Jack Lemmon Biography

John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 " June 27, 2001) was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films, including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts (for which he won the 1955 Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger (for which he won the 1973 Best Actor Academy Award), The Out-of-Towners, The China Syndrome, Missing (for which he won Best Actor at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival), Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men, and Grumpier Old Men.

Early life

Lemmon was born in an elevator at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. He was the only child of Mildred Burgess LaRue (née Noel) and John Uhler Lemmon, Jr., the president of a doughnut company. Lemmon attended John Ward Elementary School in Newton and The Rivers School in Weston, Massachusetts. He stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight. Lemmon attended Phillips Academy (Class of 1943) and Harvard University (Class of 1947), where he lived in Eliot House and was an active member of several Drama Clubs - and president of the Hasty Pudding Club - as well as a member of the Delphic Club for Gentleman, a final club at Harvard. After Harvard, Lemmon joined the Navy, receiving V-12 training and serving as an ensign. On being discharged, he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway. He studied acting under coach Uta Hagen. He was enamored of the piano and learned to play it on his own. He could also play the harmonica, guitar, organ, and the double bass.

Career

Lemmon's film debut was a bit part as a plasterer/painter in the 1949 film The Lady Takes a Sailor, but he went unnoticed until his debut, opposite Judy Holliday, in the 1954 comedy It Should Happen to You. Lemmon worked with legendary leading ladies, among them Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood, Betty Grable, Janet Leigh, Shirley MacLaine, Lee Remick, Romy Schneider, Doris Day, Kim Novak, Judy Holliday, Rita Hayworth, June Allyson, Virna Lisi, Ann-Margret, Sophia Loren, and many more. He was close friends with actors Tony Curtis, Ernie Kovacs, Walter Matthau, and Kevin Spacey. He made two films with Curtis, three films with Kovacs (Operation Mad Ball, Bell, Book and Candle, and It Happened to Jane), and eleven with Matthau.

Early in Lemmon's career he met comedian Ernie Kovacs while co-starring with him in Operation Mad Ball. Lemmon and Kovacs became close friends and appeared together in two subsequent films, Bell, Book and Candle and It Happened to Jane In 1977 PBS broadcast a compilation series of Kovacs's television work, and Lemmon served as the narrator of the series. Lemmon discussed his friendship with Kovacs in the documentary, Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius.

He was a favorite of director Billy Wilder, starring in the films Some Like It Hot (for which he was awarded Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival), The Apartment, Irma la Douce, The Fortune Cookie, Avanti!, The Front Page, and Buddy Buddy. Wilder felt Lemmon had a natural tendency toward overacting that had to be tempered; the Wilder biography Nobody's Perfect quotes the director as saying, "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat". The biography quotes Lemmon as saying, "I am particularly susceptible to the parts I play... If my character was having a nervous breakdown, I started to have one".

He enjoyed a longtime working relationship with director Blake Edwards, starring in My Sister Eileen (1955), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Great Race (1965) and That's Life! (1986).

Lemmon recorded an album in 1958 while filming Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe. Twelve jazz tracks were created for Lemmon and another twelve were added. Lemmon played the piano and recorded his own renditions of Monroe's trademark songs, I Wanna Be Loved By You and I'm Through With Love, for the album which was released in 1959 as A Twist of Lemmon/Some Like It Hot.

Lemmon was awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1956 for Mister Roberts (1955) and the Best Actor Oscar for Save the Tiger (1973), becoming the first actor to achieve this rare double (the only other actors to achieve this are: Robert De Niro, Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson, Kevin Spacey, and Denzel Washington). He was also nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in the controversial film Missing in 1982, and for his roles in Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The China Syndrome (1979), and Tribute (1980). He won another Cannes award for his performance in Missing (which received the Palme d'Or). In 1988, the American Film Institute gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962) was a favorite role. He portrayed Joe Clay, a young, fun-loving alcoholic businessman. In that film, Lemmon delivered the line, "My name is Joe Clay ... I'm an alcoholic." Three and a half decades later, he stated on the television program Inside the Actors Studio that he was a recovering alcoholic.

Lemmon's production company JML produced Cool Hand Luke in 1967. Paul Newman was grateful to Lemmon for his support and offered him the role of the Sundance Kid, later played by Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but Lemmon turned it down. He did not like riding horses and he felt he'd already played too many aspects of the Sundance Kid's character before.

Lemmon appeared in many films partnered with actor Walter Matthau. Among their pairings was 1968's The Odd Couple, as Felix Ungar (Lemmon) and Oscar Madison (Matthau). They starred together in The Fortune Cookie (for which Matthau won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), The Front Page and Buddy Buddy. In 1971, Lemmon directed Matthau in the comedy Kotch. It was the only movie that Lemmon directed and Matthau was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his performance.

Additionally, Lemmon and Matthau had small parts in Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK (the only film in which both appeared without sharing screen time). In 1993, the duo teamed again to star in Grumpy Old Men. The film was a surprise hit, earning the two actors a new generation of young fans. During the rest of the decade, they would star together in Out to Sea, Grumpier Old Men and the widely panned The Odd Couple II. In 1996, Lemmon was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear award at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. Lemmon was a guest voice on The Simpsons in 1997, playing the character Frank Ormand, owner of the pretzel business that Marge Simpson franchised. The recurring character Old Gil Gunderson, voiced by Hank Azaria, is an ongoing parody of Lemmon's character in Glengarry Glen Ross.

At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, he was nominated for "Best Actor in a Made for TV Movie" for his role in Twelve Angry Men losing to Ving Rhames. After accepting the award, Rhames asked Lemmon to come on stage and, in a move that stunned the audience, gave his award to him. (The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the Golden Globes, had a second award made and sent to Rhames.). He received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1988.

Personal life

Actor Kevin Spacey recalled that Lemmon is remembered for always making time for other people. Already regarded as a legend, he met teenage Spacey backstage after a theater performance and spoke to him about pursuing an acting career. Spacey would later work with Lemmon in Dad (1989), the critically acclaimed film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) and on stage in a revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Lemmon was Spacey's mentor, and taught Spacey that people who do well in a business have an obligation to "send the elevator back down" to help lift people starting out on the ground floor. This metaphor is ironic in that Lemmon was born in an elevator.

In his autobiography, My Life, Burt Reynolds recalls Lemmon as the quintessential gentleman who never spoke ill of anyone, even if they deserved it. This niceness backfired for Reynolds: prior to accepting the lead in W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), directed by John G. Avildsen, Reynolds asked Lemmon, whom Avildsen had directed in Save the Tiger (1973) for an opinion of Avildsen as a director. Lemmon told Reynolds that Avildsen was "okay", and Reynolds accepted the role. After the film was released and his experiences in production proved unhappy, Reynolds complained to Lemmon and described Avildsen as an "asshole", whereupon Lemmon replied, "I guess you could say that."

Lemmon was married twice. His son Chris Lemmon (born 1954), was his first child by his first wife, actress Cynthia Stone (February 26, 1926, Peoria, Illinois " December 26, 1988). His second wife was actress Felicia Farr, with whom he had a daughter, Courtney (born 1966). Farr had a daughter from a previous relationship (her marriage to Lee Farr) named Denise. Lemmon was a Catholic, and publicly announced his alcoholism during a 1998 interview in Inside the Actors Studio.

Death

Lemmon died of colon cancer and metastatic cancer of the bladder on June 27, 2001. He had been fighting the disease, privately, for two years before his death. He was interred at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California, buried near his friend and co-star, Walter Matthau, who died almost exactly one year before Lemmon. His gravestone simply reads "JACK LEMMON in", a reference to how he was billed on film credits. After Matthau's death in 2000, Lemmon appeared with friends and relatives of the actor on a Larry King Live show in tribute. A year later, many of the same people appeared again on the show to pay tribute to Lemmon.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1949	The Lady Takes a Sailor	Plasterer	Uncredited
1954	It Should Happen to You	Pete Sheppard
1954	Phffft!	Robert Tracey
1955	Three for the Show	Martin "Marty" Stewart
1955	Mister Roberts	Ensign Frank Thurlowe Pulver	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1955	My Sister Eileen	Robert "Bob" Baker
1955	Hollywood Bronc Busters	Himself
1956	You Can't Run Away from It	Peter Warne
1957	Fire Down Below	Tony
1957	Operation Mad Ball	Private Hogan
1958	Cowboy	Frank Harris
1958	Bell, Book and Candle	Nicky Holroyd
1959	Some Like It Hot	Jerry "Gerald" / "Daphne"	BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance (2nd place) Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor
1959	It Happened to Jane	George Denham
1960	The Apartment	C. C. Baxter	BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor
1960	Stowaway in the Sky	Narrator	Voice
1960	Pepe	Daphne	Cameo
1960	The Wackiest Ship in the Army	Lt. Rip Crandall
1962	The Notorious Landlady	William "Bill" Gridley
1962	Days of Wine and Roses	Joe Clay	Fotogramas de Plata Award for Best Foreign Performer San Sebastián International Film Festival Award for Best Actor Sant Jordi Award for Best Performance in a Foreign Film Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1963	Irma la Douce	Nestor Patou / Lord X	Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1963	Under the Yum Yum Tree	Hogan	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1964	Good Neighbor Sam	Sam Bissel	Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1965	How to Murder Your Wife	Stanley Ford	Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role
1965	The Great Race	Professor Fate / Prince Hapnick	Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance (2nd place) Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1966	The Fortune Cookie	Harry Hinkle
1967	Luv	Harry Berlin
1968	There Comes a Day
1968	The Odd Couple	Felix Ungar	Laurel Award for Top Male Comedy Performance (2nd place) Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1969	The April Fools	Howard Brubaker
1970	The Out-of-Towners	George Kellerman	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1971	Kotch	Sleeping bus passenger	Director
1972	The War Between Men and Women	Peter Edward Wilson
1972	Avanti!	Wendell Armbruster, Jr.	Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1973	Save the Tiger	Harry Stoner	Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1974	The Police Can't Move	Narrator	Voice
1974	The Front Page	Hildebrand "Hildy" Johnson	David di Donatello for Best Actor Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1975	Wednesday	Jerry Murphy
1975	The Gentleman Tramp	Narrator	Voice
1975	The Prisoner of Second Avenue	Mel Edison
1976	Alex & the Gypsy	Alexander Main
1977	Airport '77	Captain Don Gallagher
1979	The China Syndrome	Jack Godell	Best Actor Award (Cannes Film Festival) David di Donatello for Best Actor BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1980	Tribute	Scottie Templeton	Silver Bear for Best Actor (Berlin) Genie Award for Best Performance by a Foreign Actor Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1981	Buddy Buddy	Victor Clooney
1982	Missing	Ed Horman	Best Actor Award (Cannes Film Festival) Nominated "? Academy Award for Best Actor Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role Nominated "? David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actor Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1984	Mass Appeal	Father Tim Farley
1985	Macaroni	Robert Traven
1986	That's Life!	Harvey Fairchild	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
1989	Dad	Jake Tremont	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama
1991	JFK	Jack Martin
1992	Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy	Himself
1992	The Player	Himself
1992	Glengarry Glen Ross	Shelley Levene	National Board of Review Award for Best Actor Valladolid International Film Festival Award for Best Actor Volpi Cup Award for Best Actor
1993	Luck, Trust & Ketchup: Robert Altman In Carver County	Himself
1993	Short Cuts	Paul Finnigan	Golden Globe Award for Best Ensemble Cast Volpi Cup
1993	Grumpy Old Men	John Gustafson
1995	The Grass Harp	Dr. Morris Ritz
1995	Grumpier Old Men	John Gustafson
1996	Getting Away with Murder	Max Mueller / Karl Luger
1996	My Fellow Americans	President Russell P. Kramer
1996	Hamlet	Marcellus
1997	Out to Sea	Herb Sullivan
1997	Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's	Himself
1998	Puppies for Sale	Pet shop owner
1998	The Odd Couple II	Felix Ungar
2000	The Legend of Bagger Vance	Narrator / Hardy Greaves	Uncredited

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1949"1950	That Wonderful Guy	Harold
1950	Toni Twin Time	Host	Episode dated May 31, 1950
1951	'	Celebrity panelist	5 episodes
1951"1952	'	Newlywed	"The Couple Next Door" sketches
1952	Heaven for Betsy	Pete Bell
1954	'	Surgeon
1956	'	John Wilkes Booth
1957	What's My Line?	Mystery Guest	Season 9, Episode 10
1957"1958	Alcoa Theatre	Henry Coyle Steve Tyler Wally Mall Lieutenant Tony Crawford Edward King	Episode: "Disappearance" Episode: "Most Likely to Succeed" Episode: "Loudmouth" Episode: "The Days of November" Episode: "Souvenir"
1976	'	Archie Rice
1987	Long Day's Journey Into Night	James Tyrone, Sr.	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film
1988	'	Gov. John Slaton	Nominated "? Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor " Miniseries or a Movie Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film
1992	For Richer, for Poorer	Aram Katourian
1993	'	Robert	Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film
1994	Wild West	Host
1996	'	Bud Bailey
1997	'	Frank Ormand	Voice Episode: "The Twisted World of Marge Simpson"
1997	12 Angry Men	Juror #8	Nominated "? Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor " Miniseries or a Movie Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie
1998	'	Thomas Gerrin
1999	Inherit the Wind	Henry Drummond	Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film Nominated "? Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor " Miniseries or a Movie
1999	Tuesdays with Morrie	Morrie Schwartz	Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor " Miniseries or a Movie Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Miniseries or Television Film

Discography

• A Twist of Lemmon/Some Like It Hot (1959)
• Piano Selections from Irma La Douce (1963)
• Piano and Vocals (1990)
• Peter and the Wolf (1991)
• Songs and music from Some Like It Hot (2001)

Bibliography

• Wise, James. Stars in Blue: Movie Actors in America's Sea Services. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997. ISBN 1557509379