Lewis, Richard (Comedian)

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    Oscars’ In Memoriam: Academy Honors Aleksei Navalny and Andrea Bocelli Performs

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    The in memoriam segment at the Academy Awards opened not with a Hollywood star, but with a clip of Aleksei A. Navalny from “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader who died last month in a Russian prison.“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing,” read a quote of Navalny’s on the screen.Taking a moment to recognize those in the film industry who have died since the previous Oscars ceremony, the telecast also paid tribute to stars such as Harry Belafonte, the barrier-breaking performer and activist, and Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, as well as filmmakers such as Norman Jewison, the lauded director behind “In the Heat of the Night,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck.”To accompany the tributes, the superstar tenor Andrea Bocelli sang “Time to Say Goodbye” — with a new orchestration by Hans Zimmer — alongside his son, Matteo Bocelli.Chita Rivera, the Broadway star who also appeared in films, was honored in the Oscars’ in memoriam segment.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesHere are some of figures the Academy honored:Alan Arkin, the acclaimed actor who won an Oscar for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine”Andre Braugher, a film, TV and theater actor who had roles in Spike Lee and Edward Zwick filmsMichael Gambon, the acclaimed Irish-born actor who played Albus Dumbledore in the “Harry Potter” moviesWilliam Friedkin, director of the box office hits “The French Connection” and “The Exorcist”Bo Goldman, the admired Hollywood screenwriter who took home Oscars for his work on “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Melvin and Howard”Glenda Jackson, the two-time Oscar winner who turned to politics in her 50sPiper Laurie, a respected actress with three Oscar nominations, including for her role in “Carrie”Bill Lee, a jazz bassist and composer who scored the early films of his son Spike LeeRichard Lewis, the acerbic stand-up comic who became a regular in movies and TVRyan O’Neal, who became an instant movie star in the 1970 hit film “Love Story”Matthew Perry, the “Friends” star who had roles in movies such as “The Whole Nine Yards”Paul Reubens, the comic actor behind Pee-wee Herman who had scores of movie and TV creditsRichard Roundtree, one of the first Black action heroes who was catapulted to fame in the movie “Shaft”Ryuichi Sakamoto, one of Japan’s most prominent composers, who scored the films “The Last Emperor,” “The Sheltering Sky” and “The Revenant”Tina Turner, the pop sensation who appeared in films such as “Tommy” and “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome”Carl Weathers, a former pro linebacker, who played Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies More

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      With Richard Lewis, Kvetching Was Charismatic

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      The comedian gave his Jewish neurotic persona a nervy cool even as he threw his whole body into his comedy.In the 1980s, Jewish characters were scarce on television. There were broadcasters (Howard Cosell) and the occasional talk show host (Joan Rivers), but no Jews leading a cast on prime time. Then in the final year of the decade, that changed, and a glut of anxious men arrived, kvetching, quipping and dating shiksas.Jackie Mason had his own sitcom, short-lived; Jerry Seinfeld had his, a classic. Then the following year, Rob Morrow played a Jewish doctor fish-out-of-watering in Alaska on “Northern Exposure.” But to my young Jewish eyes, none of them was as charismatic as Richard Lewis on the sitcom “Anything but Love.”Constantly grappling with a thick mane of hair, he played a smart Chicago journalist who charmed his love interest, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, whose royal status back then was derived from being pursued by an only slightly more relentless man in “Halloween.” Whereas Michael Myers paced calmly in a silly jumpsuit, Lewis bellyached in moody black outfits. For those who know him as the cranky friend of Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” it may be a surprise that Richard Lewis, who died at 76 this week, cut a seductive figure: clever, cool, darkly morose.“Anything but Love” didn’t have the inspired absurdity or cutting wit of “Seinfeld,” and it began with the most sentimental theme song in the history of television. (Second place: “Family Ties.”) But Lewis brought a nervy energy that pushed against the saccharine instincts of network sitcoms. If he seemed like a new kind of Jewish neurotic comic, he built this persona in comedy clubs. His stand-up was full of stories about his love life that somehow managed to be self-deprecating and glamorous. He once told David Letterman, “The woman I’m with now insisted on having intercourse only with a raven on her shoulder.”William Knoedelseder’s book “I’m Dying Up Here,” about stand-up in the 1970s, presents Lewis as the Lothario of the scene, dating stars like Debra Winger and once picking up a Danish baroness at the Improv in Manhattan with this line: “I’ll take you out for a tuna fish sandwich anywhere in the city.” It worked.Lewis belonged to a class of young stand-ups, like Seinfeld and Bill Maher, who were influenced by the acerbic Everyman persona of Robert Klein. But Lewis eventually developed a frenetic, jazzy style that also owed something to chaos agents like Mel Brooks and Robin Williams. His jokes were delivered with rollicking energy, making misery a full-body exercise, slumping, pacing and, most of all, gesticulating. His comedy had choreography, a visual language of pointing, air-sawing and face clasps. To say he talked with his hands seems insufficient. His whole body never shut up.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Lewis and Larry David’s Lifelong Friendship

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      The two comics were born three days apart in the same Brooklyn hospital, and their paths never stopped crossing. They became the best of friends — in their own way.If ever a Hollywood friendship was destined to be, it might have been the one between the comics Larry David and Richard Lewis, who died from a heart attack on Tuesday at 76. They were born just three days apart in 1947 at the same Brooklyn hospital. When they were 12, they met at summer sports camp, and instantly detested each other. That would set the tone that would define their friendship — and their onscreen relationship — for the rest of their lives.“I disliked him intensely,” Lewis told The Spectator last year, calling the young David cocky and arrogant. “When we played baseball, I tried to hit him with the ball. We were archrivals. I couldn’t wait for the camp to be over just to get away from Larry. I’m sure he felt the same way.” (He did. “We hated each other,” David said during a 2002 interview.)About a decade or so later, they found themselves performing at the same New York comedy club — both honing their similar brand of neurotic humor — but didn’t recognize one another at first. Later that same night, something clicked inside Lewis: “I looked at his face, and I said, ‘There’s something about you, man, that spooks me.’” With that, their memories were jogged.“We became instant best friends,” David said of Lewis during that 2002 interview, at the Paley Center for Media. In 2010, talking with Howard Stern, Lewis said, “When I became a comic, he loved my work, and I loved his work.”“For most of my life, he’s been like a brother to me,” David said of Lewis in a statement on Wednesday, shared by HBO. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob and for that I’ll never forgive him.”David was not available for questions on Thursday morning.Last month, Lewis spoke to The Times’s Melena Ryzik about those early days. “Without sounding too pompous about it, I always dug comedians who were the same onstage as they were offstage,” Lewis said, referring to David. “There wasn’t too much fake stuff going on, they didn’t create a character, they were just who they were.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Lewis and ‘The (Blank) From Hell’

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      The comedian, who died this week, said he coined the ubiquitous phrase. An episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” about a “nanny from hell” recounted his efforts to get credit for it.Go ahead and call Richard Lewis the comedian from hell. You’d be paying him a compliment.The stand-up comedian, who died on Tuesday, was known for his dark clothes, dark sense of humor and a recurring role as a, yes, even darker version himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He was a fixture in the comedy world for over half a century. But his most indelible legacy could be one simple phrase, spoken so often that its origin might never be questioned.“The (insert hated thing here) from hell.”It’s a phrase that seemingly has been around since time immemorial. The flight from hell, the day from hell, the lunch from hell. We’ve all been there, and we all know what it means, but where did it come from?According to Richard Lewis and the “Yale Book of Quotations,” it came from him.Posting on X, known then as Twitter, Mr. Lewis asked, “Where was my Nobel Peace prize?” and linked to a 2006 UPI article about his appearance in the “Yale Book of Quotations.”In a 2008 interview with Interview Magazine, Mr. Lewis said that “the truth of the matter is that whatever gift I have as a comedian, most of it was in the phrase ‘from hell.’”“I’m credited with popularizing that phrase because I felt victimized by everything,” he said.Mr. Lewis elaborated in a 2014 interview with the Nashville Scene.“I totally popularized the phrase in the late ’70s,” he said. “If you go on YouTube, you can see on Letterman, David would cut me off, and go, ‘You mean it was the bar mitzvah from hell?’ ‘That’s right!’ And I stopped saying it. I felt self-conscious. I was getting applause for it. I guess subconsciously I thought I was a victim of everything.”Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations” did not give him credit for the phrase, which became a story line in the episode “The Nanny,” during season three of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”The episode, which aired in 2002, weaves in Lewis’s attempts to get into Bartlett’s.“It was a real solid for Larry to do that for me,” he said. “That really immortalized it in some respects.” More

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      Richard Lewis, Comedian and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Actor, Dies at 76

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      After rising to prominence for his stand-up act, he became a regular in movies and TV, most recently on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”Richard Lewis, the stand-up comedian who first achieved fame in the 1970s and ’80s with his trademark acerbic, dark sense of humor, and who later parlayed that quality into an acting career that included movies like “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” and a recurring role as himself on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 76.His publicist, Jeff Abraham, said the cause was a heart attack. Mr. Lewis announced last year that he had Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Lewis was among the best-known names in a generation of comedians who came of age during the 1970s and ’80s, marked by a world-weary, sarcastic wit that mapped well onto the urban malaise in which many of them plied their trade.After finding success as a comedian in New York nightclubs, he became a regular on late-night talk shows, favored as much for his tight routine as for his casual, open affability as an interviewee. He appeared on “Late Night With David Letterman” 48 times.And he was at the forefront of the boom in stand-up comedy that came with the expansion of cable television in the late 1980s.Mr. Lewis performing as a standup in Las Vegas in 2005. He called himself “the Prince of Pain.” Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Lewis Recalled Friendship With Larry David in One of His Last Interviews

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      The occasion was a profile of a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” co-star, but Lewis got plenty of good lines in as he reminisced about starting out with Larry David.Richard Lewis called me barely a month ago, on Jan. 22, to gush about his friend Susie Essman.“I adore her,” he said, eagerly offering his thoughts for a profile of his co-star on the Larry David series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “She’s so on the money with her delivery.”Lewis, who announced last year that he had Parkinson’s disease, played himself as David’s friend on the show (as he was in real life). He and Essman, the comedian and actress behind the invective-spewing Susie Greene, the wife of David’s manager, provoked very different reactions from fans, he recalled.“When I’ve been with her in public, they want her to yell things back at them,” he said. “For me, it’s like, ‘You’re going to be all right, Richard.’”He dialed me directly, rather than having a publicist connect us, as is more common, and seemed happy to stay on the phone and crack jokes.Listening to the recording of our conversation, I hear a lot of my own laughter. Lewis was effortlessly funny and sharp.“I’ve got to give Jeff Garlin a lot of credit for hanging in,” he said of the comic who plays David’s manager and Essman’s beleaguered husband, the object of her expletive-filled, improvised tirades. “I mean, it’s a television show, but how he can have any self-esteem left after what he has taken — it’s just a barrage. Every time a scene is over, it looks like he’s limping back from the Civil War. He’s just all bloodied.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Richard Lewis, Diagnosed With Parkinson’s, Will Retire From Stand-Up Comedy

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      Mr. Lewis, whose roles include a long-running appearance on the HBO hit “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” said that he was diagnosed two years ago, and that he would continue to write and act.The comedian Richard Lewis is retiring from stand-up after having privately dealt with Parkinson’s disease, which he was diagnosed with two years ago, he said in a video posted on Twitter.Mr. Lewis, 75, said that he was diagnosed after he noticed stiffness in his walking and that he was shuffling his feet. Parkinson’s disease is an incurable disorder that affects the part of the brain that controls movement.“The last three and a half years, I’ve had sort of a rocky time, and people say, ‘You know, I haven’t heard from you, are you still touring?’” he said in a video post Sunday night to his nearly 240,000 Twitter followers. He described his diagnosis and said: “I’m finished with stand-up. I’m just focused on writing and acting.”pic.twitter.com/ngqm6TmC3x— Richard Lewis (@TheRichardLewis) April 24, 2023
      Mr. Lewis, who recently finished filming Season 12 of the HBO hit show “Curb Your Enthusiasm” with the comedian Larry David, said that he was lucky he did not get Parkinson’s disease until late in life and that the disease had progressed slowly, if at all.In addition to the Parkinson’s diagnosis, he has had four surgeries on his shoulder, back and hip in the past few years. “It was bad luck, but it’s life,” he said.Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Mr. Lewis started performing his own stand-up routines in 1971 at New York’s Improvisation and Pips, according to IMDB, the entertainment website. After appearing on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1974, he had a four-year run on the hit ABC series “Anything but Love,” co-starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Comedy Central included Mr. Lewis in the top 50 of its list of the top 100 comedians of all time.Mr. Lewis has also had a number of film roles, including as Prince John in the 1993 adventure comedy film “Robin Hood: Men in Tights.” In his memoir, “The Other Great Depression,” he described his recovery from addiction and finding spirituality.Mr. Lewis, who has performed on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” since its debut in 2000, has known Mr. David since they met at summer camp at age 12, Mr. Lewis said in a 2010 interview with Howard Stern.“Hated him, never saw him again until I became a comic, became best friends,” he said. “When I became a comic, he loved my work, and I loved his work.” More