Jerry Lewis in THE KING OF COMEDY

Do you think he deserved an Oscar nomination?

I think the film in general deserved some Oscar nominations. If Jerry Lewis had gotten an Oscar for his performance, my feelings wouldn't have been hurt. I'm just happy the film is getting more credit now than it did before.

His best role by far.

That's because he played himself.

Jerry Langford and Buddy Love were the characters that most resembled Jerry's off-camera self.

Sure, it's a good enough performance to warrant an Academy Award especially since he's playing against type where he's typically a gonzo man-child nebbish character. He's acts like a real human in the film and is likely playing a version of himself who knows all too well of what it means to be hounded by fans and not have your privacy.

The King of Comedy came out in 1982 and was eligible for the 1982 Academy Awards. I'm not sure who you'd replace, but here at the nominees for best supporting actor of that year according to wikipedia:

Louis Gossett Jr. – An Officer and a Gentleman as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley‡
Charles Durning – The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas as The Governor
John Lithgow – The World According to Garp as Roberta Muldoon
James Mason – The Verdict as Ed Concannon
Robert Preston – Victor/Victoria as Carol "Toddy" Todd

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I might have swapped him in for Charles Durning's nomination.

Gideon has blocked me and thus won't see my contributions, but for the sake of the discussion....

First of all, Viddy you are incorrect about The King of Comedy's release date and Academy Awards eligibility. It first screened in Iceland in 1982, thus both the IMDb and Wikipedia list it as a 1982 release. However, it screened in competition as the opening film of the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1983 and it's qualifying U.S. premieres in New York and Los Angeles were definitely in 1983, not 1982, making it eligible for the 56th Academy Awards, which were announced in April of 1984. HERE is a list of the eligible films for the calendar year of 1983.

The five nominees for Best Supporting Actor that year were Charles Durning (To Be or Not To Be), John Lithgow (Terms of Endearment), Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment), Sam Shepard (The Right Stuff), and Rip Torn (Cross Creek). Nicholson of course won. Personally I would slot Jerry Lewis' work as Jerry Langford in there, in favor of Durning and probably even Shepard. Some other worthy eligible performances that missed the cut that year include Burt Lancaster in Local Hero, Jeff Daniels with his two Terms of Endearment co-stars, many of Shepard's The Right Stuff co-stars including Ed Harris and Dennis Quaid, Darren McGavin in A Christmas Story, Lee Marvin in Gorky Park, and Gene Hackman in Under Fire. Best Supporting Actor is almost always a category that is overflowing with worthy and interesting nominees, and thus usually has snubs of some order.

Here is Siskel & Ebert's original television review of The King of Comedy.



Ebert wrote a rather scathing initial print review of The King of Comedy after he saw it in Cannes, but his opinion began to morph into a more positive outlook with each subsequent viewing over the years. Siskel loved it from the beginning.

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Thanks for the correction on the year Holden. I've always liked The King of Comedy and found Rupert Pumpkin to be the more extroverted, optimistic and slightly less sociopathic, but also less perceptive cousin of Travis Bickle. He's a great character and it was interesting to see DeNiro pay homage to this film in The Joker by taking on a slight variation of Jerry Lewis' character and situation.

For the record I have never been a Jerry Lewis fan... at all, in fact I find him annoying and unpleasant when he plays the character he did so often in the 50s and 60s. He's been in some decent films, I just never cared for his brand of humor. I'm much more of a Bob Hope kind of guy. So yeah, it was great seeing him play such a different role in The King of Comedy and I very much enjoyed him in it.

My cross-universe theory (just for fun)...
DeNiro's character of Murray Franklin in Joker (2019) IS Rupert Pupkin.
At the end of King of Comedy (1982) Pupkin achieves his dream and becomes a professional comedian and ultimately a late-night talk show host.
But he also had a criminal record as a convicted felon (for kidnapping Jerry Langford) and didn't want his name (and record) linked to his new successful career.
So he adopted the stage name of "Murray Franklin" (in honor of talk-show-host Joe Franklin) for his new gig before his life was taken by Arthur Fleck (the new King of Comedy)!

Ha! Interesting. Not sure how the timeline's would match up with that, but yeah I know in the press around the time The Joker came out a lot of people were comparing it to Taxi Driver and a 1970's New York and such and certainly the Scorsese influence is there. Yes, I can see shades of Taxi Driver, absolutely, but when I watched The Joker was the first time I was thinking to myself... holy shit! Taxi Driver isn't quite the right Scorsese film, this is more obviously The King of Comedy territory here. If anything it goes to show how The King of Comedy is largely forgotten or at least overlooked among casuals which is too bad. It's not on the level of Taxi Driver, which is a masterpiece for several reasons, but it's still a great film.

Man, oh, man, that'd make for a depressing day with nothing to do; a triple bill of Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy, and to cap it off with The Joker. Geesh! All three wonderful films with lots of overlap to be sure, but each have their own unique and singular merits.

Yeah I keep forgetting that Joker takes place in the 80's (I think... I never saw the entire thing) - the same period that King of Comedy takes place - so Rupert wouldn't be 30 - 40 years older in Joker.

Read some trivia yesterday that said that DeNiro and the makers of Joker actually toyed with the idea of making it a sequel to King of Comedy by having DeNiro reprise his role as Rupert Pupkin (but again, they would've had to change the timeline to account for Pupkin's aging by decades).

One of the many famed roles which Burt Reynolds apparently turned down.
Of all of them, he said that that one was his biggest regret as it could have made him a 'proper' actor.

I'd also say it's one of De Niro's best performances as well.
For a straight actor, his interplay with Lewis, including mini adlib reactions, is superb.

Jerry Lewis's performance in The King of Comedy is often regarded as one of his most nuanced and compelling roles.