Of the 2,000 or so people who recently converged in Dallas, Texas, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), one name stood out: Christopher J. Lewis.
Born just four years after the MDA’s establishment in 1950, Lewis is the son of entertainer Jerry Lewis, Hollywood’s “King of Comedy” and the public face of the MDA for well over half a century.
Few Americans older than 30 have never heard of the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon — an annual event akin to the Super Bowl or the Academy Awards that from 1966 until 2010 raised some $2.5 billion for research into muscular dystrophies, including Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).
“I worked on the MDA telethon for 39 years with my dad, and the MDA is a big part of my life. It actually inspired me to start a foundation that delivers free wheelchairs around the world to people who need them and can’t afford them,” Lewis told DMD Companion in between autographing copies of his new 300-page memoir, “Jerry Lewis on Being a Person.”
Founded in 2000, the Nevada-based American Wheelchair Mission has delivered some 800,000 new wheelchairs to disabled children and adults in 150 countries, at zero cost to the recipients.
Lewis said during a half-hour interview that he decided to come to Dallas for the MDA’s March 16-19, 2025, conference because the organization meant so much to his father and the thousands of children who came to be known as “Jerry’s Kids.”
“I have been friends with Don Wood, the head of MDA, for years,” he said. “I’m here because I want to learn about what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and how I might be able to help.”
A career born out of adversity
Though a Hollywood star, Jerry Lewis — who died in 2017 at the age of 91 — was actually a very lonely person who craved attention and acceptance, his son said.
“My dad was born to Vaudevillians. His father was a singer, and his mother was a piano player. They lived the bohemian life traveling through the borscht circuit of upstate New York,” Lewis said. “He felt rejected. When an interviewer once asked my dad to describe his childhood, he said, ‘tears of loneliness.’”
Lewis added: “He created the clown to make people laugh so he could feel loved and accepted. That was the core of his being. But until the day he died, he was the most insecure person on the planet.”
In 1945, Jerry Lewis began a long comedy partnership with singer and actor Dean Martin; the pair soon became stars of their own radio program, “The Martin and Lewis Show.” The duo would continue performing together until 1956, during which time they starred in 16 buddy movies, from “Sailor Beware” to “Scared Stiff.”
It was around this time that the MDA was established by Paul Cohen, a New York businessman who had facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). The new charity awarded its first research grant in 1950 to Ade T. Milhorat, MD, in the amount of $1,500.
Though Jerry Lewis didn’t become involved with the organization until 1952, he had first became interested in muscular dystrophy a few years before, his son said.
“One night, I asked my mom whether there was a secret reason why my dad did what he did for the people with muscular dystrophy. He always said when there was a cure, he’d tell everyone why he does it,” Lewis wrote. “She remembered that he had met a family in 1949 who lost children with muscular dystrophy and had a third son ‘waiting to die.’ My mom said: ‘He came home in tears telling me we had to help these children.’”
Chris Lewis recalled how, in 1952, his father approached the New York Cardiac Hospital, which was planning to do a 16-hour telethon with a local TV station. That same year, Martin and Lewis had just become the highest-paid act in show business.
“My dad told him, ‘Dean Martin and I will host that 16-hour telethon for you if you give 25% of what we bring in to the MDA,’” Lewis recalled. “MDA made $226,000 from that telethon, which for that time was stratospheric.
“Then in 1953, he had the idea to go to the Letter Carriers of America and have them deliver an MDA donation envelope to every household in America,” he continued. “Martin and Lewis did a two‑hour simulcast on ABC radio and television the night before Thanksgiving. That Friday, the letter carriers picked up the donation envelopes. MDA made $3.9 million.”
The comedian did fundraising variety shows, alone and with Martin, sporadically until 1966, when the Labor Day Telethon became a regular fixture. The 21-hour show was broadcast on 213 TV stations — first from New York, and then after 1973 from Las Vegas — and viewed by tens of millions of families coast to coast.
A versatile actor, comedian, singer and filmmaker, Jerry Lewis’s most famous movies were “The Bellboy” (1960), “The Nutty Professor” (1963) and “The King of Comedy” (1982). All told, Lewis appeared in 117 film and TV productions, and was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He is regarded as one of the most effective fundraisers in TV history.
Exploring a father’s legacy
According to his son, Lewis often visited children hospitalized with muscular dystrophy but kept those visits low-profile.
“Well, he never talked about it, so I would hear about it from other people. He wasn’t going to come home and tell my mom, ‘Oh, I went to see this dying kid.’ He didn’t want anybody to know because it was personal between him and the family, and he did not blow his own horn,” Lewis said.
This is partly why Chris Lewis decided in January 2016 to write “the true story” of his father and the MDA. In fact, the book’s last 70 pages documents the comedian’s lifelong dedication to muscular dystrophy research.
“For the book, I interviewed people like Dr. Don Wood, who was on the front lines as a researcher in the 1970s. He was there when my dad spoke at his very first scientific conference in 1976 in Colorado,” Lewis said. “When they were looking for the gene that causes Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the National Institutes of Health said you cannot find a gene unless you know its protein product. The MDA said, ‘Well, then we will find it.’ MDA found it. I mean, that was the attitude. With Dr. Don Wood as the head of MDA research, it was dream come true.”
From its humble beginnings, the MDA has funded over 14,000 grants totaling more than $1 billion. To date, 28 drugs have been approved to treat neuromuscular diseases — including gene therapies for both DMD and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).
“The fact that a child born with SMA can get a single dose of a drug and it will never progress in his body is an absolute miracle,” Lewis said. “Even though we haven’t found a cure, if you can stop the progression of the disease, you’re improving people’s lives — and that’s what my dad was trying to do.”
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