I saw a talk show where Lewis directly addressed the comedy issue and I wish I could find it. He said it didn’t matter whether he will be remembered in a century. The question was specifically would he be remembered in a hundred years. He pointed out how fast the culture was changing. He pointed out that, in the 1940s, ’50s and into the early ‘60s, he and Dean Martin were considered the absolute height of comedy. By the 1970s, the comedy of his era was considered outdated.
There was a new era of people like Robin Williams and Eddie Murphy. He had no problem with that. It was just an example of a new generation and a different culture with the culture that loved and spawned his kind of comedy being outdated or loved only by the old folks who were young themselves when he started. He said it didn’t matter if he was remembered in 50 or a hundred years. What mattered was, when he did a movie or standup, was it loved then, that night, by that audience in that time and place. Fifty years and two generations and two full cultural shifts later on late night television movies watched by people who weren’t even born when what they were watching was made was meaningless.
On the topic of his anger, when he was still fairly young, he did a stunt, a pratfall, where he was supposed to fall through a breakaway piano. But something went wrong. A sturdy, narrow piece of wood did not give and he fell onto it spine first. It caused tremendous damage and he suffered from severe, stabbing, constant pain in his spine for decades. He admitted that tended to make him short-tempered, especially with incompetence, laziness, or people not getting to the point, especially at work.
Medical science finally progressed enough that, in the last years of his life, they implanted an electronic device that masked the pain so he didn’t feel it. On a talk show, he talked about that, about how bad tempered he had been and how much more mellow and friendly he was after that surgery.
As to “anybody could do what he did” and really do it well, I don’t think so. I think we all tend to have that attitude about performances we don’t like. I loved Lewis as a child, not as much later. But I found Jim Carrey’s early work more annoying than anything else and don’t even get me started on early Carrottop. But I’m one generation removed from the culture of Lewis’s heyday.
I don’t know about Lewis being fired from the telethons he started but he spent decades raising money for muscular dystrophy victims and he did it for free because he wanted them to be able to afford help. It involved staying awake all night and into the next day, which had to be very difficult when he was getting older and still in constant pain.
So, sure, there were people he was short-tempered with who didn’t like him. Lots of famous people are like that and for far less reason. But I think his legacy will certainly be that of a good human being who used his celebrity status to help thousands of people.
As to the comedy. Will Eddie Murphy be revered as a comedy genius in a hundred years or will the cultures have so completely changed that most people will go, “I don’t get it. I don’t see why that’s funny.” I think it’s up to people who understand history to evaluate such things.