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John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001), better known as Jack Lemmon, was a Hollywood movie star and one of the most award-winning American actors of his generation.

Life and career

He was born in an elevator in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where his father was the president of a donut company. After attending Phillips Academy and Harvard University (becoming while there president of the Hasty Pudding Club) Lemmon joined the Navy, received V-12 training and served as an ensign. On being discharged he took up acting professionally, working on radio, television and Broadway.

Lemmon's film debut was a bit part in the 1949 film The Lady Takes a Sailor but he was not noticed until his official debut opposite Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You (1954).

He became a favorite actor of director Billy Wilder, starring in his films Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Irma La Douce and Avanti. Wilder felt Lemmon tended to slightly overact; 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 same Billy Wilder biography quotes Jack 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." Lemmon was the first actor to have won Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He was awarded Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts (1955), and Best Actor for Save the Tiger (1973). He was also nominated for Best Actor award for his role in the controversial film Missing in 1982. In 1988 the American Film Institute gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Days of Wine and Roses (1962) was one of his finest and favorite roles. He portrayed Joe Clay, a young fun loving alcoholic businessman. In that film Lemmon delivered the memorable line: "My name is Joe C and I am an alcoholic." Three and a half decades later he admitted on the television program, Inside the Actors Studio, that he was not acting when he delivered that line.

At the 1998 Golden Globe Awards, he lost "Best Actor in a Made for TV Movie" to Ving Rhames, who promptly gave the award to Jack Lemmon.

Lemmon was one of the best-liked actors in Hollywood. He is remembered as taking time for people, as the actor Kevin Spacey recalled in a tribute. When already regarded as a legend, he met the teenage Spacey backstage after a theater performance and spoke to him about pursuing an acting career. Spacey would later work with Lemmon in the critically acclaimed film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), where one of its most powerful scenes involves Lemmon's character begging Spacey's character for another shot at making a sale.

Lemmon was married twice. His son Chris Lemmon (born in 1954 by first wife Cynthia Stone), was an actor and frequent guest on To Tell The Truth and Match Game. His second wife was the actress Felicia Farr (one daughter, Courtney, born 1966).

Jack Lemmon died of cancer on June 27, 2001. He was 76. He is interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, Westwood, Los Angeles, California, where Walter Matthau, who had co-starred with him in several films, was also buried. In typical Jack Lemmon wit, his gravestone simply reads 'Jack Lemmon - in'. After Matthau's death in 2000, Lemmon had joined other friends and relatives on a Larry King Live show in tribute to Matthau; a year later, many of the same people appeared on the show again, this time in tribute to Lemmon.

Unlike, for example, Gary Cooper who played baseball star Lou Gehrig on film -- or Henry Fonda, who played Abraham Lincoln, Jack Lemmon never played heroes from American history. But in a career spanning five decades, Lemmon was known for his intense portrayals of a wide variety of non-heroic characters.

Lemmon gravitated toward humor in his personal relationships, and was quite skillful at screen comedy. But he also had a deep respect for theatrical drama, and played serious roles with dignity and commitment.

Filmography

TV work

Awards and nominations

Academy Awards

Golden Globe Awards

Currently, Jack Lemmon holds the record for most Golden Globe nominations with twenty-two.

External links

  • * Jack Lemmon Yahoo Group

  • * Classic Movies (1939 - 1969): Jack Lemmon
  • * Jack Lemmon's Gravesite

1925 births | 2001 deaths | Academy Awards hosts | American actors | American film directors | American World War II veterans | BAFTA winners | Best Actor Oscar | Best Supporting Actor Oscar | Best Actor Academy Award nominees | Cancer deaths | Roman Catholic entertainers | Emmy Award winners | Entertainers who died in their 70s | Film actors | Genie Award winners | Harvard University alumni | Hollywood Walk of Fame | People from Massachusetts | People treated for alcoholism | Phillips Academy alumni | United States Navy officers | English-language film directors

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