Oscar Profile #272: Jack Lemmon

Born John Uhler (Jack) Lemmon III on February 8, 1925, the future eight-time Oscar nominee and two-time winner was born in an elevator on the way to the delivery room at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. His father was the president of a donut company.

Lemmon was president of the famed Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, from which he graduated in 1947. Wanting to be an actor since the age of 8, he took up acting professionally after graduation, working in radio and television and on Broadway. He made his film debut in a bit part in 1949’s The Lady Takes a Sailor in support of Jane Wyman and Dennis Morgan.

The actor’s film career took off with two films in 1954, It Should Happen to You opposite Judy Holliday and Phffft opposite Kin Novak. His standout performance in 1955’s Mister Roberts won him an Oscar on his first nomination. That same year he starred in My Sister Eileen opposite Betty Garrett and Janet Leigh.

Lemmon’s late 1950s films included Fire Down Below with Rita Hayworth and Robert Mitchum, Cowboy with Glenn Ford, Bell, Book and Candle with James Stewart and Kim Novak and of course, Some Like It Hot for which he received his second Oscar nomination, his first for Best Actor.

One of the most prolific actor-stars from then until his death in 2001, Lemmon’s 1960s output included such films as The Apartment (his third Oscar nomination), Days of Wine and Roses (his fourth), Irma La Douce, The Fortune Cookie, and The Odd Couple. In the 1970s he stood out in such films as Avanti!, Save the Tiger (for which he received his fifth nomination and second win), The Front Page, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and The China Syndrome (for which he received his sixth Oscar nomination).

In the 1980s Lemmon received his seventh and eighth Oscar nominations for Tribute and Missing and gave outstanding performances in Mass Appeal and Dad. In the 1990s he had great success with JFK, Glengarry Glen Ross, Grumpy Old Men and its sequel, Grumpier Old Men and the TV remakes of 12 Angry Men and Inherit the Wind. He won an Emmy for the 1999 TV movie Tuesdays with Morie. His last film was 2000’s The Legend of Bagger Vance in which he had a cameo.

Lemmon was married twice, first to Cynthia Stone (1950-1956), who later married Cliff Robertson whose TV role Lemmon played in Days of Wine and Roses and then to Felicia Farr (1962-his death).

Jack Lemmon died of bladder cancer on June 27, 2001. He was 76.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

Mister Roberts (1955), directed by John Ford and Mervyn LeRoy

Henry Fonda hadn’t made a film since 1948 when he went back to Broadway for the original stage production of Mister Roberts. His first film in seven years would be the film version of that fabled play co-starring screen legends James Cagney and William Powell (in his las film) and relative newcomer Jack Lemmon. All the performances of all four stars recived extraordinary notices for their performances, it was Lemmon, not Fonda, Cagney or Powell who received an Oscar nomination and an eventual win. It should be noted, however, that cagney was nominated for Love Me or Leave Me that same year.

Some Like It Hot (1959)/The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder

Lemmon’s credentials as a bona fide movie star of the first magnitude rests on his work in Billy Wilder’s back-to-back comedy classics. In the first, Lemmon dons a dress and bowls everyone over with his masterful comic delivery. In the second, he plays an everyman sap who loans out his apartment key to his superiors at his insurance firm in order to advance his career. It’s only when the kooky elevator girl he’s sweet on (the equally impressive Shirley MacLaine) attempts suicide after a dalliance with the big boss (Fred MacMurray) that he finds his moral compass. Oscar nominations all around, Oscar wins for some, but not Lemmon or MacLaine.

The China Syndrome (1979), directed by Billy Wilder

Lemmon won the 1973 Oscar for Save the Tiger, a very morose and depressing film about a middle-aged jerk who sets fire to his business for the insurance money. He won the Oscar primarily for going around the country showing the film on various college campuses to drum up support and for publicly apologizing for being drunk at the Golden Globes. He was much better in a much better role as the whistle-blower in a nuclear plant that paralleled real-life events at the time of the film’s release. His co-star was Jane Fonda, the daughter of Henry Fonda, his co-star in the film for which he won his first Oscar,

Mass Appeal (1984), directed by Glenn Jordan

Lemmon received what would be his last Oscar nomination for a good, if predictable role as a middle-aged American businessman who goes to 1973 Chile in search of his missing son. He was even better two years later as a popular priest in the Connecticut suburbs who is challenged by his friend Charles Durning, the Monsignor at the local seminary to turn around talented but headstrong seminarian Zeljko Ivanek. Instead, it is Lemmon’s character whose conscience is raised. Sadly, the film received no major awards recognition. The closest it came was its designation by the National Board of Review as the fourth best film of the year.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), directed by James Foley

Lemmon gave his last great screen performance in this acclaimed film version of David Mamet’s play about the machinations involved in selling vacation properties at a tension filled real-estate office. The actor started out the awards season well with a Best Actor win at the Venice Film Festival, followed with the same designation by the National Board of Review, but then along came the Golden Globes and the Oscars, both of which ignored Lemmon and honored Al Pacino, who along with Alan Arkin, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Jonathan Pryce, Kevin Spacey and others, was quite good. None of them, though, were as good as Lemmon.