Joss Whedon

Jack Lemmon knows how to make an entrance. The moment he appears on the screen, something-the twinkle in his eye, the manic grace of his movement-tells us that he is a man who doesn’t quite fit in his world. Whether as the naïve policeman in Ima La Douce, Jerry and Daphne in Some Like It Hot, or Mister Roberts’ lazy and lascivious Ensign Pulver, he is the hero who either doesn’t understand or won’t accept the rules of normal behavior, a man who will need a good deal of luck, charm and perseverance to get by.

John Uhler Lemmon III made his very first entrance in prototypical fashion. He was born on February 8, 1925 at Boston’s Newton-Wellesley Hospital-in the elevator. His mother Mildred couldn’t make the choice between imminent motherhood and a particularly intriguing bridge hand. So Jack entered a world that, perhaps prophetically, was not quite ready for him.

Jack’s acting career got its start when he was just four, in a production called There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills. His father, though not above an amateur stage appearance or an impromptu softshoe himself, was a hardworking businessman, and raised Jack accordingly, sending him to the most prestigious schools. At Phillips Academy, Andover, Jack divided all his time between entertaining and teaching himself the piano. At Harvard, which he entered in 1943 on the ROTC program, his disinterest in academics was even more pronounced. Yet somehow he managed to glide through, being elected president of the Hasty Pudding Dramatic Club. At one point his grades were so low he was banned from appearing in any more productions. To get around it he simply assumed a stage name, billing himself as "Timothy Orange." "My boy," one dean told him in despair, "I don’t see how you will ever amount to anything."

Jack served his time in the Navy stateside, then spent the summer working with the North Shore players in Beverly, Massachusetts. When a key part opened in Young Woodley, starring the famous teen actor Roddy McDowall, Jack watched as dozens of professionally trained actors auditioned before Roddy’s mother, only to be met with the repeated outcry: "That boy is not British!" Jack came out on stage and began reading. He had not gotten two sentences out when Mrs. McDowall threw up her hands. "Thank God," she cried, "for a British boy."

After a successful and encouraging summer at North Shore, Jack finished up at Harvard and set out for New York. "I was so excited," Jack remembers. "I was going to be the next Gershwin-and I was going to save the American theater! It was only much later that I found out they wouldn’t let me do that, for some peculiar reason."

They young actor slept on friends’ couches, took what jobs he could, tried to put revues together, and relied on his own peculiar sort of luck to step in and keep things from becoming too grim. On classic episode occurred when he and some friends tried to save rent money by sleeping in an abandoned building. They bedded down late at night and were awakened the next morning by the thunderous crash of a wrecking ball tearing through the wall of their room. They piled out the window, hysterical and miraculously unhurt.

Jack finally got work at a music hall called the ‘Old Knick’. He acted as master of ceremonies, played piano, performed sketches, even waited tables. The pay was next to nothing but the training was invaluable.

Eventually the young actor landed the part of the lovelorn Bruce on the radio soap opera, Brighter Day. This led to parts on other radio shows, and eventually to a role in an episode of television’s Kraft Theater. A few days after that appearance Jack learned that producer Worthington Minor was looking for an Irishman to play the lead in Shadow and Substance for his Studio One series. Jack headed straight into Mr. Minor’s office and introduced himself as an actor just off the boat from Dublin, where he had been with the famous Abbey Players. Minor listened politely to the new immigrant’s rather elaborate story, then told him, "I saw you on Kraft Theater last week, and you were about as Irish as Eddie Cantor!"

Despite Jack’s abortive ruse, (or possibly because of it), Minor gave him the part. This was the take-off point for Jack, the beginning of a prodigious television career. He appeared in literally hundreds of shows, and starred in five continuing series. By the time he was approached to do a screen test for Columbia Pictures, he was an established figure on television with years of experience behind him.

He put that experience to good use. Thirty-five years and over forty films later, Jack Lemmon is one of the most popular and respected actors of his time. For four generations audiences have been touched by his honesty and accessibility-by the feeling that no matter what the film, role, or situation, he is really just one of the,. Even at the pinnacle of his success there remains in him the eager young man who tried so hard to get there: a man with the blind luck to fall into good fortune, and the talent to land on his feet.