For more than half a century comedian Jerry Lewis has been entertaining audiences around the world with his unique style of exaggerated mugging and heavy-handed sentimentality. A national presence since the mid-1940s, when he teamed up with crooner Dean Martin to create one of show business' legendary comedy acts, Lewis has been hailed by some as a comic master equal to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and reviled by others as self-indulgent and grating. Author Tim Brooks best captures the intensity of the contrasting opinions of Lewis when he writes, "He is perhaps the most controversial performer in show business; depending on whom you read, he is either the greatest comic genius of the Western world, or the most idiotic no-talent to ever foul the screen." After a decade as entertain-ment's hottest comedy team, Martin and Lewis broke up in 1956. Each went onto...