- Title: USA: VETERAN ACTOR JACK LEMMON DIES AGED 76
- Date: 31st May 1997
- Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (AUGUST 9, 1999) (REUTERS) VARIOUS, JACK LEMMON GETTING OUT OF LIMOUSINE TO ATTEND HOLLYWOOD FILM FESTIVAL (2 SHOTS) CUTAWAY TELEVISION CAMERA SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) JACK LEMMON SAYING "It's just, I don't know, but it's a thrill. I really love it, being able to, you know, get up and hopefully please an audience, I think is, it's
- Embargoed: 15th June 1997 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES AND VARIOUS FILM LOCATIONS
- Country: USA
- Topics: Obituaries,People
- Reuters ID: LVA9LWJ18HO13C4LJFFILXOZ0XN8
- Story Text: Jack Lemmon, one of America's best loved actors, has died at the age of 76.
Jack Lemmon won a clutch of awards including two Oscars, an Emmy, the Golden Globes and the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award in a career spanning more than 50 years.
A Harvard graduate, his dithering style of acting suited both comedy and drama and won him the enormous devotion of fans and colleagues.
Whether playing the comically conniving Ensign Pulver in "Mr. Roberts" (1955) for which he won the Best Supporting Award, or the desperate businessman in "Save the Tiger"
(1973), which won him the Best Actor Oscar, Lemmon displayed a sense of humanity that audiences could easily relate to.
Lemmon also starred in such popular movies as "Some Like It Hot" (1959), "The Apartment" (1960), "The Days of Wine and Roses" (1962), "The Odd Couple" (1968), "The Front Page"
(1974), "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" (1975) and "The China Syndrome" (1979).
He also teamed up with his friend hangdog-faced Walter Matthau in several films including the surprise hit "Grumpy Old Men" in 1993.
Of his relationship with Matthau, he said: "I think it's part and parcel. Part of our personal relationship is in our work, and part of our work is also, affects our personal relationship."
His last known work was a made for television film "Tuesdays with Morrie" in 1999 which won him an Emmy.
Lemmon was nominated for a total of eight Academy Awards and, in 1988, won the American Film Institute's 16th Life Achievement Award.
On receiving the Life Achievement Award, he paid tribute to the actors and directors he had worked with over the course of his career.
"Every single clip up there from every single one of those films, I had the best damn collaborators in the world," he said.
"From the ones who laid the brick, the writers, like Neil, or Billy Wilder, and so many others on up. Wonderful directors and great fellow actors to work with in every one of those films."
Born John Uhler Lemmon III in Boston on February 8, 1925, - in an elevator because his mother refused to leave a winning bridge hand - Lemmon from an early age had his heart set on acting. While in the Navy at the end of World War Two, he studied acting at Harvard.
Theatre work in stock companies led to hundreds of appearances on early 1950's TV programmes, followed by his casting opposite Judy Holliday in "It Should Happen To You"
(1954).
In that - his first - movie, Lemmon's screen personality was formed. He usually played an earnest, but naive man whose good intentions run afoul of his manic energy.
Lemmon's Oscar-winning role in "Mr. Roberts" earned him plenty of movie work, but nothing particularly popular until Billy Wilder's hit "Some Like It Hot" -- in which Lemmon and co-star Tony Curtis spent most of their time disguised as women to hide from gangsters.
Lemmon continued to take acting risks in the sex-charged "The Apartment," the liquor-soaked "Days of Wine and Roses"
and the titillating "Irma la Douce" (1963). Five years later, Lemmon recovered from a string of less popular movies by playing the finicky Felix Unger in the movie version of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple." Angered by the usual role restrictions placed on Hollywood stars, Lemmon throughout the rest of his career mixed "star" roles in the likes of "The Prisoner of Second Avenue" and "The China Syndrome" with smaller roles in such films as "Airport '77" (1977).
He also produced the 1967 hit "Cool Hand Luke" with Paul Newman and directed frequent co-star and close friend Matthau in "Kotch" (1971).
His later films included the dramas "Missing" (1982) and "Mass Appeal" (1984) and the serio-comic "That's Life" (1986), with Julie Andrews. In 1978, he appeared on Broadway in "Tribute" and he returned to the New York stage in 1985 in a revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night"
that was taped for transmission on cable television.
Lemmon, who liked to play pool and the piano, had a son, Chris, an actor, with his first wife, Cynthia Stone (their marriage lasted from 1950-56).
In 1962, he married actress Felicia Farr, with whom he had a daughter, Courtney.
Of his acting career he said "I really love it, being able to, you know, get up and hopefully please an audience, I think it's a privilege."
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