The son of a prosperous doughnut king, Jack Lemmon  was born on February 8, 1925 and was educated at Andover and Harvard and served in the Navy before learning the acting ropes in New York. Once in Hollywood, he established himself in comedies and quickly won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in Mister Roberts, in 1955. Four years later, his cross- dressing flapper brought down the house in Billy Wilder's classic Some Like It Hot. A neurotic Everyman, he unlocked the pain behind a jaunty façade in The Apartment, another Wilder winner. But it was Lemmon's anguished alcoholic in Days of Wine and Roses (1963) that revealed his true dramatic range. (His own alcohol abuse remained a longtime personal problem.) A decade later, Lemmon won the Oscar for another downbeat role, in Save the Tiger (1973), a film that reinvigorated his career. In 1979, at the age of fifty- four, he was at his peak, jittery form in The China Syndrome. When he won the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, in 1988, critical accolades for J.F.K. and Glengarry, Glen Ross and handsome profits for Grumpy Old Men and Grumpier Old Men— had yet to roll in.

He kept gainfully employed in 1996 with roles as a ghost spotting guard in Kenneth Branagh's star studded Hamlet, and as a former U.S. president in My Fellow Americans. In 1998, Lemmon re-teamed with frequent co-star and fellow old fart Walter Matthau for the schtick-fest The Odd Couple II. Lemmon described his acting relationship with Matthau as "heaven, because we were always on the same wavelength and we never got off it."

Despite failing health, Lemmon continued to work in TV movies, including a remake of Twelve Angry Men, and he won an Emmy for Tuesdays With Morrie and a Golden Globe for Inherit the Wind. His last filmwork was as the narrator in Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance. Mr. Lemmon passed away on June 27, 2001, after a long battle with cancer and almost a year to the day of the death of Matthau. He is surrvived by his wife, Felicia Farr and children Chistopher and Courney. He will be greatly missed by his family, fans and employees of this company.