 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.
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