Jack Lemmon 

Jack Lemmon was a two time Oscar winning actor whose roles ranged from dramatic to comedic. Much of Hollywood and America had a great affection for Jack Lemmon, especially when paired alongside his frequent co-star and off screen friend, Walter Matthau. Though he had a very successful acting career that spanned roughly fifty years, Lemmon was also a well-educated and very personable man.

In a birth that must have caught his mother off guard, John Uhler Lemmon III was born in an elevator in Newton, Massachusetts, on February 8, 1925. His father was a company president and Jack was afforded an education at the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, a preparatory school that also educated former President George Bush Sr. and his son, President George W. Bush. After graduating in 1943, Lemmon attended Harvard University and was a member of the drama club until he graduated in 1947 and subsequently joined the United States Navy where he served as an ensign.

After discharge from the Navy, Lemmon pursued acting full time on television and Broadway. His film debut was a small, uncredited role in the 1949 movie The Lady Takes a Sailor. He continued working mostly in television until he became noticed in his first credited film role as Pete Sheppard in It Should Happen to You in 1954. In 1959, Lemmon starred with Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis in Some Like it Hot, directed by Billy Wilder. Wilder enjoyed working with Lemmon and cast him in several of his other films.

Jack Lemmon was the first actor to hold two Cannes Film Festival awards for Best Actor and Academy Awards for both Best Actor, for Save the Tiger in 1973; and Best Supporting Actor for Mister Roberts in 1955. He was nominated for an Academy Award six other times as well.

In a pairing that became legendary, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau appeared in ten films together. The first time was in 1966 in the film The Fortune Cookie. Lemmon and Matthau appeared together in The Odd Couple, The Front Page, Buddy Buddy, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpier Old Men, The Grass Harp, Out to Sea, and The Odd Couple II. Both were also in Oliver Stone’s JFK, but it was the only film in which they both acted but did not share screen time. Lemmon also directed Matthau in Kotch.

Jack Lemmon admitted to being an alcoholic at one time. He was married twice, first to Cynthia Stone, and then to Felicia Farr. He had a son, Chris, by his first marriage to Stone. Chris Lemmon appeared with his father in Airport ’77. Lemmon had daughter, Courtney, with his second wife whom he was still married to at the time of his death. Jack Lemmon died of bladder cancer June 27, 2001, nearly one year after the death of his longtime co-star and friend, Matthau. Jack Lemmon is fondly remembered as one of Hollywood’s classic, all-time greats.

YUDDY