From
The AP. Pictured is a sign from the
anti-Jerry Lewis Telethon protest.
NEW YORK — The Muscular Dystrophy Association
telethon is ending its annual Labor Day telethon, a television tradition
for decades that has slowly disappeared from view since the sudden end
of Jerry Lewis' role as host following the 2010 show.
The telethon
was a relic from a different age, a tuxedoed Lewis oozing show biz
schmaltz and hosting stars from Frank Sinatra to Jennifer Lopez over 45
years, pushing through his exhaustion to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone"
as a tote board rang up millions of dollars in donations.
From 21 and a half hours in Lewis' final year, the show had been reduced two hours the last two years on ABC.
"It's not a 21-hour world anymore," said Steve Ford, MDA executive vice president, on Friday.
With
television time costly, the MDA's fundraising efforts will move
primarily online, he said. The success of a viral event like "The Ice
Bucket Challenge" proves this is a potent area for philanthropy, he
said.
"The real heroes have always been our families, and what we
need to do is make sure that every dollar we raise is spent working for
our families," he said.
The Labor Day tote board hit a record of
$65 million in 2008, a figure Ford said reflected a full year's worth of
fundraising activities capped off by the telethon. The MDA says the
telethon itself has been responsible for more than $2 billion in giving.
Lewis'
abrupt exit, announced by the MDA a month before the 2011 telethon, was
never fully explained. There was no immediate comment on Friday's
announcement from the 89-year-old comedian's spokeswoman.
His
history with the charity goes back nearly to its beginning: the MDA was
started in 1950 and, a year later, Lewis and his comic partner Dean
Martin mentioned the charity on their NBC show. The two comics hosted a
1956 telethon before breaking up. Lewis began hosting it regularly in
1966, starting on a single television station in New York.
The
telethon was not without controversy; in the early 1990s it was picketed
by a handful of disabled people who said people with the disease were
being made objects of pity by Lewis in order to raise money.
Yet
his roster through the years represented a who's who of entertainment,
including a post-Beatles John Lennon, Michael Jackson singing with and
without his brothers, Liberace, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles and Celine
Dion. Former Johnny Carson sidekick Ed McMahon filled the same role with
Lewis on Labor Day for many years.
In 1976, Sinatra engineered a reunion of Lewis with Martin, his estranged former partner.
With
years of telethon tapes, the MDA has the equivalent of years of show
biz gold in its vaults. Ford said the MDA has been discussing with Lewis
ways to release some of this archived material.
