Richard Lewis
Rebecca Sapp/WireImage
Richard Lewis, the master of self-deprecating comedy who shot to stardom with stand-up TV specials, a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall and performances of “Anything but Love” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” has died. He was 76.
Lewis died peacefully at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening after suffering a heart attack, his publicist told . The actor and comedian announced in April that he was suffering from Parkinson's disease and was retiring from stand-up.
“I've had a pretty difficult time over the last three and a half years,” he said on social media as he publicly shared his private struggle after finishing the twelfth season of Curb, which was ultimately announced as the final season for the Larry David HBO comedy. Lewis retired from the series in 2021, appearing in only one episode of season 11 and returning for the final season now airing.
Lewis, who dealt with his diagnosis while filming Season 12, “was a champion,” series executive producer Jeff Schaffer recently told THR. Speaking about last week's episode in which Lewis appeared, Schaffer said he was “doing fantastic at the moment, I'm really happy to report.” Having seen him for the press and everything else, he does a great job.”
It was hard to name a neurosis that didn't make Lewis laugh. “I'm a big hypochondriac. I won't even masturbate anymore. “I’m afraid I’ll indulge,” he once said, probably in jest. He also called himself the “Descartes of fear; I'm panicking, that's why I am.” Fittingly, he almost always dressed in black.
Lewis paced nervously during his stand-up performance, running his fingers through his hair and waving his arms in annoyance. He had a long-standing problem with substance abuse and admitted he was high the night he performed at New York's Carnegie Hall in 1989. He said he had a hard time remembering the standing ovation he received or anything else that happened during the 2 1/2 season. an hour-long show that he considered the highlight of his career.
After mixing alcohol and drugs in 1991, he was quickly hospitalized, and the experience led to him becoming sober. He described his recovery in his 2002 autobiography, “The Other Great Depression: How I'm Overcoming, on a Daily Basis, at Least a Million Addictions and Dysfunctions and Finding a Spiritual (Sometimes) Life.”
As an actor, Lewis also portrayed Prince John for Mel Brooks in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights” (1993), played the psychologist son of a used car salesman (Don Rickles) in the Fox sitcom “Daddy Dearest” in 1993 and was a rabbi from 2002. 04 on The WB's 7th Heaven.
However, Lewis was at his best as a fictionalized version of himself in Curb Your Enthusiasm. He and David played transplanted New York stand-ups now living in Los Angeles in the HBO comedy.
“We are heartbroken,” an HBO spokesperson said in a statement. “His comedic brilliance, wit and talent were unmatched. Richard will always be a valued member of the HBO and Curb Your Enthusiasm families. Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends and all the fans who counted on Richard to brighten their day with laughter.”
Running gags included making fun of Lewis's past problems with substance abuse and his tendency to date beautiful women in search of “the one,” only to inadvertently ruin any chance of a relationship for David. (In real life, Lewis married in 2005.)
In “The End,” the final episode of Curb's fifth season, Lewis needs a kidney transplant and both David and manager Jeff Greene (Jeff Garlin) are a good match. The two argue that the other should donate. After a life-changing moment, David decides to make the sacrifice, but the surgery doesn't go well and David suffers life-threatening complications. Meanwhile, Lewis celebrates his new kidney by going on vacation with his newest girlfriend.
The fact that the two worked so well together was funny considering they were at odds when they were younger. Lewis was born three days apart in the same hospital and liked to joke that David tried to strangle him with Lewis' umbilical cord. As teenagers, they attended the same summer sports camp and bumped into each other.
“I hated him,” Lewis said in a 2015 interview with New Jersey Monthly. “Years later, as young comedians in New York, we became friends, but one night something caught my eye. “Something about you I hate,” I told him. “Wait, you’re that Larry David from summer camp.” And he said, “You’re that Richard Lewis.” It almost came to a fight.”
Richard Philip Lewis was born on June 29, 1947 in Brooklyn. He grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, where his father worked as a caterer. His mother performed in regional theater.
He didn't look back fondly on his childhood. “It was pretty bad. I didn’t see my father much,” he said. “My dad was such a successful caterer that he was booked for my bar mitzvah – and I had my party on a Tuesday. Talk about low self-esteem. My father died early and my sister and brother moved out when I was in middle school. So it was me and my mother, and we didn't get along very well. She didn’t catch me.”
After graduating from Dwight Morrow High School in 1965, Lewis earned a degree in marketing and communications from Ohio State University and then began writing advertising copy for an agency located above a pizzeria in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey .
At night, Lewis wrote jokes and sold material to longtime New York comedian Morty Gunty and others. This encouraged Lewis to develop his own performance, and his father's death in 1971 prompted him to take to the stage. Soon he was performing at New York hotspots like The Improv and Pips Comedy Club. (Lewis praised David Brenner and Robert Klein for helping him refine his performance, and he counted Jonathan Winters among his father figures.)
The Prince of Pain made it onto Johnny Carson's “Tonight Show” in 1974 and gained attention with “Diary of a Young Comic,” a 1979 NBC television movie produced by Lorne Michaels in which he played a Jewish comedian who leaves New York for to make a name for himself in Hollywood. When he doesn't meet Lorne Greene right away, he orders a sandwich with bacon, lettuce and calcium at a health food store.
In 1982, Lewis made his first appearance on Late Night With David Letterman and the host said he could stop by at any time.
“The reason that was so important to me…it wasn't the material, it was my physicality,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2018. “I was too much for the camera. I moved all over the joint… [Letterman] somehow turned me into a younger version of Oscar Levant [Jack Paar’s The Tonight Show]just sat there, twitching and screaming for help.”
His TV specials included the 1985 “I'm in Pain” concert, the 1988 “I'm Exhausted” concert and 1990's Richard Lewis: I'm Doomed.
Fearing he might forget a fun idea, Lewis constantly jotted down possible parts on a notepad. He taped the pages together and used them as a roadmap for an evening's performance. (Lewis even brought his recorded pages to Carnegie Hall.)
“I'm such a weirdo – I'm so obsessed with the show, but that's what I am,” he said in a 2007 interview with the New York Observer. “I am so fascinated by the time on stage that my head is full of images. It's terrifying, but also exhilarating. I will never work like that.”
On the big screen, he worked with fellow stand-ups Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Franklin Ajaye and Tim Thomerson in The Wrong Guys (1988), and in 1989 he co-starred in the ABC romantic sitcom Anything But Love.”
Set in the offices of a Chicago magazine, Lewis plays a veteran (and, yes, neurotic) columnist balancing his wits with a teacher and writer (Jamie Lee Curtis). Although they try to keep their relationship professional, they can't help but feel attracted to each other.
Richard Lewis and Jamie Lee Curtis in a promo shot for ABC's “Anything but Love”
ABC/Photo Festival
“I was a stand-up star for a long time, but it was great to get this big network in prime time,” Lewis recalled in a 2007 interview with TV Guide. “Suddenly I was in the middle of Roseanne at a promotional event and before the day was over, millions of people knew my face. It was just a whole different ball game. That’s why it was very important to me that this series lasted.”
Anything but Love, never a ratings juggernaut, made it through four seasons before being canceled in 1992. “It was actually historic because we were canceled by our own studio [20th Century Fox, instead of the network]” Lewis told TV Guide. “It was a shock. “Jamie Lee and I drove up to the stage ready to read a new script on Monday morning, not knowing that some supervisors had decided we were done.”
In 1997, he co-starred with Kevin Nealon as the goofy TV comedy writer in the ABC series “Hiller and Diller” (1997), which was canceled after 13 episodes, and then starred as a college basketball coach in “Game Day” (1999).
Lewis also appeared as a recurring character in the television series Rude Awakening, 'Til Death, and Blunt Talk (as a psychiatrist); guest appearances on “The Larry Sanders Show,” “Tales From the Crypt,” “Two and a Half Men,” “George Lopez” and “Everybody Hates Chris”; and appeared on the big screen in That's Adequate (1987), Once Upon a Crime (1992), Wagons East (1994), Drunks (1995), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Elevator (1996) and Hugo Pool (1997) . , Vamps (2012) and She's Funny That Way (2014).
Lewis is survived by his wife Joyce.
Jackie Strause and Christy Piña contributed to this report.