Born on January 12, 1902, on New York's Lower East Side, Joe E. Lewis came from the same neighborhood as Irving Berlin, Eddie Cantor, and Al Smith. Lewis was one of the best two fisted drinkers. He spent 49 years on the speak-easy and nitery circuit delivering his jokes between swallows of straight scotch whiskey. Cutty Sark was his favorite brand.

In the 1920's, Lewis started his career as a crooner and he became so popular that his services started a gangland war in 1929. While working the club of a gangster box that year, Lewis would not accept a rival mobster's offer and he was ambushed with a throat slashing. He was left in an alley to bleed to death, but recovered.

For many years after, he couldn't talk nor sing and finally came back as a comedian. His bull-frog voice fascinated the show-going public at the El Rancho and New York's Copacabana. Lewis was a headliner for over 25 years. He was without any doubt the best box office draw along the glittering Strip earning over $400,000 a year after World War II.

Lewis loved to play Vegas so he could booze and gamble all night long. He fought sleep and was always in hock to Beldon Katleman.

For many who never saw Lewis on the saloon circuit, he was best known for his song rendition of Sam, You Made the Pants Too Long. This was his only popular hit song in all his years as a performer.

TV was not for him. He tried it once and faltered badly. He never wanted another crack at it, although he received offers.

Money never meant anything to him. He gambled away the $400,000 received for his autobiography, which was made into the 1957 movie - The Joker Is Wild (aka All The Way), starring Frank Sinatra as Lewis. Lewis died on June 4, 1971, in New York, New York, and is buried at Cedar Park Cemetery, New Jersey.

"Nobody else had a mythical coat of arms made up of a jockey's cap on a bottle of scotch. It is surmised Joe E. Lewis would have loved the creation. After a long battle with self-destruction, he has passed on. Today when people go home early, where prom kids bail out a supper club's financial woes and rock and pot are newfangled additions to the vocabulary, it may be a little difficult to remember the happy-go-carefree nights of the 30's, 40's and 50's. Back then a funny man with a song or two thrown in would regale the late watch with some Norwegian philosophy, which he admitted he read on a can of imported sardines. Or he sang about the unfairness of the calendar that denied the second month equal days with the others. "Poor Little February," it was called.

Joe E. Lewis, nearly always found entertaining in a night spot that had proximity to a race track, had his own pendulum of interest swing from bangtails to booze. The guys with the big bankrolls in their pockets and chorines on the arms made up the Lewis legion. How many times we saw him and in so many places! Saratoga, Loew's State, Chicago's Chez Paree, the Copa - here in town, Hollywood's Mocambo, the fabled Riviera over on the Jersey side of the Hudson, the Troika in Washington, D.C. Right now we can hear wide-eyed Joe, sometimes mealy-mouthed with excess spirits, sing "The H.V, Kaltenborn Blues." Wasn't he the one who pointed out that George Washington must have been quite a tippler himself. How else, Joe E. reasoned, would a guy stand up in a rowboat while crossing the Delaware. Some of his patter and songs were somewhat off color. By today's standards, no, rather tame in fact.

But he was the cover charge crowd and how they loved his ditty about the benedict in crowded quarters at a wedding - "The Groom Couldn't Get In." Joe's extra entendre was good for laughs back then. Never really dirty or lubricious, his humor was not for the prude or the righteous teetotaler. Lewis never made it in the last days of vaudeville, he scored not on the Broadway stage. Radio! Oh, no. And the TV tube was not his glass of scotch. So what it boils down to is this - Joe E. Lewis was reigning royalty in the upholstered sewers, as Fred Allen named night clubs. Glass in hand in the late hours he could charm you.

Now this very special comedian has poured his final fifth. His domain, ashtrays with music, as Fred Allen called upholstered sewers, died years before he did.

He was a lonely guy. But a lovely one." - Gary Stevens, Requiem For A Midnight Clown, June 1971

For Lewis' biography Click Here, go to out of print section, and type in The Joker is Wild.

Lewis' film credits include Lady in Cement (1968) as himself; Private Buckaroo (1942) as Lancelot Pringle McBiff; The Holy Terror as Pelican Beek; and Private Number (aka Secret Interlude) (1936) as Smiley Watson.

My research has shown that Lewis appeared at the Aladdin, 1966, El Rancho 1944, 1954-1960; Flamingo 1959-1963; and Sands 1957 and 1966. He was also roasted for the Friars' Club at the Riviera in 1970.