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KAREN BARTA: Good morning. I'm Karen Barta with news from Minnesota Public Radio. The annual Memorial Day service at Fort Snelling National Cemetery gets underway this hour. George Steiner, commander of the US Army's 88th regional support command, will deliver the Memorial Day address. Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and Congressman Jim Ramstad and Bill Luther also will speak.

Authorities say a man who was found dead in a South Minneapolis apartment died of multiple blunt force injuries. The 31-year-old was discovered by his mother Friday night. His identity has not been released. No arrests have been announced.

Up to 1,500 teenagers in Minneapolis start summer jobs in two weeks. The city's employment and training program director, Chip Wells, says it appeared Congress would eliminate summer jobs programs, but he says about half a million federal dollars have come through for Minneapolis.

CHIP WELLS: That'll probably employ about 350 young people. There was, though, another thing that happened as well, and that is that the governor within the state of Minnesota also approved a doubling of state resources for the program. And that was not altogether expected either. So not only do we get extra federal money, but we also got twice the amount of state money.

KAREN BARTA: Wells says the jobs for 13 and 14-year-olds pay minimum wage and last 10 weeks.

The state forecast today, rain is likely in the south, partly to mostly sunny in Central and Northern Minnesota. Highs from 50 in the far South to the middle 70s in the North. And for the Twin Cities, cloudy and cool, a chance of showers and a high near 60. Around the region in Rochester, it's cloudy and 50 degrees. It's fair and 59 in Duluth. In Saint cloud, it's fair and 56. And in the Twin Cities, it's cloudy and 56 degrees. That's news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Karen Barta.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Well, just when you think you've heard every possible account of surviving the Holocaust during World War 2, another voice with a remarkable story emerges. Today on our Voices of Minnesota interview, we hear from Reidar Dittmann. The retired Saint Olaf College professor is a native of Norway. He was arrested by the Nazis during the war and sent to Buchenwald, a concentration camp. His life was spared because of the Nazi view that Nordic people had suitable genetic material.

Well, Dittmann and thousands of other Norwegians resisted the Nazi occupation of their country. 275,000 German troops swept into the country, overwhelming Norway's army of 11,000 soldiers in two months. The 74-year-old Dittmann told Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson he was 18 when the Nazis took over his country and his hometown of Tonsberg, a historic seaport South of Oslo. Dittmann, a music student, was first arrested for singing anti-German songs at a protest rally.

REIDAR DITTMANN: Now, if you had been in Norway during the war, you would have known that on every lamp post, on every bare wall, there were posters that told us what we could do and what you couldn't do. And they usually started with this. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH], which means subject to execution is he who does so and so, or subject to imprisonment. And one of the things you couldn't do was to sing in public. That was a sin. That was a crime. And also, you couldn't gather more than four to six people in one place. Rules and regulations imposed upon us by the occupation.

But we were there and the singing didn't go too well until somebody said, we see the determined kid is here. He can lead us because he conducts the choir. So I did. Got hoisted up on a ledge outside a store and we sang patriotic songs. God save the King, who was in London. But from my high vantage point, I could see down the street and I could see the Germans coming, four abreast with their bayonets, bared, marching up to split this group apart.

And I did the only sensible thing a person would do. I jumped off my ledge and ran away as fast as I could. I'm reminded of what Ibsen said once. He said that face to face I was never a courageous man. And I think that he was foreshadowing my feeling at that moment. So I went into the woods and actually stayed in the woods overnight. And in the morning, Monday morning, it was nice and quiet and I went to my house, which is at the edge of the woods.

And went there and put the key in the door latch and opened the door, and inside were two civilian men I had never seen before. And one of them stepped forward and said, [GERMAN]. Are you Mr. Dittmann? You're under arrest. And so I became the first political prisoner in my 1,100 year old hometown's history and didn't feel very great about it at that time.

But something had happened in Norway prior to this time. On the first day of the occupation, a very important ship, the Admiral Blücher had sailed into Oslo with 1,200 civilians on board. And these civilians had learned Norwegian language and Norwegian culture. They were to infiltrate the life of Norway to facilitate the nazification of the nation. But that ship was sunk at the entry to the city of Oslo, went down with 2,000 people. 17 came ashore.

And so this civilian onslaught on Norway was hindered and that made it possible for us to organize. And so when I got into prison, the prison authorities were not Nazis. They were loyal Norwegians. So I, in a sense, had a good time except for being confined. I served three months at that time and then got out again.

DAN OLSON: You should explain for a moment the nature of the resistance. I think many people know, although we could all use some refresher, it was much more than singing songs. It was much more than people--

REIDAR DITTMANN: It was a lot more than that. It started out in somewhat innocuous way. For instance, you would wear a paperclip on your lapel. And paperclips hold things together. And so everybody who wore a paperclip was an indication that we are on your side. We are sticking with you. Then the Germans announced that it was illegal to wear a paperclip on the lapel, which is a wonderful thing to do, humorous stupidity.

And they sent out-- ordered Quisling's troops-- he had a civilian guard-- to go out and remove paperclips. And of course, after a while, the underground got a hold of this that they were going to come and remove the paperclips. So an order was placed out to put razor blades on the back of the paperclips. And that kind of quickly stopped the advancement of the Quisling's guard. That was one little thing. Little things. That was a resistance.

Another resistance was that you come into a tram in the city of Oslo and if there was an empty seat next to a German soldier, you'd never sit down. And that, of course, irritated the occupation force. They realized very quickly that we are not welcome in this country. And I'm sure they had been told back in Germany that the Norwegians are going to be very friendly, but they were not.

But then it went into more serious activities. And my first involvement was in the underground newspaper distribution. And we would receive news from England through radio receivers, although all radio receivers were confiscated. But we had some underground sources and we also had transmitters that went to London. All our orders came from the government in exile in London.

And we would walk around in the night leaving newspapers and information in strategic places, always seeing to it that the Nazis got them as well because it was important. Everything else was controlled and the media were totally controlled by the Germans. The radio, the newspapers, anything like that was under control. This became very dangerous because if you were caught even reading an illegal newspaper, you would immediately be imprisoned.

It is probably not known to many in America that there were 35,000 Norwegians imprisoned during the war. In a nation that had at that time less than 3 million people, 35,000 were in prison. And of those, some 25,000 were in German concentration camps. The others were in camps in Norway.

But thereafter, the underground became much more active in sort of a military way, semi-military way, paramilitary way, by sabotaging trains and ships and that sort of thing. I was involved a little bit in this, but not in any great degree. There were some true heroes in the Norwegian underground who absolutely had no fear of death.

A very famous event, of course, are the men of Telemark who sabotaged the heavy water plant and thereby stopped the German research toward the development of the atomic bomb. And that resulted in many deaths on the part of the Norwegians, but it was a crucial event in the history of World War 2.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Reidar Dittmann, a Holocaust survivor, a member of the resistance in Norway during World War 2, talking with MPR's Dan Olson. We'll continue the interview with Reidar Dittmann in just a moment. Let me tell you, first of all, that you're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. This is Midmorning. I'm Paula Schroeder.

Coming up, after the Voices of Minnesota, we'll hear from Arne Fogel, who will be in to tell us about the life and art of Jerry Lewis. Yes, indeed. It's going to be kind of a cloudy day in Southern Minnesota today with rain likely. High temperatures right around 50, maybe getting up into the upper 50s. But if you head north, that's where the nice weather is going to be, partly to mostly sunny skies from probably Saint Cloud North to the border and reaching the middle 70s in Northern Minnesota today.

Well, the arrest, which sent Reidar Dittmann to a Nazi concentration camp came as he was taking his entrance exam for the university. He and hundreds of students were sitting in a large auditorium in Oslo taking the test. His work for the resistance had prevented him from learning all he needed to know to pass the exam.

REIDAR DITTMANN: And I was going to say, gentlemen, I believe I will try to take this examination next year. And I said, gentlemen, I-- and at that moment, everything had been focused on me, from the audience and everybody waiting for what I was going to say. But everything shifted because into the auditorium from the back and from the side and in the entry area streamed German soldiers with their bayonets bared. And an officer jumped up in front of me on the stage and he shouted out, [GERMAN]. Everybody is under arrest.

And so I found myself in the strange position of being saved by the Germans from failing my exam. And I knew perfectly well that this third arrest would lead to nothing good on my part. And so the Germans had decided that on the 27th of November at 11 o'clock in the morning, they were going to surround the university and apprehend everybody on the premises in the hope in this net sweeping or picking up underground, important underground people.

I suppose that they were right in this assumption. They arrested 4,500 people. And we were all shipped to an assembly camp in South Norway where all of us, again, were subjected to interrogation. And you can imagine my coming in there, they already had a file on me, that I had very little chance. But in the course of three weeks until Christmas, they sifted these people out and a great many were released and a great many were transferred to camps in Norway. And then ultimately, we were 348 left.

And on Christmas Eve that year, we were told that we were to be shipped to Germany and came to Oslo and boarded the prisoner transport ship, the Danube, and sailed through the Skagerrak and Kattegat to Stettin in North Germany, put into boxcars, and were transported farther down into a rather devastated Germany. And in the dark of the night on New Year's Eve, we arrived in this place that nobody had ever heard about.

And to the sound of the baying of dogs and the roaring of guards, we were hustled out of the boxcars and moved forward and beacons, spotlights were playing on us. And in the light of the spotlights, I could see the gateway to what I assumed was a camp. And above the gateway emblazoned in brass letters was the motto of the camp. And it said, [GERMAN]. Right or wrong, my country.

I didn't know then, but learned later that that wasn't a German phrase at all but that was an American phrase, was said by Stephen Decatur in the early part of the 1800s when he lifted his glass to his fellow soldiers and he said, my country, may she always be right. But right or wrong, my country. Thereby issuing forth one of the most immoral statements ever made, one that we have been struggling with in America ever after, where we put patriotism ahead of our own moral responsibility. And the Germans found it such a beautiful sentiment that it perfectly suited the establishment of a concentration camp.

DAN OLSON: Was there widespread knowledge, do you think, in Norway, even across Europe, for that matter, of the existence of the death camps?

REIDAR DITTMANN: Of the death camps, initially, no. Of concentration camp, yes. And of the fatal result of being incarcerated in the concentration camp. When I was-- when my parents learned about three weeks afterwards that I had been transported to an unnamed camp, they did not think they were going to see me again.

And in my camp, which was Buchenwald, from 800 to 2,000 people died every day. And it would have been sheer arrogance to believe that you would not be one of them. So we decided that we were going to die there. Once having decided that, we tried to live one day at a time.

DAN OLSON: What was life one day at a time?

REIDAR DITTMANN: It may sound almost callous to say it, but I suppose that life from one day to the next was extremely boring. There was no way-- there were 40,000 in my camp. I was number 32,232, and there was no way that they could put all of us to meaningful labor. There were some who worked in the munitions factory. There were others who were sent to mines. We as Norwegians, pure Germanic material, were not sent to those bad spots and we were blessed with having our own barrack that-- it's very difficult to convey what that would mean.

But in Buchenwald, we were 16 different nations represented. An individual who would come from Bulgaria may be put into a camp-- into a barrack with nobody spoke his language. It would be terribly hard. We were surrounded by our own people, could speak our own language. We could take care of each other in whatever way was possible. And I'm sure that part of our minimal death rate, out of the 349, 28 died. They were young people, 18 to 22 years old, but that was a low rate.

A Polish prisoner had a life expectancy of three weeks. A Russian about the same. And of course, the Jews had no life expectancy. Jews came to camp to be annihilated. That was it. They never entered the register of the camp. And I, of course, witnessed that sort of thing.

DAN OLSON: This is what those of us who live outside that time and can only look back on it, I suppose cannot comprehend and--

REIDAR DITTMANN: Becomes very abstract, I think. And I can understand that because even having witnessed this from one day to the next, when I now have the distance of time and history, and geography before me, it becomes somewhat abstract to me as well. And you asked me at the outset if I would mind talking about it, and I don't mind talking about it because I think it's important to be talked about, and I can do it with authority without feeling deeply involved, although I was involved.

DAN OLSON: You were there. On the day you learned you would not be killed, how did you learn it and what did it make you feel?

REIDAR DITTMANN: We in Buchenwald, and I'm sure in other camps, were very apprehensive about the final days because we thought with what we know, will they let us get out? They have annihilated hundreds of thousands of people, millions, and it wouldn't be hard for them to annihilate the rest of the occupants of Buchenwald. So we thought that we were in danger.

Everything that happened in camp was announced on the public address system and it started out like this, Achtung! Achtung! Attention, attention! And then you give a number, like 32,232. If that were in there, I would be called to the gate area and that would mean I would be executed. And then on the 18th of March, 1945, the public address system crackled and it said, [GERMAN]. That meant, all the Norwegians to the gate area.

And we thought, now we have had a reasonable life here in Buchenwald but now they're going to start by choosing us to be the first. So we thought we were going to be executed. And we shuffled up to the roll call area with its gallows in the center and its gas chamber and its smokestack.

And there were two young men in dusty blue uniforms, quite unfamiliar to us, together with the commander-in-chief of the camp. And he came up and walked along our ranks. We always lined up 5 by 5. In Buchenwald, you always lined up 5 by 5 because then they could count your fast. We were counted twice a day. They counted 40,000 people twice a day. If the number didn't turn out, we stood on a pelvic all that until it worked out. Sometimes you could stay there at attention for six, seven hours.

But anyway, we lined up 5 by 5 and Commander Pister came in front of us and they said, how are you, my Norwegian friends? The saying that if he is your friend, you need no enemies really worked out well. He said, I have somebody here who would like to talk to you. And one of the young men stepped forward and he said, [SWEDISH]. That's Swedish. I've come to take you to Sweden.

And he expected a riotous reception because Sweden was neutral. To be taken to Sweden would mean that the war was over for us. Of course, there wasn't a soul among us who believed this. And there was no reaction whatsoever. What had happened was this, that Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of the King of Sweden, and the International Vice President of the Red Cross, had negotiated with Himmler and he had received Himmler's written permission to go to all camps and pick out Scandinavian prisoners on the condition that we would be interned in Sweden until the end of the war.

And so with this blanket authority, he sent buses and personnel in all the camps and picked us up. But the condition was also this, that everybody has to be assembled before they move out of Germany. And so we were all brought to a concentration camp, again, in, Hamburg called Neuengamme, a very bad camp, no better than ours. But at least we thought that we were on the way because as we were there, there were more and more Danes and Norwegians coming in the camp. There were all these incredible reunions happening every single day.

And six weeks later, on the 30th of April, they came from Denmark a colossal fleet of white buses. Now, Denmark was still occupied, but the Danes were occupied under somewhat different circumstances. And all the bus owners in Denmark had volunteered for this activity. And so they shipped, they stowed into their buses, 32,000 prisoners on their way to Sweden. We traveled through Denmark, where people still occupied, where people stood along the side with bouquets of flower and food for us. We were just showered with wonderful attention.

May go to the Coast of Denmark and the ferry boats were waiting for us. And at 10 o'clock in the morning of the 1st of May, I set foot on Swedish soil, and the war was over for me. As you know, the war was over a week later. And that was the end of it. I was in the-- then at that time, there were 85,000 Norwegians in Sweden as returning prisoners and refugees. It had been impossible for the Germans to monitor 1,500 miles of borderline between Sweden and Norway. So Sweden became a center of refuge for us.

I often get the question, how did the Norwegians feel about the Swedes being neutral during the war? And some Norwegians didn't feel too great about it. And in the early first year of the war, 50,000 German troops traveled unobstructed through Sweden to the Norwegian battlefield. But it was very important for Norway to have this neutral country right nearby so that people under pressure, important members of the resistance, could get across to Sweden, and from Sweden, they could get to England and join the Norwegian forces in exile. I came home by train, actually, and all my classmates and my parents were there.

DAN OLSON: Evil just seems too simple a word to try to convey what it was, was this industrial effort to exterminate, to annihilate a group of people, the Jews and, for that matter, other groups of people, too. As you reflect back on it and think about the mindset of human beings who organized that kind of extermination, what kinds of conclusions have you come to?

REIDAR DITTMANN: It's a very difficult question to answer. I know, for instance, for a fact that the existence of concentration camp and the existence of death camps was a known fact in German circles. No matter what they say today, it was a fact that they knew. Because we were on working columns in the city of Weimar and were received with mocking and spitting and the throwing of pebbles at us. So they knew that this happened.

I don't know what makes an entire nation subscribe to these kind of supremest ideas. But we have it around us here as well, only that it hasn't been blended with straitened economic conditions, which were a fact in Germany in the 1920s. It cost 5 million marks to send a letter from Hamburg to Munich. The inflation was horrendous.

And Hitler came with this notion that all of this misery is not your fault, it's the fault of the Jews. So the Jews became a convenient scapegoat for Hitler. And he could do this because Germany had a long history of anti-Semitism. I've been working at a Lutheran institution for 50 years, but one of the most rabid anti-Semites in German history was Martin Luther, who said as much as this that they should be annihilated.

So this re-echoed with an appealing tone in the hearts and minds of the Germans. Every German living in a city at any rate, had a neighbor who was a Jew. There's no question about that. And they disappeared. And the neighbor or the city itself got their belongings and enjoyed this new being that they experienced as a result of their neighbors and friends being sent off to death camps.

I don't know what does it, but I do know that in clusters, even here at home in America, extremist things happen and we don't know. The principal Nazi song was this [GERMAN]. That means, today we march in the West. Tomorrow we march in the whole world. This notion of conquering the world and ruling over everybody else was an age-old German notion and the system allowed this to happen.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Reidar Dittmann. A footnote. Dittmann came to the United States right after the war on a scholarship to Saint Olaf College. Later, he taught at Saint Olaf. He retired three years ago after 47 years as a professor there. He lives in Northfield with his wife today. He returns to Europe and to Norway every summer to teach. Our Voices of Minnesota series is produced by Dan Olson.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's 28 minutes before 11 o'clock. This is Midmorning on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for staying with us today on this Memorial Day, the actual day itself. Although, those of us who are purists will say, well, it's actually May 30th, but what the heck, we get a Monday holiday.

The best part of it for me, even though I had to come in to work today, was that there's no traffic on Memorial Day. That's great. You don't have to deal with that. Well, if you've got picnics planned for this afternoon, let's hope you're in Northern Minnesota because it's going to be partly to mostly sunny there and high temperatures will reach the mid 70s. In Southern Minnesota, including the Twin Cities, mostly cloudy skies with highs in the 50s and rain is likely. There's a 40% chance of a possible thunder shower here in the Twin Cities.

Tomorrow, a little bit warmer with mostly cloudy skies expected, highs from the upper 50s in the far Southeast to the middle 70s in the North. In the Twin Cities, we should get up to around 67 degrees tomorrow.

Today's programming is supported in part by membership contributions from listeners like you. Thank you for your membership support of Minnesota Public Radio.

Well, Arne Fogel is here today. And even though Arne had a gig last night and the day before Memorial Day, he made it in here today to talk with us about Jerry Lewis. And here is a guy that we've all heard. Jerry Lewis is so popular in France. And this is somebody, though, who has been very, very popular in the United States as well. Before we get started with our conversation with Arne, let's listen to a little bit of Jerry.

[JERRY LEWIS, "I LIKE IT"]

I was sitting in the parlor with my girl one summer night. I was busy eating peanuts when she went and dimmed the light. The next thing that I know, she grabbed me by the head. She started into squeeze me so I jumped up and said, I like it. I like it. What can I do? I like it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Jerry Lewis. Well, who could not recognize that awful voice?

ARNE FOGEL: Deliberately awful voice.

PAULA SCHROEDER: But very funny. Very funny man. And in fact, there's a big book out now called King of Comedy, The Life and Art of Jerry Lewis by Shawn Levy. And Arne Fogel here today to tell us all about Jerry. Hi, Arne.

ARNE FOGEL: Hi there, Paula. Happy holiday to you.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Thank you. Thanks for coming in. Now, tell me about I Like it.

ARNE FOGEL: That was way back in the early days of Jerry Lewis's career on television when, of course, he was half of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. They were on the Colgate Comedy Hour. Every month, they had people looked forward to this crazy hour of television. And as has often been the case in all the years since on television, and even earlier on broadcast and radio, popular comedians gave birth to popular phrases. And these phrases would enter the public consciousness for however many years. And one of Jerry's was, I like it. I like it. And they made a little song out of it and made a record. So long memory experts will remember that Martin and Lewis phrase.

PAULA SCHROEDER: How long has Jerry Lewis been entertaining people?

ARNE FOGEL: Boy, he's about 70 years old now. And I think he started when he was about five, so I guess about 65 years.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Honestly. I mean, because there are pictures in this book of him as a very young man, a teenager.

ARNE FOGEL: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And already getting lots of attention.

ARNE FOGEL: Well, he was a very big star, became a very big star at a very, very early age. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis formed officially as an act in 1946, at which time he was 20 years old. And so that's-- and they almost immediately took off. By 1948, they were making movies already and starring on their own radio programs and guesting on everybody else's television and radio shows. So they pretty immediate, pretty terrific rise for such a young individual. Martin was about 10 years older. And it was an incredible-- had an incredible effect on him. And he, by his own admission, was not a very nice guy for the first 10 or 15 years because he turns your head.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, sure. Yeah. Well, we see it a lot in baseball and football, and basketball players getting early success very early. How did he start out? What was he famous for?

ARNE FOGEL: Well, before he worked with Dean Martin-- and actually, he wasn't famous for this because he wasn't famous yet, but his earliest act was what was then called a record act, which consisted of miming to phonograph records. They'd put a record on or someone backstage would do that, and the artist up front would ape while do the lip syncing. And which doesn't sound like all that much, but when you think about Jerry Lewis and the specific nature of his talents, you can see that it was hysterical.

In fact, to this very day, he still does a little bit of that in his act, his live act. He'll take Mario Lanza's Be My Love, and he will lip sync to hysterical effect, as a matter of fact. I got to interview Jerry about five years ago, and I asked him about what it's like to go through those contortions and how difficult it may actually, in fact, be.

JERRY LEWIS: And the same register and it's very difficult. One, the breathing must be infinite. And you can only breathe like he does if you're singing the number. Well, I'm singing it, but I have to squash it off without it coming out. And I'm not only out of breath when I'm through with it, but I have lost my voice because I'm straining and not allowing any of what I am doing quietly.

The contortions that I make with my face are real because I'm pushing those notes out. And I can't hit what he hits, so I am having a more difficult time because I am having to hit less than what he hits, but having it look like I've hit it.

ARNE FOGEL: That strain probably shows in your face.

JERRY LEWIS: Yes. I have some color photographs of a couple of pieces of that where I'm absolutely red.

ARNE FOGEL: And it's incredible to watch him do it too because, particularly the climactic moment when he'll go, be my love, and his tongue will actually come rolling out and he'll push it back in with his hands. And only Jerry Lewis can get away with doing stuff like that because, and I think this is important to note, the silliness and the craziness-- and people who don't appreciate his humor will say, what is it about a guy just acting crazy?

And like any humor or any physical comedy or verbal comedy, whatever, it's not so much subjectively what they're doing as in the way that it's being done. If you can be funny with your body, that's, after all, what Charlie Chaplin did and what Lou Costello did and what Buster Keaton did. And Lewis had his own particular language of physical humor that even in the silliest little thing, if you're so disposed to laugh at that kind of thing, can make you crazy.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, obviously, a lot of people were for a long, long time. I was surprised to read in the jacket to this book, the King of Comedy, that Jerry Lewis has been the highest paid performer in history, in film, on television and on Broadway.

ARNE FOGEL: The Broadway thing is current, that he is right now, or I believe that now that the show is on the road, it's not officially Broadway, but this damn Yankees revival, a tremendous success. And he was, while it was on Broadway last year, the highest paid Broadway performer ever. And he signed million-dollar contracts in the '50s participation and getting profits from his films, which were unheard of at the time because he was a tremendous force. That's why I always believed this French thing. Well, the French like Jerry, such a cop out.

Because the fact of the matter is, he was the most popular movie star in America for about 15 years, with the exception of maybe John Wayne. Jerry Lewis made more money. His movies made more money in this country than anybody else's. And he was immensely popular. It was only in the early to mid-'60s that Americans began to, because of his talk show appearances and things of that nature, during which he displayed a personality, which was grating to some people, that they began to be some critics.

Back in the Martin and Lewis days, he was immensely popular. His partner was immensely popular. And they were the biggest moneymaking act in American show business.

DEAN MARTIN: Hi, everybody. This is Dean Martin.

JERRY LEWIS: And Jerry Lewis.

DEAN MARTIN: Would like to tell you all about our latest and funniest picture for Paramount.

JERRY LEWIS: Of course, you mean The Caddy.

DEAN MARTIN: But of course. You know, Jerry, I don't remember the last time I had so much fun making a picture.

JERRY LEWIS: Boy, I'll say, how about that thing when I rented the department store that I'm working in.

DEAN MARTIN: And what about the scene when I come home and find a strange, and I do mean strange man, in my bed, and it turns out to be you.

JERRY LEWIS: Tell them about the terrific game of golf I play. Go on. Tell them.

DEAN MARTIN: Terrific. I've never seen golf played that way before. Crazy, man. Crazy.

JERRY LEWIS: I hate to brag, folks, but I think The Caddy is the funniest picture we've made. No kidding. It's got 90 riotous minutes of howls, gags, fun, and more heartwarming entertainment than you and the family ever saw.

DEAN MARTIN: You'll love Jerry and me in The Caddy.

JERRY LEWIS: Take my word for it. The Caddy is the most hilarious picture we've ever made. Come on and join the fun. See, Paramount's The Caddy.

DEAN MARTIN: Yeah, The Caddy.

PAULA SCHROEDER: A promotional deal for them.

ARNE FOGEL: Yes, back in 1953. And that's, incidentally, is the film that gave birth to the song When The Moon Hits Your Eye. That's--

PAULA SCHROEDER: Volare.

ARNE FOGEL: No, That's Amore. That's--

PAULA SCHROEDER: Amore. That's Amore.

ARNE FOGEL: You're getting your Dean Martin hits mixed up.

PAULA SCHROEDER: I know. I know that. It's a wonderful song.

ARNE FOGEL: Yeah.

PAULA SCHROEDER: We're talking with Arne Fogel today here on Midmorning and about the life and art of Jerry Lewis. There's a new book out called King of Comedy. Hey, what the heck. It gives us an excuse to talk about Jerry Lewis, right, Arne?

ARNE FOGEL: Yes. And it's the first really serious book on Jerry. There have been some film studies and a couple of biographies, some of them very critical, some of them very, very glowing. And this is the first time such a major book has come out on Jerry Lewis. And also, it's a very, for the most part, very fair-minded look at Lewis. Doesn't flinch from some of the negatives, but very, very big on the positives too.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, it's a thick book, as it should be, because Jerry Lewis is probably one of the most complex celebrities that we have had.

ARNE FOGEL: And controversial.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Very controversial. Yes. He has a very dark side to him.

ARNE FOGEL: I'm not so sure if that's it, though. I've always had very, very-- looked at this very-- I've been very amused, shall we say, at what surrounds Lewis. Yes, I'm sure he has a dark side. Of course, he has a dark side, but so do a number of other performers. I've always felt that it's the sheer volume plus silliness of his work as a performer finally, particularly as he got older and it became-- looked like less of a kid that violated certain people's sense of decorum.

And there's been a number of negative pieces written about his work, drawing a lot of very far-fetched-- there are some people who resent his work for Muscular Dystrophy because they feel very wrongly so that his work as a comedian pokes fun at disabled people, which is demonstrably untrue.

PAULA SCHROEDER: He's also been accused of using children for his own gain.

ARNE FOGEL: You mean in the MD?

PAULA SCHROEDER: Yeah.

ARNE FOGEL: Well, once again-- and there's room for so many different areas of opinion on this-- I've always felt that he has been tasteless on occasion, but that he's raised millions and millions and millions of dollars.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, one billion is a figure that I read.

ARNE FOGEL: Yeah, so it's pretty-- and I'm sensitive to the issue. I have a disabled child. I don't-- not that particular disability. But I like to consider myself somewhat sensitive to the issue. I can't put myself in another's place, but I find it-- I'm just amused by it all, that a comedian, a performer and a popular entertainer should arouse such tremendous feelings, negatively and positively.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, a lot of people who are buffs of his films would rather just pay attention to those, of course.

ARNE FOGEL: Yes.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And I know that in your interview with Jerry, you asked him what his favorite film was.

ARNE FOGEL: And what he felt-- yes, I--

PAULA SCHROEDER: I think it's my favorite Jerry Lewis film too.

ARNE FOGEL: And I, of course, knew what the answer was going to be as soon as I asked him.

What would you view as the definitive Jerry Lewis film?

JERRY LEWIS: Nutty Professor. Absolutely. It's the definitive film for me because it was the totality of a man's work to write it and to direct it, and to have come out what you set out to have come out, and then some. We did a $16 million gross on that picture at $0.30 a ticket. If we released it today, it'd have been $170 million.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, it's very amusing to me to hear he talks so seriously about his work.

ARNE FOGEL: He takes it--

PAULA SCHROEDER: And he takes it very seriously. But here he's talking about, for heaven's sakes, the Nutty Professor and speaking about that is the totality of a man's work. You just think--

ARNE FOGEL: But it's a great picture. See, that isn't jarring to me because-- maybe it's because it's been a particular hobby of mine to study comedians and comedy, and filmmaking. And it's a very, very serious business. And that particular movie is-- it is clearly the best film he ever made as a director from beginning to end. And there's a lot of very serious work that goes into making a movie like that.

And I find it very interesting that now because it's become somewhat more popular to do so, that that movie is now viewed as a classic and described as such. But for many years, nobody would describe any Jerry Lewis movie as a classic. But now it's commonly accepted that that's one of the great films of the '60s.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Hey, on a day like this, let's go to the video store and rent the Nutty Professor.

ARNE FOGEL: Absolutely.

PAULA SCHROEDER: What have you got for us here at the end, Arne?

ARNE FOGEL: I thought it would be interesting to close up with a little portion of Jerry Lewis's biggest hit as a recording artist. Believe it or not, he has a million selling record Rock-a-Bye Your Baby. And this, however, is a false start, shall we say. And what a nice way to think of Jerry Lewis collapsing into chaos.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Arne Fogel, thanks a lot for coming in.

[JERRY LEWIS, "ROCK-A-BYE YOUR BABY"]

Rock-a-bye your baby with a Dixie melody. When you croon, croon a tune from the heart of Dixie. Just hang my cradle mammy mine right on that Mason Dixon line. And swing it from Virginia to Tennessee with all the love that's in ya. Weep no more, my lady. Sing that song for me.

GARY EICHTEN: Gary Eichten here. Hope you're having a relaxing Memorial Day weekend, and I hope you'll include Midday in your weekend plans. We'll be hearing from CBS Sunday Morning host Charles Osgood, the man who rhymes the news. Charles Osgood will be sharing some rhymes, telling some stories, and pick up a banjo for a little singing and picking as well. Hope you can join us. Midday begins with the news each weekday morning at 11:00 here on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And coming up on the 11 o'clock hour of Midday, a look at several Memorial Day observances taking place today around the country and a conversation with Melor Strurua from the Humphrey Institute on talks between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Chechen leader to end the 17-month conflict in that part of the world. That's on Midday coming up at 11 o'clock.

Well, how do moviemakers get those lifelike figures of either famous dead people or monsters? Well they hire makeup artists to make actors look like someone else. In today's odd jobs report, we meet a Saint Paul man who has made replicas of Einstein and the devil in his basement.

CRIST BALLAS: My name is Crist Ballas, and I am a special makeup effects artist. I was kind of an odd kid, was always interested in changing my appearance for some reason. And it first started with glasses. And then as I started getting older, it was costumes and makeup. If you ever saw the movie Harold and Maude, I was very much like Harold minus the old lady.

[CAT STEVENS, "IF YOU WANT TO SING OUT, SING OUT"]

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out. And if you want to be free, be free. Cause there's a million things to be, you know that there are.

CRIST BALLAS: Little subtle things can even change the appearance as to, I mean, even just a little bit of makeup or a contact or subtle teeth work. When an actor comes to us, the normal part of the procedure is we will take a cast, a life cast of his face. You start sculpting with Roma clay, start blocking out and building up the face in the desired effect.

From this, we inject the latex, foam latex into the mold. The foam is put together into a mixmaster and then whipped up to the desired volume of the foam. Foam latex is just-- as some people say, it's a voodoo science where it's almost ritualistic to do something to try to make it work.

Once we get a good foam skin out, we then start painting process. So each layer that you add has somewhat of a translucency quality, which skin has. So you want to start putting in veins, age spots, liver spots, moles, things like that, redness, capillaries like around the nose, in the cheek area, sometimes the chin.

My favorite things to do are our character makeups. Old age and character things, things that tend to be more realistic are much more challenging because you have to live up to the expectations of what a human eye sees.

I've had to turn certain people away when some of the things sound a little fishy. As far as-- I mean, you don't know if these people are planning a bank heist or what and they just want to look like somebody else.

I think one of the stranger things that I had to do was a third nipple on a woman for a film that was done here called Mallrats.

This was a dummy, a full-bodied dummy that we had to construct for this Dracula unleashed CD-ROM game and they wanted this effect where a beam falls from the ceiling and impales him.

I don't know that the neighbors really know what's going on down here. They just kind of see me as kind of a quiet guy that keeps to himself.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Crist Ballas operates the company Metamorphosis from his basement in Saint Paul. Our odd jobs report was produced by Minnesota Public Radio's Kathleen Hallinan. I'm Paula Schroeder. This is Midmorning, and it's time now for Garrison Keillor and the Writer's Almanac.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 27th of May, 1996. It's Memorial Day. Day went by tradition, we honor those killed in battle, an observance that began back in April 1866 in Columbus, Mississippi, where four women decorated the graves of Confederate and Union soldiers.

It's the birthday in 1819 in New York City of Julia Ward Howe, who wrote The Battle Hymn of the Republic and who, after the Civil war, helped to found the Women's Suffrage Movement. Isadora Duncan was born on this day in 1878, in San Francisco, and Dashiell Hammett in 1894 in Saint Mary's County, Maryland, the creator of Sam Spade, The Private Eye, In The Maltese Falcon, and The Thin Man.

It's the birthday of biologist and writer Rachel Carson, Springdale, Pennsylvania in 1907, who wrote The Sea Around Us and Silent Spring. And it's the birthday of John Cheever, 1912, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Short story writer, author of Faulkner, author of The Wapshot Chronicles, and many other books.

Here's a poem for Memorial Day by Lawrence Ferlinghetti entitled Queens Cemetery, Setting Sun. Airport bus from JFK cruising through Queens, passing huge, endless cemetery by Long Island's old expressway, once a dirt path for wheelless Indians.

Myriad small tombstones tilted up, gesturing statues on parapets, stone arms or wings upraised, lost among illegible inscriptions, and the setting yellow sun painting all of them on one side only with an ochre brush. Rows and rows, and rows, and rows of small stone slabs tilted toward the sun forever.

While on the far horizon, Manhatta's great stone slabs, skyscraper tombs, and parapets casting their own long, black shadows over all these long-haired graves, the final restless places of old-country potato farmers, dustbin pawnbrokers, dead dagos and Dublin bouncers, tinsmiths and blacksmiths and roofers.

House painters and house carpenters, cabinet makers, and cigar makers, garment workers, and streetcar motormen, railroad switchmen and signal salesmen, swabbers and sweepers and swampers, steam-fitters and keypunch operators, ward heelers and labor organizers, railroad dicks and smalltime mafiosi, shopkeepers and saloon keepers and doormen, icemen and middlemen and conmen.

Housekeepers and housewives and dowagers, French housemaids and Swedish cooks, Brooklyn barmaids and Bronxville butlers, opera singers and gandy dancers, pitchers and catchers in the days of ragtime baseball, poolroom hustlers and fight promoters, Catholic sisters of charity, parish priests and Irish cops, Viennese doctors of delirium, now all abandoned in eternity.

Parcels in a dead-letter office, inscrutable addresses on them beyond further deliverance in an America wheeling past them and disappearing oblivious into East river's echoing tunnels down the great American drain.

A poem entitled Queens Cemetery, Setting Sun by Lawrence Ferlinghetti from his collection These Are My Rivers, New and Selected Poems 1955 to 1993, published by New Directions and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac for Monday, May 27th. Made possible by Cowles Enthusiast Media, publishers of Vegetarian Times and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, that's Midmorning for today. I want to bring you up to date on a couple of news items. There has been a reported ceasefire agreed to in the dispute between Russia and Chechnya that will take place on June 1st. We'll have details on that agreement coming up on Midday, which begins at 11 o'clock.

I want to tell you too about the arrest of war criminals that's become a stumbling block to the peace efforts in Bosnia. And one person who's trying to do something about that is Justice Richard Goldstone, who is chief prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal. On June 3rd, Justice Goldstone will receive the Minnesota Human Rights Award by Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, one of the largest human rights organizations in the country.

There's going to be an awards dinner taking place on the evening of June 3. And if you're interested in attending that, call the Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights at 341-3302. 341-3302. Justice Goldstone, by the way, will be appearing on our program on Midmorning on June 4, the day after that awards dinner.

Also a reminder today on Memorial Day, lots of people out on the roads. There have already been 13 people killed this holiday weekend in Minnesota. Speed and drinking, the chief causes. So do be careful if you're out on the roads this afternoon. We hope to see you tomorrow when we talk with Michael Lerner, the author of Politics and Meaning. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks for joining us today.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

SPEAKER: On Mondays, All Things Considered, Sam Sheppard speaks. All Things Considered, weekdays at 3:00 on Minnesota Public Radio, KNOW-FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 56 degrees under cloudy skies at KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Twin Cities weather for today calls for a high temperature around 58 degrees. It's going to be cloudy with a 40% chance of rain and a possible thunderstorm. Tomorrow, mostly cloudy, warmer with a high near 67.

GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11 o'clock and this is Midday on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary Eichten. In the news this Memorial Day, Russian President Boris Yeltsin says he's reached an agreement with the leader of the Chechen separatist movement to end 17 months of fighting in Chechnya that has killed more than 30.