Jerry Lewis

Lewis has enjoyed something of a career resurgence this spring. In March, two of his one-man shows sold out at the 2,400-seat La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts in La Mirada, Calif.; in April, his hand- and footprints finally were stamped in cement outside Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatre; later that day, he was a guest of honor at the TCM Classic Film Festival, participating in a Q-and-A at the El Capitan Theatre following a screening of the 1963 comedy classic The Nutty Professor, which Lewis calls "my baby." A 50th anniversary collectors' edition Blu-ray box set of Nutty was released June 3.

FULL STORY: At Home With Jerry Lewis as He Opens Up About Son's Death, Skirmishes With Fans

Lewis at Home

Sitting in his wood-paneled home office, crammed with leather-bound scripts and memorabilia along with drawer upon drawer of press clippings, he is eager to note the attention this recent activity has brought him. "The bottom drawer is current press," he says. "I defy you to open [it]."

Jerry Lewis

While he is very close to — and chokes up merely speaking about — his second wife, Sam, to whom Lewis has been married 31 years (they have an adopted daughter, Danielle, 22, whom he adores), he had a more complicated relationship with Joseph, the youngest of six sons from his first marriage, who he became a drug addict and committed suicide in 2009 at age 45.

Lewis on His Late Son

"To this day I don't understand it because it's unfair — not unfair to me, but unfair to him," laments Lewis. "That he went that way made the unfairness stupidity. But he was my son and he's gone, and there's not a lot I can do about that. I beat myself a thousand times. Sam will come to me and say, 'Are we beating ourselves again?' I will say, 'A little bit.' [She'll say]: 'You had nothing to do with that. You sent him out into the world when he was 25. You sent what you thought was a perfect human being. What he did with his time away from you is what the end result showed.' But I'll tell you this: You don't get over that."

Jerry Lewis

"I've worked under the most painful conditions any man has ever felt in his life," he says. "But when I walk out on that stage, the pain goes away."

Attached to the Past

Lewis is decidedly more attached to the past than the present: He has a fax machine and doesn't use a cellphone; he has a computer but doesn't use email; and he calls movies "pictures." He is fixed in his ways, even those that might seem eccentric — like changing into a brand-new pair of socks four times a day. "I just like the feeling of brand-new," he says.

Lewis on Favorite Performers

He says he keeps up with recent movies, mentioning 12 Years a Slave as having struck him and Jennifer Lawrence as a favorite performer. The two-time Oscar host (1957 and 1959) says he generally is a fan of Ellen DeGeneres, though he pans her performance this year: "I would never buy a pizza for an Academy Award audience!"

An Underlying Sadness

He still cracks jokes and contorts his face in the elastic ways that made him famous, but it's hard not to sense an underlying sadness