Chris Lemmon was born to play a role that is skin deep — his father.
“If I can’t play Jack Lemmon, then I’m really in trouble,” he said in a telephone interview.
The elder Lemmon was an Academy Award-winning actor but off screen starred in a real-life father/son drama that included love, music, divorce, alcoholism and reconciliation.
Now, his son tells the story of their relationship on stage from Jack’s point of view. It details everything from Chris’ childhood to his father’s death at 76 in 2001.
Chris Lemmon, 60, will bring his one-man stage production, “A Twist Of Lemon,” to the Mount Dora Community Building on Saturday, June 13 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available at www.MountDoraLive.com or by calling 352-383-2165.
The play actually started out as a book, “A Twist of Lemmon” that Chris wrote in 2006. During the book tour, Chris, a professional actor and father of three with a degree in music, discovered that people were still fascinated with his father.
They wanted to know more about his life. “He was such a wonderful guy,” Chris said. “People saw him as kind of a happy leprechaun going through life. But I saw another side of him off-screen. It was a lot deeper.”
Thus began an introspective family journey for Chris Lemmon. He described it as “a catharsis. I’m writing the story of a father and son from a father’s point of view. I’m telling the story as my father. It’s a little freaky.”
Jack Lemmon cast a long shadow over Chris. His parents divorced when Chris was a child. He was attracted to performing and earned degrees in theater and classical piano from the California Institute of the Arts. He appeared in television series’, “Duet,” “Open House” and in the “Thunder in Paradise” films. He was in many other TV shows and movies, including three with his father: “Airport ’77,” “That’s Life” and “Dad.”
Chris bears an uncanny resemblance to his father and even sounds like him. It didn’t make life any easier. “I knew people would compare me to my father. It’s not easy to be a star’s kid but I was determined to have a normal life,” said Chris, who lives in Connecticut with his wife, actress Gina Raymond, and their three children: Sydney, Chris and Jonathan.
Chris Lemmon put family before his career. He took years off from fulltime acting work as the kids were growing up. “I didn’t want them to see an empty chair at the end of the dinner table,” he said.
Then, after writing the book about his father, Chris began getting back to the stage and his music with the story of his father’s life.
“Everything kind of came together telling his story,” Chris said.
What a story it is to tell.
Jack Lemmon was barely 30 when he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “Mister Roberts” in 1955. Then, in 1959, he co-starred with Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe in “Some Like It Hot,” voted the No. 1 film comedy of all-time. A year later, in 1960, he earned a best actor nomination for his role in “The Apartment,” directed by Billy Wilder, who also directed “Some Like It Hot.”
“The Apartment was an important film for my father,” Chris said. “He had been kind of pigeon-holed as a comic actor. In ‘The Apartment’ he showed he could play a serious, dramatic role.”
To see some scenes from “The Apartment” go to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRta_ko0XGU
Jack Lemmon appeared in over 60 films and won a Best Actor Oscar in 1973 for “Save the Tiger.” But the role that really revealed his human frailty was 1962’s “The Days of Wine and Roses.” It is the story of an alcoholic man who leads his young wife into alcoholism.
“I’m not doing a tribute to my father or trying to exonerate him,” Chris said. “This is a gritty look at my Dad’s life. I want to show him good and bad, and alcoholism was a part of it.”
Jack Lemmon revealed he was an alcoholic on the television show, “Inside the Actor’s Studio.”
“There’s a scene in ‘Wine and Roses,’ where Dad as Joe Clay says to (co-star) Lee Remick, ‘Look at us. We’re a couple of bums.’”
Chris Lemmon makes it clear in the play that his father could look in the mirror at Joe Clay and see himself. And he praises his father for overcoming the addiction.
Playing all this out in front of an audience, “is a very draining role. I try to talk like my father and he had this machine-gun delivery. I’m firing away for 85 minutes. It takes a lot out of you.”
Chris felt he had to “create a universe in a one-man show. You can’t just stand there and talk. You’ve got to create space and make the character come alive.”
One way he does that is through the music Chris wrote for the show. Jack Lemmontaught his son to play the piano. “My father loved music,” he said. “I want this music to show part of his life.”
Jack Lemmon was beloved by the masses as well as those who knew him.
“He had enormous pathos,” Chris said. He added that his father admired a French actor named Jean-Louis Barrault, who was once described as someone who could make people laugh and break their hearts at the same time. Jack Lemmon had that same ability on screen.
“My father cared about people, and I’m not just talking about big stars,” Chris said. “If someone was down, even if it was a crew member on the set, my father would pat him on the back, give him that cheeky smile and make him feel better.
“All his life, he tried to make people feel better and I’ve tried to emulate him as a person all my life.”
Chris Lemmon has a ritual he goes through before each performance of the play. “I say something like, ‘OK Pops, we’re here together again, let’s go get ‘em.’”
And what would Jack Lemmon think of his son’s performance as Dad?
“I pray to God that he would be very proud,” Chris said.
