Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, singer, film producer, film director, screenwriter and humanitarian. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio.
Lewis has received several awards for lifetime achievements from the American Comedy Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Venice Film Festival, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and been honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early life
Lewis was born on March 16, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey to Russian Jewish parents His father, Daniel Levitch (1902–80), was a master of ceremonies
Shirley MacLaine (born Shirley MacLean Beaty; April 24, 1934) is an American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author.
An Academy Award winner, MacLaine received the 40th AFI Life Achievement Award from the American Film Institute in 2012, and received the Kennedy Center Honors for her lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts in 2013. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career.
Shirley Mac Laine
A six-time Academy Award nominee, MacLaine received a nomination for Best Documentary Feature for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), and Best Actress nominations for Some Came Running (1958), The Apartment (1960), Irma la Douce (1963), and The Turning Point (1977), before winning Best Actress for Terms of Endearment (1983). She twice won the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actress, for Ask Any Girl (1959), and The Apartment (1960).
MacLaine won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy-Variety or Music Special for the 1976 TV special, Gypsy In My Soul. She has also won five competitive Golden Globe Awards and received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 1998 ceremony.
Named after Shirley Temple (who was 6 years old at the time), Shirley MacLean Beaty was born in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne (née MacLean), was a drama teacher, originally from Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. MacLaine’s younger brother is the actor, writer and director Warren Beatty; he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor.
Their parents raised them as Baptists. Her uncle (her mother’s brother-in-law) was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s.
Shirley Mac Laine2
While MacLaine was still a child, Ira Beaty moved his family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington and Waverly, eventually taking a position at Arlington’s Thomas Jefferson Junior High School. MacLaine played baseball in an all-boys team, holding the record for most home runs which earned her the nickname “Powerhouse”. During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington.
As a toddler she had weak ankles and would fall over with the slightest misstep, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class at the Washington School of Ballet at the age of three.
This was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys’ roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class.
Eventually she had a substantial female role as the fairy godmother in Cinderella; while warming up backstage, she broke her ankle, but then tightened the ribbons on her toe shoes and proceeded to dance the role all the way through before calling for an ambulance.
Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique.
She explained that she didn’t have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite “beautifully constructed feet” of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle.
Also slowly realizing ballet’s propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to other forms of dancing, acting and musical theater.
MacLaine made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry (1955), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress. This was quickly followed by her role in the Martin and Lewis film Artists and Models (also 1955).
Soon afterwards, she had a role in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). This was followed by Hot Spell and a leading role in Some Came Running (both 1958); for the latter film she gained her first Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination.
Her second Oscar nomination came two years later for The Apartment (1960), starring with Jack Lemmon.
The film won five Oscars, including Best Director for Billy Wilder. She later said, “I thought I would win for The Apartment, but then Elizabeth Taylor had a tracheotomy.” She starred in The Children’s Hour (1961) also starring Audrey Hepburn and James Garner, based on the play by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler.
She was again nominated, this time for Irma la Douce (1963), which reunited her with Wilder and Lemmon. Don Siegel, her director on Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) said of her: “It’s hard to feel any great warmth to her. She’s too unfeminine and has too much balls. She’s very, very hard.”
At the peak of her success, she replaced Marilyn Monroe in Irma la Douce and What a Way to Go! (1964). Other films from this period include Gambit (1966), with Michael Caine, and the film version of the musical Sweet Charity (1968), based on the script for Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria released a decade earlier.
MacLaine’s documentary film The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir (1975), co-directed with Claudia Weill, concentrates on the experiences of women in China. It was nominated for the year’s Documentary Feature Oscar.
Co-starring with Anne Bancroft in The Turning Point (1977), MacLaine portrayed a retired ballerina much like herself; she was nominated for an Oscar as the Best Actress in a Leading Role. In 1978, she was awarded the Women in FilmCrystal Award for outstanding women who, through their endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry.
In Being There (1979), she appeared with Peter Sellers. In a short-lived MacLaine television sitcom, Shirley’s World (1971–72), co-produced by Sheldon Leonard and ITC and shot in the United Kingdom, she was cast as a photojournalist.
MacLaine has also appeared in numerous television projects including an autobiographical miniseries based upon the book Out on a Limb;
The Salem Witch Trials;
These Old Broads written by Carrie Fisher and co-starring Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Joan Collins;
Coco, a Lifetime production based on the life of Coco Chanel.
She appeared in the third and fourth seasons of the British drama Downton Abbey as Martha Levinson, mother to Cora, Countess of Grantham (played by Elizabeth McGovern) and Harold Levinson (played by Paul Giamatti) in 2012–2013.
In February 2016, it was announced that MacLaine will star in the live-action family film A Little Mermaid, based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, to be produced by MVP Studios.[16]
MacLaine was married to businessman Steve Parker from 1954 until their divorce in 1982; they have a daughter, Sachi.
In April 2011, while promoting her new book, I’m Over All That, she revealed to Oprah Winfrey that she had had an open relationship with her husband.
MacLaine also told Winfrey that she often fell for the leading men she worked with, with the exceptions of Jack Lemmon (The Apartment) and Jack Nicholson (Terms of Endearment).
MacLaine has also gotten into feuds with such notable co-stars as Anthony Hopkins (A Change of Seasons), who said that “she was the most obnoxious actress I have ever worked with,” and Debra Winger (Terms of Endearment).
MacLaine has claimed that, in a previous life in Atlantis, she was the brother to a 35,000-year-old spirit named Ramtha channeled by American mystic teacher and author J. Z. Knight.
She has a strong interest in spirituality and metaphysics, the central theme of some of her best-selling books including Out on a Limb and Dancing in the Light. She has undertaken such forms of spiritual exploration as walking the Way of St. James, working with Chris Griscom and practicing Transcendental Meditation.
Her well-known interest in New Age spirituality has also made its way into several of her films. In Albert Brooks’s romantic comedy Defending Your Life (1991), the recently deceased lead characters, played by Brooks and Meryl Streep, are astonished to find MacLaine introducing their past lives in the “Past Lives Pavilion”.
In Postcards from the Edge (1990), MacLaine sings a version of “I’m Still Here”, with customized lyrics created for her by composer Stephen Sondheim. One of the lyrics was changed to “I’m feeling transcendental – am I here?” In the television movie These Old Broads, MacLaine’s character is a devotee of New Age spirituality.
She has an interest in UFOs, and gave numerous interviews on CNN, NBC and Fox news channels on the subject during 2007–8. In her book Sage-ing While Age-ing (2007), she described alien encounters and witnessing a Washington, D.C. UFO incident in the 1950s.In the April 2011 edition of the Oprah show MacLaine stated that she and her neighbor observed numerous UFO incidents at her New Mexico ranch for extended periods of time.
MacLaine is godmother to the daughter of former Democratic U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich.
Along with her brother, Warren Beatty, MacLaine used her celebrity status in instrumental roles as a fundraiser and organizer for George McGovern’s campaign for president in 1972.That year, she authored the book McGovern: The Man and His Beliefs.
On February 7, 2013, Penguin Group USA published Sachi Parker’s autobiography Lucky Me: My Life With – and Without – My Mom, Shirley MacLaine.[36]MacLaine has called the book “virtually all fiction”.
MacLaine starred in A Change of Seasons (1980) alongside Anthony Hopkins, and won the Best Actress in a Leading Role Oscar for Terms of Endearment (1983), playing Debra Winger’s mother. She won a Golden Globe for Best Actress (Drama) for Madame Sousatzka (1988).
She has continued to star in major films, such as Steel Magnolias with Sally Field, Julia Roberts and other stars. In 2000 she made her feature-film directorial debut and starred in Bruno, which was released to video as The Dress Code. MacLaine has starred in Postcards from the Edge (1990) with Meryl Streep, playing a fictionalized version of Debbie Reynolds from a screenplay by Reynolds’s daughter, Carrie Fisher; Used People (1992) with Jessica Tandy and Kathy Bates; Guarding Tess (1994) with Nicolas Cage; Mrs. Winterbourne (1996), with Ricki Lake and Brendan Fraser; Rumor Has It… (2005) with Kevin Costner and Jennifer Aniston; In Her Shoes (also 2005) with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette; and Closing the Ring (2007) directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Christopher Plummer.
Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, singer, film producer, film director, screenwriter and humanitarian. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio.
Lewis has received several awards for lifetime achievements from the American Comedy Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Venice Film Festival, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and been honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early life
Lewis was born on March 16, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey to Russian Jewish parents His father, Daniel Levitch (1902–80), was a master of ceremonies
Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, singer, film producer, film director, screenwriter and humanitarian. He is known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio.
Lewis has received several awards for lifetime achievements from the American Comedy Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Venice Film Festival, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and been honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Early life
Lewis was born on March 16, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey to Russian Jewish parents His father, Daniel Levitch (1902–80), was a master of ceremonies and vaudeville entertainerwho used the professional name Danny Lewis.
His mother, Rachel (“Rae”) Levitch (née Brodsky),was a piano player for a radio station. Lewis started performing at age five and would often perform alongside his parents in the Catskill Mountains in New York State.
By 15, he had developed his “Record Act” in which he exaggeratedly mimed the lyrics to songs on a phonograph.
He used the professional name Joey Lewis but soon changed it to Jerry Lewis to avoid confusion with comedian Joe E. Lewis and heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis. Lewis then dropped out of Irvington High School in the tenth grade. He was a “character” even in his teenage years pulling pranks in his neighborhood including sneaking into kitchens to steal fried chicken and pies. During World War II, he was rejected for military service because of a heart murmur.
Lewis initially gained attention as part of a double act with singer Dean Martin, who served as straight man to Lewis’ zany antics in the Martin and Lewis comedy team. The performers were different from most other comedy acts of the time because they relied on their interaction instead of planned skits. They quickly rose to national prominence, first with their popular nightclub act, next as stars of their own radio program.
All sixteen movies were produced by Hal B. Wallis. Attesting the comedy team’s popularity, DC Comics published the best-selling The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comics from 1952 to 1957. As Martin’s roles in their films became less important over time the partnership came under strain. Martin’s participation became an embarrassment in 1954 when Look magazine used a publicity photo of the team for the magazine cover but cropped Martin out of the photo.The partnership ended on July 24, 1956.
While both Martin and Lewis went on to successful solo careers, neither would comment on the split nor consider a reunion. They did however make occasional public appearances together up until 1961, but were not seen together again until a surprise television appearance by Martin on a Muscular Dystrophy Telethon in 1976, arranged by Frank Sinatra.
The pair eventually reconciled in the late 1980s after the death of Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin, in 1987.
The two men were seen together on stage for the last time when Martin was making what would be his final live performance at Bally’s Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Lewis pushed out a birthday cake for Martin’s 72nd birthday in 1989 and sang “Happy Birthday” to him, and joking, “why we broke up, I’ll never know.”
Lewis tried his hand at releasing music during the 1950s, having a chart hit with the song “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” (a song largely associated with Al Jolson and later re-popularized by Judy Garland) as well as the song, “It All Depends on You” in 1958. He eventually released his own album titled, Jerry Lewis Just Sings.
By the end of his contract with producer Hal B. Wallis, Lewis had several productions of his own under his belt. In 1959, a contract between Paramount Pictures and Jerry Lewis Productions was signed specifying a payment of $10 million plus 60% of the profits for 14 films over a seven-year period.
In 1960, Lewis finished his contract with Wallis with Visit to a Small Planet (1960), and wrapped up work on his own production, Cinderfella, which was postponed for a Christmas 1960 release, and Paramount, needing a quickie feature film for its summer 1960 schedule, held Lewis to his contract to produce one. Lewis came up with The Bellboy (1960). Using the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami as his setting—and on a small budget, with a very tight shooting schedule, and no script—Lewis shot the film by day and performed at the hotel in the evenings. Bill Richmond collaborated with him on the many sight gags. Lewis later revealed that Paramount was not happy financing a ‘silent movie’ and withdrew backing. Lewis used his own funds to cover the $950,000 budget.
During production Lewis developed the technique of using video cameras and multiple closed circuit monitors, which allowed him to review his performance instantly.
His techniques and methods, documented in his book and his USC class, enabled him to complete most of his films on time and under budget.
Lewis directed and co-wrote The Family Jewels (1965) about a young heiress who must choose among six uncles, one of whom is up to no good and out to harm the girl’s beloved bodyguard who practically raised her. Lewis played all six uncles and the bodyguard. On television, Lewis hosted two different programs called The Jerry Lewis Show. The first was a two-hour Saturday night variety show on ABC in the fall of 1963. The lavish, big-budget production failed to find an audience and was canceled after 13 weeks. His second program was a one-hour variety show on NBC from 1967 to 1969.
By 1966, Lewis, then 40, was no longer an angular juvenile, his routines seemed more labored and his box office appeal waned to the point where Paramount Pictures new executives felt no further need for the Lewis comedies and did not wish to renew his 1959 profit sharing contract. Undaunted, Lewis packed up and went to Columbia Pictures, where he made Three On A Couch (1966), then appeared in Way…Way Out (1966) for 20th Century Fox followed by The Big Mouth (1967), Don’t Raise the Bridge, Lower the River (1968) and Hook, Line & Sinker (1969).
In 1968, he screened Spielberg’s early film, Amblin’ and told his students, “That’s what filmmaking is all about.”
Lewis directed and made his first offscreen voice performance as a bandleader in One More Time (1970), which starred Sammy Davis Jr. (a friend of Lewis). He then produced, directed and starred in Which Way to the Front? (1970).
He would then make and star in the unreleased The Day the Clown Cried (1972), a drama set in a Nazi concentration camp.
Lewis rarely discusses the film, but once suggested that litigation over post-production finances prevented the film’s completion and release. However, he admitted during his book tour for Dean and Me that a major factor for the film’s burial is that he is not proud of the effort. In 1976, Lewis appeared in a revival of Hellzapoppin’ with Lynn Redgrave, but it closed on the road before reaching Broadway.
After an absence of 11 years, Lewis returned to film in Hardly Working (1981), a movie in which he both directed and starred.
In France, Lewis starred in both To Catch a Cop a.k.a. “The Defective Detective” (1984) and How Did You Get In?, We Didn’t See You Leave (1984). Lewis has stated that as long as he has control over distribution of those movies, they will never have an American release. Meanwhile, a syndicated talk show Lewis hosted for Metromedia in 1984 was not continued beyond the scheduled five shows. Lewis starred in the ABC televised drama movie Fight For Life (1987) with Patty Duke, then appeared in Cookie (1989).
Lewis had a cameo in Mr. Saturday Night (1992) while guest appearing in an episode of Mad About You as an eccentric billionaire. Lewis made his Broadway debut, as a replacement cast member playing the devil in a revival of Damn Yankees, choreographed by future movie director Rob Marshall (Chicago) while also starring in the film Arizona Dream (1994), as a car salesman uncle. Lewis then starred as a father of a young comic in Funny Bones (1995).
Jerry L
Jerry Lewis
Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Lewis
Jerry Lewis
In March 2006, the French Minister of Culture awarded Lewis the Légion d’honneur, calling him the “French people’s favorite clown” Lewis has remained popular in the country, evidenced by consistent praise by French critics in the influential magazine Cahiers du Cinéma for his absurd comedy, in part because he had gained respect as an auteur who had total control over all aspects of his films, comparable to Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock.
Liking Lewis has long been a common stereotype about the French in the minds of many English-speakers, and is often the object of jokes in English-speaking world pop culture.
“That Americans can’t see Jerry Lewis’s genius is bewildering,” says N. T. Binh, a French film magazine critic. Such bewilderment was the basis of the book Why the French Love Jerry Lewis, by Rae Beth Gordon
In 2012, Lewis directed a musical theatre version of The Nutty Professor (with score by Marvin Hamlisch) at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville from July 31 to August 19 over the summer. Lewis appeared in the Brazilian film Till Luck Do Us Part 2 (2013), then next in a small role in the crime drama The Trust (2016). Lewis made a comeback in a lead role in Max Rose (2016).
In an October 6, 2016 interview with Inside Edition, Lewis acknowledged that he may not star in any more films given his advanced age, while admitting, through tears, that he was afraid of dying as it would leave his wife and daughter alone.] In December of that year, he expressed interest in making another film.
Lewis has been married twice:
Patti Palmer (née Esther Grace Calonico), a former singer with Ted Fio Ritomarried October 3, 1944, divorced September 1980[
SanDee Pitnick; married February 13, 1983; a 32-year-old Las Vegas dancer; married in Key Biscayne, Florida
He has six sons (one adopted) and one daughter (adopted):
Ronald Steven “Ronnie” Lewis (born December 1949 [adopted])
Scott Anthony Lewis (born February 22, 1956)
Christopher Lewis (born October 1957)
Anthony Lewis (born October 1959)
Joseph Lewis (born January 1964, died October 24, 2009 [from a narcoticsoverdose])[36]
With SanDee Pitnick
Danielle Sara Lewis (adopted March 1992)
Lewis has suffered from a number of illnesses and addictions related both to aging and a back injury sustained in a comedic pratfall from a piano while performing at the Sands Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip on March 20, 1965.
The accident almost left him paralyzed. In its aftermath, Lewis became addicted to the painkiller Percodan for thirteen years
He says he has been off the drug since 1978.] In April 2002, Lewis had a Medtronic “Synergy” neurostimulator implanted in his back which has helped reduce the discomfort. He is now one of the company’s leading spokesmen.
In the 2011 documentary Method to the Madness of Jerry Lewis, Lewis said he suffered his first heart attack while filming Cinderfella in 1960.
In December 1982, Lewis suffered another heart attack. En route to San Diego from New York City on a cross-country commercial airline flight on June 11, 2006, he sustained a minor heart attack .
It was discovered that he had pneumonia as well as a severely damaged heart. He underwent a cardiac catheterization and two stents were inserted into one of his coronary arteries, which was 90% blocked. The surgery resulted in increased blood flow to his heart and has allowed him to continue his rebound from earlier lung problems. Having the cardiac catheterization meant canceling several major events from his schedule, but Lewis fully recuperated in a matter of weeks.
In 1999, Lewis’ Australian tour was cut short when he had to be hospitalized in Darwin with viral meningitis. He was ill for more than five months. It was reported in the Australian press that he had failed to pay his medical bills. However, Lewis maintained that the payment confusion was the fault of his health insurer. The resulting negative publicity caused him to sue his insurer for US$100 million
In September 2001, Lewis was unable to perform at a planned London charity event at the London Palladium.
He was the headlining act, and he was introduced, but did not appear. He had suddenly become unwell, apparently with heart problems. He was subsequently taken to the hospital. Some months thereafter, Lewis began an arduous, months-long therapy that weaned him off prednisone and enabled him to return to work. On June 12, 2012, he was treated and released from a hospital after collapsing from hypoglycemia at a New York Friars’ Club event. This latest health issue forced him to cancel a show in Sydney.
Muscular dystrophy activism
Throughout his entire life and prolific career, Lewis was a world renowned humanitarian who has supported fundraising for research into muscular dystrophy. Until 2011, he served as national chairman of and spokesman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) (formerly, the Muscular Dystrophy Associations of America).
Lewis began hosting telethons to benefit the company from 1952 to 1959, then every Labor Day weekend from 1966 to 2010, he hosted the live annual Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. Over nearly half a century, he raised over $2.6 billion in donations for the cause.
On August 3, 2011, it was announced that Lewis would no longer host the MDA telethons and is no longer associated with the Muscular Dystrophy Association
On May 1, 2015, it was announced that in view of “the new realities of television viewing and philanthropic giving”, the telethon was being discontinued.
] In early 2016, Lewis made an online video statement for the organization on its website, in honor of its rebranding, marking his first appearance in support of the Muscular Dystrophy Association since his final Labor Day Telethon in 2010 and the ending of his tenure as national chairman in 2011.
Theater chain
In 1969, Lewis agreed to lend his name to “Jerry Lewis Cinemas”, offered by National Cinema Corporation as a franchise business opportunity for those interested in theatrical movie exhibition. Jerry Lewis Cinemas stated that their theaters could be operated by a staff of as few as two with the aid of automation and support provided by the franchiser in booking films and in other aspects of film exhibition.
A forerunner of the smaller rooms typical of later multi-screen complexes, a Jerry Lewis Cinema was billed in franchising ads as a “mini-theatre” with a seating capacity of between 200 and 350. In addition to Lewis’s name, each Jerry Lewis Cinema bore a sign with a cartoon logo of Lewis in profile.
Initially 158 territories were franchised, with a buy-in fee of $10,000 or $15,000 depending on the territory, for what was called an “individual exhibitor”. For $50,000, the Jerry Lewis Cinemas offered an opportunity known as an “area directorship”, in which investors controlled franchising opportunities in a territory as well as their own cinemas.
The success of the chain was hampered by a policy of only booking second-run, family-friendly films. Eventually the policy was changed, and the Jerry Lewis Cinemas were allowed to show more competitive films, but after a decade the chain failed. Both Lewis and National Cinema Corp. declared bankruptcy in 1980.
Jerry’s House
In 2010, Lewis met with 7-year-old Lochie Graham who shared his idea for “Jerry’s House”, a place for vulnerable and traumatized children. The Australian charity hope2Day is raising funds to build the facility in Melbourne, Australia.
Aldo Maccione est un acteur et chanteur italien né le 27 novembre 1935 à Turin (Italie).
Acteur de comédie, il a tourné dans son pays d’origine, mais c’est en France qu’il est devenu une vedette et où il a fait l’essentiel de sa carrière dans les années 1970 et les années 1980.
Après avoir gagné un radio-crochet dans les années 60, Aldo Maccione est engagé par un théâtre turinois où il se fait remarquer en imitant les stars de l’époque comme Jerry Lewis et Clark Gable. Venu travailler à Paris, il fait les entractes de l’Olympia avec son groupe italien, le quatuor « Les Brutos ». Ils se produisent aux quatre coins de la planète.
Entre quelques scopitones (ancêtres des clips) dont un tourné par son futur réalisateur, Claude Lelouch, et quelques émissions télé de variété, il crée un nouveau groupe parodique, « Les Tontos », qui se produit six ans d’affilée à l’Emporium de Barcelone. C’est en accompagnant Sacha Distel à Londres et à l’Olympia qu’il crée et popularise sa marque de fabrique : « Aldo la classe »
En 1970, Claude Lelouch, amusé par sa démarche cambrée « empruntée » à Alberto Sordi, lui donne son premier rôle au cinéma dans Le Voyou. En 1972, il retrouve Claude Lelouch pour L’aventure c’est l’aventure où, aux côtés de vedettes comme Lino Ventura, Charles Denner et Jacques Brel, il fait une célèbre démonstration de groupe de sa démarche.
Dans les années 1970, les rôles comiques se succèdent. Il apparaît dans le premier volet de la Septième Compagnie en 1973 (Henri Guybet reprendra son rôle dans les deux épisodes suivants), mais aussi aux côtés de Pierre Richard (Je suis timide mais je me soigne, C’est pas moi, c’est lui) ou Jean-Paul Belmondo (L’Animal).
Les années 1980 s’avèrent glorieuses et il est une vedette qui permet à des comédies de se monter sur son seul nom. Il abandonne son personnage d’« Aldo la classe » à la fin des années 1980 et a du mal à donner un nouveau souffle à sa carrière, faisant néanmoins quelques apparitions dans des films ou téléfilms.
En 2005, il apparaît dans le film français Travaux, on sait quand ça commence… aux côtés de Carole Bouquet et Jean-Pierre Castaldi, dans le rôle d’un carreleur un peu trop imbu de sa personne.
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Il vit désormais à Saint-Paul-de-Vence dans les Alpes-Maritimes.
À partir du 29 janvier 2010, il participe à la troisième saison de La Ferme Célébrités en Afrique qu’il quitte le 5 février 2010, pour cause de problèmes de santé.
Le 5 juin 2015, le journaliste et réalisateur Gilles Botineau publie aux Éditions Christian Navarro une biographie entièrement consacrée au comédien. L’ouvrage, titréAldo Maccione, la classe , est préfacé par Claude Lelouch.
JERRY LEWIS 
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