Times may have changed, but for years conversationalists who knew nothing about France except that french fries came from there always had a great fall back position: "You know, they worship Jerry Lewis movies." Cecil Adams of The Straight Dope analyzes the urban legend, while passing on some of his own notions regarding "highbrow critics (the only kind France has)".

When I was Paris once, I can remember reading the newspaper Le Figaro's review of "Allo Maman, C'est Moi Encore" (Hi Mom, It's Me Again better known as Look Who's Talking Too). The review began, as I recall, "What's more droll than a talking baby? Two of them!" Sheesh, that's more highbrow than Richard Roeper even! The Lewis libel is what is the novelist Gustave Flaubert called "a received idea," a bit of folk wisdom passed down uncritically from one ignoramus to another.

I have to admit that I came to birthday boy Jerry Lewis (he's 80 today) in a rather round-about way. When I was a kid, he was just that annoying, loud guy I flipped past on Saturday afternoon TV sometimes. As I an adult, however, I developed a possibly unhealthy obsession with Dean Martin, and it was through him that I recognized the young Lewis for the talent he was. As the French have always know, there was a tremendous amount of skill and calculation behind Lewis' childish persona, the true evidence of which lay in his ability to always stay just this side of the very, very, very fine line between gratingly endearing and too irritating to stand. Somehow, we never got quite so disgusted with him that we didn't, minutes later, find ourselves sympathizing with his struggles - really, there was a kind of genius to the way he kept us in the palm of his hand.

Though Lewis had a successful career after the breakup of his partnership with Martin, that remains his best known and most-loved period, even today. And, like many others, I prefer to remember him as he was then: young, manic, and brimming with ability.