Jack Lemmon

He was the only child of Mildred Burgess (née LaRue; 1896–1967) and John Uhler Lemmon II (1893–1962), who rose to Vice-President of Sales of the Doughnut Corporation of America.

John Uhler Lemmon II was of Irish heritage, and Jack Lemmon was raised Catholic.

His parents had a difficult marriage, and separated permanently when Lemmon was 18, but never divorced.

He attended Rivers School and Phillips Academy, Andover.

Often unwell as a child, Lemmon had three significant operations on his ears before he turned 10.

He had spent two years in hospital by the time he turned 12.

During his acceptance of his lifetime achievement award, he stated that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of eight.

He began to act in school productions.

John Uhler Lemmon III (February 8, 1925 – June 27, 2001) was an American actor.

Considered proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leading The Guardian to label him as "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."

He starred in over sixty films and was nominated for an Academy Award eight times, winning twice, and received other accolades, including six Golden Globe Awards (counting the honorary Cecil B. DeMille Award), two Cannes Film Festival Awards, two Volpi Cups, one Silver Bear, three BAFTA Awards, and two Emmy Awards.

Lemmon was born on February 8, 1925, in an elevator at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts.

Lemmon attended Rivers Country Day School and Phillips Andover Academy (Class of 1943), where he pursued track sports with success, and Harvard College (Class of 1947), where he lived in Eliot House.

At Harvard, he was president of the Hasty Pudding Club and vice president of Dramatic and Delphic Clubs.

Except for drama and music, however, he was an unexceptional student.

Forbidden to act onstage due to academic probation, Lemmon broke Harvard rules to appear in roles using pseudonyms such as Timothy Orange.

A member of the V-12 Navy College Training Program, Lemmon was commissioned by the United States Navy, serving briefly as an ensign on the aircraft carrier USS Lake Champlain (CV-39) during World War II before returning to Harvard after completing his military service.

After graduation with a degree in War Service Sciences in 1947, he studied acting under coach Uta Hagen at HB Studio in New York City.

He was also a pianist, who became devoted to the instrument at age 14 and learned to play by ear.

For about a year in New York City, he worked unpaid as a waiter and master of ceremonies at the Old Knick bar on Second Avenue.

He also played the piano at the venue.

Lemmon became a professional actor, working on radio and Broadway.

His film debut was a bit part as a plasterer in the film The Lady Takes a Sailor (1949), but he had already appeared in television shows, which numbered about 400 from 1948 to 1953.

Lemmon believed his stage career was about to take off when he was appearing on Broadway for the first time in a 1953 revival of the comedy Room Service, but the production closed after two weeks.

Despite this setback, he was spotted by talent scout Max Arnow, who was then working for Columbia, and Lemmon's focus shifted to films and Hollywood.

Columbia's head, Harry Cohn, wanted to change Lemmon's name, in case it was used to describe the quality of the actor's films, but he successfully resisted.

His first role as a leading man was in the comedy It Should Happen to You (1954), which also featured the established Judy Holliday in the female lead.

Bosley Crowther in his review for The New York Times described Lemmon as possessing "a warm and appealing personality. The screen should see more of him."

The two leads soon reunited in Phffft (also 1954).

Kim Novak had a secondary role as a brief love interest for Lemmon's character.

His best known films include Mister Roberts (1955, for which he won the year's Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), Irma la Douce (1963), The Great Race (1965), Save the Tiger (1973, winning the Academy Award for Best Actor), The China Syndrome (1979), Missing (1982), and Glengarry Glen Ross (1992).

Lemmon's appearance as Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955), with James Cagney, Henry Fonda, and William Powell for Warner Bros., gained Lemmon the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Director John Ford decided to cast Lemmon after seeing his Columbia screen test, which had been directed by Richard Quine.

At an impromptu meeting on the studio lot, Ford persuaded the actor to appear in the film, although Lemmon did not realize he was in conversation with Ford at the time.

Lemmon had a long-running collaboration with actor and friend Walter Matthau, which The New York Times called "one of Hollywood's most successful pairings," that spanned ten films between 1966-98; The Fortune Cookie (1966), The Odd Couple (1968) and its sequel The Odd Couple II (1998), The Front Page (1974), Buddy Buddy (1981), JFK (1991), Grumpy Old Men (1993) and its sequel Grumpier Old Men (1995), The Grass Harp (1995), and Out to Sea (1997).

He acted in Broadway plays, earning Tony Award nominations for Tribute (which earned him another Oscar nomination for its film adaptation) as well as the 1986 revival of Long Day's Journey into Night.

"If it wasn't for Judy, I'm not sure I would have concentrated on films", he told The Washington Post in 1986 saying early in his career he had a snobbish attitude towards films over the stage.

He managed to negotiate a contract with Columbia allowing him leeway to pursue other projects, some of the terms of which he said "nobody had gotten before".

He signed a seven-year contract, but ended up staying with Columbia for 10 years.

In 1988, he was awarded the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the American cinema.