The ‘Killer’ who fell from grace

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 24

The ‘Killer’ who fell from grace

JEFF HAYWARD

The first time actor Dennis Quaid heard Jerry Lee Lewis singing the classic hit “Great Balls of Fire” on the radio, he was a kid riding in the back seat of the family car. “My dad turned it up and I started jumping up and down and he turned round and said ‘Simmer down, son.’ But I didn’t simmer down, I couldn’t help it.” Quaid says he never stopped liking Jerry Lee Lewis’ music, and when the chance arose to play the volatile star from the heyday of rock and roll in the new film “Great Balls of Fire,” he jumped at it.

Lewis was one of the original bad boys of early rock and roll in the late ’sos and early ’6os until his career was undermined by a child bride scandal and hard living.

Nicknamed “The Killer,” Lewis went from

making huge sums playing in major concert halls, and Top 20 hits with “Great Balls of Fire” and "Whole Lotta Shaking Going On,” to earning $5O a night playing in squalid Arkansas honky tonks. The celebrated hell-raiser never recovered from the fall from grace.

Stories about Lewis’ wild behaviour are legends within rock and roll, including his threats to kill people, waving a pistol outside Elvis’ mansion and being near death several times from alcohol and drug abuse.

The film is based on an autobiographic book by Lewis’ one-time child bride, Myra Malito (played by 17-year-old rising star Winona Ryder). Lewis always grieved at his loss of stardom from

the mid-60s, and the success of the film in the United States has come as belated recognition of his important place in the evolution of rock music.

Quaid, a one-time rock musician himself, sees Lewis as a symbol. “You’ve heard the stories about Jerry, and 90 per cent of them were true. He spent a lot of time being bad. But he was innocent once, he still is. Jerry, Elvis, eight years later The Beatles, each portraying a symbol.” “He was a kid, a nine-year-old boy who fell in love with his piano, he still is.” Director Jim Mcßride (“Breathless” and “The Big Easy”) admits the film is not a documentary of the dark past of Jerry Lee Lewis and is more

like a “realistic musical comedy.” Lewis himself says he’s pleased with the over-all film, and specially Quaid’s portrayal of him. The actor went out on the road with Lewis and his band while he was preparing for the role. He also watched a lot of videos of Lewis in action.

At first, Quaid wanted to sing and play the piano himself for the film’s soundtrack. He later relented and let Jerry Lee Lewis cut new versions of the songs for the film. “When I heard Jerry cutting his tracks, I came to my senses. We’re talking legendary rock and roll here and the man is still alive!”

Although he didn’t play and sing on the soundtrack, Quaid prepared for the role by practising the piano for up to 10 hours a day and playing along to CDs of Jerry’s old hits.

He says Lewis is actually a great piano player in spite of his image as a piano-thumping rock ’n roller. “He’s a real virtuoso. He still plays all the time and he never plays the same way twice. “You know, I think you' could stack him up against just about any classical pianist.”

For the band in the film, other musicians-turned-actors like John Doe, a founder member of Los Angeles rock band X, and guitarist, Jimmy Vaughan of The Fabulous Thunderbirds, were used. Along with Quaid, they appeared on screen playing their instruments, but in reality they mimed to tracks recorded by Lewis and studio musicians. The film doesn’t attempt to wallow in the really dark periods of Jerry Lee Lewis’ life. It sticks mainly to the heyday in the late ’sos full of bobby socks, brightly coloured gull-winged cars and the early simplicity of Sam Phillips Sun Studio where Lewis, Elvis and Carl Perkins were prodigies. “There are a lot of unhappy details in Jerry’s life that you could get hung up on. In the end I think we’ve found, without being untruthful, the things that people who lived the story can be proud of,” says the director. Much of the film centres round the love affair between the 13-year-old Myra and the brash young rocker. The other major aspect follows Lewis’ rise and fall.

Although Jerry Lee Lewis was married twice previously, he eloped with his 13-year-old bride at the height of his stardom. A scandal didn’t arise un-

til he went on a tour of England in May, 1958 and Myra innocently told a Fleet Street journalist that she was the star’s wife.

Myra says she was drawn to the singer at such a young age because “he needed someone to take care of him. I was supposed to be the child, but he was the child in our relationship,” she told a newspaper recently. Quaid was quick to recognise this aspect of their relationship. “I play him as if he were younger than Myra, as if she were smarter than him,” he says.

One of the big tasks the actor faced was trying to create the character of the now 53-year-old singer as he was at barely 21. “I got to know the Jerry Lee Lewis of today and there was a danger of playing him as that. I had to boil down what I saw to what the guy must have been like when he was young.” Initially, Jerry Lee Lewis was wary about how he was going to be portrayed, admits Quaid. “I told him, look I’d be nervous too if someone was doing my life’s story, but I just want to get as close to your heart as I can. If I do that it’ll be a success.”

Quaid’s mop of blonded hair and cocksure smile make him into a pretty good version of the swashbuckling original. Jerry Lee Lewis didn’t take took kindly to having to share the limelight in the early stages. It is said that one night Quaid clambered on stage in a club in Memphis where Jerry Lee Lewis was singing and playing and with women fans calling out for the actor, the singer had to relent and let Quaid sit in

on a few numbers. While Quaid is now up there with top young Hollywood stars like Tom Hanks and Michael Keaton, it has been a long road. It has only been since “The Big Easy” that he became big-time. To date, the 35-year-old has done 22 films and now commands upwards of $2 million a picture.

The younger brother of actor Randy Quaid, he came to Los Angeles from his native Houston determined to launch a film career. His father had always dreamed of being an actor, and it had been a family tradition — with a grandmother who was a dancer and singer and a great-grandfather in vaudeville.

In his early days in Hollywood he had to scramble for some unmemorable parts, including “Jaws 3-D,” which he considers a low point. In 1984, he virtually had to start from scratch again and began to do live stage work.

“The Big Easy” was his first real role as leading man, and he got rave reviews. In its wake, he featured in a number of relatively successful films like “Innerspace,” “Suspect” and “D.0.A.” He has always been credited with being a hard-working actor who likes to jump into a character with both feet. But the good ol’ boy from Texas admits that he had trouble coming to terms with being a sex symbol on screen. “I was embarrassed, the hunkville thing. It was like showing off, strutting, just standing there and being good looking.”