Comparing the lives and careers of Jerry Lewis and Dick Gregory, who both died this past weekend, is like taking a short trip from the days of the Borscht Belt comics to the more serious humor that made audiences chuckle but also made them reflect on the world around them.

Lewis, born Joseph or Jerome Levitch in Newark in 1926, became one of the most spectacularly successful megastars in the early days of television, first with crooner Dean Martin and later on his own.

He would frequently sprinkle his stand-up routines and his role as host of the Muscular Dystrophy telethons with Yiddishisms and proud references to his Jewish faith. In one appearance in the Colgate Comedy Theater, Martin and Lewis are eating food from a buffet table and talking animatedly. 

Suddenly Lewis says—“Dean, look!  I’m eating ham!” and jumps into his partner’s arms, as if worried about divine punishment.

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In all, under Lewis’s leadership, MDA raised a grand total of $2.6 billion, according to People magazine, a staggering philanthropic accomplishment, for which he was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1977.

After starring with Martin in several hit movies, Lewis went solo and continued his stellar career with films such as the broadly slapstick “Nutty Professor.” He also became an accomplished director and an expert in the technical aspects of movie making.

After several years in the shadows, Lewis later won critical praise in the title role of Martin Scorsee’s 1982 film, “The King of Comedy,” which put his career back on track.

In his last film, the sober and serious “Max Rose,” he portrays a Jewish resident of a nursing home who is tormented by guilt over a long-ago love affair.

While many critics mocked Lewis as a buffoon and clown, he was an adored and admired artist in France, where fans considered him the greatest solo comic since Charlie Chaplin.  Lewis also starred and directed an ill-fated film about a Nazi concentration camp, “The Day the Clown Cried,” which “collapsed in litigation” according to The New York Times, and was never released.

Dick Gregory’s career was far different. He was a performer who could make you laugh and think at the same time. Maybe that’s the big difference between him and Lewis. Gregory put it this way: “I’m not a comic. I’m a humorist.”

The St. Louis native led his first protest march as a high school senior in 1951. He also was a track star who held statewide running records.

But show business was where he found recognition. Gregory made his mark during the height of the civil rights movement. Using subtle yet pointed observations, he earned a nationwide audience when he found that he could make blacks and whites appreciate the stakes of the struggle if they could just see things a little differently.

So he tried to find what was funny about situations that hardly invited a light response.

Take this observation:

“I waited at the counter of a white restaurant for 11 years. When they finally integrated, they didn’t have what I wanted.”

After he got the keys to the city from St. Louis, and then was barred from checking into a local hotel, Gregory observed:

“They gave me the keys to the city and then changed all the locks.” 

Gregory, along with stars like Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier, was long active in the Civil Right movement. Gregory marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in the Freedom Summer of 1964, and was among the protestors in Ferguson in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown.

Yet he knew the limits of political bedfellows, not always saying what his core audience wanted to hear. His response:

“Hell hath no fury like a liberal scorned.”

Yes, Gregory could make you laugh and make you think. Both are qualities sadly missing in these turbulent times. 

Robert A. Cohn is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Jewish Light. Dale Singer, a former reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, St. Louis Beacon and St. Louis Public Radio, is an editorial page writer for the Light.