page_title: Jack Lemmon
section_title: 1966–1978: Mid-career
hierarchical_section_title: Jack Lemmon / Career / 1966–1978: Mid-career
caption_attribution_description: Charlie Chaplin receiving an Honorary Academy Award from Jack Lemmon
context_page_description: John Uhler Lemmon III was an American actor and musician who was nominated for an Academy Award eight times, winning twice. He starred in over 60 films, such as Mister Roberts, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Days of Wine and Roses, Irma la Douce, The Great Race, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger, The China Syndrome, Missing, Long Day's Journey into Night and Glengarry Glen Ross.
context_section_description: In 1966, Lemmon began his first of one of his many iconic collaborations with actor Walter Matthau in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie. The film has been described by the British film critic, Philip French as their "one truly great film". Matthau went on to win an Academy Award for his performance in the film. Another nine films with them co-starring eventually followed including, The Odd Couple (1968), The Front Page (1974) and Buddy Buddy (1981). 
  In 1967, Lemmon's production company Jalem produced the film Cool Hand Luke which starred Paul Newman in the lead role. The film was a box-office and critical success. Newman, in gratitude, offered him the role of the Sundance Kid in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but Lemmon turned it down.
  The best known Lemmon-Matthau film is The Odd Couple (1968), based on the Neil Simon play, with the lead characters being the mismatched Felix Ungar (Lemmon) and Oscar Madison (Matthau), respectively neurotical and cynical. The much admired comedy Kotch (1971), the only film Lemmon directed, starred Matthau who was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar. The Out-of-Towners (1970) was another Neil Simon scripted film in which Lemmon appeared.
  In 1972, at the 44th Academy Awards, Jack Lemmon presented the Honorary Academy Award to silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin.
  Lemmon starred with Juliet Mills in Avanti! (1972) and appeared with Matthau in The Front Page (1974). Both films were directed by Wilder. He felt Lemmon had a natural tendency toward overacting that had to be tempered; the Wilder biography Nobody's Perfect quotes the director as saying, "Lemmon, I would describe him as a ham, a fine ham, and with ham you have to trim a little fat." Wilder though also once said: "Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon".
  Lemmon in Save the Tiger (1973) plays Harry Stoner, a businessman in the garment trade who finds someone to commit arson by burning down his warehouse to avoid bankruptcy. The project was rejected by multiple studios, but Paramount was prepared to make the film if it was budgeted for only $1 million. Lemmon was so keen to play the part that he worked for union scale, then $165 a week. The role was demanding, like the character Lemmon came close to breaking point: "I started to crack as the character did," he recalled. "I just kept getting deeper and deeper into the character's despair." For this film, Lemmon won the Best Actor Oscar. Having won the Best Supporting actor Academy Award for Mister Roberts, he became the first actor to achieve that particular double, although Helen Hayes had achieved this feat three years earlier in the equivalent female categories.
caption: Charlie Chaplin (right) receiving an Honorary Academy Award from Lemmon at the 44th Academy Awards in 1972
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