Lewis performed in a 1958 teen flick called “High School Confidential,” and his real life was every bit as lurid as the film’s title promised. On the opening night of disc jockey Alan Freed’s “Big Beat Show” in March 1958, after losing an argument about whether he or Chuck Berry should close the show, Lewis poured a bottle of gasoline on his piano and set it ablaze. “They had to call the fire department and everything,” Lewis remembered in Rick Bragg’s 2014 biography “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story.”
Two months later, news of the 22-year-old star’s marriage to his 13-year-old third cousin Myra Gale Brown broke during a tour of England, setting off a firestorm of controversy. Lewis and Brown had wed the previous December, just days after the release of “Great Balls of Fire.” The marriage was Lewis’ third, though he’d never officially divorced his first wife.
The British tour had come just after the Army drafted Elvis Presley and right on the heels of Lewis’ two huge hits. Lewis had been poised to snatch the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s throne away from him. Instead, the tour was canceled after just three dates, Lewis’ single “Breathless” fell off the charts, and he never had another top 10 pop hit.
“I’ve done some crazy things,” he told USA TODAY in 2010 of his more outlandish exploits. “I messed up along the way and got what was coming to me.”
Lewis experienced a comeback in country music during the late ‘60s – around the same time he starred as Iago in a rock ‘n’ roll adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Othello” called “Catch My Soul.” He was a regular presence on the country charts through the end of the next decade with such singles as “What’s Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)” and “Middle Age Crazy.”
