Lewis almost always played a semi-nerd, but it was always a bit of a very cool nerd with Jerry Lewis. Jerry as "Junior Jackson" is a shy, clumsy nerd who is trained to be a football player by the handsome, popular Dean Martin. One of his early films with Dean Martin ( That's My Boy) Jerry played a classic glasses-wearing nerd. Once in a while, Jerry would wear glasses in his films, notably The Nutty Professor and The Ladies Man. In the 1950s and '60s, the great Jerry Lewis often played a nerd-type character in his wonderful comedies. Ironically, Cary Grant, perhaps the most dapper actor in movie history, donned glasses and played a nerd character in 1938's classic comedy Bringing Up Baby. In fact, Lloyd always referred to his character as the "glasses" or "glass" character, much as Charlie Chaplin was "the Tramp." After Lloyd, the nerd character was on the shelf for many years in movies -with sporadic exceptions. The Lloyd character wore trademark glasses. ![]() But in the end, he would triumph and inevitably get the girl of his dreams. Lloyd played a weak, underdog type of comedic character, one bullied by men and ignored by women. As far as I can determine, the first nerd in movie history was the popular silent comedian Harold Lloyd. The "nerd" in movie history has not, to my knowledge, ever been fully written. The students who liked to party there were called "drunks" and the quieter, less-inclined-to-party types were labeled "knurds." See, "drunk" spelled backwards is "knurd," the precursor to the modern "nerd." In 1957, in Glasgow, Scotland, "nerd" was first defined as "square." Motion pictures, the most powerful medium of communication in human history (before television) had, of course, a huge impact on the lives of almost everyone on earth. Some theorists believe the word started at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the 1940s. This is the first instance of the word "nerd" in print. Seuss's book If I Ran the Zoo, Seuss drew a non-human creature called a 'nerd" from the land of Ka-roo. The word "nerd" was actually coined by my favorite fiction writer, the great Dr. Why do nerds so often wear glasses? This is an interesting question, and obviously it has a significance in my own life and career. Neatorama presents a guest post from actor, comedian, and voiceover artist Eddie Deezen.
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