TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) – When the phone rang at Barbara Vaka’s camera shop in Pompano Beach in 1978 explaining that comedian and actor Jerry Lewis planned to stop by, she thought it was a joke.
“The next thing you know is he walked in the door with his body guard, PR man, and I said, ‘hi Mr. Lewis,’ and he said, ‘just call me Jerry.’ And that began our friendship,” Barbara Vaka said in an interview from her Tampa home.
It was a friendship that formed over a mutual passion: photography. It’s a friendship Vaka recalled just days after Lewis’ death.
“He came to our home for dinner. We went out to see movies, of all things. Went to sulky races, nightclubs,” she said.
A thrill came in the late 1970’s when Vaka got a role in the movie Hardly Working, alongside Lewis. She got an up-close look at his talents and used her skill, photography, to capture moments on set.
“He had the best timing of any comedian I think I had ever seen, and he was exacting. A perfectionist when it came to comedy,” she said.
Lewis’ stardom began in 1946 when he teamed up with singer Dean Martin. They appeared in 13 movies, but their relationship eventually strained.
“It was one of those things, he likened it to a divorce,” Vaka said.
For Vaka and her husband, it was years of friendship and fond memories.
“It was life-changing, being a friend with someone like Jerry Lewis,” she said.
Lewis died Sunday in Las Vegas. He was 91.
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