Jerry Puts Clowning Aside, Raises Record $41 Million

--Jerry Lewis raised a record $41,132,113 in his 23rd annual Labor Day telethon to fight muscular dystrophy. This year’s figure exceeded by about $2.1 million the previous record of $39,021,723 set last year. The 21 1/2-hour event in Las Vegas featured appearances by celebrities, dystrophy patients and corporate sponsors. The $34,379,537 in corporate contributions was not included in the telethon’s final total. The Labor Day event, which Lewis started on a single New York City station in 1966 and is now carried by more than 200 stations, up to this year has raised $443,182,370. Lewis, in opening the annual event, promised “there is light at the end of the tunnel” in the long battle against 40 neuromuscular diseases targeted by the New York-based Muscular Dystrophy Assn. He estimated that 120 million people in the United States and Canada would view the opening and closing hours of the telethon. Ed McMahon, the telethon’s longtime anchorman, was back, along with co-hosts Sammy Davis Jr., Casey Kasem, Tony Orlando, Norm Crosby and Julius LaRosa.

--Gary Hart is off on another campaign--this time to bolster relations between Colorado and northern Italy. The former Democratic presidential hopeful met with Luciano Guerzoni, the president of the Emilia Romagna region in northern Italy. Hart “showed a great deal of curiosity about the social and political situation of Italy,” Guerzoni said in Bologna. “During our meeting we set up the basis for a project of cooperation in economic, social and cultural affairs between the Emilia Romagna region and the state of Colorado,” he added but did not give details. Hart is on a private visit to Italy.

--”Dress As You Please Day” is no longer fashionable in Portland, Ore., Mayor Bud Clark says. Clark proclaimed a day for casual dress his first year as mayor and drew nationwide attention. Similar observances followed in 1986 and 1987, but fewer and fewer downtown workers took part. Clark’s top aide, Charles P. Duffy, says there’s simply been no demand for it this year, so the mayor will not proclaim a day for fashion freethinkers. Some events are just one-time happenings, Duffy said, “and Dress As You Please Day probably should have been one of them.” Though the official observance of casual dress may be ended, it continues at City Hall, which has no air conditioning. The city auditor allows shorts in the office when the mercury tops 90 degrees, as it did last week.