As a young New York actor, Jack Lemmon would sometimes hang out at the Players Club, where he would join in the ritual toast to Edwin Booth, whose home the building had once been, as "the greatest actor and the finest gentleman the American stage has ever produced." Substitute "cinema" for "stage," and the same toast could be made today, and for the foreseeable future, to Jack.

Certainly no American movie star was so triumphant in both comic and tragic roles. He was equally unforgettable as an exuberant musician in flapper drag (Some Like It Hot) and as a downward-spiraling alcoholic (Days of Wine and Roses), as an infuriatingly anal hypochondriac (The Odd Couple) and as a distraught father searching for his son amidst foreign chaos (Missing), as a cantankerous senior citizen (Grumpy Old Men) and as an aging huckster who’s lost his selling touch (Glengarry Glen Ross).

Jack’s unique ability to evoke laughter and tears, sometimes almost simultaneously, was evident as early as 1955, when his buffoonish ensign in Mr. Roberts, moments after movingly reporting to the crew the death of a beloved officer, confronts the tyrannical captain with hilariously over-the-top insolence. The special Lemmon magic that Jack manifested in that Oscar-winning performance was still in full force in 2000, in his Emmy-winning portrayal of a professor whose wit remained sharp as his body fell apart ("Tuesdays with Morrie").

Jack’s preeminence as an actor can be assessed by anyone with access to a VCR. His being no less admirable a human being is something to which I can personally vouch, having spent considerable time with him in the 1980s as his personal publicist.

Although our respective Andover days were only about two decades apart and we had at least one PA teacher in common, he did not talk much about his time there. He did indicate that he had received an excellent education despite his lack of diligence and the distraction of all too often being hailed by his schoolmates as "Jack, you lemon"–a play on his full name, John Uhler Lemmon III. I’d like to think, though, that the years Jack spent learning "the great end and real business of living" helped form those personal qualities that made him, by a wide margin, the best-liked person in modern Hollywood.

Above all, Jack demonstrated that nice guys sometimes do finish first. Jack was a movie star for more than 45 years, at one point even ranking as the No. 1 box office attraction. He had received every imaginable acting honor, including two Oscars, two Emmys, five Golden Globes, two Best Actor awards from the Cannes Film Festival and one each from the Venice and Berlin film festivals. He also held life-achievement awards from the American Film Institute, the Kennedy Center Honors, the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press. Yet he never succumbed to the egomania and self-centeredness that characterized so many in show business who had achieved far less.

Jack was conscious of his professional stature but never acted like a star. He was wholly unaffected and unfailingly considerate, treating with equal respect and affection everyone who came in contact with him, whether that person was a "biggie" (one of his favorite nouns) in the business or an ordinary fan on the street. In stark contrast to those celebrities who behave as if the universe revolves around them, Jack was highly sensitive to the feelings of others, even those who inconvenienced him, and would agonize if he thought–usually wrongly–that he had been inconsiderate or acted inappropriately.

Having sat with Jack at countless press interviews, I could infer that he was proud of what he had accomplished, yet I never heard him say a single word about himself, in public or private, that could be considered boastful. On the contrary, every reminiscence was rife with self-deprecation, even self-ridicule. He delighted in descriptions of his golf style as the "human hinge" approach and his golf record as that of "someone who had spent more time in bunkers than Eva Braun." He loved to tell how, after a magazine dubbed him "the American Olivier," his wife, Felicia Farr, and daughter, Courtney, immediately punctured any self-importance he might have felt over this designation by playing oversolicitous maidservants to "His Lordship."

But Jack’s unquenchable good humor and upbeat temperament, his almost invariably responding to inquiries about how he was doing with "terrrifffic," could not disguise the fact that he was a very serious man. He was ferociously devoted to, and passionate about, his family, his work, his industry and his community. He was an active supporter of many social causes, most notably protecting the environment, and no star of his magnitude ever lent his voice and name to as many state or local candidates or issues. Indeed, he embodied the altruism and good citizenship of the Andover motto, non sibi, or "not for self."

At the end of Some Like It Hot, the film recently voted the best comedy in movie history, Jack’s character attempts to discourage an old playboy’s wedding plans by presenting a litany of his shortcomings as a prospective bride, including that he is actually a man. The playboy, undaunted by this last revelation, blithely responds, "Nobody’s perfect." Maybe so, but as anyone who saw or knew Jack can attest, one 1943 graduate of Phillips came awfully close.

Richard Leary, now a lawyer in Los Angeles, claims he can hear Roger Higgins, who instructed both him and Jack Lemmon on the basics of good English, turning over in his grave every time Leary writes "and/or" in a brief