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Dean and Me: (A Love Story) Paperback – October 10, 2006
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They were the unlikeliest of pairs—a handsome crooner and a skinny monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J.. Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something clicked—something miraculous—and audiences saw it at once.
Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years after it all started, it ended suddenly. After that traumatic day, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart.
In Dean & Me, Lewis makes a convincing case for Martin as one of the great—and most underrated—comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love Lewis felt for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrown
- Publication dateOctober 10, 2006
- Dimensions5.14 x 0.73 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100767920872
- ISBN-13978-0767920872
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Review
—Stephanie Zacharek, The New York Times
“A perceptive and entertaining showbiz memoir that should become a classic of its kind...”
—Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair
About the Author
JAMES KAPLAN has written novels, essays, and reviews, as well as over a hundred major profiles for many magazines, including The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and New York. In 2002 Kaplan coauthored the autobiography of John McEnroe, You Cannot Be Serious, which was an international bestseller (and #1 on the New York Times list). He lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In the age of Truman, Eisenhower, and Joe McCarthy, we freed America. For ten years after World War II, Dean and I were not only the most successful show-business act in history–we were history.
You have to remember: Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue–nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us, but what we really were, in an age of Freudian self-realization, was the explosion of the show-business id.
Like Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Hope and Crosby, we were vaudevillians, stage performers who worked with an audience. But the difference between us and all the others is significant. They worked with a script. We exploded without one, the same way wiseguy kids do on a playground, or jazz musicians do when they’re let loose. And the minute we started out in nightclubs, audiences went nuts for us. As Alan King told an interviewer a few years ago: “I have been in the business for fifty-five years, and I have never to this day seen an act get more laughs than Martin and Lewis. They didn’t get laughs–it was pandemonium. People knocked over tables.”
Like so many entertainment explosions, we happened almost by accident.
***
It was a crisp March day in midtown Manhattan, March of 1945. I had just turned nineteen, and I was going to live forever. I could feel the bounce in my legs, the air in my lungs. World War II was rapidly drawing to a close, and New York was alive with excitement. Broadway was full of city smells–bus and taxi exhaust; roast peanuts and dirty-water hot dogs; and, most thrilling of all, the perfumes of beautiful women. Midtown was swarming with gorgeous gals! Secretaries, career girls, society broads with little pooches–they all paraded past, tick-tock, tick-tock, setting my heart racing every ten paces. I was a very young newlywed, with a very pregnant wife back in Newark, but I had eyes, and I looked. And looked. And looked.
I was strolling south with my pal Sonny King, heading toward an appointment with an agent in Times Square. Sonny was an ex-prize-fighter from Brooklyn trying to make it as a singer, a knock-around guy, street-smart and quick with a joke–kind of like an early Tony Danza. He prided himself on his nice tenor voice and on knowing everybody who was anybody in show business. Not that his pride always matched up with reality. But that was Sonny, a bit of an operator. And me? I was a Jersey kid trying to make it as a comic. My act–are you ready for this?– was as follows: I would get up on stage and make funny faces while I lip-synched along to phonograph records. The professional term for what I did was dumb act, a phrase I didn’t want to think about too much. In those days, it felt a little too much like a bad review.
You know good-bad? Good was that I was young and full of beans and ready to take on the world. Bad was that I had no idea on earth how I was going to accomplish this feat. And bad was also that I was just eking out a living, pulling down $110 a week in a good week, and there weren’t that many good weeks. On this princely sum I had to pay my manager, Abner J. Greshler, plus the rent on the Newark apartment, plus feed two, about to be three. Plus wardrobe, candy bars, milk shakes, and phonograph records for the act. Plus my hotel bill. While I was working in New York, I stayed in the city, to be close to my jobs–when I had them–and to stick to where the action was. I’d been rooming at the Belmont Plaza, on Lexington and Forty-ninth, where I’d also been performing in the Glass Hat, a nightclub in the hotel. I got $135 a week and a room.
Suddenly, at Broadway and Fifty-fourth, Sonny spotted someone across the street: a tall, dark, and incredibly handsome man in a camel’s-hair coat. His name, Sonny said, was Dean Martin. Just looking at him intimidated me: How does anybody get that handsome?
I smiled at the sight of him in that camel’s-hair coat. Harry Horseshit, I thought. That was what we used to call a guy who thought he was smooth with the ladies. Anybody who wore a camel’s-hair overcoat, with a camel’s-hair belt and fake diamond cuff links, was automatically Harry Horseshit.
But this guy, I knew, was the real deal. He was standing with a shorter, older fellow, and when he saw Sonny, he waved us over. We crossed the street. I was amazed all over again when I saw how good-looking he was–long, rugged face; great profile; thick, dark brows and eyelashes. And a suntan in March! How’d he manage that? I could see he had kind of a twinkle as he talked to the older guy. Charisma is a word I would learn later. All I knew then was that I couldn’t take my eyes off Sonny’s pal.
“Hey, Dino!” Sonny said as we came up to them. “How ya doin’, Lou?” he said to the older man.
Lou, it turned out, was Lou Perry, Dean’s manager. He looked like a manager: short, thin-lipped, cool-eyed. Sonny introduced me, and Perry glanced at me without much interest. But Sonny looked excited. He turned to his camel-coated friend. “Dino,” Sonny said, “I want you to meet a very funny kid, Jerry Lewis.”
Camel-Coat smiled warmly and put out his hand. I took it. It was a big hand, strong, but he didn’t go overboard with the grip. I liked that. I liked him, instantly. And he looked genuinely glad to meet me.
“Kid,” Sonny said–Sonny called me Kid the first time he ever met me, and he would still call me Kid in Vegas fifty years later–“this is Dean Martin. Sings even better than me.”
That was Sonny, fun and games. Of course, he had zero idea that he was introducing me to one of the great comic talents of our time. I certainly had no idea of that, either–nor, for that matter, did Dean. At that moment, at the end of World War II, we were just two guys struggling to make it in show business, shaking hands on a busy Broadway street corner.
We made a little chitchat. “You workin’?” I asked.
He smiled that million-dollar smile. Now that I looked at him close up, I could see the faint outline of a healing surgical cut on the bridge of his nose. Some plastic surgeon had done great work. “Oh, this ‘n’ that, you know,” Dean said. “I’m on WMCA radio, sustaining. No bucks, just room.” He had a mellow, lazy voice, with a slightly Southern lilt to it. He sounded like he didn’t have a care in the world, like he was knockin’ ’em dead wherever he went. I believed it. Little did I know that he was hip-deep in debt to Perry and several other managers besides.
“How ’bout you?” Dean asked me.
I nodded, quickly. I suddenly wanted, very badly, to impress this man. “I’m just now finishing my eighth week at the Glass Hat,” I said. “In the Belmont Plaza.”
“Really? I live there,” Dean said.
“At the Glass Hat?”
“No, at the Belmont. It’s part of my radio deal.”
Just at that moment, a beautiful brunette walked by, in a coat with a fur-trimmed collar. Dean lowered his eyelids slightly and flashed her that grin–and damned if she didn’t smile right back! How come I never got that reaction? She gave him a lingering gaze over her shoulder as she passed, a clear invitation, and Dean shook his head, smiling his regrets.
“Look at this guy,” Sonny said in his hoarse Brooklyn accent. “He’s got pussy radar!”
One look at Sonny’s eyes was enough to tell me that he idolized Dean–whose attention, all at once, I felt anxious to get back. “You ever go to Leon and Eddie’s?” I asked, my voice sounding even higher and squeakier than its usual high and squeaky. Leon and Eddie’s was a restaurant and nightclub a couple of blocks away, on fabulous Fifty-second Street–which, in those days, was lined with restaurants and former speakeasies, like “21,” and music clubs like the Five Spot and Birdland. Live entertainment still ruled America in those pretelevision days, Manhattan was the world capital of nightclubs, and Leon and Eddie’s was a mecca for nightclub comics. Sunday night was Celebrity Night: The fun would start after hours, when anybody in the business might show up and get on to do a piece of their act. You’d see the likes of Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, Danny Kaye. It was magical. I used to go and gawk, like a kid in a candy store. Someday, I thought. . . . But for now, no chance. They’d never use a dumb act–one needing props, yet.
“Yeah, sometimes I stop by Sunday nights,” Dean said.
“Me too!” I cried.
He gave me that smile again–warm but ever so slightly cool around the edges. It bathed you in its glow, yet didn’t let you in. Men don’t like to admit it, but there’s something about a truly handsome guy who also happens to be truly masculine–what they call a man’s man–that’s as magnetic to us as it is to women. That’s what I want to be like, you think. Maybe if I hang around with him, some of that’ll rub off on me.
“So–maybe I’ll see you there sometime,” Dean told me.
“Yeah, sure,” I said.
“Go get your tux out of hock,” he said.
I laughed. He was funny.
***
Sonny King was a pal, but not a friend. I badly needed a friend. I was a lonely kid, the only child of two vaudevillians who were rarely around. My dad, Danny, was a singer and all-around entertainer: He did it all– patter, impressions, stand-up comedy. My mom, Rachel (Rae), was Danny’s pianist and conductor. So I grew up shuttled from household to household, relative to relative. I cherished the precious times Mom and Dad would take me on the road with them. And for them, the highest form of togetherness was to put me right in the act: My first onstage appearance was at age five, in 1931, at the President Hotel, a summer resort in Swan Lake, New York. I wore a tux (naturally) and sang that Depression classic “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” From that moment on, showbiz was in my blood. So was loneliness.
By the time I was sixteen, I was a high-school dropout and a show-business wannabe. A desperately-wanting-to-be wannabe. I worked the Catskill resorts as a busboy (for pay) and (for free) a tummler–the guy who cuts up, makes faces, gets the guests in a good mood for the real entertainment. That’s what I wanted to be, the real entertainment. But what was I going to do? I was tall, skinny, gawky; cute but funny-looking. With the voice God had given me, I certainly wasn’t going to be a singer like my dad, with his Al Jolson baritone. I always saw the humor in things, the joke possibilities. At the same time, I didn’t have the confidence to stand on a stage and talk.
Then I hit on a genius solution–or what seemed at the time like a genius solution. One night, at a New Jersey resort where my parents were doing their act, a friend of mine, an aspiring performer, Lonnie Brown–the daughter of Charlie and Lillian Brown, resort hotelkeepers who were destined to become very important in my life–was listening to a record by an English singer named Cyril Smith, trying to learn those classy English intonations. I had a little crush on Lonnie, and, attempting to impress her, I started to clown around, mouthing along to the music, rolling my eyes and playing the diva. Well, Lonnie broke up, and that was music to my ears. An act was born.
After a couple of hard years on the road, playing burlesque houses where the guys with newspapers on their laps would boo me off the stage so they could see the strippers, I became a showbiz veteran (still in my teens) with an act called “Jerry Lewis–Satirical Impressions in Pantomimicry.”
I had perfected the act, and to tell the absolute truth, it was pretty goddamn funny. I would put on a fright wig and a frock coat and lip-synch to the great baritone Igor Gorin’s “Largo Al Factotum” from The Barber of Seville. I’d come out in a Carmen Miranda dress, with fruit on my hat, and do Miranda. Then into a pin-striped jacket, suck in my cheeks, and I’d do Sinatra singing “All or Nothing at All.” I knew where every scratch and skip was on every record, and when they came up, I’d do shtick to them. I had gotten better and better at contorting my long, skinny body in ways that I knew worked comedically. I practiced making faces in front of a mirror till I cracked myself up. God hadn’t made me handsome, but he’d given me something, I always felt: funny bones.
And I never said a word on stage.
The dumb act was a rapidly fading subspecialty in those rapidly fading days of baggy-pants comedy, and my own days doing it were numbered. There were a few of us lip-synchers out there, working the circuit, and while I liked (and still like) to think that I was the best of the bunch–nobody could move or pratfall or make faces like Jerry Lewis– I only had around three to eleven audience members per show who agreed with me. Those three or four or nine people would be wetting themselves while I performed, as the rest of the house (if anyone else was there) clapped slowly, or booed.... Bring on the strippers!
And I never said a word.
The truth is, funny sentences were always running through my brain: I thought funny. But I was ashamed of what would come out if I spoke–that nasal kid’s voice. So I was funny on stage, but I was only part funny: I was still looking for the missing piece.
Product details
- Publisher : Crown (October 10, 2006)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0767920872
- ISBN-13 : 978-0767920872
- Item Weight : 10.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.14 x 0.73 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,105,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,242 in Comedy (Books)
- #9,376 in Actor & Entertainer Biographies
- #32,438 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
JAMES KAPLAN has been writing about people and ideas in business and popular culture, as well as noted fiction (Best American Short Stories), for over three decades. His essays and reviews, as well as more than a hundred major profiles of figures ranging from Madonna to Helen Gurley Brown, Calvin Klein to John Updike, Miles Davis to Meryl Streep, and Arthur Miller to Larry David, have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, and New York. His first novel, Pearl's Progress, was published by Knopf in 1989. His nonfiction portrait of John F. Kennedy International Airport, The Airport (1994) -- called "a splendid book" by Gay Talese -- remains a classic of aviation literature and New York storytelling. His second novel, Two Guys From Verona -- published in 1998 by Atlantic Monthly Press, and chosen by The New York Times as one of its Notable Books of the Year -- is being developed as a movie by Jeremy Garelick, screenwriter of The Break-Up and The Hangover. In 2002 Kaplan co-authored the autobiography of John McEnroe, You Cannot Be Serious, which was an international bestseller (and number one on the New York Times list). His 2005 book Dean and Me: A Love Story, co-written with Jerry Lewis and published by Doubleday, was a New York Times bestseller as well. In November 2010, Doubleday published Frank: The Voice, the first volume of Kaplan's definitive biography of Frank Sinatra. The book was also a New York Times bestseller, and was chosen by Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani as one of her Top Ten Books of 2010. James Kaplan lives in Westchester, New York, with his wife and three sons. You can visit his website at www.jameskaplan.net.
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Having loved the comedy of Martin and Lewis all my life, I bought this book the very day it was released and enjoyed reading it so much that I am already reading it for the second time. (This is NOT like me!) Oh, it is not great literature, to be sure, but, my oh my, it is a wonderful story! And it really is a love story... It is a story of two regular guys who achieved the great American dream. It is, in fact, American History. It is also the story of a deep and abiding friendship and the realization that the friendship was a treasure far greater than the achievement of the childhood dreams of fame and fortune.
That is not all. It is also quite an entertaining read. Jerry Lewis, with James Kaplan's expert assistance, has written it as though he is sitting in your living room telling the story; he includes little sidebars and interesting tidbits about the times, the fashions, the mob, the rat pack, and many other celebrities. One of the most wonderful surprises of this book is that Mr. Lewis does not beat his readers over the head with the silliness we might have expected from him. He has, instead, written this story to honor his partner and the partnership and friendship they shared. He engages his readers from the first page and escorts them on a sentimental journey - from Martin and Lewis' humble beginnings and how they got their start in the big time to their infamous break up and some of what came thereafter, up to and including Dean Martin's broken heart (over the loss of his son, Dino, Jr. in a plane crash) which ultimately led to Dean's own death. Mr. Lewis includes parts of the story of their reconciliation and of their last encounter, only a short time before Dean passed away.
While he is clearly not telling this as a comedy, Jerry Lewis is, after all, the consummate classic entertainer, always conscious of what this audience is feeling. This shines through in his generous peppering of the book with stories of their early years and their mischievous antics, and the predicaments into which those antics led them on more than one occasion. He recounts it all in such a way that it consistently evoked remarkably vivid memories of their hilarious routines that had me laughing out loud throughout the entire read!
I cannot remember when I have had so much fun reading and then re-reading a memoir, a tribute!
I never say this type of thing, but... if you have ever been a fan of this greatest of the great comedy team, do yourself a favor and purchase this book! In my opinion, you will not be spending your hard earned money; you will be investing it. It is my belief that among the benefits and returns with which you will be delighted are: the wonderful memories, the discussions, the laughs, the conversations, and the out-and-out fun it will inspire within your heart, your home, and your social circle! You may even find yourself looking up an old friend...
Thank you for the laughter, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. You have done it again... still!
In addition to playing the biggest nightclubs and making numerous television appearances, Martin and Lewis made 16 films in 10 years. They went from a pair of unknowns (Lewis was 19 and Martin was 28) to making $7,500 a week, almost overnight. In 1951, the pair was paid $100,000 (equivalent to more than $750,000 today) for performing one night at Grossinger's in the Catskills.
Sophie Tucker described Martin and Lewis as "a combination of the Keystone Kops, the Marx Brothers and Abbott and Costello." Others described Martin and Lewis as "the singer and the monkey."
Much of what Martin and Lewis did was unscripted and the end result was hilarious. Lewis said the key to their success was that "we had fun together."
Martin and Lewis' well-publicized breakup was one of Hollywood's biggest stories. Lewis said the pair had few disagreements in the first five years, but he did notice things starting to change in 1949. Martin and Lewis were two very different personalities, whose common bond was a lonely childhood. Martin, the quintessential straight man, was laid back and seemingly more concerned about golf and women than his career. Lewis, an unpredictable comedic genius, was more driven, detail-oriented and ambitious.
As if that difference wasn't enough, Martin was constantly ignored or bashed my critics, who placed most of the credit for the team's success on Lewis' shoulders. As Lewis received the lion's share of attention and Martin fell further and further into the shadows, the rift began and continued to widen. The insecure and angry Martin felt unappreciated.
Lewis, however, makes it plain in the book that he didn't share the critics' opinion of his partner. He praises Martin as "the best straight man ever." He said he would've probably reacted the same way if the situation had been reversed. In the end, Lewis encouraged the breakup, recognizing that their relationship had changed and that he would affect their work. It's clear that Jerry Lewis respected, admired and loved Dean Martin.
Their 20-year "feud" in which they didn't talk to each other is as famous as their breakup. The two were reunited during the 1976 Muscular Dystrophy Telethon by mutual friend Frank Sinatra.
Lewis includes plenty of other interesting stories in this self-proclaimed "love story." I've always been interested in Jerry Lewis and this book provided the answers to a lot of questions I had. The book is well-written, informative and entertaining.
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Jerry estava fazendo apresentações solo em Atlantic City quando viu a oportunidade de chamar o Dean para também se apresentar por la. O Dean contava umas estorias e cantava, o que não agradava muito. Então, o Jerry invadiu a apresentação dele como um cliente atrapalhado e intrometido. O sucesso foi tanto que, no dia seguinte, o publico havia aumentado de 20 para 200 pessoas.
A parceria, que começou em 1946, teve sucesso instantâneo e logo começaram a fazer filmes em Hollywood. Dean era 9 anos mais velho que Jerry que, em 46, tinha 19 anos. A dupla encerrou suas operações em 1956 e, estes 10 anos, foram ricos em estorias que são agradavelmente apresentadas no livro.
Depois da ruptura, Jerry continuou a fazer sucesso no cinema por vários anos e Dean, para surpresa de muitos críticos, fez sucesso em filmes com Frank Sinatra e John Wayne, alem de mostrar talento cômico em apresentações do "Rat Pack", aonde ele sempre se apresentava como se estivesse bêbado. E era bastante convincente, alem de divertido.
Em 76, Sinatra levou o Dean no Telethon do Jerry para que, apos 20 anos, voltassem a conversar. Foi um belo reencontro, que pode ser visto na internet.
Como começaram a trabalhar juntos? Por que se separaram? Por que pararam de se falar? Como era o relacionamento do dois? O que aconteceu apos o reencontro em 76? Como fizeram tanto sucesso? Como era personalidade e postura dos dois?
Este livro esclarece tudo, do ponto de vista do Jerry.
Lewis schildert sehr anschaulich, wie die beiden sich kennengelernt haben und wie es zu ihrem Durchbruch kam. Es entsteht ein schönes Bild des Showbusiness dieser Zeit. Es kommen witzige Geschichten von den Tourneen und Begegnungen mit vielen Promineten der Zeit zur Sprache. Auch Begegnungen mit der Mafia werden nicht ausgespart. Man merkt, wie gut sich Jerry Lewis im Showbiz auskennt.
Lewis war neun Jahre jünger als Martin und hat diesen oft als einen großer Bruder betrachtet. Sehr interessant sind auch die Analysen von Lewis, warum das Duo zu seiner Zeit so erfolgreich war. Die beiden haben sich perfekt ergänzt.
1956 kommt es dann zu wohl unvermeindlichen Trennung. Lewis beschreibt die Gründe aus seiner Sicht und wie sie sich langsam auseinander entwickelt haben. Die klare Rollenverteilung zwischen den beiden wurde auch zum Problem. Beide kommen als nicht einfache Persönlichkeiten rüber, die eine komplexe Freudschaft hatten. Lewis schreibt aber mit sehr viel Wärme über Martin. Das ist schon bewegend zu lesen. Martin wird immer wieder für seine einmalige Begabung auf der Bühne gelobt.
Nach der Trennung habe sie 20 Jahre nicht mehr miteinander gesprochen. Danach habe sie regelmäßig telefoniert. Lewis schildert Martin als unglückliche Person, die am liebsten allein war. Die familiären Verhätnissen, aus denen Martin stammt, sind auch immer wieder Thema.
Da Buch war eine Herzensangelegenheit für Lewis. Gut, dass er es geschreiben hat. Wenn man sich für einen der beiden interessiert oder diese Phase des Showgeschäftes mag, wird man dieses Buch mit Gewinn lesen. Das Englische fand ich jetzt nicht so einfach zu lesen, aber man kommt gut durch. Jerry Lewis Witz kommt gut rüber. Fünf Sterne.