by Jerry Lewis
Ciro’s was the ritziest nightclub on Sunset Strip, and Herman was quite a power in the Hollywood of the late forties. Short, gruff, always impeccably tailored, he was the same height and build as Edward G. Robinson, with the same hairline—except that instead of looking like a gangster, Herman resembled a textile salesman. He wore expensive hand-painted ties and custom-made shirts: Whenever he extended an arm, you saw his monogram, “H.H.,” right there on the cuff. The first time I got a load of that, I said, “Wow! Harry Horseshit!” Dean made an Oliver Hardy face at me, and I never did it again.
Herman Hover spent money exactly the way you’d think a guy who looked like Herman Hover would spend money. He lived in a mansion on North Bedford in Beverly Hills that had once belonged to Mary Pick-ford: Howard Hughes, another pal of Hover’s, conducted most of his business there. Herman’s home had a $40,000 supply of liquor on hand at all times—he skimmed pretty good from Ciro’s. Oh, he was a piece of work. (I’m sorry to say he wound up broke.)
It was in Herman’s mansion, on September 1, 1949, that Dean married Jeannie. It was quite an affair, small and private but lavish. Herman footed the bill (of course), including ten grand worth of white gardenias. I was best man. Patti was present, under protest—she still felt bad for Betty. And Dean, in a separate room from Jeannie so they wouldn’t have the bad luck of seeing each other before the ceremony, was nervous as a cat. My partner and I were alone together, as he paced and lit cigarette after cigarette. You’d have thought he was going to the chair! Soon all the pacing and smoking began to get to me. When he said, “Christ, I need a drink!” I was thrilled.
“You’re gonna be all right if I leave for a minute, right?” I asked him.
“Of course!” he bellowed. “Get the drink!”
I dashed out to the pantry, swung open the door, and got my first eyeful of Herman’s fabulous liquor collection. Jesus, there was enough booze in there to get all of Pasadena loaded. I took out a bottle of Dean’s favorite (at the time), Johnnie Walker Black Label, and filled a huge tumbler—at least sixteen ounces’ worth. There were smaller glasses, but whenever there was a chance for a laugh, I always went for it. Then I strolled back into the room and handed the tumbler—it had to be at least nine inches tall—to Dean. He took one look at it and fell apart, just thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. It really wasn’t, it just happened to be the perfect time for that kind of a sight gag. He sipped some of it, put it on the table, and lit another cigarette.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.
Dean looked at me like I was nuts. When, before, had I ever asked if I could ask? Not my style, especially where he was concerned! But on this one, I genuinely felt a little timid. I cleared my throat. “You just got out of one marriage,” I said. “What the fuck are you rushing into another one for?”
He just stared at me, shocked that I had hit the issue on the button. I hurried to explain myself. “Forgive me, Paul,” I said. “Jeannie’s a great girl, and I think she would follow you to the ends of the earth. I know she would wait until you were ready. And there are four kids to think about.”
Dean thought for a moment. “Listen, Jer,” he said. “You know me better than anyone, so what I say is between us. I do worry about my kids. But this feels so right. So strong.”
I nodded, finally understanding that he was really in love, and probably for the first time. “It’s your life, pal,” I told him. “And you have to do what’s best for you. You’ve always taken care of your kids; now it’s your turn to take care of yourself. Everything’ll fall into place.”
He threw his arms around me in a bear hug and whispered into my ear: “Thanks, Jer.”
As it turned out, Jeannie was the best thing that ever happened to Dean. Unfortunately, she and I never really hit it off.
Both of us were jealous of Dean’s deep feelings for the other, both of us wished we could have him all to ourselves. But I repeat: Jeannie was the best thing (next to me) that ever happened to Dean. They had a loving, strong, and enduring relationship. A complicated relationship, yes—it was impossible to have any other kind with Dean. Though he and Jeannie would eventually divorce (twenty years later), I always felt that that was just legal paperwork. They never stopped caring for each other. I guess I loved her, too, in my own way. Someday I may tell her.
In the annals of marriage counseling, I know there is the following sentence: The couple that laughs together, stays together. I’m totally convinced of the wisdom of that, and I’m positive the same holds true for partners of all sorts, because as long as Dean and I were laughing with each other, we stuck like glue.
When two guys perform and travel together ten months out of the year, they form a unique attachment. Staying in the same hotels, sharing a two-bedroom suite at the beginning, Dean and I found out almost everything there was to know about each other—sometimes secrets you wouldn’t want to share with anyone.
There was the time we played a gig at the Presidente Hotel in Acapulco. We’d only been a team for eleven months, and suddenly we were being offered big bucks to do a show in sunny Mexico, including everything else that came with the package: water-skiing, frolicking on the beach, frolicking off the beach.
We went, we played, we rehearsed, we did the show, and then we played some more. All night, in fact: from around 12:30 till 8:30 A.M. We stumbled back to the hotel for a couple hours’ sleep, then staggered to the airport for the flight back to L.A.
After grabbing some rest in our Los Angeles hotel (this was around a year before we both moved to the West Coast), we had to get ready for the evening’s show. Dean came into my bathroom to borrow some toothpaste and saw me examining myself in the mirror, trying to figure out where the itching was coming from.
“Having trouble, Mr. Lucas?” he said. (I don’t think, in ten years, that he said “Lewis” even once. His favorites were: Lucas, Loomis, Lousy, and Looseleaf.)
“Yeah, I’m having trouble,” I answered. “What the hell is happening to me?”
It was apparent that my partner had been there before. (I was only twenty-one, and hadn’t.) He took my arm. “Step up here for a minute,” Dean says, pointing to the toilet-seat cover. I stand up there as he instructs. His head is right in line with my penis.
“I didn’t know about this perk, pal!” I say.
Dean tilts his head ever so slightly and says, “The day that becomes a possibility is the day I go back to doing a single.”
By now I’m getting annoyed with his survey of my pubic stuff. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask. “And what’s going on down there, anyway?”
Dean says, “Hold on for just a second.” He leans over to the medicine cabinet and retrieves a small tweezer I had in my toiletries case. He looks like he’s scrubbed in for the operation and ready to begin the incision.
He plucks something off me and opens the tweezer over the white porcelain sink, and I go ballistic. “It’s moving!” I scream. “It’s a moving thing! What do I do, Dean? There’s animals climbing on my bones! What do I do?”
Dean begins to laugh, and I wonder what the hell he thinks is so funny. “What is it?” I say. “Will you please tell me?”
“Jerry,” he says, “you got crabs.”
“What the hell am I doing, ordering seafood?” I yell. “What the hell do you mean? And what the hell do we do?”
“I have to get us some alcohol and sand,” Dean says.
He’s lost it, I think. “Alcohol and sand?” I say. “Then what?”
“We throw the sand on them,” Dean says, casually, “then the alcohol. They get loaded and kill one another throwing rocks!”
(Thank God he knew to send for Campho-Phenique. The morning came and the itching went.)
You might also be interested to hear that my partner loved to read comic books.
Jack Eigen, Al Jolson, Dean, and Jerry: Copa, 1948. No, we were not the King family.
You heard me, comic books! Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman. (Once w
hen we got to meet Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, Dean was more knocked out than I’d ever seen him about meeting anyone— except perhaps Frank.) I don’t remember ever seeing him buying a newspaper; he’d only look at a paper if I bought one. But I had to buy his comic books. Why? Because he was embarrassed, that’s why. He was always sensitive about his lack of education.
He also loved—and I mean loved—to watch Westerns on television. I remember third shows at the Copa where he’d speed up so as not to miss the three A.M. showing of John Wayne in Red River or Stagecoach. In fact, I’ll swear: As much as Dean loved the ladies, when the fun was done, he preferred being left alone to watch his Westerns or read his comic books. Women always seemed to need the kind of attention he wasn’t much interested in giving.
But God, did they pay attention to him. And I have to admit: When I was an impressionable young man, one of the first things that fascinated me about Dean was the way he smelled.
The postwar years were a great era for men’s colognes, especially after Leo Durocher, the tough-guy manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (who would become a pal of ours) let it slip that he liked to slap on something nice-smelling after he showered and shaved, and he didn’t care who knew it. Dean’s cologne was the provocatively named Woodhue (say it out loud and it sounds like the kind of question Dean might ask a beautiful young woman—or that beautiful young women would ask him), by Fabergé. The minute I first sniffed it, I associated it with the almost incredible voodoo my partner exerted on the opposite sex. I wanted some of that, too!
I began paying close attention to Dean’s postshower ritual: He would take his bottle of Woodhue, pour some into one cupped palm, then put the bottle down and slap his palms together. Then he’d rub the cologne all over his body—as far as I could see, anyway. At this point he was always in the bathroom, the door just slightly ajar to let out the steam. After a couple of minutes, he’d emerge in his robe, smiling with complete satisfaction: He looked, felt, and smelled great!
I’ll never forget what happened one day in Detroit.
We had done six shows at the Fox Theater, were dog-tired, and were back in our suite at the Book-Cadillac Hotel. Dean was lying on his bed, reading a comic and drinking a beer, and I was ready to take a nice, long shower. I sauntered into the elegant bathroom, turned the radio on, and stepped into the shower, ready to spend twenty minutes just letting the warm water hit my body. The music was nice, we had done six terrific shows, and I felt swell.
When I stepped out of the shower, I yelled out to Dean: “Hey, Paul— can I use some of your Woodhue?”
“Sure, use what you like!”
I took the bottle, unscrewed the top, and, just for a moment, admired my twenty-three-year-old body in the full-length mirror. Then I started to splash the cologne on—under my arms, on my chest, on my legs, even down my back....
Then I poured some of the liquid into my hand, put the bottle on the sink, and proceeded to anoint Little Jerry and the entire surrounding region.
It might have been about fifteen seconds before the burning sensation began—and did it ever. I bounced out of the bathroom Indian-style, whooping and dancing in pain. I went through both bedrooms into the kitchenette, then the sitting area, until finally, deciding I needed air, I flung open the door of the suite and dashed down the long hall, hoping I could create a little wind on my crotch.
I passed the elevators—naturally, they opened with women in them, who screamed louder than I did. Down the hallway, doors began to open as people emerged to investigate the noise . . . men laughing . . . women aghast . . . and at our door, there was Dean, leaning against the jamb, laughing hysterically.
I finally ran into a room-service waiter and his cart—rolls, knives, forks, and steaks flew from one wall to the other—and picked up two silver plate covers, using them like Gypsy Rose Lee used her boas. I limped back to the suite, where Dean was still laughing. I crawled off to my bed and lay down with a pillow between my legs, waiting for the pain to quit, and swearing to myself I would never use the smelly stuff again.
I just couldn’t seem to keep away from Dean’s Woodhue, though.
Practical jokes were an important part of our life on the road, and I worked overtime to tease my hero, my big brother: When the devil got into me, I would stop at nothing. Once, back in Atlantic City, I found a duplicate of his pin-striped performing suit (these were the pretux days) in a pawnshop, and made razor cuts along the stripes. The incisions were impossible to see until Dean put the suit on—at which point it fell apart. Another time I took his prized bottle of Woodhue, dumped it out, and put in Coca-Cola that I mixed with water to achieve an identical light-brown shade.
It was a perfect match. I put the bottle back in place, cleaned up my tracks, and couldn’t wait until he got home from golf, showered, and went for his “Woodhue.”
Some hours passed, and I took a nap. When I awoke, I heard Dean in his bathroom, taking a shower. Yeah, I said to myself. The beaver’s in the hopper.
I waited... and waited. Finally, I decided it was time to shower and get ready for our shows. When I was done, we met for a drink in the living room of our suite, and Dean said nothing to me. I didn’t understand. I walked by him. . . . His Woodhue aroma was in place—he smelled like always, and I didn’t get it. I said nothing, we just made some idle chatter, and off to work we went.
We did our two shows, had a ball, and headed back to the suite. But I didn’t have great success with sleeping that night, because when you do a practical joke, it isn’t sweet until you got the mark and it’s done. Well, this one wasn’t done, and I had no mark!
This went on for another two or three nights. Dean would shower, shave, use his “Woodhue.” (I tried sneaking into the bathroom to reexamine the bottle, but Dean was always around, for some reason!)
Soon I was starting to feel an itching in my scalp... and the jumpies. If anyone spoke a little louder than usual, I’d jump. All symptoms of an unfulfilled gag.
After a while, the symptoms wore off and I started to forget the whole thing.
We were doing the second show on our next-to-closing-night performance, and as I began to leave the stage (a planned point in the act when I walked off so Dean could do a song), he stopped me, turned to the audience, and said, “If you’ll excuse me for just a second, I need to confer with my partner about something.”
A little ripple of laughter started up in the audience—I’m sure they thought we were setting them up. And Dean turned to me and whispered in my ear, “I didn’t want you to suffer any longer, pally—I know what you did with my aftershave. I dumped it and got a new bottle.”
He looked at me and laughed hysterically, which made me laugh hysterically—and the audience was still waiting for the joke! We recovered, Dean sang, and the “Woodhue” became history.
We loved the sheer nonsense of it all, having as much fun off the stage as we did on.
I don’t think, early on, that we really knew the difference.
A little while later, though, I came up with a scheme I thought might be foolproof. It was 1952, we had just completed two weeks at the Chicago Theater—seven shows a day, forty-nine a week—and we were as exhausted as a groom on his wedding night. Especially my partner. When we finished the last show of the engagement, I heard Dean say something I’d never heard from him before: “Jer, I’m outta gas. I’m really very tired.”
“Let’s go back to the hotel, order room service, catch a Western on TV, and hit the pad early,” I said. (Early for us was before three A.M.)
We got into the limo and rode back to the Ambassador Hotel. We were both so beat we didn’t speak for the whole twenty-five-minute drive, but I had time to think about a scenario I’d been developing for years. All I needed was for my partner to give me ten minutes in the suite before he came up. So I suggested we have a nightcap in the Pump Room, and to my delight, Dean accepted.
As soon as we ordered, I excused myself, telling Dean I had to go to the men’s room. Off I went—not to
the men’s room, of course, but to the elevator and up to our suite. It took me no more than three minutes to short-sheet his bed, and when I was done, I just had to spend another moment or two admiring my work.
I rushed back down to the bar, and Dean gave me a look. “Did everything come out all right?” he asked.
“It must’ve been all the Cokes I had today,” I said.
We finished our drinks and headed up to the suite, both of us so fatigued that our feet were literally dragging. When we got inside, Dean went straight to his bedroom.
I stood just outside his door, pretending to be busy doing something, but really listening carefully. I heard his shoes falling, the bedcovers being pulled down, and finally his last sound—the sigh of a dead man. I waited, eager to hear the roar of laughter or the roar of the jungle beast. Nothing. It was as quiet as a zipper in the men’s room. I waited a little longer, completely stumped: What had happened?
Finally, I sneaked into his room to take a look. Dean was sleeping like a baby, snoring a little, his legs tucked into the fetal position. He was so exhausted that he’d never even felt the short sheets—he slept all through the night that way.
I sighed. Oh well, I thought. Maybe I’ll get him next time.
Some of the best times we had were hanging out with other performers. Both of us were crazy about Jackie Gleason, who in addition to being a comic genius was the greatest party animal alive. He loved teasing Dean about his wussy drinking. It finally got to be too much for Dean. “Let’s have a contest and see who’s standing at the finish!” he told Gleason.
It was February 1950, at Toots Shor’s restaurant on Fifty-second Street in Manhattan. The three of us were standing at the bar, and everyone heard the challenge. We now had at least forty people surrounding us, watching to see how this episode played out. Jackie ordered for both of them: “Let’s have two boilermakers!” Dean called out, “Give us both a Pink Lady!” This got a great laugh—ordering a Pink Lady at Toots’s would be like ordering a condom at a convent.