by Jerry Lewis
“You know something?” I said. “They’re always going to like the kid who makes the biggest noise. They’re always going to pay attention to the fuckin’ monkey. You’re going to hear more about him than the straight man. Nobody ever talked about George Burns. It was always Gracie. When Jack Benny and Mary Livingston worked in vaudeville, they didn’t know who Jack Benny was.”
I said, “You have to know that the straight man is never given the kudos that the comic gets. And I just need to know you’re okay with that.”
This was really opening a sore. Dean said, “Jerry, look. Your father told you once, Be a hit. With the monkey act, with a couple of broads, with two balls and a watermelon. Whatever—just be a hit. We’re a big hit. And you need to know that I know when our film is on that screen and I start to sing, the kids go for the popcorn.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I argued. “I don’t think little kids go for popcorn at any particular time.”
But in my heart, I knew he was right. Kids go to the movies to laugh and see action, and singing and love scenes slow things down.
What I should have said was that the people also went for popcorn during Crosby’s songs. And Perry Como’s. And every other singer who went into film, including Frank. The songs and the kissing scenes—that was the time for popcorn.
But Bing Crosby was Dean’s first idol, and he often felt he was walking in Crosby’s shadow. There were too many kids in Steubenville—and too many reviewers later on—who said, “You’re imitating Crosby.” Dean carried that around with him. I’d tell him, “Crosby has a voice, but he’s got no fuckin’ heart, you putz. You got heart.”
He also had a thing about Frank. Dean always felt like the guy who had subbed for Sinatra at the Riobamba. Sinatra was so great, why even try to take him on? Even though what Dean did and what Frank did was apples and oranges.
Every once in a while, Dean would make some joke about how he’d had to sing on the radio for free. During the war and just after, several of the stations in the New York area had what they called “sustaining”— nonsponsored—programs. When there was no sponsor, there was no pay for the talent: It was strictly a showcase.
“It may interest you to know,” I said, “that Sinatra was on Hoboken radio sustaining.”
“Horseshit,” Dean said.
I said, “Really?” I went to the phone and called Frank. He confirmed that he’d sung on Hoboken radio for free. He said it was only for three days, but he had! I said, “Paul, they couldn’t afford to pay you. We were coming out of a depression and a war. They were broke.”
After he had a couple of small hits on Capitol in the early fifties, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Was I being overcontrolling? Maybe. But I needed to protect our act. In 1952, we were in preproduction on our new picture, The Caddy, and we needed some songs for Dean. So I went to the great Harry Warren, the Oscar-winning writer of such songs as “Forty-Second Street,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” and his lyricist Jack Brooks, and paid them $30,000 out of my own pocket. I didn’t want Dean to know I hired them, and I never told him. But I knew that Harry Warren could write hits, and I said to Harry, “I want a hit for Dean.”
And he wrote one. Boy, did he write one.
Cut to the following fall, about a month after the release of The Caddy . Dean phoned me from his dressing room on the Paramount lot: “What are you doing?” he said.
“Darning a sock,” I told him. I waited for the laugh, then remembered I had used the line before. “Why, what’s up?”
“Wanna take a ride?” he asked.
Six-year-old voice: “Ooh, goody, I love rides.” Grown-up voice: “Where we going?”
“It’s a surprise. See you outside.”
We always kept our cars parked right behind the dressing-room area, poised for action. When I opened the door, Dean was sitting at the wheel of his blue Cadillac convertible with the top down, a grin on his deeply tanned face. I think he loved that car more than any he ever had, and he had a few.
I got in and he started her up. We pulled through the studio gates, drove down Melrose, took a right up Vine, and turned left onto Sunset. Quite a few heads turned as we passed by. It was a warm, hazy, Indian-summer day in L.A., and we were at the height of our fame, riding down Sunset Boulevard in an open Cadillac! An open blue Cadillac. I was very aware of the impression we made, and I loved every second.
And so did Dean. As I glanced over at my partner, I could feel his total satisfaction. He was at peace with the world: smoking his Camel, driving his great car, his partner at his side. He never said it, but his eyes reflected a happy man.
As we pulled up in front of Music City, Dean stopped the car and pointed to the huge store window, where a double-life-size photo of himself stood, next to a sign announcing his new single, “That’s Amore.”
“Hey,” he said. “Is that one handsome Italian, or what?”
Neither of us had any idea that day what a monster hit “That’s Amore” would become (it would sell two million platters as a single, and be nominated for an Academy Award) and what kind of effect the song would have on both our lives. It was a number Dean tired of singing after a couple of years, but for the time being, it gave him an identity with the public that he had never had before.
In The Caddy, Dean played an up-and-coming golfer who leaves the game to become a professional comedian. In real life, I don’t think he’d have minded doing it the other way around.
As a struggling young singer in the forties, Dean couldn’t afford to
She wouldn’t leave me alone.
With his natural grace and athletic ability, he overcame his late start and got better and better, finally whittling his handicap down to a six. Not bad for a kid from Steubenville, where all the hitting you did was at each other! Once we moved out to the Coast in 1949, he figured he’d found golfing heaven. The second house he and Jeannie bought was right next to the Los Angeles Country Club.
Dean loved golf because it was made for his chemistry: quiet, soft breezes, green grass, no people gawking at him, and a bar at the nineteenth hole. But mainly quiet. The few words you might exchange with your partners as you strolled down the fairway were plenty for him. And he chose his partners carefully. Or so he thought.
When Dean joined the California Country Club, his golfing skills made him the envy of much of the membership. But those same skills also made him a target. The advice his parents had given him about keeping to himself had insulated him from potential friends and annoyances alike. Still, there were times that even he let his guard down. In short order, he fell in with a group of hustlers headed by a character named Bagsy Kerrigan. These were guys who claimed to have a certain handicap, nine or twelve or sixteen, but who in reality could play lights-out, par or subpar golf whenever they wanted.
Dean was flush with our new success. And so as a born gambler, and as a guy who was pretty confident about his skills around a golf course, my partner just had to get some action going. Bagsy and his pals were glad to oblige.
At first they’d just bet a couple of hundred a round, but then the stakes got heavy: four or five grand every game. You do that ten days in a row, and they’ve got you for $50,000. On the eleventh day, they’d pick you up at your house just to be courteous!
I’m told that Dean played terrific golf with these guys but just missed pay dirt. Bagsy and his pals were so good that if Dean shot a 74, they could throw a 72 (handicap factored in) at him. When he shot a 78, they got a 76. They did whatever was needed, nothing more. And oh, of course—now and then, just to break the monotony (and avoid suspicion), they’d let Dean win. Didn’t that make him feel fine!
By the time the year was over, my partner had lost over $300,000 to Bagsy and company. And talk about it was beginning to circulate around Hollywood.
For a long time, Dean never understood what hit him. He was loving the golf, and he was winning now and then. When you’re freewheeling and h
ave bucks in your kick, you rarely take inventory. . . . After all, he was in the game, and taking part was all he really wanted at the time.
Let me be clear about one thing: Dean was not a fool. He was very smart, as long as you were straight. In this one instance, he acted naively because he believed that the handicaps posted in the clubhouse were earned honestly. These guys he was playing with weren’t cheating obviously. They weren’t moving the ball; they weren’t changing the numbers on the scorecard. They were coming to Dean under false pretenses, and—maybe because he spent so much of his life avoiding close relationships—that was one area where my partner was always vulnerable.
Bagsy and his pals built themselves a couple of upscale homes, complete with swimming pools, on the money they won from Dean over the next couple of years. And Hollywood was a tightly knit community. When these guys boasted, “I’m living in Dean’s other house,” or “Let’s take a dip in Dean’s pool,” word got around. In fact, after our first four years in Hollywood, rumor was that Dean had lost two or three million in all. A lot of money anytime, but especially in those days, when two or three million was what one of our movies might gross domestically.
Maybe Dean didn’t hear the gossip. Maybe he didn’t want to. In time he would learn that he’d been had, and he dumped Bagsy and his crowd, leaving that country club for others where such shenanigans didn’t take place. But he took the rip-off in stride. He never sought revenge. He just found other partners who pushed him to excellence without taking advantage of him. Ultimately, you play golf against yourself, and money wasn’t what it was about for Dean. He just wanted to play the best he could.
Golf remained Dean’s great refuge. But no matter how far he ran from people, they continued to surround him. And that was how he— and there’s no getting around it, we—got into trouble.
My partner’s self-esteem was a funny business. With looks, talent, and a sense of humor like his, Dean Martin should have been the soul of confidence—but if you knew him well, you could never tell when you might strike a nerve. The problem was, he was so good at covering up his vulnerabilities, you might never realize he was hurt. But I was so good at reading Dean that I almost always did.
Which is not to say that I didn’t commit my share of stupidities.
Dean was very proud of his golfing skills, and deservedly so. He took a natural gift and, instead of coasting, the way you might have expected a guy with his laid-back reputation to do, he worked very hard on his game. He might have been a one-take guy when it came to movies, radio, and TV—“You only have to tell me once” was his favorite saying to directors—but he thought nothing of practicing his putting and driving for hours at a time.
The results showed. He had a beautiful swing, and a real sense of command on a golf course. He would joke while he played (he always joked), but he still took the game very seriously. And he got better and better at it over time.
Early on, though, I stepped over the line. Feeling that it might bring us closer to play golf together, I secretly took up the game—and, to my delight, found I had some innate skill. My plan was to surprise Dean: “Isn’t this great?” I would tell him. “Now we can play together wherever we go!”
And so the day I went to Palm Springs (where Dean was taking some R&R time between films) to join him for lunch, he thought it was just lunch. He had already played nine holes when we met at the clubhouse. After we ate, Dean said, “You want to ride around with me for the back nine?”
“I’d love it!” I said. “Wait here!”
I ran from the clubhouse to my car, popped the trunk, and took out my shiny new golf shoes and my expensive new clubs. Slipped on the shoes, shouldered the bag, and ran back to Dean, who was putting on the practice green. He looked me over and just said, “I thought it would only be a matter of time before you found out how great this is!”
We both jumped into his cart and rode to the first tee. I was breathless with excitement—couldn’t wait to show off for my big brother. We hopped out, and Dean said with a big smile, “You first, pally.”
I teed the ball up with a silent prayer: Please let me be good for him.... Took my driver back—and blasted it straight down the fairway, 200 yards.
Dean blinked. “When did you learn this?” he asked. “I thought you were always in the office or the editing room!”
I admitted I’d taken lessons so we could be together more. His look told me: Wrong! But he covered it well, and we went on playing.
After we’d finished the thirteenth hole, Dean was one under and I was two over. Not bad for a beginner! I thought. I glanced at my partner’s face as he filled out the scorecard. Nothing. Throughout the first four holes (back nine, remember), I’d been looking for some acknowledgment of how well I was doing.
Nothing.
Then Dean said, with a strange smile, “Why don’t we make it interesting and bet the last five holes?” he said. “Five hundred bucks, winner takes all?”
“Sure!” I said. Naturally, I would have paid the five hundred just for the privilege of playing alongside him. . . . But then I birdied the fourteenth, and Dean bogeyed it. All at once it was a shooting match: He was at even par, I was one over.
Dean made par on the fifteenth, and—to my great surprise—I birdied again. Now he’s even and I’m even. We both parred the sixteenth, and I scanned his face. No reaction.
A bogey for both of us on seventeen. All tied up.
Then I hit the biggest drive of my life, so did Dean, and now we’re looking at a pretty fancy run for the roses. As I took out a nine-iron for my third shot, he put up a hand. He had a mischievous smile on his face. “Hold on, Ben Hogan,” he said.
“Of course,” I said.
“Side bet of two hundred you don’t par the hole,” he said.
“What about if I birdie?” I asked, all innocence.
He shook his head at my nerve. “Hey, hotshot, you birdie and I’ll pay you a grand!”
I didn’t birdie. (Thank God.) I parred the last hole, as did Dean, making us all even—except that he had lost the side bet. He took the bills out of his hip pocket, counted them, and handed them over. He was smiling, but his eyes were cold. “Boy, talk about beginner’s luck,” he said.
I put my hand up. “That’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t want the money.” I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“Oh, no,” Dean said. “A bet’s a bet.” And he stuck the bills in my pocket.
I knew in my heart I had made a great mistake. Not simply by winning the money, but just learning how to play.
When I phoned my dad and told him what had happened, you could have heard his scream across the room. “You fool!” he shouted. “You young, stupid fool! Why did you do that?”
“I just wanted to spend time together playing his favorite game,” I said sheepishly.
“All they ever write about is the skinny kid,” Dad said. “Jerry this and Jerry that—he’s the funny one, he’s the smart one. Don’t you see that all Dean ever had to himself was golf—and now you’re trying to take that, too?”
My dad was smart. Dean and I never played together again, except for a cancer benefit we did for Bing Crosby. But that was it. I never again talked to my partner about my golf, only his.
CHAPTER TEN
A NUMBER OF ENTERTAINERS STAYED OUT OF WORLD WAR II with questionable physical or psychological conditions, but both Dean and I were genuine 4-Fs. My problem was a heart murmur, a congenital defect; Dean’s was a double hernia. Nothing by halves for my partner!
Seriously, though, it had not been fun to be classified 4-F. I had badly wanted to join up, and was devastated to be turned away. (Dean, never a joiner and no fan of uniforms, might not have been as crushed as I was.) But in the mid- and late forties, both Dean and I faced audiences who accused us of draft-dodging—doubtless the same kind of people who had thrown tomatoes at the front of the Paramount Theater when Frank Sinatra, another legitimate 4-F, played there in 1944.
Although the strong
emotions stirred up by the war died down by the early fifties, Dean’s hernia had gotten worse. Jack Entratter of the Copa recommended a doctor, and the doctor told Dean he would have to operate. The procedure, at the Harlem Hospital Center on 137th Street in Manhattan, went well. So well that two days afterward, my partner was complaining of hunger pains.
“Is this an endurance contest? When can I have some real food?” Dean said when I visited him.
“I’ll go to Lindy’s and get you some nice chicken soup,” I told him. “That’ll be good for you.” And without giving him a chance to say anything, I dashed out of his room and ran down the stairs. (Hospital elevators always have old men gasping for air in them.)
I hailed a cab and told the driver, “Take me to Lindy’s at Fifty-first Street and Broadway, and step on it!” We were just crossing 121st Street when a roar of thunder and a flash of lightning almost stopped my watch. The rain looked like something out of one of those old Saturday-afternoon King Brothers B movies where the dam breaks.
The traffic moved agonizingly slowly: A half hour later, we were only at Eighty-fourth Street, and it was another half hour before we got to the restaurant. I ran in and ordered hot chicken soup, with lots of noodles, to go. It was only when I stepped outside that I realized I should have kept the cab and let the meter run, because when it rains in New York, every taxi in the city is taken.
I started to walk. From Fifty-first and Broadway I was going to walk to the hospital at 137th and Lenox, assuring myself that I would be able to hail a cab along the way, or at least find one letting someone off. Not in this lifetime!
I am now at Seventy-eighth Street, with only fifty-nine blocks to go, and it feels as if I’ve been walking for days. I am so wet, my skin is wrinkled. Cabs are still zooming by, keeping their passengers comfy and cozy. All I see are silhouettes of happy people, dry and comfortable, while I am trying to keep my Jewish Boston Marathon going.