Dean and Me

by Jerry Lewis

  I fought back feelings of panic—alone, he’s going to leave me all alone. But I could always act as tough as anyone, even Dean. “I’m consulting you now,” I told him. “Give me the word and we’ll do it. If not, we won’t.”

  He took a long, slow breath. “Actually, Jerry, I really don’t care where we hold it.”

  I took this to be tacit approval. (We hear what we want to hear.) And so I got right on the phone with Uncle Charlie, who went straight to work on the extensive preparations for the big event.

  The night before our fifty-plus-person party was to get on the east-bound Super Chief, there was a knock on my office door at Paramount. It was Mack Gray.

  Mack, aka Maxie Greenberg, was a onetime prizefighter who had worked as George Raft’s man Friday for twenty years. He’d been very much present at Raft’s pool party on our first night in Hollywood. When Raft couldn’t afford to keep him on anymore, Gray went to work in the exact same capacity for Dean. I always had a full staff buzzing around me; Dean mostly just had Mack. Mack was a gofer. If Dean needed a pack of cigarettes, or a girl driven home at seven A.M., Mack was his guy. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but I liked him. Thought I did, anyway.

  Now he was staring at me with that sad tough-guy’s face. “Your partner isn’t making the trip,” he said.

  “Are you putting me on?” I said.

  “Look, Jerry, I’m relaying this straight from Dean’s mouth. He said he’s tired. He’s going to take Jeanne on a trip to Hawaii. What else can I tell you?”

  I felt like somebody had kicked me in the stomach. At the same time, some part of me couldn’t help but marvel at how Dean had once again avoided confrontation by sending Mack. He had also stuck it to me by bailing at the very last minute. It was all too symbolic—my partner and I were headed thousands of miles in opposite directions. I got on the train the next morning with my family and the rest of our large party and traveled east in a miserable rage, unable to explain my despair even to my nearest and dearest.

  Meanwhile, before heading to Hawaii, Dean sat down with syndicated columnist Earl Wilson and fired another couple of shots across my bow: “I want a little TV show of my own, where I can sing more than two songs in an hour,” he told Wilson. “I’m about ten years older than the boy. He wants to direct. He loves work. So maybe he can direct and I can sing.”

  Then Wilson asked him why he hadn’t gone east with me. “Outside of back east,” Dean said, “who knows about the Catskills?”

  A trickle of blood had first leaked into the water when we had our troubles on Three Ring Circus, but the press was slightly more discreet in those days, and then the story of Martin and Lewis’s troubles died down.

  Now, however, it was back again in full force, and there was a crowd of hungry reporters waiting for me when I got off the train at Penn Station on June 9. I was completely unprepared for their questions.

  “Where’s Dean?” “Why didn’t your partner make the trip?” “Are you feuding?”

  I must have looked like a man on his way to the gallows. “No comment” was all I came up with.

  “Then where is he? Can you comment on that?”

  “No. You’ll have to ask him.”

  They were all yelling at once. “Have a heart! C’mon, Jerry, you’re not helping us!”

  “If I commented, it wouldn’t help me.”

  The drive north to the Catskills was more miserable with each passing mile. Route 17 was plastered with billboards announcing the appearance of Martin and Lewis at Brown’s Hotel. And when we pulled into the driveway of the resort, there were Uncle Charlie and Aunt Lil standing on the big front porch, beaming out into the light rain.

  I was moved; I was terrified; I was mortified. I gripped Patti’s hand for dear life. “Momma, what am I going to tell them?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” my brave wife said.

  The clichés about show people are true: We do smile when we’re low. And the lower you feel, the bigger and broader a grin you need. We arrived on Friday afternoon, and from the moment I stepped out of the car until the premiere on Saturday night, I was completely in character as the kid half of Martin and Lewis, impersonating a bellhop, a busboy, a waiter; kibitzing with the guests. After the screening of You’re Never Too Young, there was a two-hour show: Alan King performed, and my wife the former band singer directed a number, “He’s Funny That Way,” right to me. And then another King showed up—Sonny King, the guy who first introduced me to Dean! Sonny and I did a little shtick together. It all felt like a weird episode of This Is Your Life.

  By the time the big show was over, I simply couldn’t take any more. The facade cracked. Another gang of reporters was waiting for me at the foot of the stage, and I could no longer hold back the tears. The theater went dead quiet. “Maybe I’m using the wrong words,” I said, and then my voice broke for a moment. “But I don’t know the right ones. Maybe the lawyers wouldn’t want me to say anything at all. But you’ve been wonderful. I want to thank you all for saving me embarrassment by not asking questions I couldn’t answer.”

  Everyone in the place stood and clapped, and my tears weren’t the only ones flowing. But when the applause stopped, the questions started. Lawyers? Did he say lawyers? And the word started to rocket across America: Martin and Lewis are having a feud.

  It’s hard to explain to a 999-channel, Internet-connected, all-entertainment-all-the-time world what it felt like to be a big act in a much simpler time, having very public trouble. Then imagine the commercial implications of a rift between Dean and me. We had commitments out there worth literally tens of millions of dollars. We owed Hal Wallis five more movies, for starters. We had TV and radio contracts, theater bookings, and commercial endorsements. And we had some very big shots—most notably, Wallis and our mega-agent at MCA, Lew Wasserman—very, very concerned.

  Still, I’d come to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore. The day after I got back to L.A., I marched into Lew’s office and said, “Please do something, anything, because I can’t continue working this way.”

  “What about Dean?” Lew asked. He was, after all, agent to both of us.

  He just wouldn’t shut his mouth ...

  “How do I know?” I said. “We don’t talk to each other. Just get me out of my commitments and I’ll be happy.”

  “But, Jer— ”

  I cut him off. And I didn’t let up until Lew promised to hold a meeting with Paramount, and to tell Dean what I’d decided.

  In the meantime, my partner (who was getting more press-savvy by the minute) answered me in the newspapers. On August 3, he told a UPI reporter, “To me, this isn’t a love affair. This is big business. I think it’s ridiculous for the boy to brush aside such beautiful contracts.”

  Again with “the boy.” I was going to be thirty in a few months, for Christ’s sake! Anyway, I got my meeting, all right, and I didn’t have to wait for Lew Wasserman to tell Dean what I’d decided—Dean was right there. The parley took place on Monday morning, August 8, in Y. Frank Freeman’s office at Paramount, and besides Y. Frank and Martin and Lewis, Lew, Wallis, and our lawyer, Joe Ross, were all present. Another heavy sit-down at Paramount, and, once again, very serious business.

  It was the first time Dean and I had seen each other in over two months, since before our separate trips to Hawaii and the Catskills. There was no hugging. I eyed him warily, but he was all smiles and cool assurance. I knew there was something cooking under there, but I also knew my partner well enough to realize that he’d be damned if he was going to show any weakness to me.

  We sat around a big conference table, and while Y. Frank’s secretary, Sydney, filled our water glasses—for some reason, my mouth was very dry—Y. Frank and Lew and Wallis and Joe proceeded, one after another, to explain to us just how inextricably tied up the two of us were, with our contracts and with each other. After a while their voices turned into a hum in my head that repeated the same message over and over: You’re stuck, boy—stuck good
and proper. For now, anyway. As the businessmen talked, I kept stealing glances over at Dean, who was squinting coolly in his cigarette smoke. He hadn’t touched his water.

  Jack Keller announced to the press, and the press announced to the world, that Dean and I had reconciled. The truth, of course, was more complicated. My partner and I were beginning to speak to each other again, and my emotions were wildly mixed: On the one hand, I couldn’t shake the childish hope that, just like a fairy tale, everything would be all better. On the other hand, I knew that Martin and Lewis’s days were numbered. I thought of something that my dad had told me: “You and Dean have been the greatest shooting star in the history of show business. Recognize that it tails off. But don’t wait until it’s gone before deciding, ‘Well, let’s do something.’ Uh-uh. You gotta do it while the star is still cresting.”

  You want to see brilliant faking with a not-so-subtle psychological sub-text? Watch the Colgate Comedy Hour we did that September, where I play a goofy quiz-show contestant who has to be isolated in a tank of water so he won’t hear the answers. Dean, of course, is the master of ceremonies, and he keeps pushing my head under water. He won’t stop! Could he possibly be getting some sadistic pleasure from this? “Wait,” I finally say, bobbing up and gasping for air. “Haven’t you heard? The feud is over!”

  The studio audience screamed with laughter.

  There was another reason the two of us were stuck together. Soon after I had returned from the Brown’s fiasco, I’d been met with more bad news: a letter from the Internal Revenue Service using the very attention-getting phrase “tax evasion.” The IRS claimed that Dean and I owed them $650,000 in back taxes. And unfortunately, when I had my accountants check and double-check the matter, it turned out that the IRS was right.

  The timing couldn’t have been worse. Despite the money that was rolling in, almost all of it was rolling right back out again: Both Dean and I were running very high overheads—mansions, servants, cars, offices, staffs—and I knew that neither of us had that kind of cash lying around.

  Moreover, we were not really speaking to each other.

  So I did the only thing I could think of: I went to Y. Frank Freeman for help.

  The “Y” stood for Young, and Y. Frank was from a fine old Atlanta family that had managed to hold on to its money. How a well-off and cultivated Georgia boy had managed to find his way west and make good in the motion-picture business is a saga in itself. In fact, along with four other men, including his East Coast counterpart, Barney Balaban, and founder and chairman Adolph Zukor, he ran Paramount Studios.

  Y. Frank Freeman was like no studio executive I had ever met or have encountered since: He was a white-haired gentleman of the old school, who lived by the principle that a man’s word is his bond. In a town full of sharks, he actually believed in the handshake. Since our first days with Hal Wallis, I’d shaken hands with Y. Frank on a number of York Productions matters that, at any other studio, would have kept squadrons of lawyers busy for weeks. The suits at Paramount would have loved to get thousands of pages in ironclad legalese holding Martin and Lewis to account if we did anything that even smelled as if it conflicted with the studio’s interests. But Y. Frank trusted us because I shook his hand, and Dean and I did nothing to abuse that trust.

  Y. Frank and I had a special relationship, one I was very careful to nourish and protect. He allowed me to enter his office whenever I wanted, no appointment necessary, through a private entrance that opened onto the back lot. When he was entangled in business that had nothing to do with me, I could always see it in his face. “Not now, Y. Frank?” I’d say.

  “Give me fifteen and come back,” he’d answer.

  A lot of the time, Y. Frank and I would just sit in his office and rap about the industry and the people in it. And more than once he expressed his displeasure with Bing Crosby, who was a very closed man, even with his sons. I always thought Bing was so insecure that he had no fun, and a man that can’t have fun can’t have love.

  But back to our tax problem. After exhausting all other possibilities (including the fantasy of approaching Hal Wallis for a loan, which I instantly realized was insane), I went to see Y. Frank. Knowing that I had a short break from shooting and was due back on the set, he was waiting for me in his office. The moment I sat down, he could tell from my body language that I was in some kind of trouble.

  “Nothing can be that bad, Jerry!” he said.

  “I’m afraid this one is, Mr. Freeman,” I said.

  He smiled. “‘Mr. Freeman’?” he said, in those wonderfully warm Southern tones. “What happened to ‘Y. Frank’?”

  “Excuse me, Y. Frank, but this is gonna be tough.”

  “Just spit it out and get it over with,” he said kindly. “I’m not about to bite you, son.”

  And so I told him the story, and mentioned the amount that the IRS was demanding from Dean and me.

  He whistled. “That is a big number.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “It sure is.”

  He frowned. “Even though I’m positive that Martin and Lewis will be good for that amount and much more in the coming months, you know that Paramount Pictures Corporation has a policy—”

  My heart was sinking. “I see,” I said.

  “—that has never been broken, making it impossible for any officer of the company to make a loan in dollars to anyone.” He frowned. “That’s strictly a corporate matter,” Y. Frank said. “Nothing personal.”

  “I understand.”

  “Personally, though, I’ve always been impressed by the way you’ve honored your commitments.”

  “Well, you know how much they mean to me, Y. Frank.”

  He looked me in the eye. “I tell you what I’m going to do, Jerry. I’m going to write you a check for the $650,000, as a personal loan from me to you—as long as you can tell me when you’ll pay me back!”

  Once I got my breath back, I said, “Y. Frank, if you give me sixty days, which comes out to ... let me see, September 13,1955, at 3:55 P.M., I can pay you in full. And you have my personal guarantee that I will pay you in full, and it won’t be one minute late.”

  I knew we had percentages on our last four pictures coming in, equal to slightly more than the $650,000—and Y. Frank knew it, too. “I’ll skip tea that day and be here waiting for you,” he said. Smiling, of course.

  On September 13 at 3:30 P.M. I was in Y. Frank Freeman’s outer office, waiting to be announced. I hadn’t wanted to go in the back way. Sydney pushed the button on her intercom and said, “Mr. Freeman,” but before she could utter another word, Y. Frank’s voice came through the intercom speaker, saying, “That must be Jerry Lewis. Have him come in!”

  I entered the office, holding a certified check for $650,000.

  “You’re early,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Freeman, I know how busy you are.”

  “It’s twenty-five minutes till 3:55. Do you realize what kind of interest you can pick up in twenty-five minutes, Mr. Lewis?”

  I was trying hard to keep a straight face. “Would you please take this check so I can go back to work?”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “Jerry, you did right. You kept your bond.”

  “How did you know it was me out there, Y. Frank?” I asked.

  He picked up his desk calendar and showed me the notation for September 13. “Jerry Lewis here today at 3:55 P.M.,” it read. “I never doubted for a minute that you’d show up,” he told me.

  A couple of weeks later, Mr. Freeman phoned me, sounding slightly embarrassed. “Jerry, I don’t mean to seem like I’m calling in a favor, but I could really use your help,” he said. He told me he was the chairman for a benefit to be given in early November at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for his pet charity, the City of Hope, an organization for underprivileged children. Would Dean and I be willing to perform?

  Absolutely, I told him, knowing in my heart of hearts that Dean would agree to this—must agree to
this—after the colossal hole Mr. Freeman had just dug us out of.

  “How do I know, Mr. Lewis, that I can depend on you and your partner to be there?” asked Y. Frank.

  “Mr. Freeman, you can rest assured that Martin and Lewis will be at your benefit. Don’t worry about it, we’ll do your crappy little show.”

  He laughed happily, but after we hung up, I started to get that feeling in the pit of my stomach again. It had only been four months since I’d agreed to something big without my partner’s say-so, and look how that had turned out. When was I going to learn?

  I ran over to Dean’s dressing room on the Paramount lot. His smile when he opened the door was complicated: I could see affection, suspicion, and caution, all rolled into one expression. “Hey, pal,” I said, “I hate to okay this without your approval, but something important has come up.”

  “Is it a contract?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Okay, then sign it. You’ll do it anyhow.” The TV in the dressing room was on, of course—with a Western on, of course—and Dean sat back down, watching the screen.

  “No, this is a little different,” I said. “Y. Frank needs our help at the poor-children’s benefit on November tenth.”

  “Sure, he’s got it.”

  The answer had come too fast, too easily. His attention was divided. I sat in a chair next to his and spoke deliberately. “Dean, hold on, now,” I said. “This doesn’t involve money or contracts. This is Y. Frank, the guy who kept our cars from getting repossessed. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  One eye was still on the TV screen. “Hey, man—I told you. It’s okay.”

  “Well, I’m gonna ask you to do something for me so I can rest easy,” I said. “I want you to stick your big grubby Italian paw in mine and agree that you’ll do the benefit for Y. Frank.”

  And Dean gave me that big hand, saying, “Jerry, for Chrissakes, I know how important this is. You got it.”

  I let out a big breath. It felt like the first time I’d relaxed in months.

  It was Thursday afternoon, November 10, and I was starting to get my usual preperformance butterflies, part excitement, part nerves, only today there were more butterflies than usual, because my partner was off the radar screen. He wasn’t in his dressing room, he wasn’t at home, he didn’t seem to be at the Lakeside Country Club. When we were on the road, I always knew exactly where Dean was, but when we were back in L.A., it was a very different story. He might have been anywhere at all— having a business meeting, driving in his car, engaging in a bit of hankypanky. It was a big city.