by Jerry Lewis
We talked for an hour. He cried, I cried. I said, “Life’s too short, my friend. This is one of those things that God hands us, and we have to somehow go on with our lives. That’s what Dino would have wanted.” I was trying to get him to see that he had to find a way to go forward. But all he kept saying was, “Jer, I can’t tell you.”
I wanted to get together with him, but I sensed Dean preferred talking on the phone, so I respected that. I called him whenever I could, as often as I could without feeling I was intruding. The conversations always began the same way.
“Hey, Paul, how you doin’?”
“How you doin’, pally?”
“You still don’t remember my fucking name?”
Now and then, he even laughed.
In the spring of 1989, I saw an announcement that Dean was going to play Bally’s in Vegas. I was impressed: He’s found a way to go on, I thought.
I stayed away, though, not even sneaking in to see him perform. I wanted him to have his own space.
Then one day I looked at my calendar and saw that it was June 6. The next day, unbelievably enough, would be my partner’s seventy-second birthday.
I phoned Claudia Stabile and told her to buy the biggest and best cake she could possibly find, have it delivered to Bally’s, and get somebody to guard it until I got there. We planned the whole thing with military precision. I found out what time Dean went on stage and arrived at the club a few minutes later. The management knew me well, of course; everyone was in on the plan, including Dean’s conductor and pianist, Ken Lane.
Birthday cake at Bally, 1989.
I went backstage while Dean was on and watched him from the wings for around twenty minutes. He was wonderful. Ken had told me there was a certain point in the show when Dean bowed off and exited— stage right, as always. After that, Ken would play the introduction to the next number and Dean would come back out. This all went exactly as planned, except when Dean returned to the stage, Ken stopped the music and I yelled from the wings, “How the hell long are you gonna stay on?”
Dean looked startled, turning toward the familiar voice, Ken cued the band into “Happy Birthday,” and I wheeled that giant cake out onto the stage. The place went apeshit.
“You surprised me,” Dean said. He held his arms out. His eyes were full of tears. I blinked hard, not wanting to start bawling in front of 1,500 people.
As we hugged, he said, loud enough for the audience to hear, “I love you and I mean it.”
And this is what I said, also loud enough for everyone to hear: “Here’s to seventy-two years of joy you’ve given the world. Why we broke up, I’ll never know.”
’Nuff said.
AFTERWORD: GOOD-BYE, HELLO
I HEARD THE NEWS FLASH WHILE I WAS IN DENVER, ON TOUR with Damn Yankees. The devastating bulletin came at 8:30 in the morning on Christmas Day. I was stunned, terrified, not believing any of it, and still knowing it was real. It had happened. I had lost my partner.
When I finally pulled myself together, I hired a private jet to fly to Los Angeles as soon as possible, to be with his family—and with him.
My four-year-old miracle daughter came home from school around 3:30—and when I saw her face, the pain of the reality of that day shook me again. I hugged my Princess ... thinking of the life we’d lost, but holding on to this new life. Danielle helped me pull it all together.
Sam and Dani went with me to the airport. I didn’t want them to have to go to a funeral. In fact, if it hadn’t been Dean’s, I wouldn’t have gone at all. I believe funerals are fundamentally uncivilized. If you have something good to say about a person, for Christ’s sake, say it to their face while they’re still alive. It doesn’t mean squat to them after they’re gone!
I arrived in Los Angeles in time for the memorial service—thank God, I missed the burial itself. I was asked to speak, and I prayed I would have the strength to say what I had to say without breaking down: I knew Dean would have called me a wuss if I had.
I told the people, “You are so lucky that you knew my partner and my friend. I will not fall into that drone of pain about death, but I will ask you all to just yell ‘Yeah!’ that he lived... that he was with us for all that time. ‘Yeah!’ ‘Yeah!’ And that, my friends, is my celebration of his life. Long may he drink!”
I stepped down from the podium and walked to my seat. I stopped along the way to kiss Jeanne.... He loved her so much. I sat down next to Lew and Edie Wasserman. The names who were there would have made the Hollywood Reporter envious.
Outside, I met Frank. He grabbed my hand and said, “Well, we lost the big gun, my friend!”
I said, “We didn’t lose him, God just placed him elsewhere.”
Frank said, “Yeah, I know. How you holding up, Jew?” That’s all Frank ever called me, for fifty-one years, and I loved it. We held hands like two kids, not knowing what to say next. Thank God, I had to get back to the plane. I boarded the jet—and the tears came.
I lost my partner and my best friend. The man who made me the man I am today. I think of him with undying respect. I miss him every day I’m still here. I’ve considered the idea of our getting together again someday, but I believe when we die we are just put away and life goes on. My prayer to be with him again isn’t realistic, but I’ll live the rest of my life with the memory of a great and wonderful man, my partner, Dean Martin... G.R.H.S.
So many memories flash and flicker around my brain—and the strangest ones come up at the strangest times. Why am I thinking, now, about those first crazy shows we did, way back before we were even a team, at the Havana-Madrid in the spring of ’46?
I’ve told you already about all the insane things I did to get Dean’s attention while he was performing, just to try and make him laugh. And how scared I was, at first, that he wouldn’t like what I did—and then, when I came out of the kitchen with that goddamn hunk of raw meat on a fork, he smiled, and it was like the sun coming out on the rest of my life.
Something else just popped into my mind.
The third or fourth night into my relentless menu of stunts, I realized that no matter what I did, short of lighting a stick of dynamite on stage, Dean would do takes, throw lines, and just go right on singing. (Most songs run two and a half to three minutes; with my help, his could run eleven or twelve.) That was the wonder of it all, the fun and joy of it all—but being nineteen years old, I couldn’t help but want to try to top myself. Then I had an inspiration.
As I said before, the staff at the Havana-Madrid was even more enthusiastic about our go-for-broke craziness than the few patrons who were still around in those early-morning hours. And so when I approached the guy who ran the lighting board with my idea, I knew right away that I had a willing accomplice.
Dean had gotten a little ways into “Pennies from Heaven”—up to the line that goes, “Save them for a package of sunshine and flowers”— when I hit the main switch and the whole place went black.
The musicians fumbled along for a moment, then stopped dead.
And Dean—of course!—never hesitated for a second. You think he had any doubts about what had just occurred, and who was behind it? No, going on with his number (even a capella) was a matter of pride for him at that point—and in one of those lightninglike inspirations I would soon learn he was capable of, he instantly figured out a way he could be seen as well as heard. He took out his gold-plated Zippo cigarette lighter, flicked the flint, held the flame under that unbelievably handsome face, and finished his song in the mellow flicker of its flame just as though nothing at all had happened.
No, scratch that. He finished up that goddamn number even more stylishly than if the spotlight had been right on his face.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to start by acknowledging Jerry Lewis himself, who was not only the first person I ever saw on a movie screen (in a trailer for the re-release of At War with the Army, in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, circa 1956), but who, in all his super-complicated essence, and in all his com
plex associations for me—Jersey landsman, coreligionist (both in Judaism and comedy), friend, writing partner, and indubitable father-surrogate— has compelled me ever since our first meeting, for a New Yorker profile I wrote in 2000.
The following people were also essential to this project: Peter Bogdanovich (who introduced me to Jerry in the first place), the tireless Chris Lewis, Peter W. Kaplan, Claudia Stabile, the delightful Penny Rice and Violet Ostrowski, Jeff Low, Hillery Borton, and Neil T. Daniels, of the Dean Martin Fan Center.
I must also acknowledge the superlative Joy Harris and the magnificent Phyllis Grann.
And, as ever, Karen, Jacob, Aaron, and Avery.
—James Kaplan
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JERRY LEWIS and Dean Martin sandwiched sixteen money-making films in between nightclub engagements, recording sessions, radio shows, and television bookings during their ten-year partnership. Over the following years, Lewis remained in the spotlight as the groundbreaking creator and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies, and scored triumphs in stage appearances in Europe, where he has been hailed as one of the greatest comedians of the twentieth century. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has received numerous other honors for his tireless efforts in the fight against muscular dystrophy.
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 best-seller and #1 on the New York Times list. He lives in Westchester County, New York, with his wife and three sons.
PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY BOOKS
Copyright © 2005 by Jerry Lewis
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.broadwaybooks.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
All captions written by Jerry Lewis.
Frontispiece: Photo by Philippe Halsman—Copyright Halsman Estate.
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42355-9
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