My Lucky Stars

by Shirley Maclaine

  “Who?” I said.

  “Me!”

  He told me about some of the Mob characters, his stories making it clear they were “not gentlemen,” but he was protective of my knowing too much about such people.

  Over the years I saw that Dean was not impressed with the Mob. He grew up with them, and therefore, he shared many of their Old Country traits—privacy of thought and feeling that no one dared to violate, an emotional detachment from the world and everything in it, an unspoken belief in a Catholic God who would forgive even the most heinous crime through confession. But in his soul, Dean didn’t want to run with the Mob. I always felt he didn’t even like them. He didn’t come when they called. Instead, he played gin, or drank, or did card tricks, or tried out new material for his act on whoever else happened to be around.

  For them and everyone else, Dean was a menefreghista, one who simply did not give a fuck.

  I did not know all this when I first met Dean. My initial impression was of a man who basically wanted to be left alone. He was nice to everyone; he just didn’t want “nice” to go on too long. Often there would be parties at his home on Mountain Drive, where he and Jeanne lived with their seven children. Three of the kids were Jeanne’s and four were Betty’s—Dean’s first wife. Dean didn’t particularly want to be involved in the upbringing of the children. He told me he felt inadequate, and his own emotional blocks prevented communication anyway. Whenever Jeanne asked him to have a stern talk with one of the children, Dean would take the child into his den and say, “I have nothing to say, but please tell your mother I bawled you out, okay?” The child would comply and sometime later would get a new car.

  Dean insisted on being home every night for dinner with his children. It was a ritual that gave him the Old Country feeling that he was the head of the household and connected to his children’s future.

  Much of his humor on the set revolved around things that happened with his kids in what he called the “big hotel.” He said he’d try to count them all, but he never learned to count that high. He said he had to eat standing up because he had “screwed himself out of a seat” at the table. His family humor gave the impression that his was an emotionally volatile, rough and tumble, interconnected Italian family. It might have been that, but Dean wasn’t a part of it.

  Even when Jeanne had dinner parties attended by the most interesting people in town, Dean would usually just go to his room and watch television. More than once he retired to his den and called the cops, saying there was a party at his house and it was getting too noisy. Once I lost my pearls at one of their dinner parties. I wandered around looking for them and ended up in Dean’s den. He was watching television while his guests were having dinner. He said I could sit down. I did and he told me he felt shy about not being educated and ashamed of his limited vocabulary and his lack of political and social knowledge. “I can’t understand what the hell they’re talking about down there,” he said. “So I don’t want them to know I feel dumb.” He then launched into some new material for his club act, which was so funny I laughed until I felt like I had a hernia! Dean was terrified of the intimacy required to carry on a conversation, so he inevitably segued into comedy routines.

  That was what I found the most intriguing aspect of Dean. When a man fears intimacy, I’m interested. I try to open him up. It didn’t happen when we worked on Artists and Models; that came later.

  On that first film with Dean I was awestruck at his and Jerry’s antics. Even though there was always tension underneath, they seemed to share a compulsive need for the experience of creating and playing to an audience. Perhaps the tension fed that need, or maybe they were simply performers to the core and their world inevitably became a stage.

  They careened around the Paramount lot on their motorized golf carts, clanging bells and tooting horns, stopping for a beautiful young starlet to cross the street as they drew a crowd by teasing her into red-faced embarrassment.

  If they had an interview with a newspaper reporter, they might cut the tie of a man and perhaps set it on fire, or curl up like a baby in the lap of a woman reporter and suck her thumb. Nothing was out of bounds. They’d flop into cars driven by strangers and scream bloody murder that they were being kidnapped. Dean would light a cigarette with his solid gold lighter, blow out the flame, and toss the gold lighter from the window as though it was a used match. Someone, I noticed, always retrieved it for him.

  There were custard pies thrown in the face, butter pats splattered on ceilings, golf clubs and balls slung around like children’s toys. There was Jewish deli in Jerry’s dressing room, and antipasto in Dean’s; visiting musicians with sheet music of new song ideas, comedy writers who realized that the Martin and Lewis heyday was producing moments of genius that should be recorded, and the inevitable producers, directors, and agents who attended to the needs of the talented team Americans would never see the likes of again. The agents, Herman Citron and Mort Viner, were also my agents at MCA, so in many ways I felt part of a new family … a family that defied every value I had been brought up with. I had been schooled in a WASP middle-class environment, to say nothing of having been brought up to respect authority in the world of ballet. It was beyond my comprehension that Dean and Jerry could be so freewheeling as to play practical jokes on one of the studio heads and get away with it. Y. Frank Freeman was a southern gentleman with white hair and a hospitable manner. When Dean and Jerry spontaneously made him the brunt of their humor in the commissary during lunch hour, I watched with openmouthed astonishment.

  Because he was the president of Paramount, he often entertained big, established stars at lunch meetings—Gloria Swanson, Audrey Hepburn, and Marlon Brando among them. I think he was proud to be seen escorting the likes of Marlene Dietrich or Anna Magnani through the tables to the executive dining room.

  Whenever Dean and Jerry spotted such an event, the potential for deprecating humor was too much for them to pass up.

  Their favorite rap was to stop Freeman and “visiting stars” in the midst of the big room and pose as inmates in a prison. “We don’t need to eat this slop,” they’d yell at Y. Frank while smearing butter all over his suit. (Butter was a big prop for their comedy.) They’d then pick up their food with their hands (lamb chops, tuna salad—it didn’t matter), squeeze it through their fingers, and throw it around the table. Freeman would hover in gentlemanly shock, waiting for their next move. Marlene or Magnani would take a discreet step backward, careful not to provoke inclusion, leaving Y. Frank directly in the line of fire. That’s when Dean and Jerry would really let him have it. One routine was their favorite.

  “Okay,” they’d say. “So you’ve called us all here. Tell the people why.”

  Freeman’s mouth was painted open by now, causing speechlessness. The diners were just as nonplussed. They watched in shock.

  “Why?” Dean and Jerry would yell.

  “Because,” said Dean and Jerry in unison, “because you are all fired!”

  Everybody would laugh, including Y. Frank, because they were secretly acknowledging his power.

  Jerry would then stuff french fries up his nose or throw spinach in Dean’s face and tell him he should have washed that morning. Dean would shove cold cuts into his mouth and wag them like a huge flopping tongue. Marlene or Magnani would no doubt long for the Old Country as they smiled in abject terror, wondering when and how they’d be included in the insanity.

  Then Dean would take Freeman by the arm and, like a Dutch uncle, lead him out of the commissary saying, “We simply don’t like your attitude in here—you are fired.” Jerry would bring up the rear and both would kick Freeman out the door. “Wash up, collect your pay—and we’ll take care of the girls,” they’d yell.

  Marlene and Magnani had been around show business, but never like this.

  By now the commissary would be in bedlam at the preposterousness of it all. There were two respected, dignified international icons stranded in the middle of the dining room while the boss of th
e studio had been kicked out by brash American upstarts. How would this routine end?

  “One more thing,” Dean would yell out at Freeman. “This studio is filthy. There’re cigarette butts all over the place.” (He’d light a cigarette with his gold lighter, take a puff, throw the cigarette down, crunch it out, and again throw the lighter away.) “Everywhere I look, cigarette butts!” Jerry came from behind like a spastic monkey. “And have our cars washed immediately,” he’d screech. “In fact, have all our cars washed.”

  The commissary would applaud. Dean and Jerry knew this was their exit. They’d gallantly make their way back to the screen goddesses, open their arms, and lead the by now amused beauties to the executive dining room.

  I would sit tongue-tied at the sheer audacity of it all. I’d never seen people behave like that. In my world there had been an inferred censor. A silent alarm that instantly sounded caution. I couldn’t do what I had just seen Dean and Jerry do, not in a million years. The irreverence—the disrespect—the outrageous disregard for form and social appropriateness … Where had I been all my life? This stuff was great! It got laughs, it loosened people up, they didn’t take their precarious jobs so seriously —how could they? I’d not met that many Italians and Jews. The ethnic ethos of their comedy was what made Y. Frank squirm. He was from my part of the world. Him I understood. But him was no fun.

  Later Freeman would offer Dean and Jerry money just to be quiet for one lunch hour. They’d turn him down, and Freeman would willingly offer himself up on the altar of their zaniness yet another time.

  I guess that was it in a nutshell. When you went that far out on a limb, you were successful. If you pulled your punches, you sucked dirt.

  Dean and Jerry were my primary education in spontaneous, Katzenjammer antics to let off steam, avoid ulcers, and touch the muse of comic insanity bubbling in each of us.

  I observed the havoc Dean caused, however, by sometimes being funnier than his partner. Dean would come to work throwing away comedy lines that you could barely hear. When someone would say, “Huh?” he’d repeat it. A laugh would come, which he would top, then another laugh, then he’d top that until he was on a roll. Soon the entire set was engulfed in the more sophisticated, quirky, literal humor of Dean’s words, which revealed the peculiar slant he had on any given situation. His humor was not as physical as Jerry’s, although it could be—especially with his hands. Dean’s hands were the size of ham hocks, with fingers that curled inward. He had broken several fingers boxing and they were strong from working in the steel mills. His hands encompassed so much space that it was easy for him to palm cards when he was a blackjack dealer. He could deal from the middle, the bottom, or wherever, and never be detected. He entertained me between setups with sleight-of-hand card tricks. In between the tricks he’d lob in his funny lines as though he was testing new material. People would crowd closer so as not to miss any of his subtleties.

  When Jerry saw Dean capture an intimate audience, he would often double up in pain and run to his dressing room. The attention, of course, shifted to Jerry, and Dean’s comedy roll was interrupted.

  The doctor would arrive, pronounce Jerry fine but slightly exhausted, prescribe an early night, and recommend that shooting continue without him. It did. Dean would say nothing, but I could tell he was hurt. The next day, with new people around, Jerry would repeat what he had heard Dean say and use it himself to get laughs. Dean saw what was happening, but didn’t say much. He’d just go on hitting golf balls and every now and then he’d look punchy at how obvious the manipulation had been. In fact Punchy had been his nickname in school. Since he drank J&B and made jokes about it, Punchy seemed as good a name as another. Whenever I saw that punchy look, I knew there was deep recognition of a pain he didn’t want to touch. Dean and Jerry had a dance going between the two of them that was both obvious and hidden.

  Since Dean was usually the quiet one, his punchy attitude allowed people to walk all over him. Because he was so laid-back and aloof and seemingly not desperate for attention, many people failed to recognize his real contribution to the Martin and Lewis combination. This began to grate on him seriously. Underneath, he acknowledged that Jerry did most of the work—the scripts, the production, the hiring, the planning. He knew that without all Jerry’s work, and without Jerry’s talent, there couldn’t have been a Martin and Lewis phenomenon.

  Yet slowly, Dean became more and more reluctant to continue with Jerry. He felt irrelevant and undervalued, but because he withheld so many of his feelings, he couldn’t confront anyone about it. Not Jerry, not the director, not Hal Wallis, not Jeanne—not even himself. As I watched what was happening I could feel myself understand Dean more and more. He was a prisoner of his own growing rage and the control he had been taught to exert over it. “Never let anyone know what is within you,” his mom had told him. Those could have been words out of my own mother’s mouth, but for different reasons. To Mrs. Crocetti, holding your emotional cards was a survival technique in a neighborhood controlled by the Mob. My mother advocated such behavior simply because it was more polite.

  In the meantime Jerry continued to control the set, plan the scenes, write the material, get raves for it, and seemed more and more obsessed with having everything his way. Though Dean was the singer, Jerry chose the musical directors. Then someone gave Jerry a camera, and suddenly he saw himself as the new Charlie Chaplin. He began to spend a great deal of his free time making home movies, insisting that Dean sing and perform in them. Dean and his wife didn’t socialize with Patti and Jerry, so the personal family relationships were not there. Each wife thought it better that way, as did Dean and Jerry. In fact, Dean didn’t socialize with anybody much, except maybe to play poker. But Dean felt forced to be in Jerry’s personal motion picture scrapbooks.

  Because Dean wouldn’t confront Jerry the air couldn’t be cleared and Jerry, in his own need for resolution, became even more controlling. One morning I heard them arguing.

  “Anytime you want to call it quits, just let me know,” said Dean.

  “But, Dean,” countered Jerry, “what would I ever do without you?” Half meaning it.

  “Fuck yourself, for starters,” said Dean.

  “But we have a special bond together,” Jerry said with a snicker. Psychological jokes were becoming the new communication, but it sounded like he really meant it. “We love each other, no?”

  “Talk about love all you want,” said Dean. “To me you’re nothing but a fucking dollar sign.”

  Dean himself has quoted those words many times since, and is proud of them. I was stunned.

  Jerry became more megalomaniacal than ever. Life as he had known it for ten years was in jeopardy. Like most funnymen, he had to believe he knew everything there was to know about what was funny, not only for himself, but for Dean as well. That need came out of his fear. I could feel Jerry feel that Dean was pulling away. He sensed that Dean might risk allowing their fame and fortune to slip through his fingers rather than face his problems full on.

  The impending breakup of Martin and Lewis occurred at the same time that I was feeling the most vulnerable in my own life. During this time Steve decided to return to Japan, where he told me he had spent a great deal of time as a child with his diplomat father. Steve was interested in becoming a kind of impresario of Asian talent. He knew a lot about it and wanted to carve out his own identity. He didn’t want to be Mr. MacLaine in Hollywood. He felt that I would be fine on my own with my work in Hollywood. But his departure left me lonely, so making movies became my entire focus and the people I worked with, my family.

  My childhood idols, Dean and Jerry, were becoming like unenlightened children and in some way my own world felt jeopardized. Jerry’s concern and fear sometimes disrupted the shooting of Artists and Models. Finally Frank Tashlin, our director, ordered him off the set one day. Jerry just shrugged, swaggered, and chuckled. “No,” said Tashlin, “you’re going home.”

  Jerry went home sobbing. I felt sorrier than e
ver over what was happening. Jerry hated Dean by now, but was afraid to go on without him. Dean simply couldn’t cope with his buried feelings and wanted out. If this duo couldn’t make a go of it, who could? I began to realize how much human emotion mattered to a professional relationship. I had been schooled to go on regardless. Nothing would block my living up to not only my ambition, but what was expected of me. It didn’t matter if I had a broken neck, I mustn’t break a contract. But with Dean and Jerry, I was seeing how much they were governed by their feelings and resentment. They seemed willing to let everything slip away because they couldn’t get along. In some strange way I admired this.

  I finished Artists and Models, coping as well as I could, realizing I was a part of a tragic demise. Working with Dean and Jerry during those end days was a lesson for me in not taking the spewed venom of others personally. There were times when I was caught in the cross fire of rage and was inadvertently wounded. My first reaction was to dislike them, especially Jerry, because he was more able to express his feelings. The cast did a portrait sitting in the still gallery … all of the cast together. Dean, Jerry, Dorothy Malone, Anita Ekberg, and Eva Gabor. I’ll never forget it. Jerry was especially cruel in the way he ordered us around, desperately attempting to gain control of a frightening situation. I tried to be philosophical, but my feelings were hurt. The other girls just grinned and bore it, but I knew somehow that Dean and Jerry meant more to me than that. Perhaps my own self-investigation began while watching them flail away with no real understanding of what unconsciously motivated them. They were allowing and indeed creating a disaster for themselves because they were out of touch with what terrified them.

  They each were trapped in the knowledge that their team was a prison as well as a bloodline for their survival. How they would decide to orchestrate their continuing partnership was the question. I had been involved with them a long time—long before I met them. I didn’t want it to be over. I talked to them both, trying to play mediator, but I was just a kid hoping that my adult idols wouldn’t part.