There were five more pictures to go under their contract with Wallis and Paramount and millions of dollars at stake, not only from their film careers, but from personal appearances and television as well. I couldn’t understand how they could risk such hard-earned money. They were still the hottest act in show business. Even in their mutual animosity they went off to play a longstanding club date in Minneapolis. But that didn’t work either. At one point Dean said “goddamn” on the stage.
Jerry stopped short, broke character, and said, “No one says goddamn in my act.”
“Your act?” said Dean.
“That’s right,” answered Jerry.
“Then let’s see you do it,” Dean shot back. He walked off the stage, went to the airport, and returned to L.A.
Then something happened that would have motivated any other reasonable people to put an end to the feuding.
The Internal Revenue Service came down on them with a claim for $650,000 in back taxes. They didn’t have it. Neither one of them had saved a dime. I couldn’t understand that either. Incredibly, they each had spent everything they had earned. In every area of their lives they were out of control.
This was way beyond me. I still had the first dollar I ever earned and would always listen to advice (perhaps too often as a matter of fact) that affected my finances.
Agents, managers, Paramount and NBC executives, nightclub owners, and friends prevailed upon Dean and Jerry to come to their senses and resolve their differences so that they could pay their taxes and go on to make more money and have happy lives.
Dean swallowed his anger and loathing. They made a picture called Pardners, then, in 1956, their final picture, Hollywood or Bust. It turned out to be Hollywood and Bust. Again, the agents, managers, Paramount, NBC, nightclub owners, and friends intervened to smooth over ruptured feelings. A new script was written, engineered, and controlled by Jerry, of course. When it was ready to be presented, Jerry called Dean into the office. He outlined the idea to Dean. Dean listened and his blood boiled. The scene that followed has gone down in Hollywood history as the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. A number of people were present. Each tells it nearly the same way, including our mutual agent.
Dean stood up. “Are you saying,” he asked, “that I play a cop in this thing?”
“Yep,” answered Jerry.
“In a uniform?”
“Yep. In a uniform.”
“No,” said Dean. “All my life I ran from cops who wore those goddamn uniforms. I won’t play a cop in a uniform. That’s low-class to me.”
“In my picture you have to wear a uniform,” said Jerry. “A cop has to wear a uniform.”
“Your picture?” asked Dean.
“That’s right,” said Jerry.
“Then you wear the uniform,” said Dean.
With that, Dean walked. And that was it. It all came down to a cop’s uniform and “You do it.”
They never made a picture together again and, except for fulfilling one more club date, never worked together or talked to each other for nearly twenty years. I couldn’t believe it. I tried to understand how this total rupture could have been prevented. But all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
My childhood favorites were gone forever, and to me it felt like a parental breakup. Which one would I attach myself to? What would happen to all that zany spontaneity, that childish horseplay, which there wasn’t enough of in the world? What about two people who had been a symbol of the science of comedy? The demise of this duo made me feel anxious. If a legendary partnership like this could break up, there seemed to be no guarantees.
The breakup of Martin and Lewis may have crumbled a certain sense of security for me and for many people, but witnessing what happened taught me that when people are completely dependent on one another, the relationship cannot last. Every individual alive needs to learn to stand on his or her own ground, claiming it for their own. A mutual respect for individual identity is necessary for any relationship to survive. And more than anything else, self-knowledge is essential. It was time for us all to grow up. I adjusted to their breakup and began in earnest a kind of search for my own self, because that was the only guarantee against loneliness in Hollywood.
The relationship between Steve and me became more independent. I relied on him for friendship and support, but both of us understood we would go through periods of separation with me in Hollywood and him in Japan as we each pursued what we wanted to do in life. I never thought to question the drive that Steve had to follow his dream in Japan, it was painful for me in many ways, but it seemed natural for him, and his support for me was always there—even if only by telephone.
On the homefront it was a foregone conclusion that jerry Lewis would be fine without Dean. Everyone sort of knew that. He would continue to do pictures at Paramount that he would not only star in, but produce, write, direct, and stage the musical numbers for. His stage career was assured also. He was considered the talented one, the funny one, the one on whom the combination had depended. To illustrate how convinced everyone was of Jerry’s survival as opposed to Dean’s, most of the backstage writers, musicians, and even the conductor went with Jerry. Dean was in the cold, and he had walked out into it himself.
Jerry even expressed some concern for Dean’s future and also for Dean’s personal welfare, He went to Hal Wallis’s assistant, extracting a promise that Wallis would do all he could for Dean because he knew Dean couldn’t “do” for himself, it could well have been an ironic and empty request, but I’ve always felt that Jerry was more personally affected by the breakup than Dean. Dean simply wanted out—cold and cut. Jerry was arrogant and maniacal, but deeply concerned and unhappy that he was unable to put things right.
Nobody knew what to do with Dean—not Paramount, not Wallis, not even Dean. He and everyone else thought of him as a straight-man crooner who came along with the Martin and Lewis package. Few were aware of Dean’s comedie talent, and Dean seemed too shy to flaunt it and risk the competitive ire of Jerry. Only those of us who could hear his subtle witticisms under his breath were privy to it. Dean floundered badly. He had no idea where to go.
I used to hang out at MCA, concerned about my own career moves, and I’d hear the agents talking. Lew Wasserman, as head of MCA, was determined that Dean would succeed on his own. Maybe Lew’s true genius has always been to turn an impossible situation into a triumph. In any case, he put Dean in a picture at Metro with Anna Maria Alberghetti called Ten Thousand Bedrooms. I guess he figured that the title would match Dean’s smoldering sexuality. Or maybe he liked the idea of two Italians working together. At any rate, I was working at Metro when the film was being shot. Dean would saunter into the commissary, give me a peck on the cheek, then roll his eyes as he departed for the set again to make love to Anna Maria Alberghetti. Anna Maria Alberghetti? Even their singing voices were incompatible. And her screen image was too Goody Two-shoes. Dean needed danger around him, against which his laid-back nature could bounce.
With all his problems, Dean was still sweet and attentive, though he continued to treat me like a kid. He’d ask about my life and whether I was still driving my red convertible, a secondhand Plymouth. He swung a golf club everywhere he went and seemed generally unconcerned that his career was in the dumper.
And it was a deep dumper. Ten Thousand Bedrooms was a disaster. Reviewers said Dean was an uninspired, empty straight man, and certainly no actor.
It looked like the end of the beginning of Dean’s movie career as a single leading man. He couldn’t get a hit record either and no one wanted him in nightclubs. The agents at MCA scratched their heads.
Jerry, on the other hand, was doing his zany act in clubs all over America as well as singing on albums. He got his own TV show and signed a new contract at Paramount. He had a luxurious suite of offices at the studio, pretty secretaries, high-tech sound equipment, a new golf cart with his name in neon lights, a big desk, a
swivel chair that turned as fast as his mind, a wardrobe to fill his “tuxedo” closet, pictures of himself mounted and framed by the still gallery, a projection room where he could screen anything at any time, researchers, legal advisers, gum, cigarettes, M&M’s, the newest video equipment, fresh flowers, and about twenty flunkies who were there to laugh at his jokes.
He was surrounded by the loving support system he needed to become a genuine movie mogul. He would never be abandoned again. It didn’t matter that Dean was gone. Now the studio would play straight for him. It said so in his contract.
Sometimes I’d visit the Paramount lot, which was basically my home base because of my contract with Wallis. Jerry’s attitude had proved the validity of Hal Wallis’s biggest fear. In his own head, it appeared, Jerry was a mogul, not a funnyman. He seemed to become an intellectual technocrat, far more interested in his gadgets and the powers they afforded him than he was in making people laugh. He’d usher me into his quarters, which had now expanded into a ministudio. He walked with more of a swagger now, his chin jutting out as he rolled his jaw with power. He flicked switches and ordered people around, speaking of himself in the third person. He would cackle the old Lewis outburst and feign some spastic jumps up and down, but it just wasn’t the same. I thought of the grapefruits and the fun Warren and I had had imitating him. He had been the outrageous child we longed to be ourselves. Now he was like an emperor clown.
One day he shut the door, ordered everyone out, and offered me candy in a way that bothered me. There was nothing blatantly overt in his approach, but it was unmistakable. I had heard about Jerry’s reputation with women, so I politely left his office and went to my car, the red convertible Plymouth.
The top was down as I blindly drove toward the studio gate. Was this the way it worked with the abuse of power? One of my childhood idols had, I thought, just come on to me. The other one couldn’t get a job. I couldn’t process the reversals of image, jerry was, after ail, a man just feeling his oats and Dean had been the one who walked out on the team, I was growing up by watching the fortunes and misfortunes of others. I wondered when it would be my turn.
What happened next taught me to live in the present, not the future.
Hal B. Wallis, my boss and discoverer, and the only producer whose name ever mattered to me, stepped out of his building and walked in front of my car. He stopped and smiled in a strange way. Then he strode over to me where I sat behind the wheel, leaned across my face, grabbed me by the shoulders, mashed his face into mine, and shoved his tongue down my throat.
He was strong and I couldn’t wrestle away from him. It was a bad dream. I should have stayed in the room with jerry and his candy and gadgets. I wanted to throw up in Wallis’s face—I couldn’t understand what he was doing this for.
This rape-kiss seemed to go on for days. No one else came by the car. The street was empty. I felt powerless.
I wouldn’t classify this act as a “fuck me or you don’t get the part” exercise. I already had the contract. It was a power move, using sex, and when I finally spat him out of my face and drove away, I vowed I would get him one day.
And I did … I sued him for extending my white slave contract beyond the California statute of limitations. Wallis was furious. I was the kid he had discovered and put under contract and I was acting like an ingrate.
In fact, in his opinion many of his children-contractor’s were ungrateful—Dean, Jerry, and me, Kirk Douglas, and Burt Lancaster.
Wallis would sell me out for $750,000 and give me what my contract stipulated, $12,000.
My Christmas bonus would be a cut-glass fruit bowl or a set of silver with the soup spoons missing because anything else would put him over budget. He was a penny-pinching tyrant and I hated working for him. I was glad when our contractual legalities were settled and I could walk away from him forever.
However, my experience as a contract player was valuable. It taught me that talent was up and down and bought and sold in Hollywood, but as long as you disallowed your soul in the bargain you’d be okay. One had to be soul-vigilant though. That is why Hollywood is good for the soul. You learn to appreciate and protect it more than anywhere else on earth.
In the aftermath of Ten Thousand Bedrooms, Dean was having so much difficulty finding work that people laid bets he’d be working at Larry Potter’s, a small club in the San Fernando Valley, within a year. They weren’t far wrong. He played small clubs around the country because no one of importance would book him. He was broke and he was not coming across. He couldn’t find an attitude. He couldn’t feel comfortable in his skin. He didn’t know who he was. He had thought of himself as an irrelevant sidekick for too many years, and he was so prideful he wouldn’t seek help. But a call came from Ed Simmons, a comedy writer who felt as low as Dean because of his breakup with his cowriter, Norman Lear. Ed offered his help. He had heard that Dean had gotten a job playing The Sands in Vegas, and Ed wanted him to succeed. Dean refused help. “I’m just gonna sing,” he told Ed, not admitting that he needed to do more than that. Ed pressed him. “You’ve gotta find a character out there on that stage, you know that.”
No truer words were ever spoken. To find your “stage legs” is the hardest quest of all. Who are you when you’re standing there doing whatever you do? It’s not enough just to sing, or dance, or tell jokes. You need a defined personality behind what you’re doing in order for you and the audience to feel comfortable. Jack Benny, for example, was the skinflint; Gracie Allen, the ditz to George Burns’s affectionate straight man; Perry Como, the ultimate in laid-back smoothness.
Dean realized that he had never been able to develop a character for himself when he was straight man for Jerry. Dean has always had an instinct for what is best for him. He realized everyone knew he was down-and-out. In a stroke of brilliance, Dean decided he might be willing to have Ed Simmons write comic material in which he’d be perceived as a drunk. He had loved Joe E. Lewis, who played the amiable drunk, and Lewis had recently died.
Simmons agreed, and the two of them came up with “Dean the Drunkie.”
Dean’s opening night at The Sands was something. It was well attended by celebrities because we wanted to be there for him. We were nervous because there but for the grace of God could go any of us. What would he do as a single? Many already thought he was a has-been.
Dean’s longtime assistant and loyalist, Mack Gray, was with him that night. Mack was constantly with Dean. They had met through George Raft at the fights. Mack used to manage prizefighters. Since Dean used to box, they hit it off. Dean called him “killer,” but the word was really derived from “killa,” which means hernia in Yiddish. Mack obviously had a hernia. Mack was as funny as Dean, and had had a long affair with Lucille Ball. I used to ply him with questions about his relationship with Lucy because I admired her so much. He would only say her red hair was real. I teased him that he blew it. He could have been half of “Mackilu.”
Mack did not like Jerry Lewis because of the way he had treated Dean. He’d do anything to see his Dean outsucceed Jerry. Mack went into The Sands lobby and paid people out of his own pocket to come in to see Dean. He was broke by the time the show started.
Dean was in his dressing room, faced with another personal identity decision. Sy Devore, who made all of Dean and Jerry’s tuxedos, had made Dean a special light gray tux to go with a pearl gray tie. At the last minute Dean ripped out of it and put on his old familiar Copacabana black tuxedo. Dean is a creature of habit. He doesn’t really like to try new things. This black tux with the red satin lining felt familiar and comfortable to him, along with the black bow tie. It was then too that Dean decided he would never wear the same socks twice, no matter how clean and washed they might be.
So, armed with a glass of J&B scotch in one hand and a cigarette in the other, Dean walked out on the stage and became “Dean the Drunkie.” At first the audience didn’t know what to expect. They weren’t used to seeing him alone. He peered out at them and waited for a reaction i
n that expert way he has. Then he stepped about a yard to the side of where he used to stand when Jerry monopolized the mike. “I’m just gonna’ stand here instead of there,” he said, taking a long swig of J&B and making a face. He was laid back and in command.
The audience began to laugh. They felt they didn’t have to feel sorry for Dean, which they appreciated.
He took another sip of J&B and said, “Drink up. The drunker you get, the better I sound.” (He kept that line in his act.)
He launched into a medley with a boozy sway and never finished a lyric. Instead of “It happened in Monterey …”he sang “It happened in Martha Raye a long time ago.” Instead of “My darling if I hurt you, forgive me …”he sang “My darling if I marry you, forgive me …” He continued like that for his entire medley, and when he was finished he said, “I don’t drink anymore.” Pause. “I don’t drink any less either.” Then he headed into another bunch of songs that he introduced as coming from his new album, Ballads for B-Girls. And so it went. Dean had found his stage legs, his character without Jerry. He threw his whole approach “away.” Acted as though he didn’t care that much. He became a heightened version of himself, a menefreghista. “One who does not give a fuck.”
The audience adored him, particularly those of us in show business. We understood what a breakthrough he had made. He had found who he was comfortable being. From that came the comedy.
Dean was on his way. I was proud to know him and it was only the beginning of his new identity. Twentieth-Century Fox put him in The Young Lions with Brando. He was back in the picture business.
A few years later Dean and I made Some Came Running together. The year was 1958, and I was twenty-four.
4
MASCOT TO
THE CLAN
The Clan and Some Came Running were the beginning of a relationship between Dean and Frank Sinatra and myself that endured for four decades. Dean and Frank had known each other over the years as fellow “dago” singers, but until Some Came Running, I don’t think Frank was fully aware of Dean’s brilliance.
My Lucky Stars Page 6