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‐ In the dictionary if it said "the coolest"
it would have to be underlined Dean Martin.
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
♪ Everybody loves somebody
‐ sometime. Yessir.
‐ When I worked with Dean on his television show,
when I saw the show being played,
you would think as a performer...
‐ Oh no, I didn’t miss it, I hit my head.
‐ ...you would look at yourself.
‐ I feel pretty good tonight.
‐ My eyes were still on Dean Martin.
That’s how impressive he was to me.
‐ He was a natural, one of a kind.
‐ Few of the boys and myself,
we have a little poker game now and then,
we’d kinda like have a little new blood.
‐ Dean Martin is a gigantic star in the history
of the 20th century.
‐ When Dino sings, I can hear him smiling.
♪ Love was made for me and you
‐ He just had something
no one else had had before.
‐ Dean was a straight man, romantic lead,
singer, dancer, he was funny.
‐ He did everything.
‐ Very few artists have been able to express
so many different talents, successfully.
‐ 750 recordings and 60 films,
and two decades on TV.
‐ All combined,
unlikely that we will ever see again.
‐ He’s got a fundamental cool
that is very aspirational for a lot of people.
‐ Even the people that don’t know Dean Martin
and might not traditionally be drawn
to somebody of his era or of his genre,
you can study him because I don’t think there’s anybody
that captures or embodies all of the qualities
of American cool the way Dean Martin did. He had all of it.
‐ To be cool was, to borrow from Hemingway,
having a certain kind of grace under pressure.
You didn’t let things rattle you.
‐ He could be in an avalanche
and he would make it look easy.
‐ We made a mistake and we’re doing it again.
That’s why they’re not laughing, that’s why.
‐ I have to say I idolized him and I loved him.
‐ I loved Dean.
‐ Oh, and I loved Dean.
‐ He was very special.
‐ He was just a dear soul.
‐ He was delicious, warm. He invited you in.
‐ Two of the coolest people, Frank Sinatra, Elvis,
wanted to be as cool as Dean Martin.
‐ Frank wanted to be Dean.
‐ Elvis Presley.
‐ When I met Elvis, he said,
"They call me the King of Rock and Roll,
but your dad is the King of Cool."
And I’ll never forget that, it was like,
Elvis Presley thinks my dad’s the King of Cool.
‐ Another element of cool, which is sort of an X factor,
is a sense of mystery.
There has to be something unknowable.
There has to be an undealt card.
‐ Dean was mesmerizing in his complication.
He was such a complex, complicated guy.
‐ You got a minute?
‐ All right, these are excerpts from the poem
"The Secretary of Liquor."
"Part of Martin’s appeal was that no one knew him.
It wasn’t a mask, his detachment was who he was.
He showed up, his spirit remained elsewhere.
His wives and children found him unknowable.
It wasn’t personal.
When the producer of "The Colgate Comedy Hour"
suggested they have lunch to get to know one another,
Dino set him straight, "No one gets to know me."
‐ You didn’t see a whole lot of him
out of the dressing room or hanging around the set.
‐ We all were crazy about just being in his company.
But when you were in Dean Martin’s company, were you?
‐ He had this distance, he had this menefreghista.
‐ I’ve seen different pronunciations of this word,
which is a, basically, the Italian élan of "who gives a F."
There was something about him
that was a wonderful personality trait,
a card he had in his hand,
which is that you don’t take it too seriously.
‐ Menefreghista.
‐ What does that mean?
‐ It means he who doesn’t give a darn,
he who could not care less.
‐ Doesn’t give a fuck.
‐ Well, I’m not gonna say that.
‐ I met Dean on Rio Bravo, but he was always quiet.
When you’re that quiet, people don’t know you.
I don’t think he wanted us to know him.
‐ Feathers, thanks for the shave, might call on ya again.
‐ Anytime, because I’ll be here.
‐ Everyone has a number of walls
before you get to the core of the person.
And Dean had one wall that, in my opinion,
no one ever got past.
‐ What was Dean’s Rosebud?
‐ What was my dad’s Rosebud?
What drove my dad?
‐ It isn’t enough to tell us what a man did,
you’ve got to tell us who he was.
Wait a minute, what were Kane’s last words?
‐ Rosebud.
‐ Now what does that mean?
‐ So what was Dean’s Rosebud?
‐ It’s an interesting question.
‐ Hmm.
‐ I don’t know, I don’t know.
‐ That’s a very good question.
‐ If you wanna take the paradigm of "Citizen Kane"
and see how it relates to Dean.
In "Citizen Kane" there’s the young kid is out
and he’s sledding and having a great time.
But then he’s sent away,
and he’s sent from his happy sledding life.
He never feels that sense of joy again.
‐ That’s a good question, what was Dean’s Rosebud?
I see this guy in a glorious suit or tuxedo,
and I see him undress, this is all in my mind’s eye,
and I see him undress
and, uh...
and he’s one of the guys from Steubenville.
‐ He was this guy from Steubenville
who had lucked into mega fame as nobody ever had before.
‐ My stepfather is from Steubenville, Ohio.
My first time driving into Steubenville
there’s a sign. "Home of Dean Martin."
I’m like, wow, okay.
There’s an icon who I’m a fan of that comes from here.
So maybe the town is okay.
It just gave me a sense of hope.
‐ Growing up in Steubenville,
there weren’t a lot of opportunities.
‐ There have been people throughout the years
that have called it Stupidville.
‐ They used to call Steubenville "little Chicago."
A lot of cards and a lot of liquor.
‐ Steubenville was a wide open town.
Steubenville was gambling dens and whorehouses.
‐ Steel mills all around you
and people who are working there or nowhere working.
‐ He knew that there was something
beyond Steubenville, Ohio.
He just knew there was something more for him in life.
Dad was born in 1917.
He was born to sing.
He loved to sing, he loved to entertain.
He was just a happy‐go‐lucky kid.
‐ His mother said, "I don’t know where it comes from,
but he got all the charm."
Dean’s brother Bill was very much like him.
He became Dean’s business manager.
You never, ever heard a harsh word out of this man.
‐ My grandfather was a barber at that time.
‐ Dean and his dad had same type of personality,
he liked to joke a lot.
‐ Dean’s father was an absolute sweetheart.
I never heard him raise his voice in anger.
He was a funny man, he was a gentle man.
‐ My grandmother Angela was a seamstress,
and that’s where my dad got his incredible style.
♪ You should care for me.
‐ Are you ready?
‐ Let’s slaughter ’em.
‐ She would alter everything.
Say if it was my father’s younger brother Bill
he had a suit, and then if my dad was going to wear it
she would alter it so it would fit him.
‐ She did help a lot of people in them days.
She did a lot of charity work.
Very few people had any money.
‐ In the Italian section
there was a real fear of the outside world.
They were so, so tight.
‐ Growing in an Italian family we had so many friends.
Food, it was something that unites you.
♪ Do they take ’em for espresso, yeah, I guess so ♪
♪ On each lover’s arm a girl
‐ Mangia, mangia! An ingredient that without it
it doesn’t work, that’s the family.
♪ I am only one and one is much too few ♪
‐ That’s a kind of another manifestation of Italian culture
in the new world.
He’s speaking to both Italians and Americans
at the same time, in a way that’s so warm and engaging.
‐ His father’s side was from Abruzzo.
The saying was "Keep yourself to yourself."
Otherwise people are gonna get over on you.
‐ Whatever it is it keeps in the family,
because they can use against you,
and especially in business.
‐ When Dean was a very young boy,
his parents were listening to typical Italian music.
You had Enrico Caruso records.
You had Carlo Buti.
And that’s where Dean got his predilection
for singing Italian songs.
And because he had that native language
singing them in Italian.
‐ Dean sang beautifully from an early age.
‐ His mom told him, "Someday you’re gonna be great, Dino."
‐ He did not know how to speak English
until he was six years old.
He was what a lot of immigrants were called
which was an "analfabeto"...
...which meant you’re illiterate.
And the kids made fun of him.
‐ You’re growing up in the United States
and you spoke Italian for the formative years of your life,
coming to English as a second language.
And you’ve experienced firsthand being ostracized
for who you are, for your native language,
for your ethnicity and so forth.
‐ He realized school wasn’t gonna be for him.
‐ My father tried the coal mine,
he said that’s horrible, hard, hard work.
He was a dealer in Rex’s cigar store.
‐ They had craps in there, they had 21,
but he was all around in there.
‐ That’s the hustle.
‐ "When anyone complained that acting was hard work
Dino responded as Crocetti, the barber’s son.
"You think acting’s work?
Try standing on your feet 12 hours a day dealing blackjack."
‐ Like a lot of kids that were bullied he went into boxing.
‐ He was an amateur boxer.
They called him "Punchy" but I didn’t like that.
He’d fight anybody, he didn’t care.
‐ Boxing was a way for a poor kid to make money.
Irish kids, Italian kids, Jewish kids,
and of course black kids and Latino kids.
All the outcasts of America went into boxing.
Dean Martin coming out of an Italian‐American background,
there are not too many ways out.
If you became a big time boxer you yourself was a celebrity.
Jack Dempsey,
Gene Tunney,
these people were celebrities.
‐ There’s a total relation between boxing and performance.
The best boxers know that.
Sugar Ray Robinson, he understood the showmanship of boxing.
You have to be an artist, as well as a fighter.
It’s not surprising that Dean Martin
would be able to do that because he’s an artist.
‐ He thought that he might have a career in boxing,
but then he had his nose broke,
he decided that that isn’t what he wanted to do.
♪ Which way did my heart go?
‐ I do remember his voice.
I remarked at the time I said this guy can really sing.
‐ He was absolutely spectacular
when he sang with that perfect rhythm.
‐ He would sing anywhere that he could.
‐ When he was working at the casino
I would pick him up at two or three in the morning
when they got through
and there’d be three or four guys in the car
and we’d just cruise around
and he would sing to us all night.
‐ We’re talking about the swing era.
America was all about bands.
‐ There were all kinds of clubs at the place.
He would come in maybe two or three nights a week.
‐ When you come from a world of nightclub,
you’re dealing with an audience, one on one.
You know when you’re not cooking,
you know when you’re not clocking.
‐ He got to the point
where it was as though he owned the place.
He would grab the microphone and start singing,
no accompaniments.
‐ Martin was influenced by Crosby.
♪ I give to you
♪ and you give to me
But he really liked the source of Crosby,
which was the Mills Brothers.
‐ Dean loved the Mills Brothers.
‐ They had this beautiful harmony
and sound. Mellifluous and flowing.
‐ Oh, I sure love how you guys sing
and I got every one of your records and albums.
‐ Every one of them?
‐ Every one of ’em.
‐ Harry Mills, the lead singer,
had a coolness about him that Dean wanted to copy.
‐ Harry Mills had a wonderful style, great rhythm,
like Dean sang a little bit behind the beat.
♪ Up a lazy river by the old mill run ♪
♪ The lazy, lazy river in the noon day sun ♪
♪ Linger in the shade of a kind old tree ♪
♪ Throw away your troubles
♪ Dream a dream with me
‐ You don’t have to fit in the frame and the measure,
you could be before the measure,
come in the middle of the measure,
but as long as you find that location of exit,
it’ll make sense.
♪ Oh, everyone’s in love.
‐ Dean Martin picked up from them how to present a song
in a way where you seem cool and detached,
but at the same time you’re in control of the thing.
‐ The Mills Brothers!
‐ Dean is singing in a hotel club room
and in walks Betty MacDonald,
attracted by the sound of Dean’s voice.
And she has just dropped out at Swarthmore.
Dean saw somebody he could have a family with.
‐ Elizabeth McDonald, that was my mom.
She was so caring and so smart.
‐ Before two families melded together
I remember going to Dean’s parents’ house
seeing broomsticks laid out across chairs
with pasta hanging down, they were making their own pasta.
‐ My mother helped Dad in so many ways, helped mold him.
Not that my grandmother didn’t teach him manners,
but there was something a little more elegant
about my mother.
‐ Betty would walk around, beating a spoon on a plate
and going, "You don’t go down to the soup,
the soup comes up to you."
Betty believed in his talent.
I think he found it himself.
She always built him up. "You can do it."
He didn’t speak well. "Dems and dose."
And my mother of course, very educated, she would say no,
it’s "them" or "those."
And my father he ended up‐ he speaks very, very well,
but that was because of my mother.
She was a doer, she would get things done.
‐ Betty thought that Dean should have his nose fixed.
‐ He was very reluctant to have it done
and Betty talked him into it.
‐ What was his career like
in those first few years?
‐ Oh, Lord...
Very sketchy.
‐ They wired my father for money
and he never turned them down.
‐ He was working regional nightclubs.
You’re playing these toilets, as they called them.
These were the marginal dregs of show business.
‐ He would go on the road
and my mother went with him.
‐ They would do those one nighters on buses.
‐ They had their first baby, when Craig was born,
they put him in a drawer in a hotel room,
that would be the crib.
‐ It seemed like every third person that came along
would offer to become his agent
and he would sell him a piece of himself.
He had sold something like 115% of himself.
He just wanted to get out and sing
and that was all that mattered to him.
‐ There is another element of cool, which is luck.
And that‐ that indicates to people
that even God thinks you’re cool.
‐ Dean, what do you regard
as the biggest break of your life?
‐ I think the biggest
and the most wonderful break in my life
was meeting Jerry, Jerry Lewis.
‐ Suddenly here is something new,
new enough that nobody really understood
what was happening right at the beginning.
Suddenly these two shlubs from nowhere
do the biggest thing in show business.
‐ Martin and Lewis were huge.
‐ You couldn’t get near them,
they sold tables all the way up to the band stamp.
‐ What they were doing in nightclubs was totally wild.
‐ I don’t know the number.
They just had something no one else had had before.
‐ You better lock up when you’re through.
‐ They did things that most people didn’t do.
‐ Well, that was a collision.
‐ It was sort of like proto‐punk rock.
‐ They represented a really good time.
‐ They were... pure and simple funny.
‐ I just loved it.
‐ They were crazy, they were all over the room.
Anything goes,
and we can say whatever we feel like.
‐ Together they were just terrific.
Here’s a picture of Dean and Jerry.
They were great, no doubt about it.
I loved them both.
I thought well, gee,
that would be nice to have Regis and Dean together.
Don’t you think?
Look a little bit alike...not even close.
‐ Dean and Jerry, they got together kind of by accident
in Atlantic City at Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club.
It was meant to be.
‐ Their fame and infamy came from the nightclub stage.
Jerry Lewis was doing what they called a record act.
It would be perfect for TikTok.
He wouldn’t talk,
the record would be playing and he’d be going‐
‐ From the moment Jerry set eyes on Dean Martin
he was riveted.
‐ I was 19 when we teamed up, he was 29.
You know when you meet somebody
and you just like them immediately,
that’s what happened.
‐ When you performed at a nightclub you were thrown
on the same bill with a bunch of other performers.
It would be an acrobat, followed by a singer,
followed by a comedian.
Dean and Jerry started to cross paths.
Jerry would sometimes intentionally sabotage
Dean’s act a little bit,
give him a little bit of a heckle.
‐ And he started the first few notes,
and I bang on the table‐
"Waiter, where’s my steak for Christ’s sakes!"
‐ And the whole thing starts right there.
The audience instantly senses
that something completely different,
completely brand new has begun.
‐ Another element of Dean’s cool was spontaneity.
‐ They did a good job fixing your nose.
‐ Yeah, used to be over here.
‐ Jerry got goosebumps.
Every comedian Jerry Lewis had ever seen
would have these little pauses...
...with Dean, nothing.
It was instantaneous.
‐ Dean was in tune.
So if Jerry comes in and he throws something at Dean...
‐ Are you sure you got the right head
back from the cleaners?
‐ Bang, nothing. Bong, right there.
‐ Give and take.
I mean they were just naturals together.
‐ Oh Dean.
‐ What? What is it? What is it?
‐ I’m eating ham.
‐ His reflexes, instinct, rhythm...
Dean used a force that was within him
that he didn’t know he had.
‐ You would say, "I’m going to the corner,"
not, "I’m going to the corner."
Who talks like this?
‐ The rudiment of
Dean is the Playboy.
And Jerry is the Putz.
Here is this kid
allowing Dean to come out of himself a little bit.
To be less guarded, to be less self‐protective,
to be, yes, a little more vulnerable.
‐ Lewis was funny, but let’s face facts
if you had Lewis in your ear,
you’d want to go out in the parking lot
and smash your head in the door of your car.
‐ I’ll never forget.
Dean brought him to the house,
for the first time in my life I saw a hyperactive kid.
He jumped on the furniture, he acted like a maniac.
This guy was out of control.
‐ Looks like I got myself a kid.
‐ Yeah, yes Dad.
‐ And we’re gonna be... pals, right?
‐ Lewis always needed to be paired with somebody
to dilute that manic, high energy,
very twitchy kind of thing.
‐ Straight man is highly prized in the industry
because it’s so hard to do.
‐ Dean was subtler.
You would be laughing your head off,
but you didn’t know why.
‐ Dean’s comedic timing was as good as my father’s.
‐ You sure read a lot, don’t you?
‐ Oh no, sir.
I just use these to build tunnels for my electric tr‐
‐ Get away from me!
And that’s what lent such great depth to the team.
‐ Orson said, "You know Jerry Lewis
is not about Jerry Lewis,"
and I said, "What do you mean?"
He said, "It’s about Dean Martin."
And I said, "What?"
He said, "Jerry Lewis’ success
and what makes that so special
is the incredible straight comedy and timing of Dean
and the fact that he can maintain the level
so that Jerry can play off of it
and on it and go around it,
and it’s a consistent line that is held for the audience."
He said, "Dean is the genius behind that show."
‐ Sinatra came to see them at the Copacabana.
Sinatra was huge in 1943.
♪ Oh lonely night
‐ And he did that little croon.
And that’s when all the girls would start screaming
and fainting.
‐ Sinatra was a great friend to people,
and he understood a lot of times what people needed.
‐ Sinatra stands up to the huge applause
and gives them the ultimate endorsement.
These guys are on a trip to the galaxies.
Nobody here really understands how big they’re gonna be.
‐ From there they just sprung.
‐ And suddenly these two kids,
they were the toast of New York City.
And now they’re the toast of Hollywood.
And they signed this big contract with Paramount.
‐ They were a hit in their very first movie, a big hit.
‐ The first time I saw them was their first feature.
‐ Am I wrong, were they squeezing lemons?
‐ Nice to know you.
‐ See how embarrassing it gets?
‐ I became an abject fan of Martin and Lewis.
Absolutely loved them.
‐ Like 16 movies in a row.
It was just an incredible money machine.
‐ Those movies were huge, they were huge.
Monster hit comedies.
‐ I feel much better now, thank you very much.
Oh! Oh! I’m leaking!
‐ My favorite would have to be "The Caddy."
♪ When the moon hits your eye
♪ Like a big pizza pie, that’s amore ♪
‐ People loved "That’s Amore."
♪ When the world seems to shine ♪
♪ Like you’ve had too much wine, that’s amore ♪
‐ Everybody applauded, that’s very unusual
in those days in movie theaters.
‐ They did the movies, they were doing television.
Like it was nonstop.
‐ Hello friends.
‐ TV made them hot in a way nothing had made them before.
‐ Television is this brand new phenomenon.
Most of what was on TV was stodgy and it was boring.
People watched it because it was a novelty,
not necessarily because it was good.
But Martin and Lewis came on TV
and they did something just for TV.
‐ "The Colgate Comedy Hour"
starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
‐ Jerry went right up to the lens,
he slapped the cameraman.
‐ See when I walk close
you gotta focus all over and everything.
Am I giving you trouble now?
‐ That was new, that was exciting.
‐ Oh if I only knew the line. What is it?
‐ They broke the presenium.
‐ Oh yeah, you clean up here!
‐ It’s wonderful, it’s fresh.
‐ After the burglar bit, shame on me.
‐ "Colgate Comedy Hour" one of the best shows
in the beginning years of television.
‐ Hey man!
‐ What is it?
‐ Get outta here.
‐ Ed Simmons was my writing partner
when we did the Martin and Lewis show.
It didn’t take long working with them
to understand that Dean was as much the reason
for the success of the team as Jerry was.
‐ Where are you?
Oh, right now we’d like to give you some impressions.
First, Jerry. My friend Jerry.
‐ Thanks a lot you’re my boy.
‐ Good.
‐ They were so funny and they also seemed
to really like each other, love each other.
That came across.
‐ Jerry Lewis was a very, very lonely, sad kid.
He was an only child.
‐ His parents did not go to his bar mitzvah.
As sad moments of childhood go,
I would say that’s pretty good.
‐ Jerry had this fantasy
that this guy was the big brother that he never had.
‐ He was like a brother, a father, a friend,
all of the best things a man could have in his life.
‐ You felt that they liked each other and they were friends
and you could see Jerry breaking Dean up.
‐ I bet you won’t know this‐
I ad‐libbed, I don’t know where I‐
‐ I know.
‐ I love that stuff.
Obvious affection.
If you could bottle that you could have peace in the world.
‐ He filled a space in my dad’s life
that could never have been replicated
by my dad’s wives or anyone.
‐ Jerry was the one for the two of them
who was the producer, the director, the head writer,
and that was fun at the very beginning.
Jerry Lewis eventually became the Pope and knew everything.
‐ Why are we always doing things that aren’t right?
‐ We’re on. We’re on.
‐ Here’s one of our technicians.
‐ Dean didn’t compete with Jerry
and Jerry found it necessary sometimes to compete with Dean.
There were days when Jerry wasn’t feeling well
and they usually coincided with days when Dean came in
and was hilariously funny
and Jerry would be curled up in the corner in a ball
complaining of a bad stomach.
‐ We moved to LA in ’49 right when I was born.
My dad bought my grandfather his home
in Inglewood, California.
He and my grandmother went to live in LA.
‐ It’s the American dream
"Oh, I can make enough money to buy a home for my parents."
‐ They were always around.
Of course we’d go over to their house for dinner.
My grandmother Angela would make fabulous food.
Unbelievable memories.
Then things started to change.
My mother Betty was very, very unhappy.
It was very, very hard for her.
Four kids, a dad on the road all the time.
She started to drink more.
That was hard for Dad.
‐ Dean and Jerry had gone down to Florida for some benefit
and that’s where he met her.
‐ Jeanne Biegger was the Queen of the Orange Bowl.
Dean would confide in Jerry.
‐ I saw him go nuts a couple of times.
"I can’t spend my life with her and the children.
It’s all wrong, it’s just wrong."
I said, "Who the fuck is telling you you have to?"
He said, "We’re married, she’s Catholic, I’m Catholic."
I said, "Fuck Catholics.
You have a life to lead,
you’ve got the pink slip on your life."
‐ Jerry’s wife Patti tried to warn Betty. She said,
"This one is not going away."
‐ From that moment,
Dean’s marriage to Betty is history.
‐ When they divorced, it broke all our hearts.
He’d been like a big brother since I was five years old.
He was part of the family.
‐ We moved to Hollywood.
My dad and Jeanne had a house just down the street from us
and Dad would come over.
We would always have a great Christmas
and Dad would come over and bring presents to us.
This is so sad for me, I don’t even...
Jeanne knew that I was not doing well.
In order to make me feel more welcome into the family
she took me to Capitol Records
when Dad was recording "Memories are Made of This."
♪ Take one fresh and tender kiss ♪
I remember walking down the hallway with Jeanne
holding my hand.
♪ Add one stolen night of bliss ♪
We walk into Studio A and I see all the musicians.
I’m just little, and I sit on a chair and I hear Dad
he made a joke and everybody laughed. I thought, "Aw,"
and I put my arm around her‐ I put my arm around Jeanne‐
and she said, "Everything’s gonna be all right."
That memory of sitting there and I thought, "Huh,
everything’s gonna be alright."
And it wasn’t until I was nine years old
that we went to live with my father.
My mom’s drinking was something that would eventually
catch up with her, until she finally decided
she just couldn’t take care of us anymore
the way we should be.
By that time, they had their own family,
they had their own kids.
‐ I have never known such bliss as it was
when I was pregnant with my three children.
‐ Jeanne was a hands‐on mother.
I mean, she had seven kids to raise.
She was just a beautiful woman, oh my gosh.
‐ Jeanne was kind of like my mom,
she made sure the house was running very normal,
to have regular dinners and make sure,
"Did you do your homework?"
These sort of Norman Rockwell scenes,
but they grew up with it,
okay, so they were trying to make sure we had that.
And it was given to us.
‐ Looking at that footage of him playing in the pool,
interacting with his kids, I was jealous.
He was a very... a much more available father than mine was.
His kids just adored him.
‐ Are you on?
I’m on.
‐ Every Sunday night, my grandfather,
he and my grandmother came to our house.
‐ Well Jerry, what else can I say?
Happy birthday.
Every time I see his splendor I forget myself.
‐ Now when I was nine years old my grandmother Angela
she taught me how to make pasta fazool,
which is my dad’s favorite, favorite food.
She said, "Now Deana, this is important for you to remember.
You can’t write this recipe down.
You can’t tell anyone, don’t tell your sisters."
So I stood there in her kitchen she had the big pot,
just everything right in and you’d put Romano cheese on it,
not Parmesan ’cause Romano is just better.
And then the secret ingredient.
‐ Perfect house, the perfect wife, the perfect family.
It’s perfect.
Except when it isn’t.
‐ Mr. Kelly, watch it!
‐ Something happens in the last two films
that really does clear the way for Jerry Lewis
to push the envelope pretty far.
‐ The two Frank Tashlin movies,
it’s created by a master director.
‐ I’ll be right down, I got it.
‐ They bring a cartoon world into reality.
‐ Frank Tashlin storyboarded everything.
Jerry Lewis literally sits at his feet
and learns how do you compose your shots?
What is the nature of a comic dynamic?
How do you film it?
How do you edit it?
How do you time it?
And he gets a masterclass from Tashlin.
That’s the point at which Jerry Lewis says,
"I think I can do everything on my own."
And he pushes it.
‐ Now why don’t you stop that.
‐ And Dean is more and more the accessory.
It just wore on Dean more and more.
‐ Dean wanted to get through a whole song
without interruption and get the applause.
But as the years went on, that happened less and less often.
‐ Jerry had written "Delicate Delinquent."
‐ And Dean was gonna play a cop.
‐ When Dad read the script he said,
"I don’t wanna be a policeman in a uniform
and I wanna come in before the second half of the movie,"
and Jerry said, "Well, that’s what the part is,
that’s what the part calls for. Dad said, "You wrote it."
‐ What is this?
‐ Thank you very much.
Now I would like to do a number that I have the pleasure‐
‐ There was so much that Dean couldn’t do.
His talent had reached a wall.
‐ Jerry called the shots a few too many times.
‐ And I said this is gonna explode before too long.
‐ It was a very uncomfortable time.
I didn’t wanna play sides, but it just amounted to that.
It was a pretty open war.
‐ Dean says something to Jerry
about what it is they even have together anymore
and Jerry says, "Well I think it’s two men
who feel a kind of love for each other."
Dean looks at Jerry and he says,
"When I look at you
I see nothing but a fucking dollar sign."
‐ It was on the front porch of our home
reading in a paper, is Dean gonna be okay?
What’s gonna happen to Dean?
‐ General public thought most of the talent was Jerry Lewis.
And Dean was very lucky.
‐ Well, I thought Dean would have some problems.
‐ Dean had huge insecurity about being able to make it
without Jerry and it was constantly reinforced
by everybody in Hollywood.
Without Jerry he was gonna fall on his ass.
‐ It was very important for Dean to do that picture
and hopefully be successful, but unfortunately
it turned out to be the opposite
it wasn’t a success for Dean.
‐ Have you actually seen this movie?
‐ I don’t think so, I don’t think anybody did.
‐ It stinks.
‐ I made a mistake, everybody makes mistakes.
‐ It was an unlucky moment which was gonna be followed
by a great stroke of luck.
‐ He was rehabilitated by being cast
in a serious dramatic role that starred him
with two of the most
iconic, serious actors of the era.
‐ On one side of him is Marlon Brando,
on another side of him is Montgomery Clift.
They insisted on casting him, you know why?
Because Dean Martin was cool.
‐ Not every actor would dare to step up
with Brando and Clift...
He did.
‐ Dean was the guy that went in. He just did it.
‐ You feel his freedom.
‐ What’s wrong? ‐ It’s cold.
‐ You see his freedom in his acting.
‐ Now cough.
Turn your head and cough.
‐ I was always very fond of Dean Martin.
I played his girlfriend.
‐ I’m scared.
‐ No, don’t be scared.
I’ll come back, I have to come back.
How else can I marry you?
‐ Montgomery Clift just loved him.
They were very fond of each other.
‐ Montgomery Clift,
he had just had this terrible car accident.
‐ He was so thin in it and he was ill.
It’s a wonder he had a film at all, he was hurt.
Dean was quite a doctor.
He’d pick him up and he carried him,
he carried him around the set.
‐ He was so sick, he was in that wreck
and nobody paid any attention to him.
I used to carry him to the restaurant and...
I loved him so much
because he was so helpless
but nobody else paid attention to him.
‐ They were brothers.
They were each other’s best friend.
‐ He said that Monty taught me how to act,
he said just to listen and react.
‐ How do you spell "extenuating?"
‐ Hmm?
"Extenuating."
‐ I don’t know E, X, T, E, E, X...
‐ Illiteracy, that’ll do it.
‐ Much to everyone’s surprise, he held his own.
‐ Who’s out there?
‐ Crowley.
‐ Oh, Crowley good.
‐ Yeah, except he can’t swim.
‐ Even better.
‐ That was the first time I’d saw him do anything
as a dramatic actor.
I remember thinking about how good he was.
‐ When I look at "Young Lions" today
the most exciting thing in it for me really is Dean Martin.
‐ How about you son?
You look fat and sassy.
‐ Wait a minute, I just got here.
‐ I completely believe he is that character.
‐ Besides, I’m a coward.
‐ I’d seen "The Young Lions" where he was quite good.
But Rio Bravo was really a performance
where he played all that dramatic stuff.
‐ Hey, Chance, you gonna let him do that to me?
‐ He loved to do westerns, he was one of the kings.
‐ He’d practice over and over again to get the guns right.
‐ And of course, the Western hero
‐ Do just about what you want, Chance.
‐ is a kind of cool guy who rides into town and rides on,
doesn’t need the town, doesn’t need the people,
can go on his own way.
‐ Dean is so wonderful.
You felt he was really agonized trying to beat the bottle.
‐ Didn’t spill a drop.
‐ And so many colors to his character.
‐ Shakes are gone.
‐ Rio Bravo really broke the mold for him, being as a singer
to being an actor.
‐ I don’t even wanna drink.
‐ It’s about time.
I was getting awful tired of taking care of you.
‐ If you wanna jump in, I’ll take care of you.
‐ Within that movie is this strange moment
where a musical number takes place.
‐ He and Ricky Nelson doing that
"My Pony, My Saddle and Me" I just‐
or was it "My Rifle, My Pony and Me."
♪ The sun is sinking in the West ♪
♪ The cattle go down to the stream ♪
‐ That should be enshrined in some museum somewhere.
‐ It shouldn’t work but it does work.
Because he’s created a character that you believe
really exists in this world.
♪ Purple light in the canyons
♪ That’s where I long to be
‐ When you listen to Dean
there’s this casual cool kind of sound.
♪ No more cows, no more cows
♪ To be roping, to be roping
♪ No more strays, no more strays, will I see ♪
It seems effortless.
♪ For my rifle, my pony
♪ and me
At the time Dean sings "My Rifle, My Pony And Me"
people were listening to a more modern sound.
‐ But our music as a kid growing up was not Frank Sinatra.
♪ That’ll be the day when I die ♪
‐ Dean Martin had a fairly high level of intelligence
and real awareness about the business
and what was happening.
He had to think about, "Where’s popular music going
and what is gonna be my career?
I need to develop something else."
‐ Dean has some absolute film success.
But what’s he gonna do in nightclubs?
In a brilliantly, aptly timed moment,
You have Sinatra, great friend, he books him at the Sands.
‐ Out of these feelings of admiration for Dean,
Frank really began the first steps
in what was to become Dean’s comeback in nightclubs.
‐ It was the first time he was a solo performer.
I know he was nervous.
‐ Dean knows that because Frank has engineered this
he’s gonna have a big audience there,
but he’s gotta have an act.
‐ I remember him talking about it.
I remember him saying that he needed to get a gimmick.
‐ This is the moment when Ed Simmons
who had written for "The Colgate Comedy Hour,"
goes to Dean and says,
"Let me help you come up with an act."
‐ Dean told Simmons Joe E. Lewis is gone.
Joe E. Lewis was a famous nightclub comic.
‐ And may I quote the words of Byron,
Irving Byron, a bartender, you don’t know him.
‐ His character was based on a guy who drank.
Dean said, "Nobody’s doing that, I wanna do that."
‐ Dean Martin almost played the straight man
to his drunken self.
‐ I feel sorry for you people that don’t drink.
I mean it ’cause when you wake up in the morning,
that’s good as you’re gonna feel all day.
‐ And I became a bellhop at the Cal Neva.
The Cal Neva Lodge was a hotel casino.
All these big acts would come through.
At the end of the summer was Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
And when I would finish as a bellhop,
I would go into the main room to see the two of them.
‐ Oh, thank you very much.
‐ When I saw Dean Martin, I was amazed by him.
‐ Did he introduce me? I just walked on... Somebody‐
‐ He was like, really, informal and,
"Where’d I put my drink?"
He’d say, "What song are we gonna do?
That song? I thought we were doing that.
No, no? Okay..." He’s just working this whole thing out
on stage. And he was a little bit tipsy, maybe.
‐ Oh you just remember the great words of Mr. Joe E. Lewis.
He says, "You’re not drunk
if you can lay on the floor without holding on."
‐ I’m amazed how spontaneous he could be
and still hold a show together.
The next night I come in, it’s exactly the same.
‐ I like the wonderful words of Mr. Joe E. Lewis
he said, "You’re not drunk if you can lay on the floor,"
‐ One day I went into his dressing room after he had left
and saw that glass down on the table
and I picked it up.
Apple juice.
‐ Dean is gonna play this character
for the rest of his show business career.
‐ Martin and Lewis was in another eon.
‐ I don’t know if Dean was a method actor,
but there are certain strategic moments in his life
where he might have been a method singer.
♪ Volare, oh oh
♪ Cantare
‐ I can remember all summer
everybody playing his version of "Volare."
♪ Your love is giving me wings
♪ Penso che un sogno cosi non ritorni mai più ♪
‐ Dean had the origin element of cool which is authenticity.
♪ E incominciavo a volare nel cielo infinito ♪
‐ The great thing about "Volare" is
it is this return to the earliest days
of him singing in Italian to Steubenville.
♪ non ritorni mai più
‐ He’s really leaning into it and saying that this is me.
♪ Mi dipingevo le mani e la faccia di blu ♪
‐ Coming on the heels of this breakup with Jerry Lewis,
if you look at the Italian to English translation
of "Volare," it really does reveal a lot more
about what Dean experienced personally
in that last year before he made the records.
"Sometimes the world is a valley of heartaches and tears.
And in the hustle and bustle, no sunshine appears.
But you and I have our love always there to remind us.
There is a way we can leave all of the shadows behind us."
Now, if that doesn’t fit how Dean felt inside
about the breakup of his partnership with Jerry Lewis
I don’t know what does.
‐ Anytime you return to the source of your authenticity,
you get a boost for going forward.
‐ Dean Martin was revered in Vegas.
He was one of the most charming,
almost childlike personalities I ever met.
Totally relaxed, and everybody around him was relaxed.
He was an experience.
‐ Easygoing, gentleman, Frank loved him.
‐ Sammy Davis joined the two on stage
and the night went into high gear.
‐ Dean and Sammy were special.
They were more than entertainers
they were like brothers to him.
‐ When Sinatra made the movie "Ocean’s Eleven"
in Vegas in 1960,
he decided that they would do an act at night for fun.
‐ Say as long as we’re all here together,
why don’t we have a drink?
‐ You had really sophisticated, charismatic, handsome,
well‐dressed guys acting like
drunken fraternity brothers on stage.
They call themselves the Rat Pack.
This was the apex of nightclub culture in the United States.
‐ They were the hipsters. They were the hip thing.
‐ They would do the show and then they would go out
in the casino, and Dean would deal cards.
‐ These guys went out into the Sands
and were gambling at night.
‐ They’re having a ball.
You’re hanging out with your friends having fun.
‐ As you might imagine, in any picture
Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are engaged,
there’s a gay party atmosphere among all the players
in this set.
‐ All right, the show is on.
‐ You get older and you start watching older movies
and realize that there was this thing called The Rat Pack.
♪ How lucky can one guy be?
♪ I kissed her and she kissed me ♪
♪ Like the fella once said,
♪ "Ain’t that a kick in the head?" ♪
That was and remains a pretty distinct signpost of cool,
especially masculine cool.
♪ A flower’s not a flower if it’s wilted ♪
♪ A hat’s not a hat ’til it’s tilted ♪
And the deeper you dig into it the more you realize
there’s a reason that it has staying power.
‐ We definitely have, over the years,
created our own Rat Packs, you know what I mean,
you see the Rockefeller, the Jay‐Z crew,
you see the Wu Tang Clan,
a bunch of men all coming together,
and they actually move culture forward when you have that.
‐ There was a feeling of family, a feeling of community.
‐ And now she is the leading lady
of our picture "Ocean’s Eleven," Miss Angie Dickinson.
‐ Did I hang out with all of them much?
Not an awful lot, you just can’t hang around
with that many gorgeous, successful, fun, happy men
and pretty soon you’ll have to explain yourself.
‐ My dad would be out there, entertain everybody,
and then he was perfectly happy being at home.
‐ He and Jeanne Martin
had one of the great families of all time.
Every night they’d get home for dinner.
They would all meet in this huge dining room they had.
‐ Together at 601 Mountain Drive,
seven kids sitting around the table.
That was the happy place.
My grandmother was making the pasta fazool
and the chicken.
Everybody was over at the house.
If we all had a friend over, it’s 14 people right there.
‐ We would dine in the dining room.
Dean would be there at the head of the table
and Jeanne would be there.
It’s something let me tell you
having Dean Martin sit at the head of the table.
‐ Dean came home one night with Frank.
The kids brought their friends.
There was no room in the dining room
and Dean says, "How do you like that pally,
we screwed ourselves out of a seat
at the dining room table."
So Dean and Frank ate in the kitchen.
‐ Guitarist Dino Martin Jr. is 13.
‐ Dino, Desi, and Billy, they had a rock band
with some modicum of success.
♪ You can’t be kind to me
‐ You got Dean Martin’s son, Dino,
Desi Arnaz’s son, Desi Arnaz Jr.,
and another equally talented guy named Billy.
‐ In 1965, I’d mark that as our year.
We were sharing the top 10, 20 in any given city
with The Beatles, The Supremes, The Stones.
‐ He had a big hit. In fact Dino made so much money
when he was 16 years old,
he bought himself a Dino Ferrari.
And I’m trying to think what age he was
when he started flying the helicopters.
We had a fun house, it was a big crazy family that we had.
Dean Paul is just a couple years younger than I am
and Ricky younger than that.
But Dino and Ricky bought a Sherman tank.
Dad and Jeanne had just gotten back from a trip
and Dad when he would come home,
he would turn on the lights.
So he said that he and Jeanne go in
and they turned on the lights and there’s a tank.
She said that Dad turned off the lights and said,
"Is there a tank in the garage?"
And she said, "Yes there is," he said, "Okay."
They were nuts, Dino and Ricky.
All of us were a little bit crazy.
‐ I did security for Dean for almost 10 years
between he and the family.
Two o’clock in the morning, I would hear,
and he’d be coming down the stairs
and he’d have a sport coat on,
there’d be golf balls in his pocket.
He had pajama bottoms on the bottom and his slippers,
and he would be hitting golf balls down Copa de Oro.
‐ The very first movie I ever did starred Dean Martin.
Jason, you and Melissa were made for each other
and I unmade you.
Dean was so loose.
Jason, what are you doing?
And was a lot of fun, very supportive.
I can help you I work with mental illness.
Believe me, I know what makes you tick.
He would go play golf a lot.
When he was finished,
he’d say, "I want to get out of here so I can go play golf."
‐ He was an excellent golfer,
one of the best of the entertainers.
‐ The carpet in our house was green, it was like a fairway,
and he would practice his swing.
‐ A lot of people wonder why celebrities play golf.
It’s because there was no way
anybody could get out there to bother him.
‐ Dean really had two basic lives.
He was the Dean Martin everybody saw,
the laid‐back, playboy, boozy type image.
And Dino Crocetti, the guy who worried about his future
and the people he really loved.
And the golf game, which showed him, I was good at golf.
It wasn’t made up.
I could really be good or I could really be bad.
But in show business, everything’s made up.
‐ Dean really never spent much time
hanging out late at night with Frank Sinatra.
‐ He would go to his room.
Frank would want to have dinner with everybody,
we’d have dinner with everybody
and Dean would go up to his room.
‐ Sinatra was a dictator,
and Sinatra could dictate the terms
of any social interaction except with one person.
If Sinatra told you that you were gonna stay up with him
until 5:00, 6:30 AM and keep him company, you did it.
If Sinatra said that to Dean he would say,
"Fuck you Frank," and he’d walk away and he’d go to bed.
‐ Dean and Jeanne they had a practically open house,
a lot of parties.
‐ Jeanne Martin would have a party every Saturday night
and they’d invite everybody over
and they were the Milton Berles and that society.
‐ The A‐list. The Billy Wilders and Jimmy Stewart.
‐ 8:30, 9:00 o’clock Dean would come through the room
with his martini, "Hey, pally, how are you,
oh, nice to see you,
oh, hello, pal."
And everybody was sure that Dean was so glad to see ’em.
‐ And after a little while,
suddenly everybody would look around and say where’s Dean?
‐ I went to a party that was given by Dean Martin.
It was a big affair, and I went to the bathroom.
And I walked past this door that was like a quarter open
and I heard the television set inside
and I just looked inside a little bit.
And there was Dean Martin at his own party.
And he’s watching The Andy Griffith Show.
‐ If you won’t take her to the movies
and buy her $2 worth of popcorn...
‐ I tried to duck back out.
He said, "Hey kid, come on in, what are you doing you?
Oh, you’re from the party?"
And it’s like he said it disdainfully, and it’s his party.
And he was very playful and friendly.
But I said, "Shouldn’t you be back out at your party?"
And he said, "No, they don’t need me."
‐ Dean wanted to go to bed.
And that party going on downstairs bothered him.
‐ And he’d call the Beverly Hills police,
he said, "I’m a neighbor of Dean Martin’s,
and he’s having a very noisy party."
‐ "I live on Mountain Drive and the people down there
are having a party with a lot of noisy people,
and I’d like for them to be quiet."
‐ Police would come over and knock on Dean’s door,
Dean would open the door and they said,
"Mr. Martin, you really‐ tell your friends to keep it down,
the neighbors are complaining."
So everyone then, well, maybe we better leave.
So they all left and so Dean could go to sleep
and get up for the golf game.
‐ I don’t wanna be flippant about this
I mean, he loved to play golf.
And I don’t know that he had a Rosebud, per se,
but it was just...
‐ The core of this, the root of this,
was that when people got to talking at a dinner party,
all kinds of things would come up,
politics would come up, studio gossip would come up.
And Dean ultimately felt that he wasn’t equipped
to hold his own in a world of bright, shiny,
fast‐talking people. He was this guy from Steubenville
deep in the core of his being.
And that’s what really drove him to the den
to watch the Westerns on TV.
‐ Dean Martin was coming to English as a second language.
Somebody who had that kind of background,
this is going to make you more inclined
to distrust the mainstream culture,
to feel cynical about it,
you’re gonna be very leery about wanting to be a part of it.
‐ When you come from an Italian family
speaking only Italian
and then put into another culture,
it gives you a small advantage as well
because you know something
that the rest of the people don’t know.
‐ Just look at Martin’s attitude about JFK.
‐ When Kennedy was trying to become president
there was a relationship between the Rat Pack and Kennedy.
‐ Senator John Kennedy from the great state of Massachusets.
‐ Kennedy comes to Las Vegas for the Rat Pack shows.
‐ The Rat Pack were big supporters of JFK when he ran.
They saw JFK as really a new generation.
I mean, they saw him as like the hip president.
If there was ever a hip president, it was gonna be JFK.
‐ Sinatra was yearning
to be a part of the administration.
Sammy Davis Jr. was very hopeful
that Kennedy would represent a kind of new chapter
in the civil rights.
‐ Negro baby is born there
and a white baby is born next door.
His chance of being unemployed is four times of that baby’s.
‐ Part of the attraction of the Rat Pack,
and I think part of actually their agenda
because they actually sort of talked about this on occasion,
was civil rights.
‐ In Las Vegas at the time that the Rat Pack has emerged,
having an integrated act is very, very unusual.
It’s a big deal.
‐ Sammy wasn’t allowed,
they wouldn’t let him into a restaurant.
In the Sands he could perform on stage
and bring in lots of money.
‐ The Rat Pack made it seem like a hip person
doesn’t have any problem with somebody
because of their race.
‐ Dean Martin, he liked Kennedy’s candidacy
and had great sympathy for the civil rights movement.
But he was more cynical about politics.
He didn’t really trust politicians.
‐ Dean, who didn’t give a shit about politicians,
said stay away from those guys.
‐ Hi Jack.
‐ What was his last name again?
‐ Dean Martin was wiser than the other people
in the Rat Pack.
And certainly Sinatra was kind of naive about Kennedy.
JFK made that very clear to him once he got elected.
No, Sammy Davis isn’t coming to the inauguration
because I can’t have an integrated couple there,
that’s just not gonna work for me.
Sammy Davis Jr. felt betrayed by this
because he thought that JFK was his friend.
‐ Kennedy’s inauguration, absolutely dominated
by Hollywood actors, singers, entertainers.
Sinatra went along with all of this, but not Dean Martin.
‐ Dad did not go to the inauguration
’cause of Sammy.
Dad said, "This is my friend, I’m sticking with my friend
and I’m not going."
‐ Martin seemed like somebody who had no tolerance
for bullshit. To be somebody who was cool
was that you were honest.
You were honest about yourself.
You were honest about the world about you.
You didn’t accept bullshit.
‐ Dean Martin had a kind of honor code.
On "The Dean Martin Show,"
Greg Garrison, who was his producer,
one of the most lucrative deals,
they never had a written contract. They just shook hands.
‐ It’s "The Milton Berle Show."
‐ In the early 1960s, variety shows
were the staple of television.
♪ We wish you the happiest, the happiest, the happiest ♪
And NBC decided that they would like Dean Martin
to host his own weekly show.
‐ He did not want to do a TV show.
I think Frank Sinatra had a show that didn’t work.
Jerry Lewis had a TV show, it didn’t work.
Dad didn’t really wanna do it.
‐ So he made a lot of demands.
A lot of money, of course.
Also, he didn’t want to come in for rehearsals.
And he would only tape the show on one day a week.
‐ And I want that to be on Sunday afternoon
after I play golf.
‐ He thought NBC would never agree to that, but they did.
‐ Yeah, it sure is good to be back.
On Nebec‐ Nebec?
‐ On NBC.
‐ NBC. Ya stick a period in after everything there. Nebec.
‐ That show was hugely popular.
‐ I watch it every Monday night, Andy.
‐ We were the top 10 for the entire nine years.
‐ And they’re so nice to me.
They told me to treat this place like it was my own home,
and I do, I show up once a week.
‐ It was a happy set.
I can’t think of any other show I’ve ever worked on
where everybody had a good time.
‐ We worked with all the top stars.
‐ I’m working on a Western right now
with Kirk Douglas...
‐ I did "The Dean Martin Show" with Dom DeLuise.
You talk about funny.
We literally couldn’t go on, we just couldn’t stop laughing.
‐ Dom DeLuise is one of the funniest men in the world.
Greg Garrison, our producer,
he took Dom into Dean’s dressing room and of course,
Dean’s dresser was full of delicatessen stuff on the table.
And Dom said, "Look at all this food!
You’re somebody I could love!" to Dean.
And they did the show many many times,
and went off to, on an adlib spree
almost every time he was on the show.
‐ How much was that again?
‐ 17,000,000, 369 79,000 million dollars.
‐ And Dean loved that, he went along with it.
‐ That’s a lot of‐
‐ He’d be in such good spirits about it.
‐ You’re always pretending to be so dumb.
You know what I mean?
‐ Yeah, I’m not pretending, I really am dumb.
‐ He loved performers and when he looked at Goldie Hawn
it was magic.
‐ He loved surrounding himself with talented people
’cause he was so secure in his own talent.
‐ If you were one of Doris Day’s freckles would you tell?
‐ What are you reading, Dean?
‐ Popular Mechanics.
‐ It was like going to university
to see these great performers work every week.
Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald.
‐ We didn’t rehearse with Dean.
He was on the golf course playing golf.
‐ I never saw him before a show ever.
‐ Oh, will you stop being so ridiculous?
‐ Hey there, that’s not in the scrippy.
‐ They always said Dean didn’t rehearse.
What he would do is he would have the whole show recorded
and Dean would play it in the golf cart
and play it in his car.
‐ I was the assistant choreographer on the show.
I would stand in for Dean for the dances
and he would watch it from his dressing room on a monitor.
He would see me doing it but he would see it in reverse
and I kept saying, "Should I turn around
and do it backwards for him?"
And they said, "No, do it like you do it."
And he would reverse it in his head.
He’s an amazing natural talent,
an in intuitive, natural performer.
♪ For every girl
‐ No, no that’s wrong, hold it.
♪ For every girl
‐ He would make little mistakes constantly,
but that was a part of the show.
♪ Gimme a little kiss
‐ No now they only gave you two bars.
‐ I was cool with it because I also improvised a lot.
He would say to me, "Now when it’s my turn to sing
just give me a little poke."
He never knew his lyrics
and we’d be laughing during the takes.
‐ I knew it was that I was just taking my time.
‐ I did a routine on a guy who got a toupee
for Christmas from his wife.
...toupee fell into the tea...
I did 24 of Dean’s shows and and I liked it.
We were two nightclub people that were kind of used to
the unscripted.
‐ Would you want a full exchange?
‐ I’d like the straight man who didn’t laugh.
‐ Sometimes, something would come out wrong,
and he’d make a joke out of it.
♪ I heard somebody whipser
♪ Whisper
‐ The S is before the P.
‐ I think it was my first show.
They always had me doing acrobatic things at the rehearsal.
I did a backflip off a boy’s back and landed on my foot
and broke it. The show was the next day.
My foot started to swell and it hurt so badly.
Get through the numbers and I’m doing this crazy number
with all the boys and my shoe pops off.
Then we were supposed to go right from that
into a number with Dean.
‐ Oh thank you Sir Galahad.
‐ Florence?
‐ Yessir, Dean?
‐ I know you’ve got a sore toe but...
‐ One thing I’d learned about Dean, he’d love spontaneity.
♪ It’s called Hernando’s Hideaway. Ole! ♪
And he just decided to do a pratfall.
♪ Like a flower bending in the breeze ♪
We wound up on the floor, we sang
♪ I’m in heaven
♪ And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak ♪
It was really a high point of the show
and people still talk about that.
‐ Dean had a great relationship with Christmas.
One of the reasons that Dean’s Christmas show
was so wonderful is the happiness in it.
There’s almost not a year goes by
when I don’t, around Christmas time,
put in my bootleg copy of "The Dean Martin Christmas Show."
‐ Around Christmas time
Dad was always thinking about Steubenville, Ohio.
‐ And I’d like to start by telling all you kids
in Steubenville, Ohio, at the St. John’s Hospital,
to keep a sharp eye out for Santa,
’cause he’s on his way with lots of gifts for you.
‐ There was one Christmas show
and everybody brought their kids.
‐ All these children belong to the people
who work on my show.
Thank you sweetheart, and they’re just like family to me,
so I invited...
‐ Christmas was back home, it was the family,
and it was a very important part of the year.
‐ Do you know who I am?
Who? ‐ Dean Martin.
‐ Dean Martin?
I’m glad I found that out.
‐ Christmas comes along and you hear a Dean Martin song,
it really is Christmas.
♪ Oh, the world is your snowball ♪
♪ See how it grows, see how it goes ♪
♪ Whenever it snows
‐ Dean recorded one of the landmark Christmas albums
in 1966.
His Christmas record is still as popular
as it was back then.
‐ In 1967, they decided to bring the Sinatra family
and Dean’s family in.
It was a very interesting time
because all the kids were there.
A lot of them haven’t been on camera a lot.
‐ And we did a whole Christmas medley
with the entire families.
‐ It was fun to be with everybody and so we all did duets.
Frank Jr. and Dean Jr. and Dad and Frank did their number.
♪ To your kids
♪ You say little, they say little, your thumbs twiddle ♪
Gail and Nancy and Dad and Frank they did their numbers.
Tina Sinatra and I we did "doe a deer" with Frank and Dad
which was really fun.
♪ That will bring us back to
♪ Doe, a deer, a female deer
‐ It was well, well‐received by the public.
The public got to finally see Dean’s family
and got to see Frank’s family.
♪ Silent night, holy night
‐ That moment in American pop culture
is really a classic moment.
All we need to do is look at Dean and Christmas
to appreciate how much he valued family.
‐ It’s the time of the year when
old friends and family get together.
Sure gives me a warm feeling to be able to share Christmas
with my family and such good friends
as Frank and his family.
From all of us to you and your loved ones.
Merry, merry Christmas.
‐ Back when "The Dean Martin Show" was starting in ’65, ’66
♪ You’re nobody ’til somebody loves you ♪
Dean was at the height of his career.
‐ I’m gonna blow up, let me out of here. I’m cracking.
‐ The TV show was number one, his records were soaring.
♪ Everybody
♪ loves somebody sometime
He just put the Beatles out of number one position
with "Everybody Loves Somebody."
His movies were taking off.
He worked, and he worked constantly, but then Dean’s mother,
Dean’s father and Dean’s brother Bill
passed away within the same year and a half of each other.
I really don’t think he had the time to mourn
the loss of his family, his mother, his father, his brother.
‐ I couldn’t believe I was asked
to be on "The Dean Martin Show."
And after the show I went out into the dark NBC parking lot
and I saw him get into his limousine.
As he came by I could just see him in the backseat,
slumped,
looking quite sad, and I waved to him, he waved back,
I thought this is... this is show business.
Poor man gave everything in that performance tonight.
Seeing him slumped in the back of a dark limousine
on a dark night looking very unhappy
is unfortunately the image that remains with me.
‐ One beautiful thing about our business is
that we get to come to Hollywood
and we could be who we wanna be.
‐ Oh, I’m happy you all tuned in tonight.
‐ But who you are is always who you are.
You can never leave yourself
’cause yourself is within you.
No matter how great Dean Martin became
the child in him remained.
That child could be smothered by other things
as you live through life,
but eventually like that same blade of grass
that grows through the concrete
that child will come back up and show itself.
‐ He just didn’t talk, what can I tell you?
‐ Jeanne said of Dean,
she was married to the guy for two decades,
she had three kids with him, she never knew him.
She tried to, she thought she could fix him,
she thought she could make him less distant,
and it just never happened.
‐ One day we came to work
and saw the headlines in the LA Times
that Jeanne was divorcing him, it was a shock to all of us
we had no idea that was gonna happen.
‐ The way she handled it, that’s how we all handled it.
It was okay, don’t be mad at your father,
don’t put him down, don’t badmouth Cathy,
don’t badmouth anybody.
It’s just, take care of it with elegance and class.
I couldn’t understand it.
I was gonna say something but I’m not gonna say it.
‐ There’s a line in Shakespeare’s Macbeth,
"The grief that does not speak,
whispers over the fraught heart and bids it break."
Grief that you hold on to, it wants to get out
and so it breaks the heart to get out.
Dean had a hit in like ’70.
And it was a kind of very sentimental song
called "My Woman, My Woman, My Wife."
♪ Eyes that show some disappointment ♪
♪ And there’s been
The loss of Jeanne which was his fault,
he’s deeply deeply grieving that.
♪ She’s the foundation I lean on ♪
♪ My woman, my woman, my wife
‐ On Dean’s variety show, he had this wonderful moment
of the show, totally spontaneous.
‐ Dare I? Dare I open it?
‐ He would go over and open the door.
‐ If there’s a bear in here...
‐ He did not know who was gonna be there.
Jimmy Durante could come out.
Whoever could come out. Red Buttons could come out
or Bob Newhart could come out.
And I’d always been hoping, oh I’d hope, open the door,
if only Jerry Lewis would come out.
‐ Jer Bear walks through there, I’m quittin’.
‐ Of course it never happened in all those years.
‐ You all will?
‐ After the breakup in July of 1956,
they were still very thoroughly broken up.
‐ We were not allowed to talk about Dean at home,
that was a hot button issue.
And if we mentioned anything in specific about him,
it would not be appreciated.
‐ My dad didn’t talk about Jerry,
he just didn’t wanna hear his name anymore.
Don’t talk to me about Jerry Lewis, that’s done.
‐ They were very much a thing of the past
until Labor Day Telethon in 1976.
‐ The Telethon was the Labor Day 20 and a half hour show
to benefit Muscular Dystrophy Association.
‐ It’s sitting there, is that the way it’s gonna stay?
‐ Jerry was the emcee every year
and made hundreds of millions of dollars
for the MDA, muscular dystrophy.
‐ I was a big fan I used to watch Telethon every year.
It was a major event back then.
Every star in the business
was clamoring to be on the show.
‐ Come on, now.
‐ So in 1976, Frank was going to be on the Telethon.
‐ Sinatra takes it upon himself
that he’s going to reunite them at the Telethon.
‐ And that’s when Frank said to Dean,
"I’m gonna bring you on."
‐ At first Dean thought he was pulling his leg
but Frank had a very persuasive way about him.
‐ I was 20 years old.
My father had made me Assistant Production Manager.
Mr. Sinatra had a mobile trailer and my dad had one
and as I was walking around, Mr. Sinatra’s trailer
had the curtains open about this much
and when I looked in, I saw the most beautiful face.
Excuse me, he meant that much to me, he really did.
And there he was in Frank’s trailer.
With that beautiful frost tip hair he had that year,
and a tuxedo, and so I actually freaked out,
being conditioned to feel that way
about Dean around my house.
So I ran to the production manager, Maury Stevens,
and I said, "Do you know who Mr. Sinatra’s got in there?"
And he said, "Yes, yes, relax."
He said, "Get a good seat."
‐ Frank Sinatra made sure that not a whisper of this
would get out to Jerry Lewis.
‐ Jerry was not aware, it was a complete surprise.
‐ I have a friend who loves what you do every year
and who just wanted to come out.
Would you send my friend out please, where is he?
Come here.
‐ And I screamed.
‐ I think it’s about time, don’t you?
‐ And thank you.
‐ I think it’s about time.
‐ So how ya been?
‐ It was wonderful.
‐ So, you workin’?
‐ And when I interviewed Jerry Lewis about that reunion,
Jerry’s comments that,
"It’s a shame it couldn’t last," Jerry said.
‐ It never, never got to be as close,
nowhere near as close as it once was.
‐ Dean was slowly going downhill physically.
I know Dean was hooked on pills in his later years.
‐ How ya been, Joey?
‐ Yeah, sure.
‐ You’re gonna start already?
‐ No I’m not starting, I’m almost through.
‐ We thought that was making him not be as
up as he always was.
And we tried to understand that, but what could we do?
We didn’t know what hardships he had.
‐ You wanna know why your monologue don’t go over?
‐ It was a smash tonight.
‐ Well, tonight I didn’t see it.
It’s ’cause he don’t cock his wrist and you keep...
‐ We did several specials where we had to
resort to him lip synching to his records
because he couldn’t sing properly anymore.
Those were sadder years for all of us.
‐ You could see his breathing was starting to get bad.
‐ He was in a bit of a depression, that he couldn’t shake.
He and Jeanne were no longer married.
‐ Jeanne, or I call her mom, kept the whole family together
but she still had 601 Mountain Drive.
He would drop by but it was Christmas and parties.
Craig and Claudia and Gail, they had all left the home.
Dino, well I always call him Dino,
but he came to me and he said, "Now from now on
don’t call me Dino, I want you to call me Dean Paul."
I said, "Okay."
But it had to be really hard on his heart
to always be in the shadow of Dean Martin.
He was not only my brother, but my best friend,
we could laugh together.
He’s Dean Jr. and I’m Dean with an A.
I was helping him with his lines ’cause he was acting.
‐ Are you all right?
‐ He didn’t limit himself to anything.
‐ By golly he married Olivia Hussey.
She was in Romeo and Juliet.
‐ They had a son, my beautiful nephew Alex.
During those years he was playing tennis.
He went into the Air National Guard.
He was flying everything.
On that day he called me and he said,
"I’ve got a new TV series."
I ran over his lines and he said,
"Deana, whenever you look up in the sky,
just know that I’m protecting you.
I’m in the Air National Guard."
And that’s one of the last things he said to me.
‐ A search is underway tonight
for the son of entertainer Dean Martin.
Captain Dean Paul Martin was the pilot
of a National Guard fighter jet when it crashed
into a mountain east of Los Angeles on Saturday.
‐ The Air National Guard says
Dean Paul Martin
was one of the best pilots in his unit.
‐ We were all each other’s best friends.
When Dean’s plane went missing, it was just...
catastrophic.
The night before, we were at Santana’s, which was our haunt.
He said, "You know I gotta be flying more.
Even though I’m doing more than the minimum requirement
you just wanna be doing it all the time.
You have to be focused on it."
‐ Dino and his weapons officer in their fighter jets
suddenly run into a snow squall. They become disoriented
and they crash into Mount San Gorgonio.
They don’t find the wreckage for days.
‐ My nephew, Alex, Dean’s son,
went to the airport with him that day
and saw all the planes leave and he said,
"But my dad’s plane didn’t come back."
‐ For four days, five days we waited
while they searched for the plane.
Eventually someone had to come and tell us
and tell my grandfather. When the high‐ranking,
from Edwards or March Air Force Base, came in and sat down
next to my grandfather
and said to him and the family
we were all around, "The United States government
is sorry to inform you that your son has passed away."
I remember the implosion of my grandfather
sitting in this chair actually, the sinking that happened.
That moment has stayed with me,
the impact of this, what this man has just said
to my grandfather has made a huge dent,
and this larger than life person has
shrank just a little bit.
‐ We ran over there, everybody ran over there,
Sinatra and they were all there.
But it was a terrible time.
‐ Dean we were all very saddened to hear
about the tragic death of your son.
‐ When it strikes home...
That’s, that’s terrible.
Eats you up.
‐ I thought man, this guy is just
broken
inside.
‐ You have to believe that when his son died that was it,
because the sun goes down.
You just can’t have the same kind of life ever again.
To lose a child, I mean that’s definitive.
‐ I give the eulogy at his funeral, everybody’s there,
Frankie is there, Frank Sinatra obviously, Rickles,
everybody was there.
‐ The girls were pleased that so many people came.
Well at one point when they turned around, and Dean didn’t,
they saw Jerry come in after the service started
and slip into the back pew all by himself and very quiet
and never let anybody know he was there.
‐ My dad was never a funeral guy, he hated funerals
but for Dean and his son he went.
It told that he felt real emotion at the time.
‐ The things that Jerry did that were genuinely selfless
were few and far between.
But one thing he did that was genuinely selfless
was he went to Dino’s funeral.
Never told a soul that he was there.
‐ That evidently touched Dean
and then they started talking again.
‐ When they got home he went in the den and closed the door
and called him and they spoke on the phone.
Must have been a very touching conversation.
‐ Frank talked Dean into that Together Again tour.
Part of the reason that Frank did that
was because he thought Dean needed to get out and work.
‐ Frank was looking to relive those days
they lived in Vegas doing the shows together.
But Dean wasn’t feeling well after the shows
he went back to his room, to his suite. He was tired.
‐ Frank makes a miscalculation about grief.
A lot of people think that the grieving person
needs to kinda get out, get back with the old friends
and get, and that’s a lot of times not
what a grieving person wants.
‐ Frank was in a bad mood
and he was shouting at Dean from the wings.
They had some kind of an argument or some kind of thing.
In the middle of the night Dean got his private jet
and went back to Los Angeles.
‐ Dean did not talk to Frank, Frank did not talk to Dean,
that’s how pissed off Sinatra was.
‐ He wasn’t mad at him, he was disappointed.
He could never get mad at him. He was worried about him.
‐ People always talk about
how the last years were the lonely years
and how he was so sad and all this kind of stuff.
But, I know that he was surrounded by people
that loved and adored him so, so much.
He always came over for dinners or we went over there
for dinners and he never once said,
you know I prefer if you guys don’t come by.
‐ Dean would frequent La Famiglia.
That was one of his hangs.
‐ This is Dino Crocetti. Party of two tonight.
It was his office, his home.
‐ He was so cute.
He could be sitting there and everybody catered to him
and people wouldn’t bother him,
but he felt safe and comfortable there.
‐ Jeanne loved Dean to the end.
I would see them at dinner long after they divorced.
And I’d say, "Oh good, you’re both together, I’m so glad."
‐ We could be a dinner at La Famiglia, and he said to mother
he says, "Well, what happened?
Why aren’t we still together?"
She says, "It’s because of you that we’re not,
no one else left you, you’re the one who left."
He had those double takes and everything.
And I remember that and I was a little upset.
‐ He just wanted to come back.
From 1980 on, we were as close as close could be
without living together.
‐ Dean’s health was starting to take a turn for the worse.
It was the smoking.
‐ He came in this one day, I said, "You’re not smoking."
He said, "No."
We’d been trying to get him to stop smoking
for years and years.
And I said, "When did you stop smoking?"
He said, "I don’t know, I just don’t want to do it anymore."
‐ He was diagnosed with cancer.
‐ It was happening for a while, he knew,
he didn’t talk about it with me.
He wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.
That’s not who he was.
So it’s Christmas and I’m thinking
what can I get for my dad?
We had everything.
The pasta fazool.
So I go, I go to the store I buy all the ingredients
and I hadn’t made it in, say, 30 years.
So I stood there in the kitchen with the big pot,
put in olive oil, chopped up an onion, six cups of water,
two cans of the Progresso cannellini beans,
just everything right in, salt and pepper, stir it,
a little bit of cinnamon.
I made it and I put it into a Ball mason jar
with a red ribbon, went over to his house,
and he looks at it.
Now I have to tell you the look in his eye
was unbelievable to me.
He said, "Is this what I think it is?"
I said, "Yes, it’s the pasta fazool."
He said, "And it’s still warm."
A week passes by and the phone rings. I answer the phone
and it’s Dad.
I said, "Hello."
He said, "Hi, this is your father.
Do you think you could make that pasta fazool for me again?"
And I got chills because I’m thinking
this is exactly what my grandmother wanted.
And I would sit with him and we would talk
and it was just a fabulous connection.
It was the connection that my grandmother told me about.
So what was my dad’s Rosebud?
I think it’s pasta fazool.
He loved being surrounded by family.
They’d be comfortable.
He was safe and warm
when he was with his mother and his family.
It made him strong and he loved them.
‐ Where somebody like a Kane
took this sort of Jerry Lewis route of saying,
"I will show the world."
Dean Martin did the exact opposite.
He said, "Well, I’m gonna try to replicate
that situation that I enjoyed, at my home,
walking around singing
with a bunch of crazy Italian characters.
I’m gonna replicate it in everything I did."
Time and again he makes a family.
Whether it’s Jerry Lewis as his brother.
The Rat Pack was a version of the dinner table.
"The Dean Martin Show" was a version of the dinner table.
The roasts was a version of the dinner table.
Down to the sad irony of the restaurant he hung around
and called La Famiglia. Family.
‐ Christmas Eve, Frank and I got together.
Frank said I wonder what the dago’s doing?
So I picked up the phone, Dean got on the phone
and so Frank gets on the phone,
"Hey, dag, how you doing?
Okay, so you want to tell me a joke, really?
Okay, what’s the joke?"
And so Dean said something, and Frank said something back,
and then Dean said something back and Frank laughed,
and he said, "I love you, dago," and he hung up the phone.
And so when Frank got off the phone
I said, "What the hell was that all about?"
He says, "Can you believe this crazy son of a bitch?"
He says, "As ill as he is, he wanted to tell me a joke."
"What did one casket say to the other casket?"
And naturally Frank said, "I don’t know, what?"
"Is that you coughin’?"
And that’s the last time they ever spoke.
About 12 hours or so later Dean passed.
‐ When he passed away at Christmas,
and I think he wanted to go at that time, on that day,
and I see his mom and the rest of the Rat Pack
and Dino.
So it was, it was quite something.
‐ A terribly sad day to die on.
But...
nobody like him. And at... at his...
at the crest of his transit
across the skies
nobody like him before or since.
‐ Our idols, our parents, they age.
But then something interesting happens.
The declining person dies
and they’re no longer the declining person.
In a weird way you get them back.
They return to being everything that they were.
‐ Well, what makes a person an icon?
When a person transcends just their own genre
and they become someone that
people from different walks of life
respect. Of their art or their music
or their talent expression,
that puts them in an iconic stage.
Dean Martin was tuned into his art.
And no matter what he did, it found its way out.
I think that puts him in a unique, unique position
as an artist.
‐ He had so much more talent and genius and instinct
and understanding, not only of the work he was doing
but of the world he was living in.
‐ I hadn’t worked for Dean for a while.
And Dean called me up and said,
"Michael, I need security again."
I said, "Dean, I’m doing my own show now, I’m doing‐"
he said, "I know pally come on over to the house
I wanna talk to you."
And he sat me down and he said, "No matter how big you get,
don’t ever think you have the power,
’cause if you do? The real power, the people,
they’re gonna take it away from ya.
I don’t even sing that good but the people love me.
And if they didn’t, I might as well have been a plumber
in Steubenville, Ohio."
He realized how lucky he’d been.
Whatever amount of talent he had,
it was the people that made him a star.
‐ "If you agree that Dino lived to live on his own terms,
and if his triumphs were in the significant films
where he had allowed himself to take direction,
listen, learn, tremble and transcend,
then his second greatest trope after inventing himself
was convincing producers and directors
to let him play a character who sang and drank
and thought about golf more than God,
so that the actor and the part were entirely one."