Dean Martin was everyone’s idea of Mr. Smooth. Say his name and even today, almost four years
after his death, and many more years since his television show, it immediately conjures up
the image of a relaxed, twinkle-in-the-eye kind of guy – who was still in control. A guy who hung out with the Rat Pack, and was pals
with Frank Sinatra. Dean Martin had several careers, in radio, TV, movies and
records – as a comedian, an actor, and a singer.
He started out a singer. Born in Steubenville, Ohio, on June 7th, 1917 as
Dino Crocetti, he was subsequently given the confirmation, or middle, name of Paul at his
first Holy Communion less than a month before his tenth birthday. His teens took place during the Great Depression of the
Thirties, and he quit high school in the tenth grade, remarking later that “It was
because I thought I was smarter than the teacher!”
He held down a number of part and full-time jobs as a teen – service
station attendant, shoe-shine boy, clerk in a store, steel-mill worker, and amateur
welterweight boxer and prizefighter. Fighting
as “Kid Crochet,” the teenager earned from $10 to $25 a match. During this period he suffered a cracked lip and a
broken nose, both of which he dealt with later with corrective surgery. Prohibition was still in sway in the early Thirties and Dino
earned money delivering bootleg liquor across state lines, selling lottery tickets (then
illegal), and doing some small-time book-making – taking bets (also illegal). This led him in turn to become an expert dealer
and croupier in the gambling houses around Steubenville.
And it was in these “joints” that he was exposed to the
entertainers who passed through and played the clubs. Dino could sing, and did for his own pleasure and amusement. One night in August, 1934, some of his friends who
had heard him sing talked him into going on-stage himself. He was 17. By the time he was 21 he was singing in a variety of local
clubs and developing a reputation. He was
working with the Ernie McKay Band at the State Restaurant in Columbus, Ohio when Cleveland
bandleader Sammy Watkins heard him and hired him. Dino became Watkins’ featured
vocalist and word of mouth quickly spread. On
November 1st, 1940 he changed his name to Dean Martin. Less than three years later, in September, 1943, Martin
signed an exclusive contract with the MCA booking company to sing at the Riobamba Room in
New York City – immediately following the hottest new singer around, Frank Sinatra. In 1944 he had his own fifteen-minute radio show, Songs by Dean Martin, on which he crooned as many
as five songs daily. In 1945 a friend of Martin’s, singer Sonny King,
introduced him to a young comedian, Jerry Lewis. But
they did not begin working together until March, 1946, when they were each booked on the
same bill. They performed separately, but got
along well with each other. After that series of club dates, they went their separate ways
again. But in July, 1946 Lewis was booked into another club and was
asked to recommend a singer to share the bill. He
suggested Martin. Right around this time Martin also made his first recordings. They were recorded on July 11th, for
the small Diamond Records label, and were “Which Way Did My Heart Go?” b/w
“All of Me” (2035) and “I Got the Sun in the Morning” b/w “The
Sweetheart of Sigma Chi” (2036). The
first two were used on a now equally rare Diamond compilation LP (D-7). Most fans of Dean Martin’s recordings are aware of him
from his Capitol Records period, during which he recorded hundreds of songs and released
literally dozens of albums – or the later Reprise period. But Martin did not sign to Capitol until 1948, and
did not begin recording for Capitol until that September. Before that he made three
records for two other now-rare labels. The first was “Oh Marie” b/w “Walkin’ My
Baby Back Home” for Apollo Records (1088), recorded in October, 1947. The second, also for Apollo, was “Santa
Lucia” b/w “Hold Me” (1116), recorded a month or less later. Although the original 78’s are difficult to
find, they were subsequently issued on the only slightly less rare Audition LP, Dean Martin Sings/Nicolini Plays (AUD
33-5936). Later in November Martin recorded two more sides, this time
for Embassy Records: “One Foot In Heaven” b/w “The Night Is Young and
You’re So Beautiful” (124). He
would not record again for nearly a year. The
reason? Martin & Lewis. Part Two – The Martin & Lewis Years In July, 1946 Jerry Lewis was booked into a club and was
asked to recommend a singer to share the bill. He
suggested Martin. Martin went into the
booking unaware of any promises Lewis had made to the club owner, one Skinny D’Amato,
and he subsequently told interviewer Pete Martin that he simply happened to be on the same
bill, rejecting any role of Lewis’s in his being there. Martin went on first and sang, followed by Lewis’s comic
act. There was little or no interplay between them – they were separate acts. But after three nights of this D’Amato wanted
to know when the “funny stuff with Dean” was going to start, apparently
referring to whatever Lewis had promised him to get the booking. Lewis, afraid of losing the booking (or worse),
wrote some material for the two to do together. But
they never used it, because when they went onstage together the next night they found it
easier to improvise the act, doing whatever occurred to them. Martin would sing and Lewis would interrupt. When Martin started telling a story, Lewis acted
like a mad man, throwing things around the stage. It
was the debut of what would become their act: the suave singer and the imbecilic comedian,
a study in contrasts. Martin was the straight
man, and Lewis would try to crack him up (and usually succeeded). The audience thought it was great. Within a short time it was standing room only at
the 500 Club. The team of Martin & Lewis
was an immediate success. But though they
performed as partners, Martin and Lewis were still getting separate billings. They would start out doing their own separate
routines and get together as a team only in the final part of the show. They did not perform legally as a team until
January, 1947. The team of Martin & Lewis worked together for ten years. In addition to ever-better nightclub bookings,
they had their own half-hour radio show on NBC, which began April 3rd, 1949. They took their show to television as the stars of
The Colgate Comedy Hour, starting Sunday, July
17th, 1950. And they made 16
movies together, successfully dominating America’s popular culture for much of the
Fifties. But Martin grew tired of the act. He felt that Lewis was simultaneously using him
as a “second banana” and pulling him down with the style of physical comedy they
used. Lewis was the dominant force in the
team, leaving Martin the junior partner. Martin
– who had remarried on September 1st, 1949, to Jeanne Biegger (the former
Orange Bowl Queen of Florida) – wanted to spend more of his time at home. He was tired of the projects which seemed to be
making constant demands on the team’s time. On July 24th, 1956, the Martin & Lewis team
made its last appearance together at The Cocacabana in New York City. The announcement of their split-up shook
their fans with surprise and disappointment. But Martin immediately made a movie – Ten Thousand Bedrooms – which got poor
reviews and did poorly at the box office. Fortunately
at this juncture he had his singing and recording career to fall back on. He’d been releasing hit after hit on Capitol
Records, having put out nearly sixty singles by then (an early one, “You Was,”
Capitol 15349, was a duet with Peggy Lee, released in December, 1948, but the rest were
pure Dean Martin) – and four 12-inch LPs (the first, Dean Martin Sings, was released as both a 10-inch
LP, H-401, and a 12-inch LP, T-401, with four added tracks). Early hits included “I’ll Always
Love You,” “If,” “When You’re Smiling,” “Oh
Marie,” “I’d Cry Like a Baby,” “Sway,” “Memories Are
Made of This,” and of course the song which became his signature tune,
“That’s Amore.” Part Three – Beyond Martin & Lewis – The
Solo Career After breaking up the team of Martin & Lewis, Martin
immediately made a movie – Ten Thousand
Bedrooms – which got poor reviews and did poorly at the box office. To rehabilitate his career as an actor he sought
out and agreed to take less money for a role in a new movie, The Young Lions, with Marlon Brando and Montgomery
Clift. The movie and Martin were a success,
and his career moved back into high gear. Over the course of his career, Martin starred in 35 more
movies, and made cameo appearances in a number of others.
Some of his most memorable films were Some
Came Running, Rio Bravo (with John Wayne), Bells Are Ringing (with Judy Holiday), Ocean’s Eleven
(with Sinatra and the Rat Pack), and Airport. He also made a series of Matt Helm movies,
half-serious James Bond rip-offs which did not live up to the books they were based on and
did not burnish his career. During the late Fifties Martin began investing in a chain of
Dino’s Italian restaurants and in Las Vegas casinos, like the Sands. But the investments stopped paying off in the
early Sixties. His records, which he’d
been making for Capitol since 1948, were also less popular.
It was time to make some changes. On February 13, 1962 Martin refused to renew his contract
with Capitol, after releasing 11 albums with that label.
Capitol would recycle those albums for years thereafter, usually reissuing
them with new catalog numbers, but also reshuffling them to come up with The Best of Dean Martin (volumes 1 and 2), The Dean Martin Deluxe Set, Dean Martin Favorites (a
new name for his first album) and Dean Martin’s
Greatest. Martin signed with his pal, Frank Sinatra’s, new label,
Reprise Records and started his own production company, Claude Productions. In this way he kept all rights and exclusive
ownership of his work from then on. With his friendship with Sinatra came membership in “the
Rat Pack,” a loosely-knit group of Frank’s friends which included Sammy Davis,
Jr. and Joey Bishop. With and without the Rat
Pack, Martin ruled Las Vegas for more than a decade.
Even his solo shows there were sold out.
During the Rat Pack years he played the Sands. During his post-Rat Pack golfing years he was at
The Riviera. He opened the MGM Grand as its
headliner. And he presented a series of
show-biz “roasts” at Balley’s. In the Sixties the popular music scene underwent drastic
changes. Rock became dominant, led by the
Beach Boys and Motown. And then came the
British Invasion and the Beatles. They
swarmed over the charts with songs simultaneously in first, second and third-place
positions. Dean Martin and his kind of songs
were suddenly old-hat and part of the past, a part of the record buyers’ parents’ generation. Martin was himself the parent of a teenager, his son Dino
(who later formed the rock group, Dino, Desi and Billy).
“All I heard from him was ‘The Beatles…the
Beatles,’” Dean said. “I told
him that while they were a good group, I could put out a record that could make a number
one hit.” He did, with “Everybody
Loves Somebody,” which went to #1 on August 15, 1964, and was issued on the LP of the
same name (Reprise R/RS6130). Martin was hot,
once again. This led to a new TV show, The Dean Martin Show, on NBC. It made its debut on Thursday, September 16, 1965
at ten PM. It quickly became one of
NBC’s highest-rated programs of the 1965-66 season.
But Martin’s contract with the network had been for only one year. This put NBC in the desperate position. They made
him an offer for a three-year contract which he could not refuse. His original contract called for $40,000 an
episode, but NBC offered him $283,000 an episode and threw in shares of stock in its
parent company, RCA, on top. Adjusted
for inflation, this is still an extremely high contract price, even today. At the time it was record-setting and simply
unheard of. In 1976, during the broadcast of Jerry Lewis’s annual
September telethon for Muscular Dystrophy, Frank Sinatra engineered the first public
reunion of Martin and Lewis in twenty years. In
1987 Martin’s son, Dino Jr., died in a plane crash.
It hit Martin hard, and in its wake he lost his taste for performing and
retired from show business, although he remained approachable for autographs or a
handshake when he dined out. Indeed, he
remained happy to meet his fans and professed amazement that he was still remembered. On Christmas morning, 1995, Martin died due to acute
respiratory failure. His own smoking and his
many years of performing in smoky clubs had caught up with him. He was 78. Over the years of his career Martin attracted many loyal fans, some of whom have created impressive websites in his memory. The Dean Martin Collectors Club Site is maintained by Jim Monaco, a fan of Dean's for over 40 years. Collecting anything involving Dean for all those years, Jim has amassed over 160 LPs, over 50 CDs, hundreds of audio tapes, posters and memorabilia from all of Dean's movies, Martin & Lewis puppets, video tapes of shows, movies, appearances...in other words, a huge collection, including numerous articles from magazines, books, newspapers, etc., etc., etc.
|
