Dean Martin
Dino Paul Crocetti
BORN: June 7, 1917, Steubenville, OH
DIED: December 25, 1995, Beverly Hills, CA
Enjoying great success in music, film, television and the stage, Dean Martin
was less an entertainer than an icon, the eternal essence of cool. A member
of the legendary Rat Pack, he lived and died the high life of booze, broads
and bright lights, always projecting a sense of utter detachment and serenity;
along with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and the other chosen few who breathed
the same rarefied air, Martin -- highball and cigarette always firmly in
hand -- embodied the glorious excess of a world long gone, a world without
rules or consequences. Throughout it all, he remained just outside the radar
of understanding, the most distant star in the firmament; as his biographer
Nick Tosches once noted, Martin was what the Italians called a menefreghista
-- "one who simply does not give a f***."
Dino Paul Crocetti was born on June 17, 1917 in Steubenville, Ohio; the son
of an immigrant barber, he spoke only Italian until the age of five, and
at school was the target of much ridicule for his broken English. He ultimately
quit school at the age of 16, going to work in the steel mills; as a boxer
named Kid Crochet, he also fought a handful of amateur bouts, and later delivered
bootleg liquor. After landing a job as a croupier in a local speakeasy, he
made his first connections with the underworld, bringing him into contact
with club owners all over the Midwest; initially rechristening himself Dean
Martini, he had a nose job and set out to become a crooner, modeling himself
after his acknowledged idol, Bing Crosby. Hired by bandleader Sammy Watkins,
he dropped the second "i" from his stage name and eventually enjoyed minor
success on the New York club circuit, winning over audiences with his loose,
mellow vocal style.
Despite his good looks and easygoing charm, Martin's early years as an entertainer
were largely unsuccessful. In 1946 -- the year he issued his first single,
"Which Way Did My Heart Go?" -- he first met another struggling performer,
a comic named Jerry Lewis; later that year, while Lewis was playing Atlantic
City's 500 Club, another act abruptly quit the show, and the comedian suggested
Martin to fill the void. Initially the two performed separately, but one
night they threw out their routines and teamed onstage, a Mutt-and-Jeff combo
whose wildly improvisational comedy quickly made them a star attraction along
the Boardwalk. Within months, Martin and Lewis' salaries rocketed from $350
to $5000 a week, and by the end of the 1940s they were the most popular comedy
duo in the nation. In 1949, they made their film debut in My Friend Irma,
and their supporting work proved so popular with audiences that their roles
were significantly expanded for the sequel, the following year's My Friend
Irma Goes West.
With 1951's At War with the Army, Martin and Lewis earned their first star
billing. The picture established the basic formula of all of their subsequent
movie work, with Martin the suave straight man forced to suffer the bizarre
antics of the manic fool Lewis. Critics often loathed the duo, but audiences
couldn't get enough -- in all, they headlined 13 comedies for Paramount,
among them 1952's Jumping Jacks, 1953's Scared Stiff and 1955's Artists and
Models, a superior effort directed by Frank Tashlin. For 1956's Hollywood
or Bust, Tashlin was again in the director's seat, but the movie was the
team's last; after Martin and Lewis' relationship soured to the point where
they were no longer even speaking to one another, they announced their breakup
following the conclusion of their July 25, 1956 performance at the Copacabana,
which celebrated to the day the tenth anniversary of their first show.
While most onlookers predicted continued superstardom for Lewis, the general
consensus was that Martin would falter as a solo act; after all, outside
of the 1953 smash "That's Amore," his solo singing career had never quite
hit its stride, and in light of the continued ascendancy of rock & roll,
his future looked dim. Martin's first move was to appear in the 1958 drama
The Young Lions, starring alongside Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando; that
same year he also hosted The Dean Martin Show, the first of his color specials
for NBC television. Both projects were successful, as were his live appearances
at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas; in particular, The Young Lions proved him
a highly capable dramatic actor. Combined with another hit single, "Volare,"
Martin was everywhere that year, and with the continued success of his many
TV specials, he effectively conquered movies, music, television and the stage
all at the same time -- a claim no other entertainer, not even Sinatra, could
make.
Even at the peak of his fame, however, Martin remained strangely contemptuous
of stardom; for a man whose presence in the public eye was almost constant,
he was utterly elusive, beyond the realm of mortal understanding. As his
celebrity and power grew, he slipped even further away: in early 1959, his
movie with Sinatra, Some Came Running, hit theaters, and with it came the
dawning of the Rat Pack. Together, Sinatra and Martin -- in tandem with their
acolytes Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and Shirley MacLaine
-- set new standards of celebrity hipsterdom, becoming avatars of the good
life; flexing their muscle not only in show business but also in politics
-- their ties to John F. Kennedy, Lawford's brother-in-law and an honorary
Rat Packer code-named "Chicky Baby," are now legend -- they were the new
American gods, and Las Vegas was their Mount Olympus.
Martin -- who continued to impress critics in films like the 1959 Howard
Hawks classic Rio Bravo -- was Sinatra's right-hand man, the drunkest and
most enigmatic member of the Rat Pack (so named in homage to the Holmby Hills
Rat Pack, a bygone drinking circle that had once gathered around Humphrey
Bogart); his allegiance to Sinatra was total, and Martin even left his longtime
label Capitol to record for and financially back Sinatra's own Reprise imprint.
In 1960, the Rat Pack starred in Ocean's Eleven, filming in Las Vegas during
the day and then taking over the Sands each night; two years later, they
reconvened for Sergeants 3. However, in late 1963 -- while filming the third
Rat Pack opus, Robin and the Seven Hoods -- the news came that Kennedy had
been assassinated; in effect, as America struggled to pick up the pieces,
the Rat Pack's reign was over. With Vietnam and the civil rights movement
looming on the horizon, there was no longer room for the boozy, happy-go-lucky
lifestyle of before -- the fun was truly over.
Yet somehow Martin forged on; in 1964, at the peak of Beatlemania, he knocked
the Fab Four out of the top spot on the charts with his single "Everybody
Loves Somebody," and that same year starred in Billy Wilder's acrid Kiss
Me, Stupid, a film which crystallized his persona as the lecherous but lovable
lush. In 1965, after years of overtures from NBC, Martin finally agreed to
host his own weekly variety series; The Dean Martin Show was an enormous
hit, running for nine seasons before later spawning a number of hit Celebrity
Roast specials during the 1970s. In films, he also remained successful, starring
in a series of spy spoofs as secret agent Matt Helm. However, by the late
'70s, Martin's health began to fail, and his career was primarily confined
to casino club stages; in 1987, his son Dean Paul died in an airplane crash,
a blow from which he never recovered. After bailing out of a 1988 reunion
tour with Sinatra and Davis, Martin spent his final years in solitude; he
died on Christmas Day, 1995. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
Dean Martin found phenomenal success in almost every entertainment venue
and though he suffered a few down-times during his career, always managed
to come out on top. During the '50s, he and partner Jerry Lewis formed one
of the most popular comic film duos in filmdom. After splitting with Lewis,
he was associated with the Hollywood's ultra-cool "Rat Pack" and came to
be known as the chief deputy to the chairman of the board Frank Sinatra.
Though initially a comic actor, he proved himself a powerful dramatic actor
in such dramas as Young Lions (1958), more than holding his own opposite
Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. He was also never above poking sly fun
at his image as a smooth womanizer in such outings as the Matt Helm spy spoofs
of the '60s. As a singer, Martin was by his own admission, not the greatest
baritone on earth, and made no bones about having copied the styles of Bing
Crosby and Perry Como. He couldn't even read music, and yet recorded over
100 albums and 500 songs, racking up major hits such as "That's Amore," "Volare,"
and his signature tune "Everybody Loves Somebody." Elvis Presley is said
to have been influenced by Martin and patterned "Love Me Tender" after Martin's
style. For three decades, his was among the most popular nightclub acts in
Las Vegas. Though a smooth comic, he has never written his own material.
On television, Martin had a highly-rated, near-decade long variety show;
it was there he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-soused
crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with sexist remarks that would
get anyone else slapped, and making snappy if not somewhat slurred remarks
about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. Martin attributed his
long-term television popularity to the fact that he never put on airs or
pretended to be anyone else on stage, but that is not necessarily true. Those
closest to him categorized him as a great enigma, for despite all his exterior
fame and easy-going charm, Martin was a complex, introverted soul and a loner.
Even his closest friend, Frank Sinatra, only saw Martin one or two times
a year. His private passions were golf, going to restaurants, and watching
television. He loathed parties and even when hosting them, would sometimes
sneak up to his bedroom without telling a soul to go to bed. He once said
in a 1978 interview for Esquire Magazine, that though he loved performing,
particularly in nightclubs, if he had to do it over again he would be a professional
golfer or baseball player.
The son of a Steubenville, Ohio barber, Martin (born Dine Crochets) dropped
out of school in the tenth grade and took a string of odd jobs ranging from
steel mill worker to bootlegger; at age 15, he was a 135-pound boxer who
billed himself as Kid Crocetti. It was from his prize-fighting years that
he got a broken nose (it was later fixed) a permanently split lip and his
beat-up hands. For a time, he was involved with gambling, as a roulette stickman
and a black jack croupier. At the same time, he practiced his singing with
local bands. Billing himself as "Dino Martini," he got his first break working
for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. A hernia got Martin out of the Army during
WW II. With wife and children in tow, Martin worked for several bands throughout
the early 1940s, scoring more on looks and personality than vocal ability
until he developed his own smooth singing style. Failing to achieve a screen
test at MGM, Martin seemed destined for the nightclub trail permanently until
he met fledgling comic Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where
both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which
led to their participating in each other's club acts, and ultimately into
forming a music-and-comedy team. Martin and Lewis' official debut occurred
at Atlantic City's Club 500 on July 25, 1946, and before long club patrons
throughout the east coast were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily
of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while the he was trying to sing,
then the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much
fun as possible. A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year that Martin
and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal Wallis as comedy relief for
the film My Friend Irma. Martin and Lewis were the hottest act in nightclubs,
films, and TV during the early 1950s, but the pace and the pressure took
its toll on the team. Martin and Lewis broke up in 1956, 10 years to the
day after their first official teaming. Lewis had no trouble maintaining
his film popularity as a single, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of
the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire to
Lewis, found the going rough. Martin's first solo starring film, Ten Thousand
Bedrooms (1957) bombed. Martin wanted to be known as a real actor, though
he was never totally comfortable in films. Though offered a fraction of his
former salary to co-star in the war drama The Young Lions (1957), he eagerly
agreed so he could be with and learn from Brando and Clift. The Young Lions
turned out to be the cornerstone of Martin's spectacular comeback; by the
mid-1960s, he was a top movie, recording, and nightclub attraction, even
as Lewis' star began to eclipse. In 1965, Martin launched the weekly NBC
comedy-variety series The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image
as a lazy, carefree boozer, even though few entertainers worked as hard Martin
to make what they were doing look easy. It is no secret that most of the
time, Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze on stage. He stole the lovable
drunk schtick from Phil Harris; his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers
in Some Came Running (1958) and Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959) led to unsubstantiated
claims of alcoholism. In the late 1970s, Martin concentrated on club dates,
recordings, and the occasional film, even making an appearance on the Jerry
Lewis MDA telethon in 1978 (talk of a complete reconciliation and possible
reteaming, however, was dissipated when it was clear that, to paraphrase
Lewis, the men may have loved each other but didn't like each other).
Martin's even-keel world began to crumble in 1987, when his son Dean Paul
was killed in a plane crash. A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis
Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1989 was abruptly cancelled, and the public was
led to believe it was due to a falling out between Martin and Sinatra; only
intimates knew that Martin was a very sick man, who had never completely
recovered from the loss of his son and who was suffering from an undisclosed
illness. But Martin courageously kept his private life private, emerging
briefly and rather jauntily for a public celebration of his 77th birthday
with friends, family. Whatever his true state of health, Martin proved in
this rare public appearance that he was still the inveterate showman. Martin
died of respiratory failure on Christmas morning, 1995. He was 78. ~ Sandra
Brennan, All Movie Guide