In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis
recounts with crystal clarity every step of his fifty-year friendship
with Dean Martin.
They were the unlikeliest of pairs--a handsome crooner and a skinny
monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J..
Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career
as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda
and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something
clicked--something miraculous--and audiences saw it at once.
Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after
them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented
hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television,
movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national
craze, an American institution. The millions flowed in, seemingly
without end--and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years after it all started,
it ended suddenly. After that traumatic day, the two wouldn't speak
again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant
individual careers--Martin as a movie and television star, recording
artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack);
Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a
series of hugely successful movie comedies--their parting left a hole in
the national psyche, as well as in each man's heart.
In Dean & Me, Lewis makes a convincing case for Martin as one of the
great--and most underrated--comic talents of our era. But what comes
across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love
Lewis felt for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a
love to last for all time.
