Dean Martin

Dean Martin singing on The Martin & Lewis Show

Dean Martin (June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer and film actor. Martin found phenomenal success in almost every entertainment venue. Although suffering a few down times during his career, Martin always managed to come out on top.

Biography

Early life

Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in the West Virginia-Ohio border-town of Steubenville, Ohio. His parents were Italian-born barber Gaetano Crocetti and his wife, Angela. He spoke only Italian until age five.

Martin dropped out of school in the tenth grade and took a string of odd jobs ranging from steelworker to bootlegger; at the age of 15, he was a boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crocett." (Kro-Shey) It was from his prizefighting years that he got a broken nose (it was later fixed), a permanently split lip, and his beat-up hands. Dean was known to have won almost all of his matches. For a time, he worked as a roulette stickman and croupier. At the same time, he practiced his singing with local bands. Billing himself as "Dino Martini" (after the then-famous Metropolitan Opera tenor, Nino Martini), he got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. But in the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins. It was here that he changed his name to Dean Martin. A hernia got Martin out of the Army during World War II, and with wife and children in tow, he 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.

A recent biography on Martin entitled Dean Martin: King Of The Road by Michael Freedland, has revelaed FBI facts about his links to the Mafia in his earlier career. Martin was given help with his early singing career by mob bosses who owned saloons in Chicago according to Freedland's book. In return Martin performed in shows hosted by these bosses, later in his career when he was a star. The book states that unlike other performers during that time, Martin knew how return a favor.

Teaming with Jerry Lewis

Failing to achieve a screen test at MGM, Martin appeared permanently destined for the nightclub circuit 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 participation in each other's acts, and ultimately forming a music-comedy team.

Martin and Lewis' official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, and club patrons throughout the East Coast were soon convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and, ultimately, 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 was the hottest act in nightclubs, films, and television during the early '50s, but the pace and the pressure took its toll, and the act broke up in 1956, ten years to the day after the first official teaming. Lewis had no trouble maintaining his film popularity alone, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire to his former partner, found the going rough, and his first solo-starring film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, bombed to a stunning degree. Jackie Gleason was virtually alone at the time in predicting that Martin would eventually be bigger than Lewis, since he had the comic timing, appearance, and singing voice, and could move well onstage.

Solo career

Never totally comfortable in films, Martin still wanted to be known as a real actor. So, though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in the war drama The Young Lions (1957), he eagerly agreed in order that he could be with and learn from Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Tony Randall already had the part, but talent agency MCA realized that with this movie, Martin would become a triple threat: they could make fortunes from his work in night clubs, movies, and records, so they engineered Randall's replacement, giving Martin one of the plum dramatic roles of the decade. The film turned out to be the cornerstone of Martin's spectacular comeback; by the mid-'60s, he was a top movie, recording, and nightclub attraction, even as Lewis' star had begun to fade. He was also acclaimed for his performance as Dude in Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks and also starring John Wayne and fellow singer Ricky Nelson. Martin later teamed up again with Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), where they were somewhat unconvincingly cast as brothers.

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 1960s. 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 more than 100 albums and 600 songs, racking up major hits such as "That's Amore", "Volare", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" and his signature tune "Everybody Loves Somebody". Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by Martin, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style.

In 1960, he gave personal authority to Bernard Thorpe to create his first fan club, The Dean Martin Association. Martin maintained his role as the honorary club president until his death in 1995. The UK-based society still remains in existence today.

For three decades, Martin was among the most popular nightclub acts in Las Vegas. Dean himself was one of the most smooth comics around. On television, Martin had a highly rated, near-decade-long series; it was there that he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-drunk crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with hilarious remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy, if not somewhat slurred, remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts.

Though often thought of as a boozing lady's man, Dean loved his wife and children very much. He always had time to spend with his family, and truly enjoyed it.

The 1960s and 1970s

In 1965, Martin launched his 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 to make what they were doing look so easy. It's also no secret that Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze, most of the time onstage. He stole the lovable-drunk shtick from Joe E. Lewis; and 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 an occasional film, and even made a surprise appearance, thanks to Frank Sinatra, on the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1976. (Talk of a complete reconciliation and possible re-teaming of their old act, however, was dissipated when it was clear that, to paraphrase Lewis, the men made each other but didn't like each other).

Later years

Rat Pack Album cover, early 1980s.

On December 1, 1983 while gambling at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City, Martin and Frank Sinatra intimidated the dealer and several employees into breaking New Jersey laws by making the dealer deal the cards by hand instead of by a shoe which is required by law. Although Sinatra and Martin were implicated as the direct cause of the violation, neither were fined by the New Jersey Gaming Commission. The Golden Nugget, on the other hand, received a $25,000 fine and four employees including the dealer, a supervisor and pit boss were suspended from their jobs without pay.

Martin never made any claims to being an intellectual or put on pretentious airs, and perhaps was telling the truth when he told an interviewer that he had only read one book in his life, the children's story Black Beauty. In his 2005 book about Martin, Dean and Me: A Love Story, Jerry Lewis notes that Martin was especially fond of comic books, but would always send someone else out to buy them for him.

Martin's even-keel world began to crumble in 1987, when his son Dean Paul Martin was killed in a plane crash. A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1988 sputtered out, with Martin's heart just not into a Rat Pack reunion. On one occasion he infuriated Sinatra when he flicked a lit cigarette butt into the audience, and on another occasion he turned to Sinatra, ignoring the audience, and muttered "Frank, what the hell are we doing up here?"

In fact, Martin was a very sick man who had never completely recovered from the loss of his son and, as a lifelong smoker, was suffering from emphysema. In September 1993 he was diagnosed with lung cancer. But he courageously kept his private life to himself, emerging briefly and rather jauntily for a public celebration of his 77th birthday with friends and family. Whatever his true state of health, he proved in this rare public appearance that he was still the inveterate showman. Martin died of respiratory failure at the age of 78 on Christmas morning, 1995. Martin had been told he needed major surgery on his kidneys and liver in order to prolong his life, and he had refused. It was widely reported, though never confirmed, that Martin had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1991.

At his side for much of his last illness was ex-wife #2 Jeannie (Bieggers) Martin, whom he had divorced to marry a younger woman, Catherine Hawn. He quickly divorced Hawn, a former hair salon receptionist, after deciding that she was a big-spending opportunist. Dean and Jeannie became closer during his last years and there were rumors of reconciliation, but it was too late. In a bit of irony, like fellow "boozer" W.C. Fields, Martin died on Christmas Day with Jeannie by his side. The lights of the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor. In 2005, Las Vegas renamed Industrial Road "Dean Martin Drive".

Popular culture

There was talk of a feature film biography about Martin called "Dino", with Tom Hanks in the starring role and Martin Scorsese directing. But as of 2006, the project has yet to come to fruition. On a side note, Hanks previously portrayed the singer in an episode of Saturday Night Live. Martin was portrayed by Joe Mantegna in an HBO movie about Sinatra and Martin entitled The Rat Pack. Recently, British actor Jeremy Northam portrayed the late entertainer in a made-for-TV movie called Martin and Lewis alongside Will & Grace's Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis.

Filmography

Film Vodvil: Art Mooney and Orchestra (1946) (short subject)
My Friend Irma (1949)
My Friend Irma Goes West (1950)
Screen Snapshots: Thirtieth Anniversary Special (1950) (short subject)
At War with the Army (1950)
That's My Boy (1951)
Sailor Beware (1952)
Jumping Jacks (1952)
Road to Bali (1952) (Cameo)
The Stooge (1953)
Scared Stiff (1953)
The Caddy (1953)
Money from Home (1954)
Living It Up (1954)
3 Ring Circus (1954)
You're Never Too Young (1955)
Artists and Models (1955)
Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars (1956) (short subject)
Pardners (1956)
Hollywood Or Bust (1956)
Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957)
The Young Lions (1958)
Some Came Running (1958)
Rio Bravo (1959)
Career (1959)
Who Was That Lady? (1960)
Bells Are Ringing (1960)
Ocean's Eleven (1960)
Pepe (1960) (Cameo)
All in a Night's Work (1961)
Ada (1961)
Something's Got to Give (1962) (unfinished)
Sergeants Three (1962)
The Road to Hong Kong (1962) (Cameo)
Who's Got the Action? (1962)
38-24-36 (1963)
Come Blow Your Horn (1963) (Cameo)
Toys in the Attic (1963)
4 for Texas (1963)
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963)
What a Way to Go! (1964)
Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
The Sons of Katie Elder (1965)
Marriage on the Rocks (1965)
The Silencers (1966)
Texas Across the River (1966)
Murderers' Row (1966)
Rough Night in Jericho (1967)
The Ambushers (1967)
Rowan & Martin at the Movies (1968) (short subject)
How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life) (1968)
Bandolero! (1968)
5 Card Stud (1968)
The Wrecking Crew (1969)
Airport (1970)
Something Big (1971)
Showdown (1973)
Mr. Ricco (1975)
The Cannonball Run (1981)
Cannonball Run II (1984)

Reference

*Nick Tosches Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, 1992 for the first edition, Delta, USA, ISBN 038533429X

External links

*Official Fan Club and Organization for Entertainer Dean Martin
*Martin and Lewis Forum
*Dino Fanpage with Forum
* Actor Profile: Dean Martin by Brian W. Fairbanks
*Editorial on Dean Martin
* Dean Martin's Gravesite

Dean Martin: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents