Dean and Me: A Love Story (21 page)

And then the Copa.

In time-honored Copa tradition, we opened on a Thursday night—July 12, 1956. We would do three shows a night, seven nights a week, for a total of thirteen days, winding up on July 24, our tenth anniversary as a team.

We played to the same New York audiences that had always come to see us at the Copa, except now there was an extra electricity in the air, a morbid curiosity: “Are they
really
going to split up?” When Dean accidentally stepped on my foot during some onstage horsing around, fracturing two of my toes, I let out a yell louder than an air-raid siren, and the Freudian-minded New York press had a field day.

“Was that
really
an accident?” somebody asked. “Or has the feud turned physical?”

“Purely an accident,” I said (after counting to ten). “Next question.”

And since everyone in New York takes a special pride in being in the know, the interest around those Copa shows built as the days passed toward our last performance together, ever. The club stopped taking reservations for the last three Martin and Lewis shows a week before we opened.

During that time, friends had told me the gossip going around Manhattan, in spite of the city’s worldly facade, was touchingly hopeful. Otherwise sophisticated people just didn’t want to believe that the two of us were really going to break up. “Are they crazy? Look at the money they’re making.” And “How would they get along without one another?”

One night during that week, the National Children’s Cancer Society held a benefit at the Versailles, a nightclub in the East Fifties, and Dean and I were invited to appear, between shows at the Copa, to do a brief performance. It was the last thing either of us felt like doing, but where children and cancer are concerned, how can you say no? So we went, and we acquitted ourselves like pros.

The comedian Joey Adams was the master of ceremonies. After we did a couple of numbers, he came out to take us off the stage. But then, instead of going on with the rest of the show, Joey called, over the applause, “Hey! You guys come on back out here for just a minute!”

And so we did—Dean on Joey’s right side and I on his left. Joey threw his arms around our shoulders. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he shouted. “Do we want these two men to split up?”

The audience rose to its feet, yelling: “No! No! No!”

“Shouldn’t they think about us—who love them?”

“Yes!” the people roared.

Dean was as embarrassed as I was. I quieted the crowd and took the mike from Joey. “Thank you all very much,” I said. “Thank you for your support, your love, and your loyalty. We both appreciate all you’ve done for us for these past ten years.
But
—” And I stared out at the audience for a long moment.

“But,” I continued, “just as Dean and I would not go to your home and try to talk you back into a marriage that wasn’t working, we cannot allow anyone to alter what we have decided is best for us. Thank you and good night!”

The audience heard us. They knew Joey Adams’s heart might have been in the right place, but even Mother Teresa can screw up if she lets her feelings get the better of her judgment.

When we reached the car that was waiting to take us back to the Copa, Dean actually spoke to me for the first time in weeks. “You did that good, pal,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, and then we were quiet. Very quiet.

Tuesday, July 24, 1956, was a mostly ordinary summer day in New York City. The Yanks were out of town, but the Brooklyn Dodgers beat Cincinnati 10–5 at Ebbets Field, and the New York Giants lost a squeaker to Milwaukee at the Polo Grounds. The morning dawned warm, gray, and muggy; a late-afternoon thundershower briefly broke the heat. If you were anywhere in the vicinity of the Plaza Hotel in the early evening—maybe taking a cooling-off stroll near the southern end of Central Park—you would have noticed a crowd starting to form at Fifth Avenue and Sixtieth Street. Several mounted policemen were on hand. The focus of the activity was the red awning of the Copacabana Club, at 10 East Sixtieth. By 7:30, the crowd was thick and pushy and excited, and the flashbulbs started to pop....

Nine hours later, I was lying in my hotel bed, my heart racing. I had just hung up the phone after speaking to my partner for the last time.

“We had some good times, didn’t we, Paul?”

“We sure did, kid.”

“I don’t know where either of us is going from here, but I’ll be carrying you in
my heart wherever I go, because I love you.”

“I know. I love you too, Jer.”

It was the first time he had ever said those words to me.

When I awoke on Wednesday afternoon, I understood how an amputee must feel.

About ten days later, Elvis Presley started shooting his first movie,
Love
Me Tender,
at Paramount Studios. In April, he’d signed a seven-year deal with Hal Wallis, who knew as much about rock and roll as he did about comedy. Much like Martin and Lewis, Elvis—whom I later got to know when we were making movies on the same lot, and who was one of the nicest young men I ever met—would have a career that boomed because of—and in spite of—the lousy but very popular movies he made with Wallis.

America had someone new to scream over.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

WHEN DEAN AND I SPLIT UP, THERE REALLY WERE SOME VERY angry people in this country. It was as though we’d broken into their homes and disrupted a pleasurable routine. Well, the public didn’t own us, so we had little or no feeling about what
our
pain was about to do to
them
. In truth, neither of us gave a shit.

As I said before, most of the people who had contracts with us worked things out—except Julie Podell, Mr. Tough Guy of the Copacabana.

Julie maintained he had a deal with Martin and Lewis, and
they would
play his place
, either together or individually. He only cared about the Copa, probably because that’s the way the Mob wanted it. He was just a gofer, but I never realized that until much later.

About a week after I got home from our last show, Podell sent a— let’s call him a messenger—to my home in Bel Air.

It was early on a Sunday morning when I heard my front doorbell ring. Through the window, I could see my family, who had just piled into the car to go to church, driving out our gate. I opened the door to find a very well-dressed gentleman standing in front of me. He stuck out his hand and introduced himself. “Hi, Jerry. I’m Bobby Brown-Eyes from New York.”

I shook his hand, as any gentleman would. “All the way from New York and so early!” I said. “How can I help you?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “Well, first I need you to know I don’t like having to do this,” he told me. “I mean, you’ve given me and my family years of laughs and great times, so this isn’t exactly how I imagined I would meet up with you.”

It was evident he was struggling, and I tried to make him comfortable: “Won’t you come in?” I asked.

“No, no. I’d rather stay right here and say what I gotta say and go.”

I found this strange, but I chose to see how it played out. “Okay, shoot,” I said.

Bad choice of words!

Bobby cleared his throat. “Jerry, Julie Podell of the Copacabana Club said he wants you to know that he expects you to free up your schedule and play the Copa for him no later than September 21—the first day of autumn, next month.”

I hadn’t expected this. “Wait a minute,” I began.

The man drew himself up and looked me in the eye. “No, you wait a minute,” he said. “Podell says you will play the Copa or he will disrupt this nice family you have, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?” He cleared his throat again. “Those were his words. I’m just the messenger.”

I was stunned. “He said
what
?”

“Jerry, don’t make me repeat it. You heard what I said. Now, have your people call Julie and get it resolved.” And he slapped his palms together like someone rubbing off dirt.

My mouth was hanging open. I was staggered—and furious. “I hear you” was all I could say.

Without another word, Bobby nodded, stepped off the front porch, and got into a waiting limo. The big black car pulled through my gate and vanished into the quiet streets of Bel Air.

As I closed the door, I thought,
Okay—now’s the time. I’ve heard for a
decade: Anytime we can do something for you, will you please let us know?
So I did.

I called Chicago. More specifically, I called Tony Accardo, who had been the boss of bosses in the Windy City ever since Al Capone had gone away for good. As a young man, Tony had earned the nickname “Joe Batters” for his skill with a baseball bat, and let’s just say there were no baseballs involved. Reputation aside, I knew him as a kindly, quiet (but still imposing) man who lived in the most enormous mansion I had ever seen, complete with indoor pool, not one but two bowling alleys, elevators, pipe organ, and gold-plated bathroom fixtures. Dean and I once visited him there in the early fifties, because Mr. Accardo wanted his son and daughter to meet us (it was an invitation we couldn’t refuse), and he’d had a warm spot for both of us ever since.

“It’s good to hear from you, Jerry,” Tony said after I mentioned my recent visitor. “I’m sorry it had to be this way.” He then asked me to tell him exactly what the messenger had said. That was easy: I remembered it word for word. Mr. Accardo was silent for a couple of seconds. Then he said, “Forget about it!”

“But according to Podell—”

Joe Batters repeated what he’d just said, only more firmly: “Forget about it! Now, get on with your life!”

I thanked him sincerely and hung up—but couldn’t help still feeling uneasy about the whole thing... until a couple of days later, when I got a call from a very connected friend in Chicago.

“Hey, long time, buddy,” I said.

“Yeah, long time. Listen—I was told to touch base with you and let you know that the little problem in New York is solved, and you should have a good rest at home with your lovely family.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And please extend my thanks to The Man.”

He said he would, and that was that.

P.S.: I never played the Copa without my partner!

Back in July, as things were winding to a close with us, Dean turned down the lead in Warner Brothers’ movie version of
The Pajama Game
. We didn’t speak about it—we weren’t speaking about anything at the time—but here’s what I believe was on his (and MCA’s) mind: Warner’s was offering him a big role opposite a big star, Doris Day, and I think Dean was tired of sharing the spotlight. What he really wanted was to establish himself as a leading man in his own right. So instead, shortly afterward, he signed with MGM to do a picture called
Ten Thousand Bedrooms
.

My first thought, when I heard about his new project, was to hope that the film would be great for him. If that sounds saintly, let me correct you. It was actually quite selfish. My reasoning was as follows: If Dean falls
on his ass, I will have guilt for the rest of my life, because I could have prevented it
.

How? Because the day that we had our big conclave at Paramount with Y. Frank Freeman and Hal Wallis, Dean had been willing to go on with
the act
. I was the one who pushed the breakup.

And now the word on the street in Hollywood—and Hollywood is a town where the word on the street always matters—was that I would do fine as a comic, director, and producer, but Dean was probably washed up. If you believed what the critics wrote, Dean was just a pretty good actor with a pleasant singing voice, period. If you believed the gossip, my ex-partner would fade gently into the sunset.

Regardless of the press, I was panicked: I felt incredibly alone and desperate. The fact that everyone around me seemed sure that I’d land on my feet made things worse. I didn’t know what the fuck I was going to do.

It’s hard to explain. Intellectually, I knew all the things I
could
do— knew where my talents and ambitions could take me. But in those midsummer weeks in 1956, I was unable to put one foot in front of the other with any confidence. I was completely unnerved to be alone, and the Podell episode hadn’t done wonders for my peace of mind.

“You need a rest,” Patti told me. “Let’s go to the desert.”

It sounded good to me. So we headed off to Vegas, along with Jack Keller and his wife Emma, for a little fun and sun at the Sands. For a blessed few days I pretended to be someone else—someone without a
care in the world. We played blackjack, we went to shows, we lay in the sun. For
four days I totally stopped thinking about my career.

I love being in the middle.

And it worked—I began to smile again. Sure, I knew that this was just a pause in the action, that the pressures would return. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow.

On Monday, August 6, I was packing to go back home, when the phone rang. It was Sid Luft, Judy Garland’s husband and manager.

“What’s up, Sid?” I asked.

“Jerry, Judy’s got a strep throat. She can’t sing. Is there any way you could go on for her tonight at the Frontier?”

“Hey, I’d love to, Sid, but I’m practically on a plane—”

Sid Luft was a real charmer: He could have sold Popsicles to Eskimos. “We’re in trouble, Jerry. You can postpone the flight. Come on, kid, for old times’ sake.”

And that’s how I found myself on stage at the Frontier Hotel, in front of a thousand people who were very much expecting someone else, wearing the one dark-blue suit I’d brought with me and a pair of black socks I’d borrowed from Jack Keller. Judy was sitting in a chair at stage left, and once the audience laughed at my first remark—“I don’t look much like Judy, do I?”—my nerves settled and I found my groove. I did thirty-five or forty minutes of silly mischief, playing to her, because that’s what I sensed the crowd wanted. There were a lot of complicated feelings in the house that night: The breakup was still a fresh wound, and the audience felt for me; they had also come out to see Judy Garland—but they
were
getting to see her, if not hear her, and they were also getting a surprise, a guy who hadn’t done a single in ten years.

Yes, I’d played Y. Frank Freeman’s benefit at the Shrine Auditorium alone, but that had been just fifteen minutes of ad lib. This was a full act, and unless you’re a performer, you’ll never understand what it feels like to go out in front of a big audience on a moment’s notice to charm them for the better part of an hour. But somehow, it worked. The crowd at the Frontier loved the interplay between Judy and me (with those expressive features of hers, she could do more without saying a word than most performers could singing their hearts out). Inevitably, though, after around forty-five minutes, I felt myself running out of gas. So I turned to the conductor and said, “How does Judy get off? What’s her closer?”

“‘Rock-a-Bye,’” he said.

Thank you, God
.
You’ve given me what I needed
. “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody” was one of Al Jolson’s signature numbers, his showstopper, and my dad, who built his act around his Jolson impersonation, sang it all the time. I not only knew it by heart, but my key was close enough to Judy’s that when the conductor hit the downbeat, I was ready to go.

I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I barely thought about the fact that I hadn’t sung on stage in twenty-five years. My previous solo had been “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” at the President Hotel in Swan Lake, New York, in 1931—at which time, as you’ll recall, I was five years old.

Now I was thirty. I got down on one knee, just the way Jolson had, just the way my dad had, and sang with no mugging, no funny business. When I was done, the place exploded. I walked off the stage knowing I could make it on my own.

What happened next is a perfect illustration of the rule that when it comes to good luck, the best kind is the kind you make yourself. The reaction to my singing had been so strong that two weeks later, thinking
Why not?
, I went to Capitol and asked them if they’d be interested in cutting an album of me singing standards, straight.

Was that bold of me? Egotistical? Sure it was. Capitol certainly thought so. They were friendly and polite, but brief and to the point: No, thank you.

So I took out my checkbook. I hired the conductor-arranger Buddy Bregman, paid for a forty-five-piece orchestra, and rented the same Capitol studio where Dean and I had recorded “The Money Song” in 1948. What a difference eight years can make. This time around, I recorded four demo disks—including “Rock-a-Bye” and another Jolson standard, “Sitting on Top of the World.” The result sounded pretty damn good to me, and I took it to Capitol.

Again: Thanks, but no thanks.

Now, another man might have folded his tent, but I’ve always been a stubborn bastard. I shlepped my demos to the other record labels in town, and the people at Decca liked what they heard. If I recorded a half-dozen or so more songs, they told me, they would put out an album of me singing straight.

In September I recorded eight more songs, and in November,
Jerry
Lewis Just Sings,
along with a single of “Rock-a-Bye,” was in the stores.

I never expected what happened next: Both the album and the single hit the
Billboard
charts. The single rose as high as No. 10 and remained near the top for almost four months, eventually selling a million and a half copies. The album hit No. 3 on the LP charts.

Along with all the other hats I wore, I was now officially a singer.

I have no idea what was going through Dean’s mind then, but I know this couldn’t have been easy for him. Not one of his albums had ever made the charts, and only two of his singles, “That’s Amore” and “Memories Are Made of This,” had done as well as “Rock-a-Bye.” His most recent hit single, “Watching the World Go By,” had only reached No. 83. Certain would-be humorists in the entertainment business had nicknamed my album “Music to Get Even with Dean Martin By.”

I wasn’t trying to get even. At the time, I thought I was just getting on with my life.
The Delicate Delinquent
, with Darren McGavin playing the cop role that Dean had refused, had wrapped in October, and I thought it was terrific. NBC and I were firming up an agreement for my first solo TV special in January. And on the strength of my surprise appearance at the Frontier, I suddenly had a lot of club dates lined up.