Dean and Me: A Love Story (9 page)

After a bit, Dean and I are getting hammered again. We catch each other glancing at our watches. Then Charlie notices. Thank God, he looks sympathetic. With an eight-o’clock showtime and an hour-and-a-half ride back to Chicago, we are officially excused. We stand and make our apologies, but as we head to the door, Charlie calls, “You better hurry—I got my regular table for the eight-o’clock show!”

I felt bad for Dean: Though I wasn’t a golfer, I understood his disappointment. For someone who knows and loves the game, a great golf course is like a beautiful, slightly unattainable woman—full of challenges, surprises, difficulties, and delights. Dean was like a man who’d been stood up. It was a long, quiet ride back to the hotel, not a time for humor. A good time to get
un
hammered.

In the dressing room at the Chez, I was drying my hair while Dean shaved and muttered to himself. “Lloyd Mangrum played that course and won the Tam O’Shanter there. Jeez, I probably would’ve done terrific if I had half a chance.”

I had a brainstorm.

That night I phoned Johnny Ambrosia and asked him the name of the pro at the Bryn Mawr Country Club. The next morning, I pried my eyes open at eight sharp and phoned that pro, who was a hell of a nice guy and very excited to hear from me. I explained what had happened with Dean the day before, how frustrated he was that he couldn’t finish his game.

“Where can I reach Dean now?” the pro asked.

“At eight A.M.?” I said. “In his room, I hope.”

The pro called Dean and told him he was a big fan (true), told him he’d heard he was in town (also true) and was a big golfer, and asked if Dean would accept his personal invitation to play eighteen holes with him on the coming weekend.

When Dean rushed into my room, he looked like a kid who’d found out Santa was coming. He jumped up and down on my bed, yelling, “I’m gonna play with the pro at Bryn Mawr! I’m gonna play with the pro at Bryn Mawr!” For the next two days, he whistled, hummed, and sang around the suite and our dressing room at the club. I’d never seen him like this before.

Saturday morning came, and out he rolled at 6:30 A.M., fresh as a daisy on one hour’s sleep. I stayed at the hotel all morning, taking pictures (my big new hobby, which I could finally afford) and silently praying that Dean would play well. That was stupid of me—he always played well.

Around two in the afternoon, there’s a bang on the door like only Dean banged on the door. I open it and Dean’s standing there with his bag of clubs standing next to him and his scorecard stuck to his forehead, covering his face. (You just wet the card and stick it to your forehead—works every time.)

I take the card from his head, and behind that scorecard is the face of the happiest man I ever saw in my life. I look at the card. The pro shot a 71, and Dean shot a 74—three strokes’ difference! I jump into his arms, yelling, “I knew it! I knew it!” and the clubs fall to the floor with a big clatter—which, since it’s 1:55 in the afternoon, shouldn’t be a big deal, except that some people might still be asleep, especially the ones who were at our club the night before till 5:30 A.M.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear Dean sang better that night. He built a nice relationship with that club pro and played there, over the years, every time we were in Chicago.

When Dean was happy, the work was better. The same with me. When either of us was sad, the work broke down a little bit—not always so the outside world could see, but we knew. For now, though, we were happy.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT’S A STORY AS OLD AS TIME: PEOPLE MEET, FALL IN LOVE, HAVE babies, fall out of love. The process is especially severe if one’s life changes radically while the other’s doesn’t.

When Dean first met Betty McDonald, she was a reach for him—a fresh-faced, lacrosse-playing Swarthmore girl, the adored youngest daughter of a successful liquor distributor. Who the hell was Dean Martin in 1941? A tough Italian kid fresh out of Steubenville who had made it as far as Cleveland. A band singer with a handsome face (and as yet unfixed nose), a smooth manner, and a sixty-five-dollar-a-week contract with Sammy Watkins and His Orchestra.

An upstart and a social climber, in the eyes of Betty’s family, when the two of them courted and married.

And a national star when they came to grief and parted.

Betty was as bowled over by Dean as he was by her. She dropped out of college and married him at eighteen, had their first child when she was nineteen. Three more babies came in quick succession, and with them, Betty’s bitterness. It’s hard in the best circumstances for a woman to be married to a traveling performer, and the best circumstances rarely exist. Four small children and an absent husband with a wandering eye are very far from ideal conditions. Betty began to drink. She tried using guilt and anger to hold on to Dean, failing to keep in mind the two key-stones of my partner’s character: First, he hated confrontation of any kind, and would go to great lengths to avoid it. And second, he devoted all his energy to living his life exactly as he wanted. He literally walked away from anything and anybody that got in the way of that principle.

Maybe Patti and I stayed together as long as we did (thirty-six years) because she let me know, at the beginning, that she knew I’d face temptations on the road, and, being a man, I’d give in to them. She just didn’t want me to humiliate her. She called me on the carpet when I did that, and I did my best to be more discreet afterward.

I don’t know what agreement—if any—Betty and Dean had. She knew how handsome he was, she knew what a magnet that was for so many women, and she knew his ways. What she—and he—had never counted on was his falling in love.

It was the last thing Dean expected: He never liked being tied down. It happened in Miami, where we were playing a four-week run at the Beachcomber Club at the end of 1948. This was the first time Dick Stabile ever worked with us, the first time we could afford our own conductor—the Beachcomber was paying us $12,000 a week. We were on stage on New Year’s Eve when Dean looked over at a ringside table and saw the Orange Bowl Queen and her ladies-in-waiting, one of whom was a pert, gorgeous, twenty-one-year-old blonde named Jeanne Biegger.

It was (as they say) as if he’d been struck by the thunderbolt.

I was thrilled to see my partner so happy, but I also understood his dilemma. It’s no small deal to be a Catholic father of four who wants— who needs—to get out of a marriage. Selfishly, I wanted Dean to be able to find a way. Betty represented all the pain of his young manhood. She brought back memories of what he was and where he came from, and Jeannie brought him thoughts of what he could be. And a performer needs to feel free in his mind to do his best work.

I’ve seen the other side of that so many times in my career. When Jackie Gleason wanted to marry Marilyn Taylor, his wife, a devout Catholic, didn’t want to give him a divorce. For a while, Jackie’s work in
The Honeymooners
became stilted and uneven—but then, when his wife finally agreed to the split, he was a new man on and off the screen.

I needed—the act needed—Dean’s best work. From day one, I understood that even though I’d been born funny, my partner’s magic was to bring it out of me in a way that looked effortless. I knew, selfishly, that if Dean wasn’t there, I’d be in trouble.

Dean agonized about leaving Betty, and—freely admitting my personal stake in it—I advised him to follow his heart. He did. He moved Jeannie to a rented house in West Hollywood in early 1949, and Betty, back east with the kids but up on all the developments, served him with divorce papers.

When a lot happens to you all at once, you learn fast. In the months after Dean and I first hit Hollywood, we learned plenty about the town, its workings, and its players. The two greenhorn kids who didn’t even know where Ciro’s was quickly became pals with its owner, Herman Hover.

Ciro’s was the ritziest nightclub on Sunset Strip, and Herman was quite a power in the Hollywood of the late forties. Short, gruff, always impeccably tailored, he was the same height and build as Edward G. Robinson, with the same hairline—except that instead of looking like a gangster, Herman resembled a textile salesman. He wore expensive hand-painted ties and custom-made shirts: Whenever he extended an arm, you saw his monogram, “H.H.,” right there on the cuff. The first time I got a load of that, I said, “Wow! Harry Horseshit!” Dean made an Oliver Hardy face at me, and I never did it again.

Herman Hover spent money exactly the way you’d think a guy who looked like Herman Hover would spend money. He lived in a mansion on North Bedford in Beverly Hills that had once belonged to Mary Pick-ford: Howard Hughes, another pal of Hover’s, conducted most of his business there. Herman’s home had a $40,000 supply of liquor on hand at all times—he skimmed pretty good from Ciro’s. Oh, he was a piece of work. (I’m sorry to say he wound up broke.)

It was in Herman’s mansion, on September 1, 1949, that Dean married Jeannie. It was quite an affair, small and private but lavish. Herman footed the bill (of course), including ten grand worth of white gardenias. I was best man. Patti was present, under protest—she still felt bad for Betty. And Dean, in a separate room from Jeannie so they wouldn’t have the bad luck of seeing each other before the ceremony, was nervous as a cat. My partner and I were alone together, as he paced and lit cigarette after cigarette. You’d have thought he was going to the chair! Soon all the pacing and smoking began to get to me. When he said, “Christ, I need a drink!” I was thrilled.

“You’re gonna be all right if I leave for a minute, right?” I asked him.

“Of course!” he bellowed. “Get the drink!”

I dashed out to the pantry, swung open the door, and got my first eyeful of Herman’s fabulous liquor collection. Jesus, there was enough booze in there to get all of Pasadena loaded. I took out a bottle of Dean’s favorite (at the time), Johnnie Walker Black Label, and filled a huge tumbler—at least sixteen ounces’ worth. There were smaller glasses, but whenever there was a chance for a laugh, I always went for it. Then I strolled back into the room and handed the tumbler—it had to be at least nine inches tall—to Dean. He took one look at it and fell apart, just thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. It really wasn’t, it just happened to be the perfect time for that kind of a sight gag. He sipped some of it, put it on the table, and lit another cigarette.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.

Dean looked at me like I was nuts. When, before, had I ever
asked
if I could ask? Not my style, especially where he was concerned! But on this one, I genuinely felt a little timid. I cleared my throat. “You just got out of one marriage,” I said. “What the fuck are you rushing into another one for?”

He just stared at me, shocked that I had hit the issue on the button. I hurried to explain myself. “Forgive me, Paul,” I said. “Jeannie’s a great girl, and I think she would follow you to the ends of the earth. I know she would wait until you were ready. And there are four kids to think about.”

Dean thought for a moment. “Listen, Jer,” he said. “You know me better than anyone, so what I say is between us. I do worry about my kids. But this feels so
right
. So
strong
.”

I nodded, finally understanding that he was really in love, and probably for the first time. “It’s your life, pal,” I told him. “And you have to do what’s best for you. You’ve always taken care of your kids; now it’s your turn to take care of yourself. Everything’ll fall into place.”

He threw his arms around me in a bear hug and whispered into my ear: “Thanks, Jer.”

As it turned out, Jeannie was the best thing that ever happened to Dean. Unfortunately, she and I never really hit it off.

Both of us were jealous of Dean’s deep feelings for the other, both of us wished we could have him all to ourselves. But I repeat: Jeannie was the best thing (next to me) that ever happened to Dean. They had a loving, strong, and enduring relationship. A complicated relationship, yes—it was impossible to have any other kind with Dean. Though he and Jeannie would eventually divorce (twenty years later), I always felt that that was just legal paperwork. They never stopped caring for each other. I guess I loved her, too, in my own way. Someday I
may
tell her.

In the annals of marriage counseling, I know there is the following sentence: The couple that laughs together, stays together. I’m totally convinced of the wisdom of that, and I’m positive the same holds true for partners of all sorts, because as long as Dean and I were laughing with each other, we stuck like glue.

When two guys perform and travel together ten months out of the year, they form a unique attachment. Staying in the same hotels, sharing a two-bedroom suite at the beginning, Dean and I found out almost everything there was to know about each other—sometimes secrets you wouldn’t want to share with anyone.

There was the time we played a gig at the Presidente Hotel in Acapulco. We’d only been a team for eleven months, and suddenly we were being offered big bucks to do a show in sunny Mexico, including everything else that came with the package: water-skiing, frolicking on the beach, frolicking off the beach.

We went, we played, we rehearsed, we did the show, and then we played some more. All night, in fact: from around 12:30 till 8:30 A.M. We stumbled back to the hotel for a couple hours’ sleep, then staggered to the airport for the flight back to L.A.

After grabbing some rest in our Los Angeles hotel (this was around a year before we both moved to the West Coast), we had to get ready for the evening’s show. Dean came into my bathroom to borrow some toothpaste and saw me examining myself in the mirror, trying to figure out where the itching was coming from.

“Having trouble, Mr. Lucas?” he said. (I don’t think, in ten years, that he said “Lewis”
even once
. His favorites were: Lucas, Loomis, Lousy, and Looseleaf.)

“Yeah, I’m having trouble,” I answered. “What the hell is happening to me?”

It was apparent that my partner had been there before. (I was only twenty-one, and hadn’t.) He took my arm. “Step up here for a minute,” Dean says, pointing to the toilet-seat cover. I stand up there as he instructs. His head is right in line with my penis.

“I didn’t know about this perk, pal!” I say.

Dean tilts his head ever so slightly and says, “The day that becomes a possibility is the day I go back to doing a single.”

By now I’m getting annoyed with his survey of my pubic stuff. “What the hell are you doing?” I ask. “And what’s going on down there, anyway?”

Dean says, “Hold on for just a second.” He leans over to the medicine cabinet and retrieves a small tweezer I had in my toiletries case. He looks like he’s scrubbed in for the operation and ready to begin the incision.

He plucks something off me and opens the tweezer over the white porcelain sink, and I go ballistic. “It’s moving!” I scream. “It’s a moving thing! What do I do, Dean? There’s animals climbing on my bones! What do I do?”

Dean begins to laugh, and I wonder what the hell he thinks is so funny. “What is it?” I say. “Will you please tell me?”

“Jerry,” he says, “you got crabs.”

“What the hell am I doing, ordering seafood?” I yell. “What the hell do you mean? And what the hell do we do?”

“I have to get us some alcohol and sand,” Dean says.

He’s lost it
, I think. “Alcohol and sand?” I say. “Then what?”

“We throw the sand on them,” Dean says, casually, “then the alcohol. They get loaded and kill one another throwing rocks!”

(Thank God he knew to send for Campho-Phenique. The morning came and the itching went.)

You might also be interested to hear that my partner loved to read comic books.

Jack Eigen, Al Jolson, Dean, and Jerry: Copa, 1948. No, we were not the
King family.

You heard me, comic books!
Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman
. (Once when we got to meet Bob Kane, the creator of
Batman
, Dean was more knocked out than I’d ever seen him about meeting anyone— except perhaps Frank.) I don’t remember ever seeing him buying a newspaper; he’d only look at a paper if I bought one. But I
had
to buy his comic books. Why? Because he was embarrassed, that’s why. He was always sensitive about his lack of education.

He also loved—and I mean loved—to watch Westerns on television. I remember third shows at the Copa where he’d speed up so as not to miss the three A.M. showing of John Wayne in
Red River
or
Stagecoach
. In fact, I’ll swear: As much as Dean loved the ladies, when the fun was done, he preferred being left alone to watch his Westerns or read his comic books. Women always seemed to need the kind of attention he wasn’t much interested in giving.