|
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 1970s, 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 |
