However, for Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959), with John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson and Walter Brennan, Martin had to stretch as an actor, and did, with considerable grace and conviction. Strictly from an acting point of view, Rio Bravo was the pinnacle for Dean—he never got the chance to do better. That same year he took a risk starring alone in a drama based on a successful little off-Broadway play, Career, but it fizzled, and 1960 saw the release of three unabashed entertainments: a wild farce with Tony Curtis, Who Was That Lady?, the kind of material Dean was born to do; co-starring with charm and aplomb opposite Judy Holliday in the big-screen adaptation of her hit Broadway musical and, unfortunately, her swan song, Bells Are Ringing, also directed by Minnelli; and the first so-called Rat Pack movie, the infamously poor Ocean’s Eleven with Sinatra, Davis, Peter Lawford, etc.
When Martin and I met, these were all the films of his that had been released. Although he would make another twenty-seven movies, except for Billy Wilder’s vicious satire Kiss Me, Stupid—in which he played the ultimate bad-Dino legend—Martin never again did a really challenging film role that worked. He tried, but was sabotaged by his associates on Toys in the Attic (1963), poorly adapted from Lillian Hellman’s Broadway drama. After that failure, he never even tried much, phoning in most of the acting work—quite amusingly as detective Matt Helm in three James Bond–like spy spoofs (starting with The Silencers), but with the most noticeable enjoyment in the Westerns, which he loved watching and doing (eight in ten years).
In his portable M-G-M dressing room—a small, moveable bungalow on the sound stage—Dean sat very politely with me and was quite forthcoming. He had been told that I was writing a piece on the state of Hollywood for Harper’s Magazine (it ultimately went to Esquire), so I assume he thought of this interview as fairly weighty stuff, answering my questions with a kind of uncharacteristic earnestness and little kidding around. Which doesn’t mean he was pretentious or less than candid. Since he had just done Bells Are Ringing the year before, I asked if he would ever consider doing a musical on Broadway. He made a face. “Doin’ the same thing ev’ry night?” he asked rhetorically. “Jesus, how borin’.” He shook his head once. “I wouldn’t mind tryin’ it for about three nights,” he said, “but I’d sure as hell hate to be in a hit.”
Dean Martin hanging out in Vincente Minnelli’s riveting, vastly undervalued adaptation of James Jones’ novel Some Came Running (1958), one of the last substantial star vehicles of the golden age.
We got on the subject of acting drama, as opposed to comedy, and how he prepared for a serious role. “I just kinda think the way the part is, you know?” He leaned forward in his chair. “I kinda think back to somethin’ that’s happened to me,” he continued. “Like in Rio Bravo—there was a scene I was supposed to be very sad in, supposed to cry even. So I thought about a time I was unhappy—time my son, little Dino, was very sick—and that helped me. I kinda used those feelin’s I had then.” He sighed deeply. “Before I started that picture, I went to Brando and he helped me out a little bit. Told me to listen. Actin’ is reactin’, you know? Think that you’re thinkin’.”
Martin went on to tell me that Rio Bravo director Howard Hawks had so correctly sensed the actor’s anxiety about this key emotional scene—to be played in a stable with John Wayne—that he saved it for the last one Dean did on the movie. A little over a year after interviewing Martin, I first met Hawks, who confirmed to me that the scene had purposely been held for last. “And he did a hell of a good job of it,” Hawks said. “He really found out he could act in that thing and it was a great scene. He worked so hard—practiced handling a gun and got real good at it. The ones who are good, work.”
In the same conversation, Hawks told me how he had happened to cast Martin in what would remain the finest dramatic performance of his career. “I always liked him,” Hawks said, “I’d met him personally.” Martin’s agent had asked if Hawks would consider Dean for the role of the drunken deputy and talk with him. Hawks said, “OK, nine-thirty tomorrow morning.” When the agent said he wasn’t sure Martin could get there quite that early, Hawks just closed him off: “Look, if he wants to get here at all, have him get here at nine-thirty.” Hawks grinned, remembering that Dean had come in the next day right on time and said, “Well, I’m kind of shufflin’. I did a show till midnight over in Vegas—got up early, hired an airplane to get down here and I’ve had a lot of trouble gettin’ ’cross town.” Hawks shook his head. “You went to all that trouble to get here at nine-thirty?” Martin answered, “Yes,” and they talked for a few minutes until Hawks abruptly said, “Well, you’d better go up and get your wardrobe.” Dean looked confused. “What do you mean?” he asked, and Hawks replied, “Well, you’re going to do it—go get your wardrobe.” Howard went on to me, “And that’s what we did. I knew that if he’d do all that, he’d work hard, and I knew that if he’d work we’d have no trouble because he’s such a personality. And he did—he worked hard over that drunk.”
It shows—yet only in the best way—never labored, remarkably natural. Clearly, Martin never worked that hard over a role again, nor did he ever have as layered a part to play. Apart from a cowboy burlesque with Lewis (Pardners), Rio Bravo was also Martin’s first Western, which was by far his own favorite kind of entertainment. Especially John Wayne Westerns. In his last tragic eight years, supposedly all Dean ever did was sit in front of the TV and watch Westerns. Therefore, to co-star with John Wayne (of all cowboy stars, the most popular), and to be directed by Howard Hawks—for the director’s first Western since his triumphant debut epic with Wayne, Red River—must have been for Dean one of the crowning moments of his career. The performance he gave was a kind of committed investment proving to doubters that if he wanted to, Dean could, within his range as an actor, do just about anything.
The last scene Dean Martin shot, in the stable, for Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959), the most dramatic one and the actor’s best serious performance. It was only his fourth film after the breakup with Jerry Lewis.
A year after my brief talk with Martin—while preparing a monograph and retrospective on Hawks for the Museum of Modern Art and Doubleday—I wrote to several of the director’s stars for comment. Dean was one of them, and he responded with a succinct note: “Every day he would say, ‘Dino, don’t worry about the next scene. We’ll make one up….’ I think he’s great.”
Many years later, Martin’s comment to me on using the unhappiness about his young son Dino’s illness for the sad scene in Rio Bravo would take on a terrible, tragic irony. In 1987, as a captain in the California Air National Guard, Dino (known by then as Dean Paul Martin) was killed at age thirty-six when his F-4 Phantom jet fighter crashed during a training mission. Dean Paul was the apple of Martin’s eye and the death devastated him, leading quite soon to his almost total retreat from life. All reports are that he never recovered from this unimaginable blow, and his own death less than eight years later was a kind of relief to him.
Yet, in 1961, he was still not at the peak of his solo popularity—which was to come after the mid-sixties while he starred in his own weekly TV variety hour, The Dean Martin Show (1965–74)—not to mention the weekly TV roasts that followed, and the Golddiggers shows, or the numerous hit singles and albums he had throughout the sixties and seventies. As popular as he was when officially teamed with Jerry, he became hipper and nearly as popular both alone and when unofficially teamed with Frank Sinatra (countless gigs in Vegas, recordings for Reprise, numerous TV appearances, and eight movies). In our brief conversation, the last thing I asked Martin was about the many jokes already then being made about his drinking. He shrugged. “They don’t bother me, but they’re a little silly. If anyone drank that much, how long you think people’d keep hirin’ him?” He paused, but not for an answer. “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I drink. But I hardly ever get drunk. I don’t mind the jokes though. Matter of fact, they kinda help the image, you know what I mean?”
Of course, through television, thi
s eventually became the entire image, and Dean milked it all the way to one of the biggest of show-business fortunes. In the seventies, I saw Martin in person twice in Las Vegas. Booze was the one running joke. He would sing “Drinkin’ Again” right at the start, and spin countless references to being drunk. The word in the business was that it was largely an act, and that he told me the truth about rarely getting drunk; certainly he never let anything come in the way of his performances. He was hilarious in a Vegas nightclub, owning the place very differently from Sinatra, but as completely. Onstage, he always kidded the singing, virtually never singing a song straight through without some shtick. He used to announce that if you wanted to hear him “sing serious,” you’d have to “buy an albeoom.” In the clubs, it was mainly about getting laughs—which he certainly did—with casually impeccable timing.
In 1969, Orson Welles told me that he’d been backstage in his own Dean Martin Show dressing room when, before the taping, Dean knocked, then came in, drink in hand. “Hey, Orson,” he said, holding up his glass, “you want one of these before we …?” Orson shook his head. “No, no, Dean, I’m fine, thanks.” Martin looked shocked. “You mean you gonna go out there alone?!” Welles roared with laughter when he told me the story. “‘Alone!’” he repeated loudly. “Isn’t that great!?” Orson went on, “That’s the best definition of addiction I’ve ever heard.”
A couple of years after our M-G-M visit, I was doing a piece for Esquire on Jack Lemmon, who was shooting Irma La Douce for Billy Wilder on the old Samuel Goldwyn lot at Formosa Avenue, where Martin was filming Toys in the Attic. Wilder had noticed a familiar figure leaning against one of the Parisian sets toward the back of the stage; it was Dean. “Vait a minute!” yelled Wilder. “Get the hell out of there, Dino.” Lemmon looked around, glassy-eyed. The extras laughed as Martin strode, smiling, into the bistro, wearing makeup and costume—a tan suit. He clapped Lemmon on the back and shook hands with Wilder. It was Election Day. “Hey, Billy,” Martin said, “I voted ‘No’ for governor!” Turning, he embraced MacLaine and gave her a loud kiss. Lemmon watched, smiling weakly as Wilder said, halfheartedly, “Get the hell outta here, Martin.” Smiling, Dean took a seat next to the director. After watching for a little while, and seeing eight aborted takes, Dean suddenly yelled out loudly, “C’mon, Shirl, Jack—let’s do it right! Speed it up! OK—roll ’em!” Lemmon ignored him and Wilder said, turning to Martin, “Vhy don’t you go to visit dat set of The Nutty Professor?” referring to the Jerry Lewis film shooting at Paramount. Dean laughed, and after the next (unsatisfactory) take, he quietly left.
That was in 1963. I would be in his presence only one other time—on a sidewalk in Beverly Hills—about six months before he died. But in 1976, I was just a few blocks away from the Las Vegas Sands Hotel where, on Jerry Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, Frank Sinatra made history when he brought Dean Martin onstage with him and—live on national television—for the first time in two decades, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis embraced. Ten years before, in 1966, Esquire editor Harold Hayes had called to ask me to use my access to Lewis to help bring about a cover photo they wanted for their fat special year-end Christmas issue: Martin and Lewis hugging each other, under which they would run the words “Peace on Earth.” I did call Jerry at the time and he said, “Forget it—it’ll never happen.” And here it was happening at the Sands, just down the strip from my suite at Caesar’s. As part of a subsequent column for Esquire, I wrote about this—for some of us—momentous, memorable event:
Jerry gave an elaborate introduction for Sinatra and out he came, sang a quick, up-tempo number and told the audience that, unbeknownst to Jerry, he had brought a friend along to help him. He pointed off left and the camera panned over to see Dean Martin walk out from behind the set. Only someone who grew up in the late forties and early fifties could appreciate the sentimental value of what happened then …
“I thought it was about time,” Sinatra shouted over the tumult of the studio audience. Without prompting they had risen to their feet and stood applauding for several long minutes. Jerry buried his head in Dean’s shoulder on the far side of the camera. Martin clasped him warmly in his arms, but just a trifle patronizingly, too. He was the one, after all, making the charitable gesture—for the M.D.A. drive. They came out of the embrace and looked at each other. Sinatra stood between them, beaming. The cameras went to various angles of the two. Dean looked a little embarrassed as the ovation continued, slightly ill at ease. Jerry was savagely chewing his lower lip; to Sinatra, from the side of his mouth, he could be seen (though not heard over the noise) saying, “You son of a bitch.” Sinatra laughed and got each of them a microphone. The applause continued in expectation, Jerry still chewing his lip, his mind racing, it seemed to me, in an attempt to come up with a good opening line. As the applause finally died down, he looked at Martin sheepishly, raised his voice to that familiar squeaky adolescent pitch he always used around Dean and said, “You workin’?” It got a big laugh and a hand. Suddenly, anything seemed possible—the past really could be recaptured, perhaps there was a Santa Claus somewhere if Martin and Lewis, like the two old comics in The Sunshine Boys, could team up again and enjoy a splendid last hurrah.
But when Martin spoke, the mood began to evaporate. He answered Jerry with an overly dry, slightly defensive line about doing his two weeks every so often at the MGM Grand; in hip Vegas style, he called it “the MeGuM,” which only baffled the audience, and looked upstage toward Sinatra and the band. If Jerry seemed almost like the princess who had awakened after a long sleep, Martin was perhaps beginning to feel he was back in a nightmare he had stopped having. He was a straight man again.
Not that he’d ever been that, really, but it was what the media and the soothsayers had proclaimed all through the partnership: Jerry was the talented and funny one, Dean was just a fair singer and a reasonably attractive foil. Except, perhaps, in their worst movies, this simplification had never been the case, since Martin’s zany timing and spontaneous wit were apparent long before his solo appearances made it obvious to everyone. But the old bad dream couldn’t be denied, and suddenly Martin seemed to want out of this situation into which Jerry had welcomed him with open arms. Sinatra must have sensed it, because he stepped forward quickly and sent Jerry away with exaggerated majesty so that he and Dean could sing. Jerry couldn’t have wanted to get off—their moment had been so brief—yet he played what he felt for laughs, walking away in a flat-footed dejection to another scream from the crowd: “Well, there he goes again!”
But the event wasn’t over. Sinatra and Martin now began a duet during which Dean started breaking up the routine in much the same way Jerry used to do when he and Dean were working. He screwed up the lyrics, walked purposely out of camera range, made dirty asides to the orchestra (it was live, so no bleeps), pretended to trip, all the while glancing over to see if Jerry was watching. He was. Wearing a severe pair of metal-frame glasses, he looked on with a wistful, if strangely analytic, expression. He knew what Dean was doing and, surprisingly, he seemed to admire it. Martin was funny, one could say, with a vengeance. Sinatra kept breaking up, the audience roared, and all the while Jerry looked on quietly. But Martin’s message was clear: if there was ever going to be any comedy team in his life again, Dean would get all the laughs. Those long, wide-eyed glances he kept giving Jerry during his funniest moments spoke of pride and victory….
Not long after this was published in February 1978, I got a message I have treasured from Dean’s second and beloved wife, Jeanne Martin, saying that as someone who had known Dean the longest, she felt my sketch had portrayed his thinking accurately.
Despite the televised embrace, Martin and Lewis did not instantly resurrect their close relationship. There was little contact until nearly a decade later. Although, in the mid-eighties, I did almost manage to get them together for a movie, again with Sinatra’s involvement. It was to be a dramatic comedy shot in Las Vegas about a group of degenerate gamblers led by Sinatra, with Dean
and Jerry as two guys in the group who had had a falling-out and hadn’t spoken directly to each other for years, but communicated by having others in their gang speak for them to the other. Frank loved the idea and said that I should talk to Jerry and he would talk to Dean. When Sinatra phoned Martin to propose the idea, Frank would tell me later, Dean immediately thought it was funny and accepted. Frank then asked if he didn’t “have a problem working with Jerry?” Martin replied, “Aw, who gives a fuck!” Unfortunately, Sinatra’s lawyers and reluctant producers screwed things up.
Martin and Lewis (with Anita Ekberg and Pat Crowley) in the last sequence from their last picture together, Hollywood or Bust (1956), directed and written for them by Frank Tashlin; such was the tension between the two that the team spoke to each other only during scenes.
A few years later, when Martin’s son Dean Paul was killed, Jerry came, uninvited, to the funeral. He sat way in the back, and left after the service was over without making any attempt to speak with Martin. He ducked the press. According to son Ricci Martin’s recent memoir of his father (That’s Amore), Dean was so touched by Lewis’ gesture, and its self-effacing method, that he called Jerry to thank him and this contact led to more frequent calls back and forth until Martin’s death.
The last time I saw Dean was one evening in front of the Beverly Hills restaurant La Famiglia, less than a year before he died. This popular Italian restaurant was nearly always where Dean ate when he went out. Just as I was walking past, Martin started to come none too steadily out the front door. He looked alarmingly thin, face gaunt and pale. As he stepped onto the sidewalk, it seemed as though one of his knees gave out, and he had to catch himself by the door to stop from falling. He made a funny surprised expression and, looking down, said with a touch of dry irony, “Oops….” Right up to the end, I thought, he’ll go for the laugh. Then Dean straightened himself to full height, shoulders back, and slowly moved toward a waiting car, weaving only slightly. The image had become the reality.
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