Dean and Me

by Jerry Lewis

  And so I did the best I could, writing him a note reminding him about the benefit, and having three copies made. The original went by messenger to his dressing room at Paramount; the copies went to Jeannie, to Mack Gray, and to Lakeside Country Club. I kept myself as busy as I could for the rest of the day, then drove down to the Shrine Auditorium.

  There was no sign of Dean at the Auditorium, and it was looking like there wasn’t going to be any. I hoped he would show up at the last minute, with a big smile on his face, telling me he’d just been taking a nap—but I knew that was the old days. The backstage loudspeaker blared: “Martin and Lewis, you’re on next!”

  I rushed to the wings, where I stood next to Bing Crosby and watched along with him as Red Skelton tore down the house.

  “Where’s the sleepy one?” Bing asked.

  I blinked and told a bald-faced lie. “He’s not well—he’s at home,” I said.

  “I wish Hope would do that!” Bing said.

  Then Red was off, to huge applause, and the announcer was saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis!”

  I walked out from the wings. I’d always gone on first, but never alone. And tonight I was alone and scared. Just go on and do, my brain told me. Just go on and do.

  As I entered the spotlight, excitement began to replace some of my fear. I opened my mouth, and this is what came out: “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen—I’m so glad to be here, and I wish I could share that with my partner, but I can’t, because he isn’t here. It happened about six-thirty this evening, while he was dressing—he was taken suddenly drunk!”

  They shrieked with laughter. The more I did bits about his not being there, the more the people laughed.... I wound up being a hit with fifteen minutes of ad lib that I had never even thought about.

  Y. Frank phoned me the next morning and told me not to take it too hard. “These things happen, Jerry,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He was a gentleman to the end, but I knew I had let him down.

  Dean was in his dressing room. I walked right in, fuming. “You crossed me, Paul.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about your handshake. You gave me your word that we’d do Y. Frank’s benefit.”

  “You’re out of your mind. I don’t know a thing about it.”

  “Where were you last night?” I asked.

  “When did my life become your business?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I sent notes to your dressing room, your wife, your valet, and your country club. So you mean to tell me you didn’t know you were supposed to be at the Shrine at eight o’clock last night?”

  Cool as could be: “Nobody told me there was going to be a benefit.”

  I was struck dumb. Meanwhile, he was going through the motions of looking for something to write on. Finally, he found a typed sheet of paper, turned it over, and started to scribble a note on the back. “Listen, Jer,” he said. “I need two prints of Living It Up. Could you handle that for me?”

  He handed me the note. On the other side was the memo I had sent him.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I DREAM ABOUT DEAN PRETTY OFTEN, MAYBE ONCE A MONTH since he died. In my dreams, he’s almost always young, tan, still unbelievably handsome—indestructible. Sometimes, though, in these ultra-vivid late-night movies, bad things are happening—to him, to me, to both of us—and I’m powerless to stop them. Sometimes, my wife tells me, I cry out in my sleep. Other times, I dream I’m Super Jew, making everything right, doing all the things I might have done, when the pressures on us were so enormous.

  Fortunately, my dreams mostly take me back to the beginning—like our time in Atlantic City, summer of ’46. Dean and I, all of twenty-nine and twenty, are staying at the Princess, a block off the Boardwalk and a bit away from the fashionable district. Down the Boardwalk is the Million-Dollar Pier and the great hotels: The Ritz-Carlton. The Shelburne. The Marlborough-Blenheim. Names that drip diamonds! In our neck of the woods, the hotels have names like The Overlook Villa. The Pink Swan. The Aladdin. The Harem Arms.

  During the day, before our shows at the 500 Club, Dean and I sit on the beach, hoping to sneak a tan so we won’t need makeup—and anyway, to stay in our non-air-conditioned room would be like committing hara-kiri! There we are on the hot sand, hoping to catch a stray ocean breeze, praying that someone will go home and leave their umbrella. When they do, we’re all set, perched like kings under the canvas, out of the July heat.

  This was the time our wives, hot and lonely at home, decided to come down with the kids, meaning Dean and I would have eight mouths to feed between us, one little room to house all these people, and not much money to swing any of it. We agreed we had to tap our greatest— and as yet untested—resource: Dean’s gambling ability.

  In our travels up and down the beach, we had become exquisitely sensitive to the gradations of class in Atlantic City. The Ritz-Carlton, with its gorgeous beachfront restaurant and swimming pool, was the crème de la crème, and it hadn’t escaped my partner’s notice that many of the Ritz’s high-rolling guests amused themselves by playing gin rummy on the beach in front of the hotel.

  “I can take these guys, Jer!” Dean says, his eyes lighting up. “All I need is a bankroll....”

  So we make one. We pool our funds, a big $95 apiece, figuring that with $190 you’re good for at least three hands. The games are Penny A Point, Hollywood, and Boxes, and if you know what you’re doing, you can walk away with big bucks. And Dean knows what he’s doing.

  We get about seventy dollars in singles and a few twenties, and put it all together to make a wad big enough to choke a horse—one that, with the twenties on the outside, actually looks impressive. Dean knows exactly how to carry himself, just how to flash his cash without being too showy. And before I realize what’s happening, he’s sitting down to play some gin.

  Three hours later, with a big grin on his face—and shaking hands all around, to make sure there are no hard feelings—he gets up from the table with sixteen hundred dollars.

  Sixteen hundred! Christ, it would take us almost six weeks to make that kind of bread! Now we’ll be able to take another room at the Princess to handle the wives and kiddies.

  But Dean’s ambitions go a lot higher than an extra room at the Princess. “Now that we’ve got a little money in our pockets, why don’t we go check out the Turf Club,” he tells me.

  The Turf Club was a spiffy private establishment just off the main drag: You had to have a member invite you inside, and you had to have a jacket and a tie, not to mention at least $200 for tips. I tell Dean the tab alone will kill us, but he says that that kind of worrying is for chumps. So one night after our families arrive, having wangled an invitation from one of Dean’s new friends, into the Turf Club we march with wives, children, bottles, and strollers, and ask the headwaiter for the best table in the house.

  He stares at us for a moment, but after Dean slips him a twenty, he leads us to the perfect table. This is the night I learn how far you can get by greasing a palm.

  Then I discover what Dean has known all along: The Turf Club is a gambling club. Dean and Betty and Patti and I are having drinks, and the children are behaving nicely, when Dean whispers, “Come on, Jer. I’ll show you the real world.”

  As we glide up the stairs, leaving the families to order, I suddenly realize we are heading for trouble. And I swear as the Almighty looks down upon me, we aren’t in that gambling hall for eight minutes before Dean has lost eleven hundred dollars at the craps table—and he hasn’t even thrown the dice! When they finally come around to him, he whispers, “Watch this, kid!”

  Oh, I watch, all right, and I become ill before Dean even tosses the dice. We both know who runs this joint, and as funny as my partner and I might be, these guys have no sense of humor. Whatsoever. This is where they make their living. It isn’t personal, just business!

  Dean proceeds to throw three crap rolls, and we are officially
out of funds.

  He hands me the dice, only because he didn’t seven out yet. So we’re still alive—without a sou. My partner asks for a $500 marker—a loan from the house—and, because the pit boss knows who has invited us, Dean gets his chips. He lays $250 on the front line, and I throw the dice.

  They come up seven. We win!

  I throw another seven. We win again!

  Now Dean puts a hundred on the hard eight—a sucker bet; you get eight to one if you throw two fours.

  I throw two fours.

  We win eight hundred bucks, plus the front line, which was three hundred. We now have eleven hundred again, and I can’t lose. I throw a six. Dean bets it back, and I make the six. We win the six bet and the front line once more, and we collect more money than I ever knew existed anywhere in the world, or even Europe. Christ, we’ll never have to work again!

  We now have $3,700 of the house’s money, and the pit bosses from all the other tables are crowding around. They’re curious as much as anything else: They rarely see anyone throw nine passes and still stay at it! But they’re nervous, too: They have absolutely no idea how to stop this crazy, screaming monkey and his handsome friend.

  “Go for it!” Dean shouts.

  “Yeah!” I answer. “Let it roll!”

  We’re now getting close to the house limit, which is a thousand dollars a bet. Holy Christmas—I just threw a ten, made all the bets you can make on that tough number, and now I throw the ten right back.... And all we can do is laugh, while the men around the table glare at me like IRS agents.

  One hour and fifteen minutes later, we go to the cashier and collect $23,000 ... all hundreds ... hundreds ... hundreds!

  We pick up the wives and kids and check into the Ritz-Carlton for the night, in the biggest suite they have. We order up room service in spite of the fact that they all just ate. We order brandy, champagne, Cokes, chocolate milk.... What a night! The eight of us are out of our minds with joy, though Gary is already asleep, and Craig and Claudia and Gail are well on the way.

  And in the morning we head straight over to see Mike Schwartz, the crazy car dealer, who would make anyone any deal on the face of the earth. Dean and I have decided we are now going to be partners in travel. So we buy ourselves a brand-new 1946 Chrysler Town and Country sedan, with wood doors and roof rails, and a spiffier vehicle you have never seen! That night we park it in front of the 500 Club for all the world to see—but we’re not telling Atlantic City anything it doesn’t already know. In that town, at that time, word of mouth wasn’t just about your nightclub performances. It spread even faster when you beat the Turf Club for over twenty G’s!

  A couple of nights later (the families have gone back home) it’s showtime, and as Dean and I do our thing, we notice a few familiar faces at ringside. They just happen to belong to some of those pit bosses from the Turf Club. Just looking at the silly bastards that made them look like silly bastards. They don’t want anything from us, just to get even. After our show, they invite us to sit down and have a drink. We oblige, happily, and laugh and drink till our midnight show. They stay for that one, too. We start changing the material so they don’t get bored.

  Before the night is over—having seen all three shows—they invite us for breakfast at the Turf Club. We understand it’s in our best interests to accept. We go. We eat. It’s 4:15 A.M. when Dean sits down at the blackjack table—and proceeds to beat them again ... for another $8,000. We tell the pit bosses we’re tired and have to get to bed. They say they understand and invite us to come back—anytime!

  At the hotel, we jump up and down on the beds, throwing hundred-dollar bills in the air, until the security man bangs on our door, shouting, “Roseland Dance Hall is down the block, knock it off!” We hush, but can’t stop laughing till we drop off to sleep.

  Dawn comes at a terrible time in the night. Just when you’re getting your best sleep, the sun shines on your face—meaning, time to get up! No, there were no blinds at the Princess: Sunup meant get up.

  We’ve tried eyeshades. They don’t work, only because when we see each other in them, we start calling each other “Zorro.” Every once in a while, Dean drops his sophisticated pose and—just for a few moments— is downright silly. Clowning with those masks was one of those times.

  Anyway, we now have a bank account that requires both our signatures! We’ve got about twenty-six grand left after paying five thousand for the Chrysler. Ten days pass, and Dean and I are discussing what to do with the money we have in the bank, when the answer comes to him like a shot.

  “Why don’t we do what the big guys do?” he says.

  “Yeah, like what the big guys do, and what are we really talking about?” I say.

  Dean explains to me that the only reason these guys at the Turf Club have so much money is that they had so much to gamble in the first place. And now that we have so much money, why shouldn’t we do the same?

  I’m nervous that this won’t fly, but I figure Dean’s nine years older, he’s been around the block a few times. He must be right. Right?

  So we decide to go to the bank the next morning and draw out our money. (Bad idea? You bet, but who knew?) We get to the bank, close out the account, and ask for hundred-dollar bills! They give us 260 hundreds, and we race to the Turf Club—even though it’s only 11:30 in the morning....

  Up we drive in our Chrysler, ready to take on the world. Since it’s before noon, none of the “big boys” are around. We walk up to the blackjack table. We can’t have been there more than fifteen minutes when all of a sudden the boys appear ... wearing open shirts, sweaters; all caught off guard, apparently. But when they heard we were there, they knew their twenty-six grand had come home to roost.

  We’re served drinks and sandwiches, and Dean is on a roll. We win the first eight hands, and he starts pressing (increasing) the bets. And all of a sudden—miracle of miracles—the house limit has vanished. By the end of an hour, we’ve lost all the morning’s winnings—as well as the $26,000. Plus Dean took a marker for $10,000.

  Not all at once, of course. The house wouldn’t give ten grand all at once. It’s called Dribs and Drabs . . . or, in gambling parlance, Grind Him Down... Burn Him Out... Chill the Sucker....

  As we’re attempting to leave and check into the nearest ICU, the head pit boss cordially invites us to sit down in his office. Call him Mr. Cashman.

  “Coffee, fellas?” Cashman says. “Any refreshment?”

  He looks at each of us. When speech isn’t immediately forthcoming, he smiles. “So,” he says. “How do you fellas plan on paying off your marker for the total sum of ten thousand big ones?”

  Dean’s voice is practically a whisper. “Well, we haven’t exactly come to terms with that issue just yet,” he says. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there like Edgar Bergen left Charlie McCarthy alone on a stool.

  Mr. Cashman shrugs. “No big deal,” he says. “When do you guys close at the 500 Club?”

  Since I’m the heavy-duty businessman, I pipe up: “Whenever we close, that’s it!”

  Cashman frowns. “This isn’t the time for funny, kid. I mean, you can’t play off your marker working in two places at the same time.”

  “You mean you want us to play here?” Dean asks. This is, I think, his first clue that we are actually heading into the big time. The Turf Club is upscale, heavyweight.

  “Unless you have a better idea,” Cashman says. “Like giving us the cash!”

  “No, no,” Dean says quickly. “We appreciate the chance to pay it off.”

  Cashman smiles. He has a scary smile. “Play it off,” he says. “We’ll give you guys five thousand a night for a Saturday and a Sunday night at two shows a night, and we’ll be clean.”

  Dean and I look at each other, realizing that’s twenty-five hundred fuckin’ bucks a show. Christ, we’re only making $750 a week apiece at the 500 Club—a total of $1,500 between us, and we’re doing twenty-one shows a week, which comes to about $74 a show. This man has just offered us $2,500 a sho
w!

  Cut to: Skinny D’Amato’s office at the 500 Club. Same day.

  Skinny listens while turning in his leather chair behind the desk he only sits at when there’s trouble. “According to the contract you guys signed, I got you exclusive for any work in and around Atlantic City for the next three years!”

  The silence is deafening. Skinny sees our pain. Skinny is our friend, and now he proves it. “I’ll tell you what,” he says. “You can play their gig, but just this once. I know these people, and I wouldn’t want them angry at either one of you—or me.”

  So we’re broke again, but we have a car, and we’re thrilled to think that we’re going to headline at the Turf Club. Skinny was such a good friend that he allowed us to close on the Friday night of the weekend we promised Mr. Cashman.

  And so comes the fateful Saturday. We rehearse all day, thrilled to learn that the Turf Club’s orchestra is eleven men. A band of eleven musicians—as opposed to the 500’s four. Fortunately, the leader of the Turf Club’s orchestra is a great guy, and he writes us some charts that same day, so we’re in good shape....

  Until that night.

  The joint is loaded with the cream of Atlantic City, all those people who have heard about Martin and Lewis but wouldn’t go to Missouri Avenue to see them. This is an audience that waits until you come to them, and nothing has changed over all the years. The venue doesn’t matter; these people lurk around show business because it’s the thing to do. Not to enjoy themselves, but to see and be seen. It’s like owning a twenty-carat diamond ring and hating the weight of it, but loving people to look.