Dean Martin: Encyclopedia II - Dean Martin - Biography

Dean Martin - Biography

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti in the West Virginia-Ohio border-town of Steubenville, Ohio, found phenomenal success in almost every entertainment venue and, although suffering a few down times during his career, always managed to come out on top. His parents were Italian Gaetano and Angela Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. During the 1950s, he and partner Jerry Lewis formed "Martin and Lewis," one of the most popular comic duos in filmdom and the most financially successful comedy team in history (only Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, never officially partners, arguably had more impact with their films and other appearances). After splitting with Lewis after exactly ten years, he was associated with Hollywood's ultra-cool Rat Pack and came to be known as the chief deputy to the "Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra.

Although initially a comic actor, Martin also proved himself in such dramas as The Young Lions (1958), more than holding his own opposite Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. He was also never above poking sly fun at his image as a smooth womanizer in such outings as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s. As a singer, Martin was, by his own admission, not the greatest baritone on earth, and made no bones about having copied the styles of Bing Crosby and Perry Como. He couldn't even read music, and yet recorded more than 100 albums and 500 songs, racking up major hits such as "That's Amore", "Volare", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" and his signature tune "Everybody Loves Somebody". Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by Martin, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style.

For three decades, Martin was among the most popular nightclub acts in Las Vegas. Although a smooth comic, he never wrote his own material. On television, Martin had a highly rated, near-decade-long series; it was there that he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-soused crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with sexist remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy, if not somewhat slurred, remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. Martin attributed his long-term TV popularity to the fact that he never put on airs or pretended to be anyone else onstage, but that's not necessarily true. Those closest to him categorized him as a great enigma; for, despite all his exterior fame and easygoing charm, Martin was a complex, introverted soul and a loner. Even his closest friend, Sinatra, only saw Martin once or twice per year. His private passions were golf, going to restaurants, and watching television. He loathed parties—even when hosting them—and would sometimes sneak off to bed without telling a soul. He once said in a 1978 interview for Esquire Magazine that, although he loved performing, particularly in nightclubs, if he had to do it over again he would be a professional golfer or baseball player.

Dean never made any claims to being an intellectual or put on pretentious airs, and perhaps was telling the truth when he told an interviewer that he had only read one book in his life, the children's story Black Beauty. In his 2005 book about Martin, Dean and Me: A Love Story, Jerry Lewis notes that Martin was especially fond of comic books, but would always send someone else out to buy them for him.

The son of a Steubenville barber, Martin dropped out of school in the tenth grade and took a string of odd jobs ranging from steelworker to bootlegger; at the age of 15, he was a 135-pound boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crocetti." It was from his prizefighting years that he got a broken nose (it was later fixed), a permanently split lip, and his beat-up hands. For a time, he was involved with gambling as a roulette stickman and blackjack croupier. At the same time, he practiced his singing with local bands. Billing himself as "Dino Martini" (after the then-famous Metropolitan Opera tenor, Nino Martini), he got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. But in the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins. It was here that he changed his name to Dean Martin. A hernia got Martin out of the Army during World War II, and with wife and children in tow, he worked for several bands throughout the early 1940s, scoring more on looks and personality than vocal ability until he developed his own smooth singing style. Failing to achieve a screen test at MGM, Martin appeared permanently destined for the nightclub circuit until he met fledgling comic Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participation in each other's acts, and ultimately forming a music-comedy team.

Martin and Lewis' official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 25, 1946, and club patrons throughout the East Coast were soon convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and, ultimately, the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year that Martin and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal Wallis as comedy relief for the film My Friend Irma. Martin and Lewis was the hottest act in nightclubs, films, and television during the early '50s, but the pace and the pressure took its toll, and the act broke up in 1956, ten years to the day after the first official teaming. Lewis had no trouble maintaining his film popularity alone, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire to his former partner, found the going rough, and his first solo-starring film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, bombed to a stunning degree. Jackie Gleason was virtually alone at the time in predicting that Martin would eventually be bigger than Lewis, since he had the comic timing, appearance, and singing voice, and could move well onstage.

Never totally comfortable in films, Martin still wanted to be known as a real actor. So, though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in the war drama The Young Lions (1957), he eagerly agreed in order that he could be with and learn from Brando and Clift. Tony Randall already had the part, but talent agency MCA realized that with this movie, Martin would become a triple threat: they could make fortunes from his work in night clubs, movies, and records, so they engineered Randall's replacement, giving Martin one of the plum dramatic roles of the decade. The film turned out to be the cornerstone of Martin's spectacular comeback; by the mid-'60s, he was a top movie, recording, and nightclub attraction, even as Lewis' star rapidly began to fade.

In 1965, Martin launched his weekly NBC comedy-variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image as a lazy, carefree boozer, even though few entertainers worked as hard to make what they were doing look so easy. It's also no secret that Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze, most of the time onstage. He stole the lovable-drunk shtick from Phil Harris; and his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running (1958) and Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959) led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism. In the late 1970s, Martin concentrated on club dates, recordings, and an occasional film, and even made a surprise appearance, thanks to Frank Sinatra, on the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1976. (Talk of a complete reconciliation and possible re-teaming of their old act, however, was dissipated when it was clear that, to paraphrase Lewis, the men may have loved each other but didn't like each other).

On December 1, 1983 while playing Blackjack at the Golden Nugget Casino in Atlantic City, Martin and Frank Sinatra intimidated the blackjack dealer and several casino employees into breaking New Jersey casino laws by making the dealer deal the cards by hand instead of by a shoe which is required by law. Although Sinatra and Martin were implicated as the direct cause of the violation, neither were fined by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. The Golden Nugget on the other hand received a $25,000 fine and four employees including the dealer, a supervisor and pit boss were suspended from their jobs without pay.

Martin's even-keel world began to crumble in 1987, when his son Dean Paul Martin was killed in a plane crash. A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1989 was abruptly canceled, and the public was led to believe it was due to a falling out with Sinatra; only intimates knew that Martin was a very sick man who had never completely recovered from the loss of his son and, as a lifelong smoker, was suffering from emphysema. But Martin courageously kept his private life to himself, emerging briefly and rather jauntily for a public celebration of his 77th birthday with friends and family. Whatever his true state of health, he proved in this rare public appearance that he was still the inveterate showman. Martin died of respiratory failure at the age of 78 on Christmas morning, 1995. Martin had been told he needed major surgery on his kidneys and liver in order to prolong his life, and he had refused.

At his side for much of his last illness was ex-wife #2 Jeannie (Bieggers) Martin, whom he had divorced to marry a younger woman, Catherine Hawn. He quickly divorced Hawn, a former hair salon receptionist, after deciding that she was a big-spending opportunist. Dean and Jeannie became closer during his last years and there were rumors of reconciliaton, but it was too late. In a bit of irony, like fellow "boozer" W.C. Fields, Martin died on Christmas Day.

There was talk of a feature film biography about Martin called "Dino", with Tom Hanks in the starring role and Martin Scorcese directing. But as of 2006, the project has yet to come to fruition. On a side note, Hanks previously portrayed the singer in an episode of Saturday Night Live. Martin was portrayed by Joe Mantegna in an HBO movie about Sinatra and Martin entitled The Rat Pack.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki