Dean and Me: (A Love Story) by Jerry Lewis, James Kaplan

I was flying back from Phoenix and didn't want to pull down my carry-on, so I just picked something off of my Kindle. This was it.

They were the unlikeliest of pairs—a handsome crooner and a skinny monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J.. Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something clicked—something miraculous—and audiences saw it at once.
Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions (and the women) flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years from the day when the two men joined forces, it all ended.
After that traumatic day, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart.
In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of a fifty-year friendship, from the springtime, 1945 afternoon when the two vibrant young performers destined to conquer the world together met on Broadway and Fifty-fourth Street, to their tragic final encounter in the 1990s, when Lewis and his wife ran into Dean Martin, a broken and haunted old man.
In Dean & Me, Jerry Lewis makes a convincing case for Dean Martin as one of the great—and most underrated—comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love Lewis felt, and still feels, for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.

The Martin and Lewis heyday was long past by the time I knew anything about them as a team, but both were known to me. As were the stories that swirled around their break-up. I saw some of their movies, but found them only mildly amusing. Lewis’s were the same. Funny, but not terribly so, which could have said more about the times than the movies. But I did enjoy Martin’s work, especially in Rio Bravo and The Sons of Katie Elder.

Given that, I began reading as something of a Dean Martin fan, but not really one of Jerry Lewis’s. While the book didn’t change my feelings about Martin, it did manage to make me like Lewis, as it laid to rest many of the myths that grew up around their split. Yes, the book was written by Lewis, but much of what he writes rings true, especially after what was written about Martin after his death.

The book’s biggest flaw is that it’s quite obviously written by a non-writer, which is odd since it appears to have been co-written by James Kaplan, a published author. But some issues are covered more than once, while others could have been covered in more depth. And the “this is Lewis speaking,” tone could have been downplayed a bit.




Mount TBR 2017 Book Links (Yea, they now allow e-books!)

Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.

1. The Lost Girls
2. Hillbilly Elegy
3. Our Revolution
4. Requiem for Athens
5. Dark Angels
6. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
7. The Last Kingdom
8. The Lost Child of Philomena Lee: A Mother, Her Son and a 50 Year Search
9. And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East
10. Now Face to Face
11. Our Endless Numbered Days
12.Dean and Me: (A Love Story)