How a flop night in Atlantic City created Martin and Lewis
Their first show together at Atlantic City's 500 Club in July 1946 bombed, and the owner threatened to fire Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis before the second set. In the alley out back they scrapped the plan: Martin would sing, Lewis would wreck it dressed as a clumsy busboy. That chaos launched a decade of fame.
Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, in 1917, the son of an Italian barber. As a teenager he boxed as Kid Crochet, joking that of his 12 fights he won all but 11, then dealt cards and ran a roulette wheel in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop while singing with local bands as Dino Martini. The Cleveland bandleader Sammy Watkins suggested the name Dean Martin.
He met Lewis in 1944 at a New York hotel where both were on the bill. After the rescued Atlantic City night, the act ran up the East Coast to the Copacabana; the trick, both said, was to ignore the audience and play to each other. Their agent's deal with Paramount paid them just 75,000 dollars for their films with producer Hal Wallis, but left them free to co-produce an outside film each year and keep control of their club, record, radio and TV work, which earned them millions.
Resentment grew. Martin felt he was playing a stooge in near-identical films, and when a Look magazine cover cropped him out of a publicity photo with Lewis, he exploded. In one film, he complained, 35 minutes passed before he sang, and then to animals. The pair split on 25 July 1956, ten years to the day after their first show.
His first solo film failed, and rock and roll was sidelining crooners. He took a pay cut to act in the war drama The Young Lions, and it began his comeback. Though he could not read music, he recorded 35 studio albums, and in 1964 Everybody Loves Somebody pushed the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night off the top of the US chart.
Source: Dean Martin
