Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
by Jerry Lewis, James Kaplan
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Book Summary Information
Author: James Kaplan, Jerry LewisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-10-10
ISBN: 0767920872
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Book Reviews of Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
Book Review: Remembering Good Times and Lots of Laughs
Summary: 5 Stars
Jerry Lewis' memoir _Dean & Me (A Love Story) _, written with James Kaplan, was a great read. Lewis covers the ten year period of his partnership with Dean Martin in minute detail, and his feelings towards Martin shine forth on the pages, from the moment they meet throughout their work together, to the years after their parting and, decades later, Martin's death. He recounts his and Martin's beginnings and also the years after their break-up, but the main focus of the book is the high points and hard times of their work together. If you're looking for insights into the mechanics of their sketches, you need to look elsewhere, for other than an account of Lewis' first time interfering with Martin's act, the book refers obliquely to their routines, recounting specifics only for special events or unusual situations where one or the other went on alone. Lewis delivers a very even-handed presentation of their success and the subsequent problems that led to their break-up. You hear of all the famous places the comedic duo performed and the famous faces they met, including sympathetic, almost affectionate portraits of movers and shakers like Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe and movie producer Hal Wallis. In fact, the whole tone of the book can be described as heart-felt; Jerry Lewis' passionate love for comedy and the people he's met, especially his idolization of his partner, comes through on every page, without turning into mawkishness or over-romanticizing. Jerry Lewis puts forward his own explanation for how he and Dean Martin, with their oddball hi-jinks, did so spectacularly well in the post-World War II, early to mid 1950's, era, and in doing so spins a wonderful story of two guys who, in finding each other, made themselves into stage and film success stories while making America laugh.
Summary of Dean and Me: (A Love Story)
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.
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