Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
by Nick Tosches
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Book Summary Information
Author: Nick ToschesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1999-04-13
ISBN: 038533429X
Number of pages: 656
Publisher: Delta
Book Reviews of Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
Book Review: "I always plays to de common folk"
Summary: 5 Stars
_Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams_ lives up to its subtitle. Nick Tosches unearths nearly every single shady dealing, squalid affair or dangerous mook that Dean Martin ever withstood from his days in the Boy Scouts to the end of his nightclub/TV/radio/Hollywood success-filled life. And through it all he remains one cool cat, the smoothest of the smooth, a man's man, a product of his sexist and un-politically correct times and one of the most successful entertainers of his generation.
Nick Tosches researched his subject more thoroughly than Howard Carter excavated King Tut's Tomb. Almost 100 pages of notes and sources document his consultation with a plethora of relatives, associates, co-workers, magazine articles, reviews, you name it; the acknowledgement section alone needs its own Dewey Decimal System number. He recreates Martin's voice strikingly, peppering his statements with colloquialisms, shortened verbs and Italian phrases.
"That half-a-finocchio husband of June's, Dick Powell, didn't know what he was missing. Besides Patti was Italian; she had been around; she ought to know what state zitt' meant."
Martin - tumbler tinkling in one hand, cigarette spitting tendrils of smoke, and an easy smile on his face - emerges as the archetypal leading man: "tall, dark and handsome"; one who beneath his charismatic exterior maintains lontananza, an emotional distance, between himself and even his closest friends. This aura of coolness and unflappability coupled with his charm and good looks made him irresistible even to men, from average joes in the cheap seats to successful stars beside him on stage like Frank Sinatra or Jerry Lewis. Women adored him. Guys hung around him, hoping some of his style would rub off on them by association. They all wanted to be just like him. And at his core, infusing his identity and personality, was menefreghismo. Dean Martin was the ultimate menefreghista - one who does not give a rat's ass.
_Dino_ dishes up many insights into Dean Martin and the immense number of people he had known, places he passed through and the vast sums of money he made on the way. Tosches illustrates his father's journey from Italy to L'America; the nightclubs and palaces he and Jerry Lewis played at during their rise to stardom and, after they part, his rise to superstardom. There are enough details of contracts, percentages and shares of the gross that, if you flip the pages quickly enough, the book could spit dollar signs. Tosches also divulges intricate details of Cosa Nostra connections and their dealings floating around the periphery of Martin's life but always kept at bay. And, of course, the women. Tosches' portrait of Dean Martin captures your attention as strongly as the real man must have captivated audiences throughout his life.
Tosches also attempts to capture the sense of the zeitgeist that Martin sought success in and eventually became reigning king of. At junctures, he launches into cultural commentary that combines James Ellroy with Alexis de Tocqueville, expounding on the nature of mob culture that elevates Martin as a favorite son:
"The culture of the American gentry - that is, the culture of Europe which it appropriated for lack of its own - would never become the culture of America. The few had the wealth. But the mob had the numbers, the loudest voice. And, as ever, the cry of the voice was the same. In whatever language, it was for bread and circuses."
Occasionally, Tosches' baroque exposition takes away from the story, but most often he succeeds. He has a seductive, boisterous writing style all his own, like a seasoned, cynical raconteur holding court at the bar with intelligent, off-color stories; I could easily read more of his work. Tosches gives us a vision of the sleazy, vulgar, sex-driven world of Hollywood and TV productions parading gorgeous entertainers and their shallow fare before the eyes of the guffawing, naïve, average slobs who kept shelling out money and begging for more.
"It would be those who were most rightfully heir to the dead centuries' spirit, those who had fled here from Europe ... whose tastes would become those of the nation. They were the ones, analfabeta, unlettered, who built her; they, and their children, were the ones whose song she would sing, stealing at last the vulgar words and colors and chords from her own native winds."
Summary of Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
From dealing blackjack in the small-time gangster town of Steubenville, Ohio, to carousing with the famous "Rat Pack" in a Hollywood he called home, Dean Martin lived in a grandstand, guttering life of booze, broads, and big money. He rubbed shoulders with the mob, the Kennedys, and Hollywood's biggest stars. He was one of America's favorite entertainers. But no one really knew him. Now Nick Tosches reveals the man behind the image--the dark side of the American dream. It's a wild, illuminating, sometimes shocking tale of sex, ambition, heartaches--and a life lived hard, fast, and without apologies.From the Paperback edition.
Only a handful of showbiz biographers can lay claim to posessing the literary acumen of writers like Michael Holroyd and Peter Ackroyd. Nick Tosches is one of these writers, and his unauthorized biography of Dean Martin stands as a testament to his genius. Several inimitable sequences in which Tosches adopts his subject's perspective (most of which are regrettably unsuitable for quotation here) make the book a real standout.
Dino is a fascinating portrait of a man who had it all--money, fame, women--and didn't give a damn about any of it and suggests that, even as he wallowed in the excesses of Hollywood and the Rat Pack, Martin stayed critically aloof from that world, albeit often in a booze-and-pill-addled haze. He got into showbiz precisely because it required so little effort of him: "I can't stand an actor or actress who tells me acting is hard work," he once said. "It's easy work. Anyone who says it is hard never had to stand on his feet all day dealing blackjack." Nobody could impress Martin. While Frank Sinatra would do anything just to hang out with reputed Mafioso, the Mob would have to make special trips to ask Martin in person to play a show at one of their casinos.
Tosches' portrait, written only a few years before Martin's death in 1996, depicts its subject as nothing so much as a Zen master without the spiritual anchor; after sampling everything that life had to offer and finding it lacking, Martin spent the last years of his life waiting to die in virtual seclusion.
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