Oh my...so many mixed emotions about this book. I had seen several of Jerry Lewis' films from the 60s, and one or two of the films he and Martin starred in. A couple of months ago, I started watching the Colgate Comedy Hour when it airs once a week on a local channel, and I totally fell in love with Martin and Lewis. They're a perfect team. So when I found out that Jerry Lewis had written a memoir, I had to read it.I have a love-hate relationship with celebrity memoirs and biographies. I love reading behind the scenes stories. I hate finding out not-so-great details about their personal lives.Two things turned me off from this book right from the beginning. First was the language. Profanity is one of my pet peeves. I didn't feel like it was necessary at all...even if Lewis and Martin did swear like this in real life, we could have got the gist of their conversations without the awful profanity. It was so distracting to me. Also, I hated their attitudes about infidelity. "We're men and we're stars...duh, we're *going* to cheat on our wives." Um...no. It's not "guaranteed." Just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean you have to be unfaithful in your marriage. That was really disappointing.Okay- now the good. :) I loved learning more about these two guys and their relationship and their career as a team. And I'll admit...I cried. This book was heartbreaking. The phone call they had right after their last performance together? There were tears. I don't think Dean Martin or Jerry Lewis were easy people to love, but the love they had for each other was obvious. I was also strangely fascinated with the parts about the Mob and the fact that apparently *every* single popular nightclub in the 40s and 50s was run by a gangster! I can't believe this kind of stuff really happened.I don't think watching the Colgate Comedy Hour will ever be the same after reading this book. In a good way and a bad way. Maybe I'll try to block out certain parts of what I read so it won't hinder my enjoyment of watching them. :) Now I'm off to see as many of their films as I can get my hands on.
Dean Martin was a handsome singer and Jerry Lewis a slapstick comedian, neither of their careers going anywhere. But when they teamed up in Atlantic City in 1946 they became an enormously popular comedy duo in those distressed post-WWII years. Martin was the perfect straight man to Lewis' over-the-top mugging, and for 10 years they were on top of the world, making big money in the nightclub circuit and 17 films with the leading Hollywood ladies of the day. This all happened before my time - I'd heard some songs by Dean Martin and seen some Jerry Lewis films and I'm not a fan of either man - but there's no denying their place in American culture. It's important to remember that this is a memoir, it is not unprejudiced. Jerry Lewis frequently takes most of the credit, airs his complaints and even indulges in a few potshots. He tells some unflattering experiences that probably should have remained private, such as Martin tweezing crabs from "Little Jerry." The level of detail and humor in his memory are a bit too good to believe, but he tries to give Martin his due. He laments that Martin was never given full credit as a very talented comedian, and claims to have always had a love for him despite their bitter and public falling out. Jerry Lewis has been a celebrity and enjoyed a life of extreme overindulgence for so long that he comes off as rather out of touch with normal folks. I come away from this book with a tarnished image of someone I'd previously seen mainly as a humanitarian and children's advocate. Rather than sounding candid he just sounded foul-mouthed and disgusting. Still, it's kind of an interesting and mildly entertaining look into the world of 1950s celebrity. Fans of Lewis will probably love it regardless, but bear in mind that it's not exactly an unbiased account. (Stephen Hoye does a very good job reading the book, done mostly in a good imitation of Jerry Lewis' nasally New Jersey whine, while his Dean Martin sounds smooth and velvety, but every organized crime personality sounds like the Godfather.)
Whew! Is this book honest to both tremendous frailty and incredible strength.Memoirs of celebs are not my thing. Yesterday I walked into my library to get something that had been held for me and they had set up a new and recent display. Each staff member had put on it three of their favorite books in different genres from different periods. This was there on that shelf. So I took it. And read it over a period of a busy day. Drawing me like a magnet between necessary chores, appointment, etc. Could not leave it unless absolutely necessary. The story, that time, I can barely remember, but it's straight. It's a long love letter to a life and a person. It holds sadness, but it also holds an understanding of aloofness, ego, need for separation and selfishness of choice. And at the same time it celebrates and details the minutia of events and time within a 10 year span when exposure was close to being absolute. And not just to each other either.Not a great fan of slapstick style of Lewis in movies, this book is as good as Martin's "Return to Me".
—Jeanette
I loved this book. The story of Martin and Lewis, as told by Jerry Lewis, is a showbiz story as big, sweeping, and heartbreaking as the story of The Beatles.I grew up with the different stages of Jerry Lewis. I was too young to have known him as part of a partnership, but as a kid, I loved his movies. Every kid did back then. As I got older, I seemed to grow out of that type of comedy, but I watched Lewis's annual telethon for Muscular Dystrophy with a bit of unease. It seemed he wasn't the goofy innocent at all, but was more like Buddy Love, the "Mr. Hyde" of The Nutty Professor. Smarmy, defensive, arrogant, and a bit unpleasant. I found out, reading this book, that during that stage, he was heavily addicted to Percodan, after taking a debilitating fall onstage.Later, he turned in a redeeming acting performance in Scorsese's The King of Comedy. Dean Martin I knew mainly as an aging crooner who liked to drink and who liked to laugh at jokes at his own expense. The "drunk" was all an act, I found out, reading this book.This book made me forget those personas and focus on two very three-dimensional men who thoroughly enjoyed the better part of ten years together as a comedy team, and a relationship that today we would call a bromance for the ages. The vagaries of showbiz chipped away at the chinks in this friendship until they grew apart. Eventually Dean would say something so hurtful to Jerry that it would take decades for the relationship to be repaired.But it was repaired. Too little, too late? Maybe. And that's where a lot of the heartbreak in this book comes in. You may cry a bit, but you'll also laugh. You'll also thrill to the anecdotes about the mob. Jerry tells his story with a love and admiration for his "big brother" Dean that you'll never forget.
—Eric Kibler
I have a total crush on Dean Martin, so this book by Jerry Lewis was fascinating. I knew next to nothing about Martin and Lewis (other than that they were partners), so I loved hearing about the jokes and pranks and humor they found together.Lewis portrays Martin as a totally different person than the media's perception and portrayal. He frequently comments on Dean's tendency to play the drunk both for humor's sake and to keep people at a distance. Martin's love for old Westerns made me smile, since one of my favorite movies is El Dorado.I am woefully uneducated in the movie careers of both Martin and Lewis, and I hope that I can find some copy of their act on DVD.Very touching book - truely a love story including the requisite heartbreak. I'm not sure what Martin's perspective on the whole situation was, but Lewis certainly tries to give credit where credit is due - maybe something only possible in hindsight.
—Lani
