Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [104]
And then there was Percodan.
By the early seventies, I was up to six of the yellow beauties a day. I’d developed a whole ritual: I would take the first pill in the morning with hot water, believing that the heat and the liquid broke up the medicine and got it into my system faster. On a similar theory, I took the other pills, throughout the day, with Coca-Cola.
The pills kept me going, but there were physical repercussions you wouldn’t even want to hear about, deeply embarrassing things. My marriage was sputtering. I was on a mood roller-coaster, most often headed straight down: When I wasn’t furious, I could be mean as a snake.
On my twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, October 2, 1973, I felt I couldn’t watch the red second hand go around the clock face one more time. I locked myself into my bathroom, took a .38 pistol out of a pad-locked drawer, and stuck the barrel in my mouth. I cocked the hammer. I was ready to go. All the pain, all my troubles, would vanish. I sat there like that for what felt like forever. Then, through the door, I heard my boys, running and playing somewhere off in the house. I took the gun out of my mouth and locked it back in the drawer. I would struggle along somehow.
But there was still plenty of pain to come.
My career was down to two things: the Telethon and personal appearances. While I was on the road, I would often tip a hotel bellboy to come into my room in the morning with a passkey, crush three Percodans in a spoon, and dissolve them in hot water so I could take them and get my day started. I’d lie in bed for twenty minutes until the medicine kicked in, then I’d get up and pop a Dexadrine.
The funny thing was that performing was its own drug. It remains true to this day. No matter how shitty I feel when I get out of bed in the morning, the moment I step onto a stage, the adrenaline takes over. Back then, I would often avoid taking the Percodans before I performed, so my head would stay relatively clear and my timing would be sharper.
After I got off the stage, it was another story.
While I did a number of shows drug-free in those days, there was such a thick haze of Percodan before and after that it’s hard for me to remember them. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that there’s an entire block of MDA Telethons—some four or five years in the mid- and late-seventies—that I have no recollection of whatsoever.
Except one.
I was on stage at the Sahara in Vegas, doing “Telethon ’76,” for the greatest cause on the planet (of course, I’m prejudiced). As I was singing “Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody,” I found myself thinking, Why do I feel something’s about to happen?
I finished the number and introduced Frank Sinatra, who came on to a standing ovation ... just for being there. He sang a couple of songs and stopped the show cold—as he always did. Then Frank and I talked about his healthy grandchildren, and he made a five-thousand-dollar contribution to the Telethon. While I was thanking him, he interrupted, saying, “I have a friend who watches what you do here every year and thinks it’s terrific. I’d like to have him come out.” Frank then yelled, “Hey, send my friend out here, will ya?”
And out walked Dean Martin, my partner, and I was in a time warp. My hands got sweaty, my mouth turned dry. I tried to stand tall as he approached me, and we hugged hard, very hard. He kissed me on the cheek, and I did the same to him. The audience in the theater was going wild! For the first time in twenty years, we stood side by side—as always, Dean stage right, me stage left. “I think it’s about time, don’t you?” Frank said. The two of us nodded yes in tandem. We talked ... a little. I prayed to God for something to say that wouldn’t make me sound like an emotional idiot.
“You workin’?” I finally asked, looking directly