Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [109]
Outside, I met Frank. He grabbed my hand and said, “Well, we lost the big gun, my friend!”
I said, “We didn’t lose him, God just placed him elsewhere.”
Frank said, “Yeah, I know. How you holding up, Jew?” That’s all Frank ever called me, for fifty-one years, and I loved it. We held hands like two kids, not knowing what to say next. Thank God, I had to get back to the plane. I boarded the jet—and the tears came.
I lost my partner and my best friend. The man who made me the man I am today. I think of him with undying respect. I miss him every day I’m still here. I’ve considered the idea of our getting together again someday, but I believe when we die we are just put away and life goes on. My prayer to be with him again isn’t realistic, but I’ll live the rest of my life with the memory of a great and wonderful man, my partner, Dean Martin... G.R.H.S.
So many memories flash and flicker around my brain—and the strangest ones come up at the strangest times. Why am I thinking, now, about those first crazy shows we did, way back before we were even a team, at the Havana-Madrid in the spring of ’46?
I’ve told you already about all the insane things I did to get Dean’s attention while he was performing, just to try and make him laugh. And how scared I was, at first, that he wouldn’t like what I did—and then, when I came out of the kitchen with that goddamn hunk of raw meat on a fork, he smiled, and it was like the sun coming out on the rest of my life.
Something else just popped into my mind.
The third or fourth night into my relentless menu of stunts, I realized that no matter what I did, short of lighting a stick of dynamite on stage, Dean would do takes, throw lines, and just go right on singing. (Most songs run two and a half to three minutes; with my help, his could run eleven or twelve.) That was the wonder of it all, the fun and joy of it all—but being nineteen years old, I couldn’t help but want to try to top myself. Then I had an inspiration.
As I said before, the staff at the Havana-Madrid was even more enthusiastic about our go-for-broke craziness than the few patrons who were still around in those early-morning hours. And so when I approached the guy who ran the lighting board with my idea, I knew right away that I had a willing accomplice.
Dean had gotten a little ways into “Pennies from Heaven”—up to the line that goes, “Save them for a package of sunshine and flowers”— when I hit the main switch and the whole place went black.
The musicians fumbled along for a moment, then stopped dead.
And Dean—of course!—never hesitated for a second. You think he had any doubts about what had just occurred, and who was behind it? No, going on with his number (even a capella) was a matter of pride for him at that point—and in one of those lightninglike inspirations I would soon learn he was capable of, he instantly figured out a way he could be seen as well as heard. He took out his gold-plated Zippo cigarette lighter, flicked the flint, held the flame under that unbelievably handsome face, and finished his song in the mellow flicker of its flame just as though nothing at all had happened.
No, scratch that. He finished up that goddamn number even more stylishly than if the spotlight had been right on his face.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to start by acknowledging Jerry Lewis himself, who was not only the first person I ever saw on a movie screen (in a trailer for the re-release of At War with the Army, in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, circa 1956), but who, in all his super-complicated essence, and in all his complex associations for me—Jersey landsman, coreligionist (both in Judaism and comedy), friend, writing partner, and indubitable father-surrogate— has compelled me ever since our first meeting, for a New Yorker profile I wrote in 2000.
The following people were also essential to this project: Peter Bogdanovich (who introduced me to Jerry in the first place), the tireless Chris Lewis,