Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [28]
“You and the chick?” Dean asked.
“What chick?” I said.
“What are you talking about? What’s happening?” he asked—but I could see he realized something big had changed since he tied that last one on.
I told him the whole story. And then, after he had slapped me on the back and gone to shower, I finally gave in to the emotions that had been building up over the past five roller-coaster days.
A few hours later, we were once again on Stage 9, for “Martin and Lewis Screen Test 2.” Instead of Irma’s apartment, we were standing by the orange-juice stand that Steve and Seymour operated—Steve out front, selling, Seymour in back, squeezing. Within minutes, we would develop the business about Seymour’s occupational injury, the hand that became a claw from so much orange-squeezing....
But what we had already developed, in the time it took to make that second test, was the Martin and Lewis we all grew up with—including me.
The act that would work not only for Paramount but also for companies like RCA, Liggett & Myers Tobacco, Famous Music Corporation, Kodak Corporation, Technicolor Corporation, Chapman Boom Corporation, Mitchell Camera Corporation, Panavision Corporation . . .
This chain of companies, entities, and individuals would never have come together if it hadn’t been for that second screen test—
The same screen test that led (it could be argued) along a winding but certain path to our breakup eight years later.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHILE WAITING TO SHOOT, WE GOT BUSY IN OTHER WAYS.
We might have passed on MGM, but we didn’t overlook two of that studio’s loveliest young stars, June Allyson and Gloria De Haven. June was the same age as Dean, an established screen presence, a sweet woman who specialized in wholesome, girl-next-door parts. The beautiful Gloria was, like me, in her early twenties, and (unlike me) playing mainly ingenue roles.
Dean and June found each other almost as soon as we arrived in L.A. There was never any stopping my partner, and there was no stopping women once they’d set eyes on him! And since June and Gloria were best pals, it made sense—by the peculiar rules of Hollywood, and of up-and-coming young performers—that Ms. De Haven and I would get together.
What made a little less sense was that all four players in this little roundelay were married . . . to other people.
June’s husband was the movie star Dick Powell (42nd Street). They had a little boy and a young daughter. Gloria was married to the movie star John Payne (Miracle on 34th Street). They had a little girl and a baby boy. Dean and I, of course, were married to Betty and Patti, with four children between us.
Were we nuts?
Sure we were, but try to understand. My partner had established his ground rules well before we met: A real man has a wife and kids—and whatever he can get on the side. And Dean could get plenty.
He was handsome and suave and funny beyond compare, and I wanted to be just like him—to the extent that anatomy allowed. Dean could get women before he had a dime in his pocket. I had to wait. But not any longer.
When fame and money come all at once, even the strongest men will get their heads turned around. I had plenty of strengths, but avoiding temptation was not one of them. Imagine—just months before Dean and I played the Copa and Slapsy Maxie’s, I was lucky to have fifty bucks to my name.
Now I was walking down Fifth Avenue (we were back in New York, to plan the upcoming year) with three grand in hundred-dollar bills in my pocket. And plenty more where that came from.
Same with my partner.
Can you blame us for going a little hog wild?
Dean and I booked two suites at the Hampshire House on Central Park South. Previous to this, we’d usually shared a hotel suite. But with all the action we were about to show New York, we needed space!
Now, imagine our surprise and delight when the very same two young ladies we had been squiring in Hollywood suddenly showed up in Manhattan and checked into