Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [34]
Frank was always very gung ho about the team, and he had tremendous respect for both of us as individuals. Where Dean was concerned, I’ll say this: Frank Sinatra idolized very few men—but Dean was certainly one of them. It was complicated. Frank was a softie under a brass exterior, a mama’s boy who never felt, despite his many conquests, that he was manly enough. Dean was a man’s man, a big jungle cat, totally easy in his skin—or at least very, very good at convincing the world that he was.
The reality was, this was his way of keeping the world at arm’s length.
The truth behind the spaghetti-and-meatballs Steubenville myth was (I learned as I got to know my partner better) that Dean came from a cold, calculating, insensitive Italian family. Doesn’t match up with the cliché, right? Well, there are all kinds of Italians—scientists, statesmen, artists . . . and killers.
His mother and his father told him the following: One: “You’re going out into the real world; there is no one there that will care for you.” Two: “Be sure that the money you have in your hand goes in your pocket.” Three: “You cry, you’re a fag. You show people any kind of warmth, and they will get closer to you. If you show them that you have your own persona and you’re happy with it, they will stay away.”
Dean got squat from his mother, father, brother, aunts, uncles. He was lonely, unhappy, and felt totally unloved. Throughout his previous career as a casino dealer, small-time boxer, and semisuccessful singer, he was always alone.
And so was I. Even though I had the love of my Grandma Sarah, who kept me weekends . . . my Aunt Rose, who kept me Mondays and Tuesdays . . . my Aunt Betty, who kept me Wednesdays and Thursdays, and my fat Aunt Jean, who kept me Fridays only, because she had Saturday-night poker parties with six Jewish ladies. I was known as the Pony Express kid, shipped from one place to another—always traveling, because my mom and dad were always on the road, to burlesque, vaudeville, concert dates, the Borscht Circuit; to Lakewood, New Jersey, in the winter months.
And so Dean and I understood each other. Deeply. He maintained that distance from everybody except me. Our closeness worked for us, bonding us in the way that audiences loved, and—over time—against us.
But where Frank was concerned, Dean could never totally let down his guard. And—in a not totally healthy way—Frank was drawn to that reserve. It made Dean more manly and fascinating in Frank’s eyes. When Frank saw the way Dean handled the Mob, he was amazed. Dean never gave them the time of day; he played dumb or drunk, or he was just off playing golf. He referred all business decisions to “the Jew,” anyway. Frank, on the other hand, was drawn to the wiseguys’ mystique because it made him feel tougher. But he was also a very smart man, smart enough to know that it was a crutch, one that Dean didn’t need.
With Frank and me, it was different. We shared a huge regard for each other’s talent, and a deep personal affection: Our personalities dovetailed. Very often he and I would be alone, on a plane trip to a benefit somewhere, or at Paramount, in my office or dressing room, while Dean was playing golf. Frank was always very open about his love affair with Martin and Lewis, and when we split as a team, he had to make a choice. It had to be one or the other. Dean and I were not talking, and Frank knew that Dean needed a friendship with substance.
For a while after July 24, 1956, people thought I would be just fine (even if I didn’t always know it myself). But they worried about Dean.
CHAPTER SIX
IN TERMS OF OWNERSHIP, BACKING, AND PATRONAGE, ORGANIZED crime played a central role in the nighttime world of cabaret entertainment in the 1940s and ’50s. Inevitably, Dean and I came to know, usually on quite friendly terms, every major figure in the