Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [39]
I take the card from his head, and behind that scorecard is the face of the happiest man I ever saw in my life. I look at the card. The pro shot a 71, and Dean shot a 74—three strokes’ difference! I jump into his arms, yelling, “I knew it! I knew it!” and the clubs fall to the floor with a big clatter—which, since it’s 1:55 in the afternoon, shouldn’t be a big deal, except that some people might still be asleep, especially the ones who were at our club the night before till 5:30 A.M.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I swear Dean sang better that night. He built a nice relationship with that club pro and played there, over the years, every time we were in Chicago.
When Dean was happy, the work was better. The same with me. When either of us was sad, the work broke down a little bit—not always so the outside world could see, but we knew. For now, though, we were happy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
IT’S A STORY AS OLD AS TIME: PEOPLE MEET, FALL IN LOVE, HAVE babies, fall out of love. The process is especially severe if one’s life changes radically while the other’s doesn’t.
When Dean first met Betty McDonald, she was a reach for him—a fresh-faced, lacrosse-playing Swarthmore girl, the adored youngest daughter of a successful liquor distributor. Who the hell was Dean Martin in 1941? A tough Italian kid fresh out of Steubenville who had made it as far as Cleveland. A band singer with a handsome face (and as yet unfixed nose), a smooth manner, and a sixty-five-dollar-a-week contract with Sammy Watkins and His Orchestra.
An upstart and a social climber, in the eyes of Betty’s family, when the two of them courted and married.
And a national star when they came to grief and parted.
Betty was as bowled over by Dean as he was by her. She dropped out of college and married him at eighteen, had their first child when she was nineteen. Three more babies came in quick succession, and with them, Betty’s bitterness. It’s hard in the best circumstances for a woman to be married to a traveling performer, and the best circumstances rarely exist. Four small children and an absent husband with a wandering eye are very far from ideal conditions. Betty began to drink. She tried using guilt and anger to hold on to Dean, failing to keep in mind the two key-stones of my partner’s character: First, he hated confrontation of any kind, and would go to great lengths to avoid it. And second, he devoted all his energy to living his life exactly as he wanted. He literally walked away from anything and anybody that got in the way of that principle.
Maybe Patti and I stayed together as long as we did (thirty-six years) because she let me know, at the beginning, that she knew I’d face temptations on the road, and, being a man, I’d give in to them. She just didn’t want me to humiliate her. She called me on the carpet when I did that, and I did my best to be more discreet afterward.
I don’t know what agreement—if any—Betty and Dean had. She knew how handsome he was, she knew what a magnet that was for so many women, and she knew his ways. What she—and he—had never counted on was his falling in love.
It was the last thing Dean expected: He never liked being tied down. It happened in Miami, where we were playing a four-week run at the Beachcomber Club at the end of 1948. This was the first time Dick Stabile ever worked with us, the first time we could afford our own conductor—the Beachcomber was paying us $12,000 a week. We were on stage on New Year’s Eve when Dean looked over at a ringside table and saw the Orange Bowl Queen and her ladies-in-waiting, one of whom was a pert, gorgeous, twenty-one-year-old blonde named Jeanne Biegger.
It was (as they say) as if he’d been struck by the thunderbolt.
I was thrilled to see my partner so happy, but I also understood his dilemma. It’s no small deal to be a Catholic father of four who wants— who needs—to get out of