Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [50]
At which point both officers burst into laughter, shook our hands, and asked for autographs.
“Watch Martin and Lewis Sunday night on the Colgate Comedy Hour!” we yelled to the cars that had slowed down at the sight of us. “Eight P.M., Eastern Standard Time!”
The cops escorted us back onto the highway, and we made our show at the Roxy with tuxes uncreased.
One night back in our first year at the Copa—June of ’48, to be exact— we’d finished our first show, then rushed from the stage door to yet another waiting limo. We popped in with Louie (our pianist) and Ray (our drummer), and headed off for the Essex House in glorious Newark, New Jersey.
Why Newark? Because a New Jersey boy was about to give his daughter away in marriage to another Jersey boy. Actually, the boy doing the giving away was a nice Italian man named Willie Moretti, and he was quite a character.
Willie, aka Willie Moore, was a longtime friend and associate of Frank Costello’s who was probably most well-known for giving Frank Sinatra a big boost back at the very start of his career. In the late 1930s, just as the Sinatra phenomenon was beginning, Frank was under contract to the bandleader Tommy Dorsey at $125 a week. It wasn’t a bad salary at the time, but it was chump change compared to what he could make if his fate was in his own hands. Frank wanted to get out of the contract, but Dorsey wouldn’t budge. Now, the story goes—I wasn’t there, so I can’t confirm it—that Mr. Moretti put a gun in Mr. Dorsey’s mouth and politely asked him to release Mr. Sinatra from his contract. Which (the legend goes) Dorsey promptly sold to Willie for one dollar.
This was Willie Moretti.
Dean and I had gotten to know Willie and his closest New Jersey associate, Longy Zwillman, at the Riviera nightclub. Like many of the major nightclubs of the day, the Riviera had a private gambling club on the premises: The Riviera’s was called the Marine Room, and whatever Willie and Longy’s business arrangement was with Ben Marden, Willie and Longy paid very close attention to the Marine Room’s operations— as they did to the operations of the Riviera as a whole. And because my partner and I were very big business for the Riviera, Willie and Longy extended us every courtesy, including, most especially, their friendship.
Dean was of two minds about wiseguys. On the one hand, unlike Frank, he never went out of his way to cultivate them. Believe me, Dean could have found any number of such gentlemen who would have been tickled pink to help him with his career early on. But he elected not to, because it was never his way to cozy up to anyone.
On the other hand, my partner always felt that you treated people the way they treated you—no matter what anybody else said about who those people were or what they did. And as I’ve said, the major Mob figures were, each and every one, all gentlemen to us, so we gave as good as we got.
Longy Zwillman, the longtime boss of New Jersey, was a real gent— quiet, well-dressed, and with beautiful manners. Willie Moretti was a little rougher around the edges, a little louder and funnier. When he appeared on the nationally televised Kefauver hearings on organized crime, he told the esteemed members of the congressional committee next to nothing—but in a very entertaining fashion. He charmed the pants off those congressmen, and when one of them thanked Willie at the end of his testimony, Willie invited the whole bunch of them to come visit him at his house on the Jersey shore!
Somewhere backstage.
That was Willie Moretti.
He was widely liked in the world of organized crime, but he also had made a powerful enemy of New York boss Vito Genovese, a dark character who didn’t have many friends anywhere. Still, we liked Willie, and when he invited Dean and me to his daughter’s wedding, we were genuinely touched. Our present to the bride and groom (and the bride’s father) was a command performance.
Dean and I were scheduled to appear between our first two shows at the Copa, so Willie knew we had to get on and get