Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [54]
I said, “You have to know that the straight man is never given the kudos that the comic gets. And I just need to know you’re okay with that.”
This was really opening a sore. Dean said, “Jerry, look. Your father told you once, Be a hit. With the monkey act, with a couple of broads, with two balls and a watermelon. Whatever—just be a hit. We’re a big hit. And you need to know that I know when our film is on that screen and I start to sing, the kids go for the popcorn.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” I argued. “I don’t think little kids go for popcorn at any particular time.”
But in my heart, I knew he was right. Kids go to the movies to laugh and see action, and singing and love scenes slow things down.
What I should have said was that the people also went for popcorn during Crosby’s songs. And Perry Como’s. And every other singer who went into film, including Frank. The songs and the kissing scenes—that was the time for popcorn.
But Bing Crosby was Dean’s first idol, and he often felt he was walking in Crosby’s shadow. There were too many kids in Steubenville—and too many reviewers later on—who said, “You’re imitating Crosby.” Dean carried that around with him. I’d tell him, “Crosby has a voice, but he’s got no fuckin’ heart, you putz. You got heart.”
He also had a thing about Frank. Dean always felt like the guy who had subbed for Sinatra at the Riobamba. Sinatra was so great, why even try to take him on? Even though what Dean did and what Frank did was apples and oranges.
Every once in a while, Dean would make some joke about how he’d had to sing on the radio for free. During the war and just after, several of the stations in the New York area had what they called “sustaining”— nonsponsored—programs. When there was no sponsor, there was no pay for the talent: It was strictly a showcase.
“It may interest you to know,” I said, “that Sinatra was on Hoboken radio sustaining.”
“Horseshit,” Dean said.
I said, “Really?” I went to the phone and called Frank. He confirmed that he’d sung on Hoboken radio for free. He said it was only for three days, but he had! I said, “Paul, they couldn’t afford to pay you. We were coming out of a depression and a war. They were broke.”
After he had a couple of small hits on Capitol in the early fifties, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Was I being overcontrolling? Maybe. But I needed to protect our act. In 1952, we were in preproduction on our new picture, The Caddy, and we needed some songs for Dean. So I went to the great Harry Warren, the Oscar-winning writer of such songs as “Forty-Second Street,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” and his lyricist Jack Brooks, and paid them $30,000 out of my own pocket. I didn’t want Dean to know I hired them, and I never told him. But I knew that Harry Warren could write hits, and I said to Harry, “I want a hit for Dean.”
And he wrote one. Boy, did he write one.
Cut to the following fall, about a month after the release of The Caddy . Dean phoned me from his dressing room on the Paramount lot: “What are you doing?” he said.
“Darning a sock,” I told him. I waited for the laugh, then remembered I had used the line before. “Why, what’s up?”
“Wanna take a ride?” he asked.
Six-year-old voice: “Ooh, goody, I love rides.” Grown-up voice: “Where we going?”
“It’s a surprise. See you outside.”
We always kept our cars parked right behind the dressing-room area, poised for action. When I opened the door, Dean was sitting at the wheel of his blue Cadillac convertible with the top down, a grin on his deeply tanned face. I think he loved that car more than any he ever had, and he had a few.
I got in and he started her up. We pulled through the studio gates, drove down Melrose, took a right up Vine, and turned left onto Sunset. Quite a few heads turned as we passed by. It was a warm, hazy, Indian-summer day in L.A., and we were at the height of our fame, riding down Sunset Boulevard in an open Cadillac! An open blue