Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [55]
And so did Dean. As I glanced over at my partner, I could feel his total satisfaction. He was at peace with the world: smoking his Camel, driving his great car, his partner at his side. He never said it, but his eyes reflected a happy man.
As we pulled up in front of Music City, Dean stopped the car and pointed to the huge store window, where a double-life-size photo of himself stood, next to a sign announcing his new single, “That’s Amore.”
“Hey,” he said. “Is that one handsome Italian, or what?”
Neither of us had any idea that day what a monster hit “That’s Amore” would become (it would sell two million platters as a single, and be nominated for an Academy Award) and what kind of effect the song would have on both our lives. It was a number Dean tired of singing after a couple of years, but for the time being, it gave him an identity with the public that he had never had before.
In The Caddy, Dean played an up-and-coming golfer who leaves the game to become a professional comedian. In real life, I don’t think he’d have minded doing it the other way around.
As a struggling young singer in the forties, Dean couldn’t afford to
She wouldn’t leave me alone.
With his natural grace and athletic ability, he overcame his late start and got better and better, finally whittling his handicap down to a six. Not bad for a kid from Steubenville, where all the hitting you did was at each other! Once we moved out to the Coast in 1949, he figured he’d found golfing heaven. The second house he and Jeannie bought was right next to the Los Angeles Country Club.
Dean loved golf because it was made for his chemistry: quiet, soft breezes, green grass, no people gawking at him, and a bar at the nineteenth hole. But mainly quiet. The few words you might exchange with your partners as you strolled down the fairway were plenty for him. And he chose his partners carefully. Or so he thought.
When Dean joined the California Country Club, his golfing skills made him the envy of much of the membership. But those same skills also made him a target. The advice his parents had given him about keeping to himself had insulated him from potential friends and annoyances alike. Still, there were times that even he let his guard down. In short order, he fell in with a group of hustlers headed by a character named Bagsy Kerrigan. These were guys who claimed to have a certain handicap, nine or twelve or sixteen, but who in reality could play lights-out, par or subpar golf whenever they wanted.
Dean was flush with our new success. And so as a born gambler, and as a guy who was pretty confident about his skills around a golf course, my partner just had to get some action going. Bagsy and his pals were glad to oblige.
At first they’d just bet a couple of hundred a round, but then the stakes got heavy: four or five grand every game. You do that ten days in a row, and they’ve got you for $50,000. On the eleventh day, they’d pick you up at your house just to be courteous!
I’m told that Dean played terrific golf with these guys but just missed pay dirt. Bagsy and his pals were so good that if Dean shot a 74, they could throw a 72 (handicap factored in) at him. When he shot a 78, they got a 76. They did whatever was needed, nothing more. And oh, of course—now and then, just to break the monotony (and avoid suspicion), they’d let Dean win. Didn’t that make him feel fine!
By the time the year was over, my partner had lost over $300,000 to Bagsy and company. And talk about it was beginning to circulate around Hollywood.
For a long time, Dean never understood what hit him. He was loving the golf, and he was winning now and then. When you’re freewheeling and have bucks in your kick, you rarely take inventory. . . . After all, he was in the game, and taking part was all he really wanted at the time.
Let me be clear about one thing: Dean was not a fool. He was very smart, as long as you were straight. In this one instance, he acted naively because he believed that the handicaps posted