Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [72]
A glance at his face told me that this was something he’d given thought to but hadn’t totally worked out. I felt certain that other people had told him this, and I could see that it confused him for me to say it. “Well—” He hesitated. “I don’t know ’bout that.”
“Well, I do,” I said. “I’m absolutely sure of it. And I want to tell you something else. I know you’re not a hundred percent with the direction we’ve been going in lately. I understand that, and I understand why. It’s a tricky place we’re in now—I’m growing, you’re growing. Who knows where it’ll all end up? But I think we can still have some fun, Paul. I want you to try and remember how good it can be when we’re enjoying ourselves. Just give me this one movie, and I’ll try like hell to get back to the good times.”
It was all I could do to hold back the tears when he held out that big hand of his to shake. I wished we could have hugged, like in the old days—but then, as I had to keep reminding myself, it wasn’t the old days anymore.
Bad news travels fast, and word of the troubled shoot of Three Ring Circus was all over L.A. long before we returned from Phoenix. Our agent, Lew Wasserman, and our lawyer, Joe Ross, called us into the MCA offices to work things out. They were friendly but very firm: We had far too many commitments, they told us in no uncertain terms, to quarrel like school-boys. Tens of millions of dollars were on the line. There were our contracts with Wallis, NBC TV, radio, club bookings, and product endorsements.
“You’ve got to try to get along, guys,” Lew said. “For your own sakes, for everybody’s.”
“We’re doin’ okay,” Dean told him. “Right, Mr. Lupus?”
I could still see the coolness in his eyes. But that was all right, for now: Cool was better than cold.
Then a strange thing happened—or rather, a tragic thing with odd repercussions: Patti’s mom died. I’d been very close to Mary, and I was almost as devastated as my wife was.
Dean and Jeannie were at the wake and the funeral. When our family returned from the cemetery to the house, my partner and his wife came along—solid, soothing, sympathetic. While everyone was sitting around, speaking in quiet tones, Dean came up and asked if we could talk. “Of course we can,” I said. We went into my den and shut the door. We both admitted that we’d said some stupid things, and that we owed it to ourselves and our families to be the total pros that we knew we were. And when we were finished talking, we hugged.
Maybe, I thought, we could be OK just as long as we weren’t on a movie set....
That August, we were booked into Ciro’s for two weeks. We might have had our troubles with Three Ring Circus, yet as far as our fans were concerned, we were still very much at the top of our game. And the illustrious citizens of Hollywood had always been among our biggest fans.
Why was that? Film people knew what it was to make magic with a script, perfect photography, and brilliant editing. The fact that on stage Dean and I could work wonders with none of the above simply awed them.
The insanity started five weeks before we were to open: Everyone tried to book a table for opening night, and soon there were no seats left. I had made reservations for some of my closest friends.
Then one morning, with only two days left before our opening, I got out of bed and started to brush my teeth. When I looked in the mirror, I saw that my face was yellow to the gills. I phoned Dr. Levy, who made a house call (they still did that then). He told me I had hepatitis and the only way I’d be able to recover from it was complete bed rest. For eight weeks.
With the opening on top of us, there were two options: We could cancel, or Dean could go on alone. With the buildup we’d had, cancellation seemed out of the question. But I wasn’t sure how Dean felt about doing his first single in eight years.
He came to visit me at my house that afternoon. When he walked into my bedroom, I was ready—in a coolie hat and a Japanese waistcoat, with a record of “Japanese