Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [83]
Jack Keller announced to the press, and the press announced to the world, that Dean and I had reconciled. The truth, of course, was more complicated. My partner and I were beginning to speak to each other again, and my emotions were wildly mixed: On the one hand, I couldn’t shake the childish hope that, just like a fairy tale, everything would be all better. On the other hand, I knew that Martin and Lewis’s days were numbered. I thought of something that my dad had told me: “You and Dean have been the greatest shooting star in the history of show business. Recognize that it tails off. But don’t wait until it’s gone before deciding, ‘Well, let’s do something.’ Uh-uh. You gotta do it while the star is still cresting.”
You want to see brilliant faking with a not-so-subtle psychological sub-text? Watch the Colgate Comedy Hour we did that September, where I play a goofy quiz-show contestant who has to be isolated in a tank of water so he won’t hear the answers. Dean, of course, is the master of ceremonies, and he keeps pushing my head under water. He won’t stop! Could he possibly be getting some sadistic pleasure from this? “Wait,” I finally say, bobbing up and gasping for air. “Haven’t you heard? The feud is over!”
The studio audience screamed with laughter.
There was another reason the two of us were stuck together. Soon after I had returned from the Brown’s fiasco, I’d been met with more bad news: a letter from the Internal Revenue Service using the very attention-getting phrase “tax evasion.” The IRS claimed that Dean and I owed them $650,000 in back taxes. And unfortunately, when I had my accountants check and double-check the matter, it turned out that the IRS was right.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Despite the money that was rolling in, almost all of it was rolling right back out again: Both Dean and I were running very high overheads—mansions, servants, cars, offices, staffs—and I knew that neither of us had that kind of cash lying around.
Moreover, we were not really speaking to each other.
So I did the only thing I could think of: I went to Y. Frank Freeman for help.
The “Y” stood for Young, and Y. Frank was from a fine old Atlanta family that had managed to hold on to its money. How a well-off and cultivated Georgia boy had managed to find his way west and make good in the motion-picture business is a saga in itself. In fact, along with four other men, including his East Coast counterpart, Barney Balaban, and founder and chairman Adolph Zukor, he ran Paramount Studios.
Y. Frank Freeman was like no studio executive I had ever met or have encountered since: He was a white-haired gentleman of the old school, who lived by the principle that a man’s word is his bond. In a town full of sharks, he actually believed in the handshake. Since our first days with Hal Wallis, I’d shaken hands with Y. Frank on a number of York Productions matters that, at any other studio, would have kept squadrons of lawyers busy for weeks. The suits at Paramount would have loved to get thousands of pages in ironclad legalese holding Martin and Lewis to account if we did anything that even smelled as if it conflicted with the studio’s interests. But Y. Frank trusted us because I shook his hand, and Dean and I did nothing to abuse that trust.
Y. Frank and I had a special relationship, one I was very careful to nourish and protect. He allowed me to enter his office whenever I wanted, no appointment necessary, through a private entrance that opened onto the back lot. When he was entangled in business that had nothing to do with me, I could always see it in his face. “Not now, Y. Frank?” I’d say.
“Give me fifteen and come back,” he