Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [86]
They shrieked with laughter. The more I did bits about his not being there, the more the people laughed.... I wound up being a hit with fifteen minutes of ad lib that I had never even thought about.
Y. Frank phoned me the next morning and told me not to take it too hard. “These things happen, Jerry,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He was a gentleman to the end, but I knew I had let him down.
Dean was in his dressing room. I walked right in, fuming. “You crossed me, Paul.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about your handshake. You gave me your word that we’d do Y. Frank’s benefit.”
“You’re out of your mind. I don’t know a thing about it.”
“Where were you last night?” I asked.
“When did my life become your business?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, I sent notes to your dressing room, your wife, your valet, and your country club. So you mean to tell me you didn’t know you were supposed to be at the Shrine at eight o’clock last night?”
Cool as could be: “Nobody told me there was going to be a benefit.”
I was struck dumb. Meanwhile, he was going through the motions of looking for something to write on. Finally, he found a typed sheet of paper, turned it over, and started to scribble a note on the back. “Listen, Jer,” he said. “I need two prints of Living It Up. Could you handle that for me?”
He handed me the note. On the other side was the memo I had sent him.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I DREAM ABOUT DEAN PRETTY OFTEN, MAYBE ONCE A MONTH since he died. In my dreams, he’s almost always young, tan, still unbelievably handsome—indestructible. Sometimes, though, in these ultra-vivid late-night movies, bad things are happening—to him, to me, to both of us—and I’m powerless to stop them. Sometimes, my wife tells me, I cry out in my sleep. Other times, I dream I’m Super Jew, making everything right, doing all the things I might have done, when the pressures on us were so enormous.
Fortunately, my dreams mostly take me back to the beginning—like our time in Atlantic City, summer of ’46. Dean and I, all of twenty-nine and twenty, are staying at the Princess, a block off the Boardwalk and a bit away from the fashionable district. Down the Boardwalk is the Million-Dollar Pier and the great hotels: The Ritz-Carlton. The Shelburne. The Marlborough-Blenheim. Names that drip diamonds! In our neck of the woods, the hotels have names like The Overlook Villa. The Pink Swan. The Aladdin. The Harem Arms.
During the day, before our shows at the 500 Club, Dean and I sit on the beach, hoping to sneak a tan so we won’t need makeup—and anyway, to stay in our non-air-conditioned room would be like committing hara-kiri! There we are on the hot sand, hoping to catch a stray ocean breeze, praying that someone will go home and leave their umbrella. When they do, we’re all set, perched like kings under the canvas, out of the July heat.
This was the time our wives, hot and lonely at home, decided to come down with the kids, meaning Dean and I would have eight mouths to feed between us, one little room to house all these people, and not much money to swing any of it. We agreed we had to tap our greatest— and as yet untested—resource: Dean’s gambling ability.
In our travels up and down the beach, we had become exquisitely sensitive to the gradations of class in Atlantic City. The Ritz-Carlton, with its gorgeous beachfront restaurant and swimming pool, was the crème de la crème, and it hadn’t escaped my partner’s notice that many of the Ritz’s high-rolling guests amused themselves by playing gin rummy on the beach in front of the hotel.
“I can take these guys, Jer!” Dean says, his eyes lighting up. “All I need is a bankroll....”
So we make one. We pool our funds, a big $95 apiece, figuring that with $190 you’re good for at least three hands. The games are Penny A Point, Hollywood, and Boxes, and if you know what you’re doing, you can walk away with big bucks. And Dean knows what he’s doing.
We get about seventy dollars in singles and a few twenties, and put it all together