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Title details for Dean and Me by Jerry Lewis - Available

Dean and Me

(A Love Story)

by Jerry Lewis
James Kaplan
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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In a memoir by turns moving, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of his fifty-year friendship with Dean Martin. 
They were the unlikeliest of pairs—a handsome crooner and a skinny monkey, an Italian from Steubenville, Ohio, and a Jew from Newark, N.J.. Before they teamed up, Dean Martin seemed destined for a mediocre career as a nightclub singer, and Jerry Lewis was dressing up as Carmen Miranda and miming records on stage. But the moment they got together, something clicked—something miraculous—and audiences saw it at once.
Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, television, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 24, 1956, ten years after it all started, it ended suddenly. After that traumatic day, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart.
In Dean & Me, Lewis makes a convincing case for Martin as one of the great—and most underrated—comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of love Lewis felt for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 1, 2005

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781415947791
      • File size: 251227 KB
      • Duration: 08:43:23

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Despite his notorious ego, Jerry Lewis's memoir and encomium is balanced, even self-deprecating. As one would expect, it contains plenty of humor in its sentimental account of his professional and personal relationship with Dean Martin, when they teamed with great success as a comedy duo. Lewis effusively attributes numerous virtues to his partner and freely admits his own failings. Narrator Stephen Hoye tries to give a sense of personality to both characters but pulls back on the author's more abrasive aspects. One is grateful that he, not Lewis, is delivering this well-told, sentimental true story. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 8, 2005
      Over the course of their 10-year partnership, Lewis and Dean Martin made 16 wildly popular movies (they were the world's number one box office earners from 1950 to 1956), but their real strength was their performances in nightclubs, theaters and on television. Audiences found their mixture of music and ad-libbed, irreverent comedic pandemonium intoxicating. The duo's fascinating kinship—Lewis idolized his partner, while Martin was aloof—has been chronicled in Shawn Levy's King of Comedy
      and Nick Tosches's Dino
      , but Lewis wants to give his late partner the credit he feels critics missed by always praising the "the monkey" rather than the straight man. Untangling the complicated union, Lewis doesn't spare himself, admitting that when the team's relationship unraveled (they weren't speaking between scenes on their last film), he became a bully on set and made others the brunt of the anger he couldn't vent at Martin. Lewis is a wonderful raconteur, and his tales capture the excitement of their budding career and the slow, sad erosion of the fun. Whether it's his age (Lewis is 79) or his coauthor (Kaplan co-wrote John McEnroe's You Cannot Be Serious
      ), fans will be surprised and entertained by Lewis's honesty and diminished ego and bitterness. Photos. First serial to
      Vanity Fair.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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