Dean and Me - Jerry Lewis

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.