Book Review: Dean and Me (A Love Story), By Jerry Lewis

Following the death of Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis felt the need to express the great admiration and gratitude he held for his former partner. The result was the book: Dean & Me (A love Story). In the book Lewis tells how a chance meeting and introduction with Martin lead to their teaming up with remarkable success. Success that unbelievably took an unknown comic with a pathetic pantomime act and a good, but unnoticed singer from being second class night club entertainers to being the hottest act in the country in a matter of just a few weeks.

With great candor, Lewis describes how success affected each of the men and how their responses to new situations were not always the best choices or the admirable thing to do. For example when they got their first check for twenty-five thousand dollars, they naturally went to the casino rather than pay the bills and they suffered the predictable results. Or how right after their rise to fame, these two married men had very public affairs with well know Hollywood starlets and almost destroyed their careers as well as their marriages.

In the end, after ten years the two men found themselves locked in a movie contract with a producer who could only see them in his idea of a formula for success. Dean always played the rather boring, self centered singer and Jerry the thirty something year old child idiot. They were disillusioned and did the only thing they could, they fulfilled their contracts and walked away not to speak to each other for twenty years.

Lewis continues the story to tell how they were publicly brought back together and then renewed their friendship out of the public's eye.

This book has been around awhile, but I still liked reading it. Some people might say it was just a book written to take advantage of the publicity following a celebrities' death. But it wasn't. This book was written so a man could honestly tell about his admiration and gratitude of another man. And to set the record straight about many things.

For a baby boomer, like me, this book filled in the gaps in my knowledge about these two stars from my childhood. And for people much younger it can give a glimpse at a time when celebrities became celebrities because they could entertain us with their abilities and skills.