The original slacker, Dean Martin glorified the lush life on stage and screen.
By Ty Burr
The original slacker, Dean Martin glorified the lush life on stage and screen.
By Ty Burr
If the signal attribute of late-20th-century American pop culture is
cool, and if the essence of cool is the projection of detachment, then
maybe--just maybe--Dean Martin was the real Chairman of the Board.
Sinatra is the greater artist, of course, but in a way, that's what
hangs him up--despite naming an album No One Cares, Sinatra obviously
has cared, especially about his music. But Martin, who died Christmas
Day 1995 from acute respiratory failure at age 78, never seemed to
give a rat pack about anything. He achieved success on the charts, in
movies, even on TV (the one arena that Ol' Blue Eyes never conquered)
while floating above the fray with bibulous serenity. In an industry
of self-publicists, Dean Martin remained insistently unknowable.
That quality gave him charisma while marking him as a lightweight,
made him seem absurdly passe by the mid-'70s while giving him a weird,
nearly existential purity in his final decades. Slackers may be
sipping martinis and neo-hipsters like Greg Mangus might be singing
Martinesquely, but there was no Bennett-style comeback for Martin; in
fact, he sourly bailed out of a 1988 reunion tour with Sinatra and
Sammy Davis Jr. after hollering "I wanna go home!" from the stage and
flicking a lit cigarette butt into the audience. His ex-wife Jeanne,
to whom he was married for 23 years, once sighed, "There's either
nothing under there or too much." Nick Tosches' 1992 biography, Dino:
Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, calls him a
menefreghista, Italian for "one who simply does not give a f---."
Born Dino Paul Crocetti on June 17, 1917, Martin grew up the son of an
immigrant barber in Steubenville, Ohio. He worshipped at the altar of
Bing Crosby and made a go at a singing career, mutating from Dino
Crocetti to Dino Martini to Dean Martin, and picking up a new nose in
the process. In 1946, he and a lantern-jawed comedian named Jerry
Lewis began kibitzing in on each other's acts; by the time the duo
played Slapsie Maxie's in Los Angeles two years later, they had the
industry in their palms.
Sixteen hugely popular Martin and Lewis films followed in seven years,
and as the comedian's ambitions ballooned, Martin simmered, despite
having a successful recording career on Capitol that crested with the
1953 top hit "That's Amore." By 1956, tired of breakups and makeups
with the insecure Lewis, Martin told him, "You can talk about love all
you want. To me, you're nothing but a f---ing dollar sign." And he was
outta there, pally. Martin never looked back, rarely acknowledging
Lewis' existence, while his ex-partner erupted in public outpourings
of separation anxiety. (Lewis was too "shattered by grief" to comment
on Martin's death, according to Lewis' manager.)
No one thought Martin would make it on his own. Reviews for his first
solo film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, were brutal ("Apart [from Lewis],
Mr. Martin is a fellow with little humor and a modicum of charm," said
The New York Times). But Martin's ensuing choices were inspired: a GI
in The Young Lions opposite Brando, an alcoholic deputy (his best
dramatic role) in Rio Bravo.
Then the Rat Pack came calling, offering the position of Frankie Lite
alongside Sinatra, Davis, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in movies and
Vegas nightclubs. To make his allegiance clear, Martin left Capitol to
record on, and financially back, Sinatra's Reprise Records. His
apotheosis came in 1964: "Everybody Loves Somebody" knocked the
Beatles out of the No. 1 spot, and he starred in Billy Wilder's Kiss
Me, Stupid, which epitomized Martin's persona as a lovable, lecherous
lush. Condemned by critics and the Catholic Legion of Decency, Stupid
was the Showgirls of its day, yet its acrid playboy nihilism may be
the closest he came to a personal statement.
The next year saw the debut of The Dean Martin Show, a variety program
that ran for nine successful seasons on NBC. Yet pop culture was
shifting away from him: The show's va-va-voom chorus line, the
Golddiggers, caused the National Organization for Women to give Martin
a Keep-Her-in-Her-Place award during the final season. The Matt Helm
spy spoof series that began promisingly with 1966's The Silencers
quickly ran aground with three limp follow-ups. His records veered
toward workaday country; Martin would lay down vocals only after
producer Jimmy Bowen had recorded all the other tracks.
The late '70s and '80s saw Martin slope off into halfhearted singing
gigs and celebrity roasts featuring the likes of Milton Berle and
Foster Brooks--Last Suppers for the borscht belt. After his son Dino
Jr., 35, died in a 1987 plane crash, Martin seemed to vanish into
himself. He haunted Hollywood restaurants, alone, with an ever-present
drink in his hand. "I'm just waiting to die," Paul Anka says Martin
told him one night.
But that tragic vision doesn't square. Tragedy necessitates
self-knowledge, and indications are that Dean Martin rolled blissfully
on the waves of unthinking fortune to the end of his days. "He had no
interest in his own life," says biographer Tosches. "He was completely
content in his solitude. I wanted him to hit 80. That was the age that
Buddha was when he died. I kind of thought of him as an American Buddha."