Build Date: Tue Oct 29 14:10:13 2024 UTC
Do you really think this is a WISE thing for you to be doing?
-- enigma
When Martin Left Lewis
2023-08-01 06:19:36
Last week was the anniversary of the last time Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin appeared as an act. 67 years ago, as the show ended at New York's Copacabana Club, "Dean threw his arm around Jerry, pulled him toward him, hugged him," remembers one biographer. "The joint was in an uproar. It was the biggest night in the club's history.
"There was no encore. Dean took one aisle away from the stage, Jerry took another."
That warts-and-all biography -- titled Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams -- captured Dean's growing frustration with Jerry Lewis. ("Jerry reportedly cried hysterically in his dressing room," remembers one web site.) But the biography ends this chapter -- "Bread and Circuses" -- with what were apparently their final words spoken in their last conversation later that night.
Jerry Lewis -- presumably feeling lost, if not clingy and needy -- phones Dean's room at the hotel in the "early-morning" hours.
Dean Martin: Hello, pallie. How're you holdin' up?
Jerry Lewis: I don't know. We had some good times, didn't we?
Dean: There'll be more.
Jerry: Yeah, well, take care of yourself.
Dean: You too, pal.
That's the story I've always heard -- but there's another version. While Jerry Lewis cries backstage in the dressing room, Dean Martin enters. There's a 2002 made-for-TV movie that ends with this scene, (which someone has helpfully pirated to YouTube).
The setup? Throughout the movie Dean is emotionally unavailable -- not just to Jerry, but to the wife he divorces and the people around him. Meanwhile Jerry's own father doesn't approve of their act, leaving Jerry with the opposite emotion: a lifelong desparation for approval.
So after their final show, here's how the movie envisions that final conversation:
Dean Martin: How you holdin' up?
Jerry Lewis: Good. (Dramatic pause) Okay. You?
Dean: Um... Good show, huh?
Jerry: Best one yet.
Dean: Yeah. (Long pause) Thanks for a great ride.
Jerry: Love you.
Dean: I love you back.
Reportedly Jerry Lewis worked as a "consultant" on the film -- and some fans complained the movie demonized Dean while giving Jerry everything he could've wanted. (Although there's also a rumor that Jerry Lewis bought the rights to the film -- just so he could stop it from ever being shown again.) I personally find this ending unsatisfying -- like Dean Martin finally gives in to the neediness of Jerry Lewis. I guess I want to believe Jerry Lewis just wrote it himself.
Both conversations could've happened. But where's the fun in that? (For what it's worth, the movie is based on a book by Groucho Marx's son Arthur Marx. The biographer who wrote Dino also cites an article by Arthur Marx -- but one that appeared in the National Enquirer.) I came here to argue that Jerry Lewis made up a story where Dean Martin showers him with all the approval he'd ever wanted.
And then for revenge, I'd share an equally-valid documentary about the life of Jerry Lewis -- from those noted documentary makers "Filmation"...
T O P S T O R I E S
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
'Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch'
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
SF Hippies Can't Get Their Act Together
The annual 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park, where large crowds of hippies, wannabe hippies, and hippie poseurs drape themselves in tie dye t-shirts and gather on a hill on 4/20 to smoke weed, was cancelled this year because the organizers couldn't get their act together. (More...)
Mozart to be inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame
Joining such hard-rocking inductees as Abba, Chet Atkins, Nat King Cole, and Neil Diamond, the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame is proud to induct Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
The end of summer is near and sirens call of Black Rock City are beginning to summons Pigdoggers from all of the world to Burning Man. Spock Mountain Research Labs (SMRL), the world leader in beverage science and leisure technology will be at our second home for a week at 5:00 and Infant (how fitting) as we enjoy the liberated lifestyle of a temporary community 200 miles from nowhere... (More...)
Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument
Mr. Bad and Crackmonkey collaborate on a fine Mr. Bad's List. We put together ALL the TECHNOLOGY you ever need to know in order to STUMP your OPPONENT in a technical argument. Use these only when your back is against the wall -- they're definitely desperation tactics. (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
Pigdog dispatched special correspondent Ratsnatcher for a holiday reconnaissance of America's frozen hell. After ten days of silence, our shortwave radio cackled with Ratsnatcher's static-filled transmission. (More...)
Our team of crack journalists went insane, and made the drive from Concord, California to Concord, New Hasmpshire on Interstate 80. Read the insightful observations of our intrepid travelers made on their journey into the heartland. (More...)
About 14 years ago when I was on a road trip and stopped in Seattle, I was invited to a party. At this party there were these little tiny glasses sitting in a flat-bottomed bowl of ice. Thin cylinders about an inch in diameter and 4 inches tall, with thick glass at the bottom. Into these were poured frozen AKVAVIT... also known as the water of life. (More...)