Zusatztext This is a wild! joyous book! but also a heartbreaking one. In some ways! friendships between men can be more fragile than those between women! something Lewis grasps intuitively. What kind of guy laughs when you upstage his crooning with a piece of raw meat on a fork? Whoever he is! you'd better hang onto him: he's probably the best friend you'll ever have. Stephanie Zacharek ! The New York Times A perceptive and entertaining showbiz memoir that should become a classic of its kind... Bruce Handy! Vanity Fair Informationen zum Autor Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan Klappentext 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. Chapter One In the age of Truman, Eisenhower, and Joe McCarthy, we freed America. For ten years after World War II, Dean and I were not only the most successful show-business act in historywe were history. You have to remember: Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the bluenobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us, but what we really were, in an age of Freudian self-realization, was the explosion of the show-business id. Like Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Hope and Crosby, we were vaudevillians, stage performers who worked with an audience. But the difference between us and all the others is significant. They worked with a script. We exploded without one, the same way wiseguy kids do on a playground, or jazz musicians do when they're let loose. And the minute we started out in nightclubs, audiences went nuts for us. As Alan King told an interviewer a few years ago: I have been in the business for fifty-five years, and I have never to this day seen an act get more laughs than Martin and Lewis. They didn't get laughsit was pan­demonium. People knocked over tables. Like so many entertainment explosions, we happened almost by accident. *** It was a crisp March day in midtown Manhattan, March of 1945. I had just turned nineteen, and I was ...

ldquo;This is a wild, joyous book, but also a heartbreaking one. In some ways, friendships between men can be more fragile than those between women, something Lewis grasps intuitively. What kind of guy laughs when you upstage his crooning with a piece of raw meat on a fork? Whoever he is, you’d better hang onto him: he’s probably the best friend you’ll ever have.”
—Stephanie Zacharek***, The New York Times**

• “A perceptive and entertaining showbiz memoir that should become a classic of its kind...”
  —Bruce Handy, Vanity Fair
  

• Autorentext

  Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan

  Klappentext

  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.

  Leseprobe
  Chapter One

  In the age of Truman, Eisenhower, and Joe McCarthy, we freed America. For ten years after World War II, Dean and I were not only the most successful show-business act in history–we were history.

  You have to remember: Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue–nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us, but what we really were, in an age of Freudian self-realization, was the explosion of the show-business id.

  Like Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello, and Hope and Crosby, we were vaudevillians, stage performers who worked with an audience. But the difference between us and all the others is significant. They worked with a script. We exploded without one, the same way wiseguy kids do on a playground, or jazz musicians do when they’re let loose. And the minute we started out in nightclubs, audiences went nuts for us. As Alan King told an interviewer a few years ago: “I have been in the business for fifty-five years, and I have never to this day seen an act get more laughs than Martin and Lewis. They didn’t get laughs–it was pan­demonium. People knocked over tables.”

  Like so many entertainment explosions, we happened almost by accident.

  ---

  It was a crisp March day in midtown Manhattan, March of 1945. I had just turned nineteen, and I was going to live forever. I could feel the bounce in my legs, the air in my lungs. World War II was rapidly draw­ing to a close, and New York was alive with excitement. Broadway was full …