Dean Martin
Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti on the 7th June 1917 in Steubenville, Ohio. Born to Italian immigrants he didn’t speak English until he started school at the age of five. He dropped out of school at the age of fifteen and took up a number of jobs including delivering bootleg alcohol, boxing and being a blackjack dealer. Eventually he moved into singing, performing with local bands under the name Dino Martini, and working with the Ernie McKay Orchestra.
By the early forties he was singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins who suggested he call himself Dean Martin. This was also the time in which he was married to Elizabeth Macdonald with whom he had four children before they divorced in 1949. T
he first half of the decade saw him develop only a reasonable amount of success as a nightclub singer as well as serving a year for the US army in 1944. It seemed like he would stay a minor act until in 1946 he met comedian, Jerry Lewis. Launching their musical-comedy act of scripted gags and improvisation.
By 1949 they had a radio series and had been signed to Paramount Pictures. They became a huge act with one of Hollywood’s best deals but Martin was always troubled by being seen as the weak link in the act (as the straight man). This came to a head in 1956 when the pair decided they could no longer work together.
Martin remained popular as a singer but the influx of rock music meant that crooning was losing popularity, he wanted to be taken seriously as an actor which after some false starts he achieved starring alongside Sinatra in the acclaimed Some Came Running in 1958. With this achieved he became a major draw both as a live performer and recording artist becoming one of the biggest acts by the mid-sixties.
Martin was fast becoming friends with Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. and together they formed the Rat Pack (although they didn’t ever refer to themselves as such). The group returned to Martin’s love of comedy and music, his comic contribution was to parody his reputation as a big drinker (although this paled in comparison to that of his peers). Politically the group were important in that they refused to play in venues that would not allow Sammy Davis Jr. to perform.
In 1965 Martin moved into television with the Dean Martin Show which was a great success (unlike a number of musical variety shows) and remained on the air until 1974. Around this time he retreated from show business and there was upheaval in his personal life as he divorced second wife, Jeanne Biegger and wed 26 year old, Catherine Hawn. The marriage only lasted three years and he eventually got back together with Jeanne although they never remarried.
In 1976 he was reunited onstage with comic partner Jerry Lewis at a telethon for muscular dystrophy. As the venues got bigger and bigger, Martin became uncomfortable in such grand surroundings and lost enthusiasm for performing.
In 1993 he was diagnosed with lung cancer and eventually died on Christmas Day 1995.
