Would You Brawl and Bicker $20,000,000 Away? That's What Martin and Lewis Have Threatened to Do Ever Since They Slapsticked Thei
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Would you brawl and bicker $20,000,000 away? That's what Martin and Lewis have threatened to do ever since they slapsticked their way to the top of the entertainment world with what their fellow comedians call a "nothing act." Here is the personal story behind the battle that may wreck the most profitable comic team of all time in their lives, their contrastirng person- oratorically like a defense attorney of the other they nearly broke up. The emo- alities start pulling Martin and Lewis old school-"it's the way we feel for tional load became more than Lewis apart. And yet, once the anxiety is lifted, each other, That, nobody can duplicate. could bear. The veneer of scatterbrained they seem to need each other, for they in- The kind of comedy we do, it's our own beliavior-which actually cloaks a very evitably return, as partners, to their zany fun. We do it for laughs and we have a tender, sensitive, frightened small boy- shenanigans on and off the stage or lot of laughs and the audience is part of peeled off. Symptoms of fatigue, sleep- camera. us. So there can never be another two- lessness, and loss of appetite troubled act like this The Shirt off Your Back because there's never going him, and a serious liver disorder devel- to be two guys who feel this way about oped. For thirty-four days Lewis was in Spend any length of time with Martin each other. There couldn't be',two men seclusion at home, suffering from nervous and Lewis and you'll find them flicking as close to each other as we are." exhaustion and yellow jaundice. cigar ashes in your hair, applying the Lewis says of his wife, the former Patti flame of a cigarette lighter to any docu- Palmer-who was once a vocalist with "Martin and Martin" ment you take out of your pocket, tearing Jimmy Dorsey's band and whom he Martin and Lewis canceled their tele- the shirt off your back, or asking to test calls affectionately "Patrick"-"She's the vision program-causing NBC a loss of your wrist watch 'and then stamping on greatest sweetheart, wife, and mother in millions of dollars. Lewis was unable to it. (The next day you will receive five the world." appear at Ciro's, a Hollywood cafe. Tony shirts in return, or a fine imported watch Mrs. Lewis is a small and very deter- Martin substituted for Lewis, and Dean- in place of the one destroyed; but the mined woman, a few years older than her and Tony went on as "Martin and Martin." experience is rather humiliating.) Go for husband, with black hair and sharp black By early November, the skinny jester was a ride with Jerry Lewis in Hollywood: eyes and a very calm and patient air. She up and around again, erupting in full fury. when he wants to pass a car, which is al- does all the cooking in the household- Dean Martin is more self-contained ways, he will step on a gimmick on the Lewis is squeamish about eating food than his partner, but it is obvious he floor board and all of a sudden the car from strange hands-and acts as a shock feels a sort of big-brother affection for will sound out with a clanking bell, like absorber for her spouse, mothering him (continued) a streetcar. If it is dark and foggy, Lewis when he is melancholy. During these will press another pedal which sends moods, he morosely shuns people for forth the eerie wail of a foghorn,'giving days on. end and sleeps ten or twelve others drivers the uneasy sensation that hours at a stretch. a boat from the Pacific Ocean is 'adrift "When Jerry gets into one of these on Sunset Boulevard. But do not invite moods," a friend reports, "he won't an- Lewis to go riding in your car. He has a swer the telephone or talk to anybody habit of placing his foot above your foot except Patti and his dogs. He suddenly on the accelerator. gets convinced he's no. good as a comic OtherC'omedians regard Martin and and that he has lost the gift of being Lewis with a nmixture of contempt and funny. He's afraid all the money he's reverence. The reverence is inspired by earned will be taken away from him. the fact that they are the highest-paid That's why he's got all those leather- act in show business (they grossed well bound scrapbooks in his den-he must over $3,000,000 in 1954). The contempt have two or three hundred scrapbooks arises from the fact that, in 'the words of with every clipping and photograph a veteran Broadway comic, "This is a about himself from way back-and he'll nothing act. What Martin and Lewis do read the scrapbooks for reassurance un- isn't basically funny, but nobody else til the mood goes away." has the gall to do it in a sophisticated .cafe where they're paying you twenty The Breaking Point grand .a »week.. When 'you figure other Jerry's most recent crack-up occurred c'omics have struggled all their lives to toward the end of September, 1954. As perfect an act, it burns you up that here's usual, it was the culmination of a long a couple of characters that come out and period of tension and aggravation. The do -nothing' and the customers are crazy team had been working hard-offstage for them." and onstage-for a long time. They had Lewis himself is not inclined to dispute finished two comedies in about eight critics of the act. "If you break down our months-"Living It Up" and "Three routines," he recently admitted, "I guess Ring Circus." They had played night there's very little in them. There's noth- club engagements and theaters, and WATCHING "JERI' destroy ing we do that another act couldn't do, Lewis had been clowning madly from several and maybe better. But" -and here his morning till night. In March, tempers thousand feet of film, Dean looks bright brownish eyes sparkled and he had been strained to the breaking point, nonchalant. But privately he resents waved his expressive, long-fingered hands and the boys became so angry at- each being typed as "the straight man." .t- z.