Product Description

A biography of Jerry Lewis's other half discusses Martin's Ohio childhood, his rise to the heights of fame as a singer, his uneasy partnership with Lewis and the Rat Pack, and more. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #346864 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-13
• Released on: 1999-04-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385334297
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
Only a handful of showbiz biographers can lay claim to posessing the literary acumen of writers like Michael Holroyd and Peter Ackroyd. Nick Tosches is one of these writers, and his unauthorized biography of Dean Martin stands as a testament to his genius. Several inimitable sequences in which Tosches adopts his subject's perspective (most of which are regrettably unsuitable for quotation here) make the book a real standout.

Dino is a fascinating portrait of a man who had it all--money, fame, women--and didn't give a damn about any of it and suggests that, even as he wallowed in the excesses of Hollywood and the Rat Pack, Martin stayed critically aloof from that world, albeit often in a booze-and-pill-addled haze. He got into showbiz precisely because it required so little effort of him: "I can't stand an actor or actress who tells me acting is hard work," he once said. "It's easy work. Anyone who says it is hard never had to stand on his feet all day dealing blackjack." Nobody could impress Martin. While Frank Sinatra would do anything just to hang out with reputed Mafioso, the Mob would have to make special trips to ask Martin in person to play a show at one of their casinos.

Tosches' portrait, written only a few years before Martin's death in 1996, depicts its subject as nothing so much as a Zen master without the spiritual anchor; after sampling everything that life had to offer and finding it lacking, Martin spent the last years of his life waiting to die in virtual seclusion.

From Library Journal
Tosches, best known for his biography of Jerry Lee Lewis ( Hellfire , LJ 1/15/82), worked in a similar vein to produce this biography of Dean Martin. Tosches's extensive research is obvious, and his book has been aided immeasurably by extensive interviews with Martin's longtime wife, Jeanne, and with his former partner, Jerry Lewis. Martin himself was not interviewed. It's all here: Martin's career in nightclubs, movies, and television as well as his friendships with various mafiosi. The book stays afloat despite the weightiness of too many Italian and Yiddish words, too many gratuitous expletives, and just plain too many words bearing too much metaphorical weight for the subject.
- John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Flamboyantly overwritten, saddest celebrity bio of the past decade. Dino Crocetti--Steubenville, Ohio, son of Italian immigrants, and an easygoing, untrained singer with lip-lazy diction--became Dean Martin early in his work with local bands, made it big in Manhattan as a solo act, and went over the top when teamed with a monkey named Jerry Lewis. The keynote of Martin's delivery, explains Tosches (Cut Numbers, 1988, etc.), was a relaxedness directed toward males but that had the ladies following him to bed like groupie mayflies--while he attracted Mafia heavy-hitters as well. Martin's pal Frank Sinatra held him in awe and envied his ease with the Mafia cafe-owners, but Dino couldn't care less about power, or much of anything. He kept Sinatra, as well as his own wives and children--everyone in fact--at arm's length emotionally, and, Tosches indicates, never in his life let one person into his most secret heart. He seemed largely devoted to golf. Gradually, Martin, at first a moderate drinker, developed a drunk act that became too real and at last took him over. After many years as the top draw on TV, he wound up hosting his celebrity roasts, a kind of gathering of the dead assembled from thousands of small splices of film. Martin is still alive, but a shadow in a breeze, withdrawn into watching westerns on TV. Tosches tells his story in a Niagara of grossness that at once strives for literary excellence while often falling into garble: ``The very songs that Sinatra and Dean sang...inspired lavish squandering among the countless men who would be them. It was the Jew-roll around the prick that rendered them ithyphallic godkins, simulacra of the great ones, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the tease-haired lobster-slurping bimbo sapiens they sought to impress.'' One-hundred-proof prose at its most scorching, and it will melt cash registers. (Thirty b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

A Fascinating Look at a Show-Biz Enigma
In the world of show business, Dean Martin remains a fascinating enigma. Nick Tosches certainly knew this when writing "Dino," a perceptive and revealing 1992 biography that depicts the singer-actor as a man who gave a damn about very little - letting the riches fall where they may. It's all here: the Martin and Lewis partnership, the Rat Pack, the Mafia, the Kennedys, etc. However, "Dino" is more than a traditional show-biz biography. Tosches writes with the wisdom of a scholar and a poet. The author documents Martin's rise to stardom and inevitable breakup with Jerry Lewis, his remarkable solo success in the 1960s, and his emotional reclusiveness - which became more pronounced after his son was killed in a 1987 jet crash. Though published three years before Martin's death at age 78, Tosches concludes his book with the telling image of Dino in retirement as he watches old Westerns on television. Even in his final years, Martin did exactly what he wanted with no apologies or regrets.

Dean Martin, alone but not lonely.
He was by all accounts a kind, gracious and modest man. Possessed of a free flowing natural off-the-wall sense of humor. These were the characteristics that drew people to him and at the same time kept them away, disappointed when they couldn't "reach" him.

He learned at an early age the card sharks tricks. Play it close to the vest and don't telegraph anything. These early lessons served him well all his life, perhaps too well.

Let it be said that no one has been able to crack the enigma that was Dean Martin. Not his wife of 20 years Jeanne, not the two siblings who have written of their lives with him, those who worked with him and not Nick Tosches.

Tosches comes as close as anyone is likely too however. His try, though it has it's flaws is a noble effort. Tosches accurately portrays Martins rise throught the mob owned and influenced night life of the 40's and 50's. Some readers have misunderstood Tosches stream of consciousness writing style as unfairly portraying Dean as a somewhat foulmouthed uncaring persona. This is a mistake. What Tosches portrays is a man of the period. A time of postwar revelry, mob influence and a need to be street smart. Dean mastered it all. He was tough but not uncaring. The uncaring attitude was the armour he used to protect himself from the mob bosses and those who would manipulate him. He not only refused to kowtow to them, he won them over with his toughness and yes, his integrity. They complained as did his supposedly best buddy Frank Sinatra, that they couldn't control him, he did as he pleased.

It did cost him. He was unable to communicate well his true feelings and held it all inside. He suffered ulcers, headaches and when his son Dean Paul died piloting a National Guard jet in 1986, it all came home to roost. He was devasted beyond comprehension.

He had been on a comeback of sorts during the early 80's. Kicking his dependence on prescription drugs, making peace with Jeanne and successful performances in London and Paris with more frequent TV appearances had him on an upswing by 1985. It came to a peremptory halt with his sons passing.

He went through the motions for 5 more years but it was only because those concerned about him, Mort Viner his manager and confidant, Sinatra and family members pushed him. He finally said enough in 1991 and retired gracefully. His health deteriorating, he lived quietly alone with visits from Jeanne and the family and weeknight forays to his favorite 2 or 3 reataurants. He appeared content. Jeanne said he was, "...always content in a void, he's content right now...".

Of all the "Rat Pack" stars, the TV stars of the 60's and 70's, he remains the most interesting, in demand and emulated. He alone seems to reach new adults who were toddlers when he left the stage. His records still sell and his TV variety performances are selling well on CD. He is doing in memorium what he always did in life; wearing well and and doing it his own way.

Dino, we hardly knew ye
This is an excellent biography and chronicle of popular culture from the 40's to the present time. He also hits on why exactly the improbable combination of Martin and Lewis was so wildly popular in the early 50's. What prevents me from giving it a 5 is that there's way too much about the mob (which seemed to interest Tosches more than most of his readers) and that he was so intent on presenting Dean Martin as world-weary and indifferent, his subject sometimes lapses into a character of Tosches' creation rather than a real man. Traits that would contradict Tosches' idea are conveniently glossed over. How could someone who didn't give a damn about success maintain an audience for 4 decades? Look at how many times Madonna and Cher have had to reinvent themselves. Dean was a natural entertainer, but he certainly had ambition and strategy.

Much is made throughout of Dean's aloofness and Tosches only offers glimpses of his good heart, generousity and loyalty since it would interfere with his own conception. Only someone of extreme good nature could have tolerated the ultra-difficult Jerry Lewis as a partner for ten years and I believe he did more for Jerry's career than Jerry did for his. Again, when Dean quits a picture for the sake of his friendship with Marilyn Monroe, Tosches only mentions it and moves on.

One issue Tosches handles beautifully is how the hero of one decade can be anathema in the next. In middle age, Dean became a parody of himself, consorting with women younger than his daughters and hosting friars' club roasts for celebrities who by that time belonged in wax museums.

Dean stopped performing in old age and his reclusiveness seemed like an act of grace compared to the alternative. I call it gracious because I happened to see Frank Sinatra perform in the 1989 "Ultimate Event' (which Dean wisely bailed out of) and can only profess great disappointment; Frank Sinatra was no longer Frank Sinatra. He was everybody's father or uncle, a frail, bald old man.

Unfortunately, it takes death to resurrect these people, restore them to their former glory and show us what we took for granted. Dean was king of the crooners, bar none, with a gorgeous voice and an effortless style. Rest in peace, Dean. You earned it.