Description
Before there was Dean Martin, before there was Jerry Lewis, there was Martin & Lewis, a music-comedy duo that brought initial fame to both Hollywood icons. They met in 1945, and a year later debuted as a team at Atlantic City’s 500 Club. Their first scripted performance was a flop, and the club owner threatened to fire them. For their second show, the pair scrapped the script and decided to improvise. Dean sang seductively while Jerry, dressed as a busboy, dropped plates and heckled his partner’s crooning. They did slapstick and tossed off old vaudeville gags to maximize the mayhem. The act brought down the house.
From that precarious start, the pair earned an extended run at New York’s Copacabana, and eventually found international stardom on radio and TV, and in films. But the act couldn’t accommodate two supersized talents with colliding egos, and after ten years of success despite an increasingly volatile relationship, the pair went their separate ways in 1956. The fame of Martin & Lewis as a duo was significant; as solo performers — they became legends.