Dean Martin: King of Cool

Admittedly, I didn't know very much about Dean Martin other than his public persona. After seeing Rio Bravo recently, this doc was an opportunity to learn more.

The insight into his real personality is fascinating. It's a difficult job to construct a profile of a man who made a point of being unknowable. The filmmakers probably came as close as possible.

I like Dean Martin as much as the next non-Italian. His singing was sublime. His acting under-estimated.

But do we really learn anything new in these two hours? Born in Steubenville. Fortuitous partnership with Jerry Lewis that turns the duo into superstars. The fallout. The comeback helped by Sinatra. The TV show. The marriages. The decline.

We get some decent dirt. Norman Lear says on the days when Dean was on fire, comedy-wise, Jerry was balled up in the corner with a tummy ache. Being the godfather of American television and still razor sharp even at nearly 100 years of age, I was hoping the film-makers would go further with Lear and juicy gossip might actually turn into genuine insight. As it is, we're left with the implication that Jerry resented Dean's comedic gifts, whereas I grew up hearing from the pre-Boomers that Dean resented Jerry's act-hogging. Considering it was the entertainment industry's biggest breakup prior to The Beatles, I wanted more.

We also gain no insight into why Sinatra got Martin booked The Sands or why they connected on music, acting or personally. And we're pretty much asked to believe that the beautiful, graceful-as-a-cat, clear-eyed Dean of the 50s and even up to the early years of his TV show wasn't drinking himself into a stumbling stupor about halfway through his TV run.

Instead, we get notable firearms expert Alex Baldwin saying things such as, ''Martin and Lewis were huge!" And Jon Hamm reading some kind of transcript. Plus more than a couple of industry geezers taking cheapshots at Jerry Lewis. I found it distasteful.

On the plus side, since I'm post-Boomer, I got my first decent taste of the Dean & Jerry magic. And Dino's comedic and musical charm from his TV show. If somebody repackages that stuff for DVD release, I'm buying it.

Dean Martin was a leading entertainer for more than thirty years. First in partnership with Jerry Lewis, then on his own, he conquered the movies, television, records, with a great talent and an air of not caring what happened. This documentary shows that at the very beginning, with flubs from his TV show that he waves off. That leads a lot of the people to speculate that they didn't know him, from his family to the people he worked with for decades.

In actuality, I think that, besides a fine singing voice, he had the ability that great straight men have: the ability to listen to his comic, observe the audience, and slow things down to feed lines at just the right pace. It's why, I believe, the live shows he did with Lewis were such riots, while their movies not so much. It's why the partnership broke up; to be seen as singing a couple of songs and standing by while your partner gets all the laughs is galling. Abbott & Costello had their fallings out; not everyone is George Burns.

And yet the habit persisted. After the partnership with Lewis broke up, his big prestige movie was Howard Hawks' RIO BRAVO. Studio executives, looking at the rushes, wanted to know when Martin was showing up. Hawks said "That's him, right there on the screen, playing the drunk."

Standing aside, letting John Wayne and Walter Brennan stand center stage: I'm not sure I believe the story but it kind of fits, doesn't it?

Like many hard working men and women, we see how hard and long Dean Martin worked to hone and expand his talent and maintain the love of his large and faithful fan base. This documentary provides some good insights into who Dean Martin, the singer, Vegas performer, and film star really was. It provides us with insight that Dean didn't have any time for phonies and preferred to go to his room after a hard day on stage or in front of the camera. He valued honesty and loved his family, and his family loved him back. He married and divorced three times if you don't include his marriages to his comedy partner Jerry Lewis and/or to his Vegas Rat pack buddies.

Hearing stories from the people that knew him best/well provided further insight into Dean Martins humble beginnings and family life and losses as when his son died in a plane crash and once again the King of Cool seemed to hibernate and reluctantly but very selectively socialized with family members and close friends until his death.

On the day he died he was telling his old friend Frank Sinatra a joke about two corpse's when one corpse says to the other corpse "Is that you coffin?"

Rest in Peace Dean from one of your loyal fans.

Based on the information in the ten user reviews of this biography to date, I may be the oldest person in the room as I grew up with Martin and Lewis on television during the 1950's and 60's. For what it's worth, my father, who owned a bar featuring live entertainment in downtown Newark, New Jersey, was a personal acquaintance of Jerry Lewis, but I do not know the extent or depth of this relationship, and he is no longer here to explain it.

I am much more of a fan of Dean Martin as a superb, silken singer who developed a unique, easygoing style than as a comedian or an actor, but his performances in "The Young Lions", "Some Came Running", "Rio Bravo", and "Ada" are very noteworthy. The airing of this biography together with these films by TCM would have been a nice touch, but you can stream them at your convenience whenever they are available on TCM . I am the proud owner of a wonderful album entitled "Dino: The Essential Dean Martin" generously offering 30 of some of his greatest songs. For inspiration, I am playing it now. An extraordinary singer with a distinct voice and tone, there is only one Dean Martin, and he can never be duplicated.

Overall, this was a very good documentary on the life of Dean Martin and his meteoric rise to fame from very modest beginnings in Steubenville, Ohio. It allowed me a rare opportunity to witness a sometimes painfully honest account of a man who made a huge impact on me during my most impressionable years. I very much appreciated the views of those who knew him best, especially his devoted daughter, Deana. I was very moved by her love for her father as well as her candor in explaining the full story, or at least as much of it as she was willing to reveal.

What totally wrecked the film for me were the appearances of individuals who apparently did not know Martin at all and who seem to be unfamiliar with the totality of his work as a performing artist. For me, the appearance of Alec Baldwin, who provided absolutely no insight or contribution whatsoever, was downright disturbing. Jon Hamm seemed to be reading from notes, and I received no benefit at all from RZA's segments. I felt as though these individuals were thrown into the production only for purposes of attracting a wider audience. They not only added zero value to the film but substantially reduced its overall effectiveness. Without their annoying presence, I would have rated this very worthy effort more highly.