Dino Paul Crocetti (Dean Martin)
June 7th 1917 - December 25th 1995
Dean Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio and found phenomenal
success in almost every entertainment venue. His parents were Italian and he spoke only Italian until aged five. During
the 1950s, he and partner Jerry Lewis formed "Martin and Lewis," one of the most popular comic duos in filmdom. After
splitting with Lewis, he was associated with Hollywood's Rat Pack and came to be known as the chief deputy to the
"Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra. He proved himself an actor in such dramas as The Young Lions (1958). As a singer,
Martin was, by his own admission, not the greatest baritone on earth. He couldn't read music, and yet recorded more than 100
albums and 600 songs, such as
"That's Amore", "Volare", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" and his signature tune
"Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime".
On television, he had a high rated, series, "The Dean Martin Show".
Martin was a complex, introverted soul and a loner.
Even his closest friend, Sinatra, only saw him once or twice per year.
The son of a barber, Martin dropped out of school in the tenth grade and took a string of odd jobs
ranging from steelworker to bootlegger. For a time, he worked as a croupier. In the early 1940s, he started singing
and it was then that he changed his name to Dean Martin.
It's no secret that Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze, most of the time onstage. He stole the
lovable-drunk image from Joe E. Lewis; and his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running (1958) and
Howard Hawk's Rio Bravo (1959) led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism.
A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1988 was abruptly cancelled. Only intimates knew that Dean was a very sick man. He
died aged 78 on Christmas morning, 1995.