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Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti in the Pennsylvania-Ohio border-town of Steubenville, Ohio, found phenomenal success in almost every entertainment venue and, although suffering a few down times during his career, always managed to come out on top. His parents were Italian Gaetano and Angella Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. During the 1950s, he and partner Jerry Lewis formed one of the most popular comic duos in filmdom. After splitting with Lewis, he was associated with Hollywood's ultra-cool Rat Pack and came to be known as the chief deputy to the "Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra. Many are surprised to learn that Martin is in fact an Italian-American, as they do not know that Dean Martin is just a stage name.

Young Dean Martin, early 1940s.Although initially a comic actor, Martin also proved himself in such dramas as The Young Lions (1958), more than holding his own opposite Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. He was also never above poking sly fun at his image as a smooth womanizer in such outings as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s. As a singer, Martin was, by his own admission, not the greatest baritone on earth, and made no bones about having copied the styles of Bing Crosby and Perry Como. He couldn't even read music, and yet recorded more than 100 albums and 500 songs, racking up major hits such as "That's Amore", "Volare", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" and his signature tune "Everybody Loves Somebody". Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by Martin, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style.

For three decades, Martin was among the most popular nightclub acts in Las Vegas. Although a smooth comic, he never wrote his own material. On television, Martin had a highly rated, near-decade-long series; it was there that he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-soused crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy, if not somewhat slurred, remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. Martin attributed his long-term TV popularity to the fact that he never put on airs or pretended to be anyone else onstage, but that's not necessarily true. Those closest to him categorized him as a great enigma; for, despite all his exterior fame and easygoing charm, Martin was a complex, introverted soul and a loner. Even his closest friend, Sinatra, only saw Martin once or twice per year. His private passions were golf, going to restaurants, and watching television. He loathed parties—even when hosting them—and would sometimes sneak off to bed without telling a soul. He once said in a 1978 interview for Esquire magazine that, although he loved performing, particularly in nightclubs, if he had to do it over again he would be a professional golfer or baseball player.

Martin and Lewis' official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's Club 500 on July 25, 1946, and club patrons throughout the East Coast were soon convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while the he was trying to sing, and, ultimately, the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year that Martin and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal Wallis as comedy relief for the film My Friend Irma. Martin and Lewis was the hottest act in nightclubs, films, and television during the early '50s, but the pace and the pressure took its toll, and the act broke up in 1956, ten years to the day after the first official teaming. Lewis had no trouble maintaining his film popularity alone, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire to his former partner, found the going rough, and his first solo-starring film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, did not do well.

In 1965, Martin launched his weekly NBC comedy-variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image as a lazy, carefree boozer, even though few entertainers worked as hard to make what they were doing look so easy. It's also no secret that Martin was sipping apple juice, not booze, most of the time onstage. He stole the lovable-drunk shtick from Phil Harris; 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. In the late 1970s, Martin concentrated on club dates, recordings, and an occasional film, and even made an appearance on the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1978. (Talk of a complete reconciliation and possible re-teaming of their old act, however, was dissipated when it was clear that, to paraphrase Lewis, the men may have loved each other but didn't like each other).

Dean Martin, late in life.Martin's even-keel world began to crumble in 1987, when his son Dean Paul Martin was terminated in a plane crash. A much-touted tour with old pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra in 1989 was abruptly canceled, and the public was led to believe it was due to a falling out with Sinatra; only intimates knew that Martin was a very sick man who had never completely recovered from the loss of his son and, as a lifelong smoker, was suffering from emphysema. But Martin courageously kept his private life to himself, emerging briefly and rather jauntily for a public celebration of his 77th birthday with friends and family. Whatever his true state of health, he proved in this rare public appearance that he was still the inveterate showman. Martin died of respiratory failure at the age of 78 on Christmas morning, 1995. Martin had been told he needed major surgery on his kidneys and liver in order to prolong his life, and he had refused.