Dean Martin: King of Cool

A TCM documentary from last year on the consummate entertainer. Tracing his roots from Ohio to the top of the heap who skirted on his great looks, effortless way around a song & his innate talent & featuring talking heads like his daughter, the RZA, Jon Hamm, et al who chart his early days as a crooner, his hugely popular partnership w/Jerry Lewis (which turned ugly when Lewis started exercising more power over their relationship), his film roles which led him becoming a member of the Rat Pack & finally his popular TV show which ran for about a decade. Through it all, for all the outward good will he displayed, his failed marriages, the death of his son & his inability to connect soon showed a dark side to his persona where even his own nearest & dearest couldn't get in but through it all Martin still remained an timeless enigma which garnered him praise from all comers.

I am very glad I watched this film with my daughter, as the film impacted both of us very differently. As a 57 year-old guy, I know I lot about Martin. I've seen most of his films and remember his weekly TV show. My daughter, on the other hand, knew little about him apart from his music...and her reaction to the film is important but quite different. And so, it seems that depending on your age and familiarity with the man will greatly impact on your viewing experience. Much of it is because the film seems to assume you know a lot about Dean Martin...and my daughter had to ask me repeatedly to fill in a few gaps.

The film itself is interesting because there's no narrator. Instead, lots of folks talk about Dean Martin and their recollections of him. Many of these pieces of footage are great...such as from his family and friends. However, a few left me confused as to WHY these people were talking about Dean Martin as they most likely did NOT know the man and were not experts on him. Jon Hamm and the guy from the Wu-Tang Clan were VERY oddly included...as were a few others.

If you are looking for a film about Dean Martin and not his career, this is a very good film. But when it comes to his career, there are a few glaring omissions (such as any mention of his "Celebrity Roasts" or even his individual films with Jerry Lewis). Overall, a very good film with a few problems...which I mentioned above.

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?