Dean and Me

Despite his notorious ego, Jerry Lewis's memoir and encomium is balanced, even self-deprecating. As one would expect, it contains plenty of humor in its sentimental account of his professional and personal relationship with Dean Martin, when they teamed with great success as a comedy duo. Lewis effusively attributes numerous virtues to his partner and freely admits his own failings. Narrator Stephen Hoye tries to give a sense of personality to both characters but pulls back on the author's more abrasive aspects. One is grateful that he, not Lewis, is delivering this well-told, sentimental true story. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

August 8, 2005
Over the course of their 10-year partnership, Lewis and Dean Martin made 16 wildly popular movies (they were the world's number one box office earners from 1950 to 1956), but their real strength was their performances in nightclubs, theaters and on television. Audiences found their mixture of music and ad-libbed, irreverent comedic pandemonium intoxicating. The duo's fascinating kinship—Lewis idolized his partner, while Martin was aloof—has been chronicled in Shawn Levy's King of Comedy
and Nick Tosches's Dino
, but Lewis wants to give his late partner the credit he feels critics missed by always praising the "the monkey" rather than the straight man. Untangling the complicated union, Lewis doesn't spare himself, admitting that when the team's relationship unraveled (they weren't speaking between scenes on their last film), he became a bully on set and made others the brunt of the anger he couldn't vent at Martin. Lewis is a wonderful raconteur, and his tales capture the excitement of their budding career and the slow, sad erosion of the fun. Whether it's his age (Lewis is 79) or his coauthor (Kaplan co-wrote John McEnroe's You Cannot Be Serious
), fans will be surprised and entertained by Lewis's honesty and diminished ego and bitterness. Photos. First serial to
Vanity Fair.