Afterlives of the Rich and Famous (25 page)

Dean married Betty McDonald in
1941
, an unhappy marriage that lasted until
1949
and produced four children (Stephen, Claudia, Barbara, and Deana), of whom Dean was awarded custody after the divorce. That same year he began a twenty-three-year marriage to Jeanne Biegger, which resulted in three more children: Dean Paul, Ricci, and Gina.

Dean’s career continued to gain momentum in the 1940s. In 1943 he signed a contract to sing exclusively at New York’s Riobamba Room, following its previous entertainer, another young singer named Frank Sinatra; in 1944 he began broadcasting a fifteen-minute radio program called
Songs by Dean Martin;
and in
1946
he was given a recording contract with Diamond Records. His one-year stint in the army in
1944
, during which he was stationed near home in Akron, Ohio, caused very little disruption in his growing popularity.

One night in 1946, at the Glass Hat Club in New York, Dean Martin met an up-and-coming comic named Jerry Lewis, who was also performing there. They began participating in each other’s acts, and a comedy team was born, with Dean as the smooth, low-key crooner and straight man and Jerry as the manic, disruptive, unpredictable clown. They were a hit, given their own radio show in 1949, and signed by Paramount Pictures producer Hal Wallis for his film
My Friend Irma
. Next thing they knew, they had a major-league agent, Abby Greshler; a very lucrative contract that included complete control over their club and recording material and their radio and television appearances; new homes in Los Angeles, which Dean loved; and a shared income of millions of dollars. The team of Martin and Lewis made a total of sixteen films, including
Sailor Beware, You’re Never Too Young,
and
Hollywood or Bust
. But Dean finally became disillusioned with his role as straight man, which consistently led critics to praise Jerry Lewis as the real talent in the team, and in
1956
he ended the partnership and became a solo act again.

First on his career agenda was to become a legitimate actor. His first effort,
Ten Thousand Bedrooms,
was a failure, but in
1957
he took a huge salary cut for the opportunity to costar in
The Young Lions
with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. It proved to be a smart move and the beginning of Dean’s comeback. Next came
Some Came Running
in
1958
with his old Riobamba counterpart Frank Sinatra, which was also a success, and Dean Martin’s acting career was on its way again with no need at all for a zany partner.

His recording career was thriving as well by the late 1950s. In his lifetime he recorded more than a hundred albums, and he even succeeded in knocking the Beatles’ hit “A Hard Day’s Night” out of first place on American charts with his signature song, “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.” He also became one of the most popular headliners in Las Vegas, soon to be joined on the stage by a small group of famous friends whom the public would come to call the “Rat Pack” (Dean, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford). The Rat Pack also made four movies together between 1960 and 1964—
Ocean’s Eleven, Sergeants Three, Four for Texas,
and
Robin and the Seven Hoods.

In 1965 Dean launched his successful NBC variety series
The Dean Martin Show,
filled with singing, comedy, and cream-of-the-crop celebrity guests; Dean, invariably in a tuxedo, was the laid-back, alcohol-buzzed, suave, and sometimes silly host. Despite plenty of rumors to the contrary, Dean enjoyed drinking, but he was invariably disciplined about it and was never an alcoholic. In fact, he was a notorious homebody, preferring a round of golf and an evening of watching westerns on TV to the night life more typical of the rest of his Rat Pack cronies. The
1960
s also ushered in a series of four Matt Helm movies, with Dean in the title role as the comedic superspy.

In the early 1970s, when his television series was still thriving and his recording career was still rolling along nicely, Dean suffered what many considered to be a mid-life crisis. He suddenly divorced Jeanne, his wife of twenty-three years, and dissolved his partnership with the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, signing instead with the MGM Grand and securing a three-picture deal with MGM Studios. He quickly married a hair-salon receptionist named Catherine Hawn in 1973, a marriage that lasted less than three years. He and Jeanne ultimately reconciled, although they never remarried.
The Dean Martin Show
was cancelled at the end of the
1974
season, but it did evolve into a series of specials called the
Dean Martin Celebrity Roast,
which lasted through
1984
.

By 1976 Dean’s old partner Jerry Lewis, from whom he’d remained estranged, was hosting an annual Labor Day telethon for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. In one of the most talked-about television events of the decade, Frank Sinatra, to the shock of Jerry Lewis and his vast television audience, walked onstage with Dean. Martin and Lewis embraced, the personal reconciliation took hold, and they remained friends until Dean’s death.

On March 21, 1987, Dean’s son Dean Paul was killed in a jet fighter crash while flying with the California Air National Guard. The loss shattered Dean, and he never recovered. He made a few more appearances with the Rat Pack, ending in 1989 at Bally’s in Las Vegas, and celebrated Frank Sinatra’s seventy-fifth birthday onstage in December 1990, but he never performed again.

By September 1993 Dean had been diagnosed with both emphysema and lung cancer. On Christmas morning, 1995, with his former wife Jeanne at his side, Dean Martin died of respiratory failure at the age of seventy-eight. Las Vegas most certainly still remembered him and honored him by dimming the lights along the fabled Strip, where he entertained so many for so long, at the news of his passing.

From Francine

As often happens when the darkness of grief overwhelms the spirit, Dean’s grief over the death of his son Dean Paul separated him from his faith and all the love around him.
And when his body died, his grief kept him lost and earthbound, wandering from his house to his favorite restaurants in search of solace and only wondering in passing why no one seemed to even acknowledge him anymore.
We all watched over him and rejoiced when, in an act of pure eternal grace, Dean Paul reached out from the Other Side to embrace his father and bring him Home.
He stayed with him at the Scanning Machine and through Orientation, and Dean emerged replenished, his faith deeper and stronger than ever, his extraordinary capacity to love and be loved fully intact.
It was then that Dean was reunited with his father and mother, his Uncle Leonard, Sammy Davis Jr., and a host of lifelong friends, particularly a Joe or Joey from “the neighborhood.”

His experience at the Scanning Machine made Dean especially eager to apologize to Sammy for moments when he was unkind and made jokes at Sammy’s expense, betraying the genuine love he felt for him for the sake of what he referred to as “a cheap laugh.” I have no idea what Dean was referring to, but his apology was heartfelt, Sammy accepted it with enormous compassion, and their friendship remains strong.
One of the countless joys of Home is that there is no anger here, no resentment or ill will toward anyone here or on earth, and while no apologies are ever necessary, they provide great opportunities for further growth and cleansing of the soul.

Dean still enjoys performing here, and he’s enormously popular for his voice, his charm, and a sense of humor that far surpasses what you experienced on earth.
He also loves entertaining in his home overlooking a cliffside golf course that corresponds to your northern California coastline.
He much prefers small crowds to large ones and cherishes time to himself, which he most typically spends horseback riding.
He devoutly attends Mass at his favorite church—not one of our magnificent cathedrals, but an intimate outdoor altar hidden in the Gardens of the Towers.
He continues to study acting and often appears in classic musicals, and he takes joy in giving vocal lessons to the many aspiring singers on the Other Side.

Dean occasionally visits his wife Jeanne and his children. To this day he and his friend Peter Lawford return to what Dean laughingly refers to as their favorite “haunt,” a restaurant called the Hamburger Hamlet in Hollywood, where they’ve likely been fleetingly spotted by a few waiters and more than a few patrons, but dismissed as products of overactive imaginations.

Rarely does anyone return to the Other Side and their time at the Scanning Machine without regrets. Dean says his biggest were his tendency to abruptly leave situations when he began to get a self-imposed feeling of being nonessential and easily replaced—particularly his breakup with Jerry Lewis and his divorce from Jeanne, whom he still loved—and the fact that he never sought help in recovering from his grief over the death of his son, which caused him to, as he puts it, “check out on so many people who loved me.” His chosen life themes were Performance and Passivity, the areas in which he found his highest highs and his most crushing personal disappointments, a statement he’s certain those who knew him best will understand.

Richard Pryor

O
n December 1, 1940, comedian, actor, and writer Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor III was born in Peoria, Illinois. His mother, Gertrude, a prostitute, worked in his grandmother’s brothel, and his father was said to be a boxer and bartender to whom his mother was briefly married when Richard was three years old. Richard was raised in the brothel and abused throughout his childhood—beaten by his violent grandmother for even the slightest disobedience, raped by a teenage neighbor when he was six years old, and molested by a priest. He found his emotional escape and inspiration in the darkened movie theater near his chaotic, cruel home.

He was first “discovered” at the age of twelve by Juliette Whit
taker, who supervised a public recreational facility. Recognizing his natural comedic performing ability, she cast him in a local production of
Rumpelstiltskin
and arranged talent shows specifically for the purpose of shining a spotlight on this hilarious, edgy little boy. She remained an important influence on Richard until the end of his career.

His formal education ended with expulsion when he was fourteen, launching him into a succession of professions: strip-club janitor, shoe-shine boy, drummer, meat packer, truck driver, billiard hall attendant, and occasional juvenile offender. His military career was limited to two years in the army from 1958 to 1960, most of which he spent in an army prison for an assault charge while he was briefly stationed in Germany.

After his discharge from the military, he spent just enough time at a cabaret in Peoria to discover that his talents did not lie in the areas of singing and accompanying himself on the piano, and he quickly switched to professional stand-up comedy in clubs throughout the Midwest. It was also in 1960 that he married Patricia Price, the mother of his first child, Richard Jr., who was born in 1961. The marriage ended in divorce a year later.

Richard moved to New York in 1963, drawn there by one of his great inspirations, Bill Cosby, and quickly rose through the ranks of club comedians until he found himself appearing with such seminal performers as Bob Dylan, Richie Havens, and Woody Allen. Television came calling in 1966, and he gained national exposure thanks to, among others,
The Ed Sullivan Show
and
The Tonight Show
with Johnny Carson. And from there it was off to Las Vegas, where he was the opening act for Bobby Darin at the Flamingo Hotel. But before long, performing in relatively middle-of-the-road Las Vegas became too confining for his more outrageous sensibilities, and in September
1969
he walked out on his scheduled performance at the Aladdin Hotel with a rhetorical, “What the f*** am I doing here?” Before leaving Las Vegas he recorded his first album,
Richard Pryor,
in
1968
; he broke into film with small roles in
The Busy Body
(
1967
) and
Wild in the Streets
(
1968
); and he became a father again, twice—
he had his second child, Elizabeth, with his girlfriend Maxine Ander
son in
1967
, and his two-year marriage to Shelly Bonus produced his third child, his daughter Rain, in
1969
.

Richard headed from Las Vegas to Berkeley, California, where he took a hiatus from comedy and sharpened his wit, his edge, and his perspective in the free-spirited, outspoken counterculture atmosphere of Berkeley in the late 1960s. He recorded his second album,
Craps (After Hours),
in 1971 and began writing for television, including
Sanford and Son,
The Flip Wilson Show,
and a Lily Tomlin special for which he shared a Best Writing Emmy. He also won critical acclaim for his role in 1972’s
Lady Sings the Blues
with Diana Ross.

His career was thriving by
1974
, when he cowrote the Mel Brooks
film
Blazing Saddles
and released his hilarious Grammy Award–win
ning album
That Nigger’s Crazy
. Eager to break into more mainstream television appearances, he was a guest host on the first season of the groundbreaking series
Saturday Night Live
in
1975
and starred in
The Richard Pryor Show,
an NBC variety series that lasted for only four episodes in
1977
before it was cancelled. But for the most part, his popularity in both television and film never faltered from the
1970
s through the
1990
s, with some fifty movies, guest appearances, and specials to his credit, not to mention the nineteen comedy albums he recorded in his lifetime.