描述
开 本: 32开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 平装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9781400098330
Charming, debonair, and impeccably attired in a black tuxedo,
Dean Martin was coolness incarnate. His music provided the
soundtrack of romance, and his image captivated movie and
television audiences for more than fifty years. His daughter Deana
was among his most devoted fans, but she also knew a side of him
that few others ever glimpsed.
In this heartfelt memoir, Deana recalls the constantly
changing blended family that marked her youth, along with the
unexpected moments of silliness and tenderness that this unusual
Hollywood family shared. She candidly reveals the impact of Dean’s
fame and characteristic aloofness, but delights in sharing
wonderful, never-before-told stories about her father and his
pallies known as the Rat Pack. This enchanting account of life as
the daughter of one of Hollywood’s sexiest icons will leave you
entertained, delighted, and nostalgic for a time gone by.
“From her heart, Deana Martin has told a frank and honest
account of what her life was like with her famous father and
family. It has been a wild ride, with lots of ups and downs,
written with honesty, love, and understanding.” —Regis Philbin
Chapter One
Inside each of us is a small, dark place we can escape to when
we’re in pain. It is a silent sanctuary where comforting thoughts
and memories wash over us, providing a soothing balm for the fear
we’re feeling inside. I first discovered mine when I was quite
small. Cared for by an aunt while my mother disappeared for three
days, I was sent to live with my father, a man I barely knew
despite the name I bore.
I can vividly recall standing in the foyer of his opulent Beverly
Hills mansion, along with three big boxes of clothes belonging to
me and my two older sisters. A woman I knew as my stepmother picked
up each item between her thumb and forefinger. “No, not this,”
she’d say, or, “This looks clean, we’ll keep it,” or-with a
sympathetic look-“This can go to Goodwill.” One of the boxes was
mine, and
I stood staring at my only possessions being picked over and
graded.
That first interminable summer in my father’s house, I remained
completely mute, breaking my silence only occasionally to whisper
my fears to my sisters, from whom I became inseparable. My arms
were pocked with hives, my skin raw from nervous scratching. While
my father worked hard to maintain his position in Hollywood,
revered by his millions of fans, his little Deana sat clutching the
banisters every night. Dressed in one of my stepmother’s baby-doll
nighties, I dripped silent tears on the top step of his grand
staircase, grieving for a loss too enormous for a nine-year-old
child to comprehend.
On August 19, 1948, the day I was born in the Leroy Sanatorium,
New York City, my father was busy doing what he did best. I emerged
into the world at the very same moment a desperate woman threw
herself from the window of the Russian embassy across the street.
The media throng that gathered outside to cover the mystery suicide
had no idea that Dean Martin’s fourth child was bawling for
attention just feet away.
Dad was on the other end of the country at the time, with his
comedy partner, Jerry Lewis, playing at Slapsy Maxie’s Café, a
popular new nightclub on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Theirs
was the hottest ticket in town, and regularly filling front-row
seats were friends like Humphrey Bogart, Tony Curtis, and Janet
Leigh. Sitting alongside them would be stars like Fred Astaire,
Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, Jane Wyman, James Cagney, and Gary
Cooper, as well as just about every studio head and entertainment
executive in town. Dad opened each show with a song. The minute he
walked out onto that stage, the atmosphere was electric. His image,
style, magnetism, class, and talent just lit up the club.
Hollywood’s brightest settled back into their seats, eagerly
anticipating what lay ahead.
Dad and Jerry were superstars, earning around ten thousand
dollars a week just after the end of the Second World War. They
were about to sign a ten-movie, five-year deal with Paramount
Studios worth $1,250,000. They also had a separate recording
contract with Capitol Records and a radio deal with NBC. With three
young children and my recent arrival, Dad was finally succeeding in
paying off the debts that had dogged him for years, and funding the
fairy-tale lifestyle he hoped to create for us all.
My mother, Betty, called Dad at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel the
night I was born to tell him he had a new daughter to add to his
family. He was so deeply asleep when he took the call that he
thought it was someone fooling around and hung up. Hours later, Dad
rang back to see if his hazy memory of the previous night was
correct. It was true. Mother had given him another baby girl.
Between them, they settled on the name Deana Angela. Dad had always
wanted at least some of his children to be named after him. Having
successfully chosen the names Craig, Gail, and Claudia, Mother was
only too happy to comply with Dad’s request. At the hospital, the
registrar misspelled my name, writing it as Dina on my birth
certificate, much to Mother’s annoyance. It was a mistake that was
to be repeated throughout my life. When the gossip columnist Walter
Winchell wrote in his Sunday column that my name was Dinah, my
mother was exasperated. She sang the line from the song, “Dinah? Is
there anyone finah in the state of Carolina?” and muttered, “Can’t
Winchell get anything right?”
It was two months before my father finally met me. His West Coast
debut of The Martin & Lewis Show and his first movie role with
Jerry in the film My Friend Irma kept him more than three thousand
miles from 315 West 106th Street and Riverside, New York. That was
where I shared an apartment with my mother, brother, and sisters
and our housekeeper, Sue. Staying with us were my maternal
grandmother, Gertrude, and my young aunts Anne and Barbara, who’d
come from Philadelphia to help with my arrival. In the apartment
above us was the singer Lena Horne, whose children played with us
from an early age.
I finally came face to face with my father in Philadelphia, where
Patti Lewis, Jerry’s wife, accompanied the Martin family to a
long-awaited reunion. Having taken me in his arms, he beamed
adoringly into my big hazel eyes. Dad then announced that we were
all moving to California. We returned to New York almost
immediately to start packing, while my mother’s family traveled
home, their task complete. It was an emotional parting. To add to
the tears, Mother’s close friend, the actor Jackie Cooper, came to
bid her good-bye.
”I wish you weren’t going to Hollywood, Betty,” he told her,
giving her a warm embrace. “I just know it’s gonna break your
heart.” Mother wondered what he knew.
For a brief period after my arrival, my parents enjoyed real
happiness. Dad loved being a family man, and reveled in being a
star. He could hardly believe how much his fortunes had changed.
“Who’d have thunk it?” he would say. “For a boy from Steubenville,
Ohio?”
He was always proud of where he came from, and mentioned it
whenever he could. My grandfather Gaetano Crocetti had traveled to
Steubenville shortly after arriving at Ellis Island in New York in
1913. A nineteen-year-old farm laborer, he came from Montesilvano,
Italy, near Pescara on the Adriatic coast, following his two elder
brothers to eastern Ohio. Steubenville was thirty-five miles west
of Pittsburgh and had a large Italian immigrant population. Once
settled, my grandfather became a barber. He embraced his new life
but never lost his impenetrable Italian accent or his love for the
old country.
My grandmother Angela Barra was born in Fernwood, Ohio, to
parents who emigrated from Italy. She was raised by German nuns who
taught her all the things that a young lady needed to know: The art
of cooking, caring for a home, and, most important, they taught her
how to sew. This was a skill, that she developed into a lucrative
profession, as she became known as the finest seamstress in the
region. Because of her, all of the boys in the neighborhood had
beautifully handcrafted clothes, either new or altered from older
suits. When we were children she made many of our finest outfits,
all matching, and it was she who gave my father his impeccable
sense of style. She also gave my grandfather his American nickname
“Guy.” On Sunday, October 25, 1914, at the age of sixteen, Angela
married Guy at St. Anthony of Padua Church in Steubenville, Ohio.
Their first child, Guglielmo, known to me as Uncle Bill, was born
on June 24, 1916. Dad, who was baptized Dino Crocetti at the same
church, was their second child. He was born June 7, 1917.
My grandmother was an excellent homemaker and a wonderful cook.
Her sons were raised on traditional Italian cuisine such as
spaghetti and meatballs, veal or sausage with peppers, and Dad’s
favorite-pasta fagioli. My grandfather was a respected barber, and
his sons were never lacking for anything. All he ever wanted was
their health and happiness. He also hoped that one day they might
work alongside him in his barbershop.
Dad grew up in a close-knit neighborhood that served as an
extended family. With his cousins John, Archie, and Robert, he
played bocce ball and baseball in the lots behind their houses and
swam in the Ohio River. There was church every Sunday, where Dad
and Uncle Bill were altar boys; Boy Scouts, where he was the
drummer; and the Sons of Italy social events. Until he was five
years old, Dad spoke predominantly Italian, but that changed when
he started going to school.
Learning English as a second language gave Dad a slow and easy
style of speaking that remained with him for the rest of his life.
Like all children, he began picking up phrases and expressions from
his school friends and soon sounded just like them. Unlike his
studious brother, Dad spent much of his spare time watching
westerns at the local movie house, the Olympic. Sometimes he would
hang out at the poolrooms and nightclubs that were opening to cater
to the increasing numbers of steelworkers in the town, which became
known as “Little Chicago.” It was great entertainment, and all done
openly within a few yards of his father’s shop.
For a time some of Dad’s friends joked that the only chair he was
heading for was not the swiveling type in his father’s barbershop.
Dad even added a funny line about that into the song Mr. Wonderful
years later, that went, “Back home in Steubenville, they’re
doubting all this, I swear. / They’re still betting six-to-five I
get the chair.”
Dad once told an interviewer, “I had a great time growing up in
Steubenville. I had everything I could possibly want-women, music,
nightclubs, and liquor-and to think I had all of that when I was
only thirteen.”
My father learned from an early age that charm, good looks, and a
smile could help him find everything from employment to hot bread
at the Steubenville Bakery. He was, at different times, a milkman,
a gas station attendant, and a store assistant.
He loved to sing, which he did at any opportunity, never passing
up an invitation to entertain. He had a beautiful voice an…
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