Dean and Me: A Love Story
I am a huge Dean Martin fan even though I wasn't around when he made it big. My mom used to play Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis movies for me when I was too little to even talk. It wasn't until I became infatuated with the 1960s did my resurgent for Dean come back when I would read all about the Rat Pack. I recently saw the Rat Pack impersonators in Las Vegas and decided to start reading more books on Dean. I picked this one up first because I didn't know much about his beginnings and since he pretty much started with Jerry, I couldn't wait to read this. I did enjoy the book but I don't think I know a whole lot more about Dean than I did before. He obviously kept a lot of his feelings to himself, where Jerry admits he wears his on his sleeve. Because he idolized Dean he put up with it. It's amazing they lasted ten years together. I wanted to understand why they broke up but it wasn't very clear to me. I think they grew apart and tired of each other but Jerry didn't dive too deeply into it. He talked about it "on the surface," but there was much more going on that he didn't say. It was probably too painful to go over as he shared a lot of the blame in what happened.
There were times that I thought Jerry used certain stories to stroke his ego while trying to make it sound like he felt sorry for Dean (the reviews, the buying him a song, etc.) and that was a little cringe worthy to read but all in all it was a good book. It's a shame that for as much as these two shared and as much as they can credit each other for their success, they didn't really end as close as they started. :(