Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in "Hollywood Or Bust"

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This is one of the best of Martin and Lewis movies. and the very last one they ever did together. When you watch a movie, you never know what the stars are doing when they are off-camera. Jerry and Dean began doing comedy routines in the best-known nightclubs and in 1949 on radio.  Paramount Pictures hired them and they soon were doing 14 movies together. Each of their movies drew bigger and bigger crowds. But whatever Dean and Jerry were doing during the making of this film, you can be sure of one thing – they were doing it apart from each other. Five months before this film went into production, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis broke up their partnership forever. Jerry says to this day that he has never watched this movie.

In fact, Jerry Lewis was fired at one point during production by the director of this film, Frank Tashlin. The director must have really been upset with Jerry to do that. At that moment Jerry Lewis was considered to be the funniest man in Hollywood. Even after he was hired again  to finish the film, Jerry and Dean had ugly arguments in front of everyone. What caused this absolute breakup? It was that Dean Martin  had become less and less important to the team and resented it very deeply.   The end of their working together came ten years after they had first joined together (1946–1956). At that time  it was as tragic to their fans as the breakup of Lucille Ball and Dezi Arnez that ended the television favorite “I Love Lucy”. On camera, both Jerry and Dean were outstanding as you’ll see in this film. But they had genius talent together or alone. Both were highly successful after they parted.

Jerry Lewis, whose real name  is Joseph Levitch, was born in Newark, New Jersey. His parents were Russian Jews. He began performing on stage with his parents at the age of 5. in the Catskill Mountains of New York. During the Second World War, he was rejected from the Army because of a heart murmur. He went solo to star in many of his funniest movies for Paramount and then for Columbia Pictures. By the age of forty, a new generation of theatergoers found Lewis’s age began making his screwy antics too absurd for their taste. By then Jerry Lewis had amassed a large fortune in films. Jerry is responsible for creating some important Hollywood camera and light affects. But at the end of his movie career, Jerry became even more famous to America for his yearly Muscular Dystrophy telethons over Labor Day weekend’s which brought in millions of dollars to fight the disease. He did that for the next forty years. It’s hard to believe that this actor, comedian, singer, film producer, screenwriter, and movie director is now 88 years old!

Dino Paul Crocetti was born to Italian-American parents and didn’t speak English until he began grade school where he was constantly bullied for his accent. Wikipedia says “He dropped out of high school his sophomore year and became a drummer,a blackjack dealer in a speakeasy,worked in a steel mill and became a welterweight boxer who called himself “Kid Crochet”.  He got his nose broken in the ring along with bruises everywhere. Dean said “I fought in 12 professional fights and won all but 11 of them.” He was drafted into the Second World War but discharged because of a double hernia. Those who heard him sing compared him with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby, but he didn’t have their kind of draw. He might have stayed thought of as mediocre forever but instead met Jerry Lewis and history was made. Pursuing his acting career, Dean Martin again nearly quit because, like in the boxing ring, he was beat up constantly by the critics and his movies proved unsuccessful. Then everything changed with one film – the 1958 war classic – The Young Lions” with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. From then on he did one great movie after another. His singing career one all kinds of awards too with chart busting songs like “Memories Are Made Of This”, “That’s Amore”, “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime”, and one after another smash hit. Yet, just like Frank Sinatra, he never could read a note of music! “The Dean Martin Show” stayed high with television ratings. And once he had become a member of “The Rat Pack” – Frank Sinatra’s gang – his career in the casinos of Las Vegas kept him going.

Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in "Hollywood Or Bust"