The partnership that would make Joseph Levitch famous as Jerry Lewis, however, came two years into that marriage, when he crossed paths with a singer named Dino Crocetti.
Dino and Jerry
Dean Martin—born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, on June 7, 1917—was nine years older than Jerry Lewis and had a very different temperament. Where Lewis was physical, frantic, and tireless, Martin was smooth, relaxed, and effortlessly cool. Where Lewis sought out work with the intensity of someone who had something to prove, Martin gave the impression that work was merely one pleasant feature of a pleasant life.
They met in 1946, both working the club circuit, and the precise circumstances of their first encounter vary depending on who is telling the story. What the record confirms is that they began performing together that year, debuting as a team at the 500 Club in Atlantic City. The chemistry was immediate and the response was strong. Lewis’s physical comedy and gleeful disorder played against Martin’s composed, seemingly oblivious elegance in a way that delighted audiences. Martin would sing; Lewis would interrupt, destroy, and clown. Martin would react with a kind of long-suffering amusement that suggested he had seen all this before and had decided to let it continue.
The act worked. By 1948, producer Hal Wallis had signed them, and the following year they appeared in their first film together, “My Friend Irma,” based on a popular radio comedy series. They were not the leads—that film starred Marie Wilson in the title role—but they made enough of an impression to be carried over to the sequel, “My Friend Irma Goes West,” and from there the Martin and Lewis films became a franchise of their own.