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Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
From dealing blackjack in the small-time gangsterÌýÌýtown of Steubenville, Ohio, to carousing with theÌýÌýfamous "Rat Pack" in a Hollywood heÌýÌýcalled home, Dean Martin lived in a grandstand,ÌýÌýguttering life of booze, broads, and big money. HeÌýÌýrubbed shoulders with the mob, the Kennedys, andÌýÌýHollywood's biggest stars. He was one of America'sÌýÌýfavorite entertainers. But no one really knew him.ÌýÌýNow Nick Tosches reveals the man behind theÌýÌýimage--the dark side of the American dream. It's aÌýÌýwild, illuminating, sometimes shocking tale of sex,ÌýÌýambition, heartaches--and a life lived hard, fast,ÌýÌýand withoutÌýÌýapologies.
620 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
119 people are currently reading
1,650 people want to read
About the author
Nick Tosches
49Ìýbooks225ÌýfollowersNick Tosches was an American journalist, novelist, biographer, and poet. His 1982 biography of Jerry Lee Lewis, Hellfire, was praised by Rolling Stone magazine as "the best rock and roll biography ever written."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 141 reviews
October 30, 2017
Nick Tosches, former writer for Rolling Stone magazine, brings the same in-house, smug disdain for any musician not named Jackson Browne or Bruce Springsteen or The Eagles, let alone a prehistoric nonentity like former cool cat, Rat Packer, Dean Martin. Contempt hangs over this book like the acrid smell of burning meat when your neighbor gets too drunk to turn his burgers over during a cookout. Mix that with a misguided leitmotif (something about a multi-metaphoric breeze that wafts over Dino at key points in his life) and a prose style that mixes hipster jargon, a smattering of Italian words and phrases and some of the more wince-inducing passages I’ve come across in a while and you have this seamy tale of debauched celebrity.
Like most biographies I’ve read, this book takes some time to hit its stride. Except for Dean’s hatred of all things apple, his childhood was pretty much standard stuff. It’s not until he teams up with “the creepy-looking Jewish kidâ€�, Jerry Lewis, does the book take off in a big way. For my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends that aren’t taking advantage of their senior discount, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the cat’s pajamas from 1946 to 1956 â€� they were a comedy team that started out as night club act and took their comedy act to radio, TV and the movies. Despite the dough and the broads, Dino got progressively tired of Jerry’s rampant ego-driven megalomania and the team acrimoniously split up.
It was in all the papers.
Kudos to Dean Martin for teaming up for ten years of his life with Jerry Lewis. For me, it’s almost impossible to spend 90 minutes with the guy.
Dean Martin was a guy blessed with looks, a good singing voice and an easy, laid back manner. Nothing phased Dino and this is a concept Tosches runs with � Dean the Indifferent or Dino the Pod Person � someone who withholds his true feelings and nature from others � Dino the Obelisk � keeping the world at bay while reaping the riches by simultaneously embracing family values (It’s a Dino Yuletide!!) and undercutting those values with misogynistic asides and smutty double-entendres (Guess what Dino’s stocking is stuffed with? Try putting a Christmas bow around that?).
There’s also Dean the Philandering Whore-Monger and Dean the Hepped Up, Percodan Popping Drunk too.
Foster Brooks � at the feet of a master.
The drunk routine (his vanity plates read “DRUNKY�) became less of an act and more of a way of life and combined with his general apathy, his Vegas act consisted of thirty minutes of him singing songs he had no interest in singing or finishing � with the ultimate act of scorn having Dino flicking lit cigarettes into an audience.
That’s Amore, pally!!!
Overarching takeaway: Celebrities are pretty much all a bunch of a$$holes.
Why did I gave it four stars?
Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, contemptuous storytelling and tales about whoring drunken celebrities are right in my wheel house of “favorite things�.
The Fifties � a time of great subtlety
Like most biographies I’ve read, this book takes some time to hit its stride. Except for Dean’s hatred of all things apple, his childhood was pretty much standard stuff. It’s not until he teams up with “the creepy-looking Jewish kidâ€�, Jerry Lewis, does the book take off in a big way. For my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends that aren’t taking advantage of their senior discount, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were the cat’s pajamas from 1946 to 1956 â€� they were a comedy team that started out as night club act and took their comedy act to radio, TV and the movies. Despite the dough and the broads, Dino got progressively tired of Jerry’s rampant ego-driven megalomania and the team acrimoniously split up.
It was in all the papers.
Kudos to Dean Martin for teaming up for ten years of his life with Jerry Lewis. For me, it’s almost impossible to spend 90 minutes with the guy.
Dean Martin was a guy blessed with looks, a good singing voice and an easy, laid back manner. Nothing phased Dino and this is a concept Tosches runs with � Dean the Indifferent or Dino the Pod Person � someone who withholds his true feelings and nature from others � Dino the Obelisk � keeping the world at bay while reaping the riches by simultaneously embracing family values (It’s a Dino Yuletide!!) and undercutting those values with misogynistic asides and smutty double-entendres (Guess what Dino’s stocking is stuffed with? Try putting a Christmas bow around that?).
There’s also Dean the Philandering Whore-Monger and Dean the Hepped Up, Percodan Popping Drunk too.
Foster Brooks � at the feet of a master.
The drunk routine (his vanity plates read “DRUNKY�) became less of an act and more of a way of life and combined with his general apathy, his Vegas act consisted of thirty minutes of him singing songs he had no interest in singing or finishing � with the ultimate act of scorn having Dino flicking lit cigarettes into an audience.
That’s Amore, pally!!!
Overarching takeaway: Celebrities are pretty much all a bunch of a$$holes.
Why did I gave it four stars?
Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, contemptuous storytelling and tales about whoring drunken celebrities are right in my wheel house of “favorite things�.
The Fifties � a time of great subtlety
July 24, 2008
Anyone thinking about writing a biography about Dean Martin, forget about it. "Dino" isn't hard to beat, it's downright impossible. The inexhaustible biography on Dino covers every facet of his career, from the Jerry Lewis sidekick days to his great TV show to his surprisingly successful movie career to the goofy Matt Helm spy films, "Dino" runs 652 pages and never gets boring, just like Mr. Martin himself.
April 7, 2012
I grew up in a time when Dean Martin, like Elvis, had ceased to have any relevance. I vaguely remember the Dean Martin show, and slightly more clearly remember the Roasts, but by and large the stream of time had pretty well carried Dino out of the zeitgeist, at least in San Francisco of the '70's. To this day, RIO BRAVO is the only one (out of the very few of his many movies that I have seen) of his films that I can ever imagine myself watching again. As for his music, I actually prefer Sinatra, and I don't even like Sinatra. So how is it that I can have given a voluminous biography of someone I don't care about, a man who was, in any event, a cipher, five stars? The answer, my friend, is Nick Tosches.
One thing that is manifest from this book is, that however jejune and inane Martin's surviving output may seem to me (don't get me started on Martin and Lewis), the man was an avatar of cool, and Tosches cogently assesses this cool as built of a combination of "lontano", the distance Martin kept between his emotions and the world around him, and "menefreghista", which Tosches defines as "one who simply did not give a fuck". This was Martin's crowning achievement, and it accounts for his attractiveness as a character. Ironically, for a man who so thoroughly renounced his past, the deaths of his parents in the late '60's caused his wall of cool to crumble, and began a sordid descent into ill-advised marriages, and live performances in which he took a subsidiary role that finally allowed Sinatra to eclipse him. The final chapters of this epic are almost unbearably sad, not because Dino becomes a tragic figure, but more because he becomes a farcical one.
"What more could one ask of life than a bottle of scotch, a blowjob, and a million bucks?" is the formulation Tosches frequently repeats to summarize Dino's creed, and surprisingly, the millions seemed to arrive commensurately with the scotch and the blowjobs. In purely financial terms, Martin had to have been one of the most successful performers who ever lived, and surely that is the only way he ever would have measured success. If posterity might feel let down by the dearth of quality in his recorded output, well then surely the joke is on posterity.
One thing that is manifest from this book is, that however jejune and inane Martin's surviving output may seem to me (don't get me started on Martin and Lewis), the man was an avatar of cool, and Tosches cogently assesses this cool as built of a combination of "lontano", the distance Martin kept between his emotions and the world around him, and "menefreghista", which Tosches defines as "one who simply did not give a fuck". This was Martin's crowning achievement, and it accounts for his attractiveness as a character. Ironically, for a man who so thoroughly renounced his past, the deaths of his parents in the late '60's caused his wall of cool to crumble, and began a sordid descent into ill-advised marriages, and live performances in which he took a subsidiary role that finally allowed Sinatra to eclipse him. The final chapters of this epic are almost unbearably sad, not because Dino becomes a tragic figure, but more because he becomes a farcical one.
"What more could one ask of life than a bottle of scotch, a blowjob, and a million bucks?" is the formulation Tosches frequently repeats to summarize Dino's creed, and surprisingly, the millions seemed to arrive commensurately with the scotch and the blowjobs. In purely financial terms, Martin had to have been one of the most successful performers who ever lived, and surely that is the only way he ever would have measured success. If posterity might feel let down by the dearth of quality in his recorded output, well then surely the joke is on posterity.
February 18, 2009
Dean Martin is an elusive and fascinating character. From what I can tell, it would be impossible to write a biography that gets to the core of "who he was," so instead Tosches uses Martin's life as an intense and sprawling exercise to take apart all kinds of ideas about America. The son of Italian immigrants, Dino Crocetti lived The American Dream to the hilt. He followed every empty promise America had to make. He saw the whole sham for what it was, and was never ashamed to expose it. He hated when actors claimed that acting was hard work. During his live shows, he frequently stopped mid-song, not caring to continue. For someone so culturally involved in the huge lie that is American "culture," Martin seems to me to still be an honest personality. What you see is what you get.
My favorite passage:
"For [Henry:] Miller, as for the masses of sub-literate and post-literate slobs who comprised the vast heart of Dean's viewership, Dean was the American spirit at its truest: fuck Vietnam, fuck politics, fuck morality, fuck culture and fuck the counterculture, fuck it all. We were here but for a breath; twice around the fountain and into the grave: fuck it."
This book rules.
My favorite passage:
"For [Henry:] Miller, as for the masses of sub-literate and post-literate slobs who comprised the vast heart of Dean's viewership, Dean was the American spirit at its truest: fuck Vietnam, fuck politics, fuck morality, fuck culture and fuck the counterculture, fuck it all. We were here but for a breath; twice around the fountain and into the grave: fuck it."
This book rules.
September 11, 2010
I love Dean Martin, I always will and I won't let this crappy author and his inability to string a simple sentence together ruin my adoration. Possibly, he had a terrible editor. More likely Mr. Tosches simply has no idea what he is doing. The book itself could have been 200 pages shorter if he decided that he wanted it to be about Dean Martin and not a lengthy history of organized crime. Yes, Dean Martin was supposed to be involved with organized crime but this author did not need to delve quite do deeply, page after page, to convince us.
Fortunately, the well written parts of the book, the sections that keep me reading were written by others and quoted here. Possibly there is a lack of material written about Dino and that is why Mr. Tosches had to pad the book so much.
Fortunately, the well written parts of the book, the sections that keep me reading were written by others and quoted here. Possibly there is a lack of material written about Dino and that is why Mr. Tosches had to pad the book so much.
August 20, 2019
This has got to be, stylistically, the worst written biography I've ever read... I've read a lot of biographies about both Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis now, plus I've easily watched and read close to a hundred hours of source material, so I'm pretty positive I can definitively say that Tosches' writing style is literally the opposite of who Dean Martin was as a person: meandering, desperately 'edgy' and straight up pretentious. It's obvious he doesn't have enough material to fill out the book he thought he was writing, so the first 100 pages are filled up with tangential information about the history of Italian American immigration, the Italian mob and every woman and minority-based slur known to man for no other reason than it's 'rock-n-roll' edgy to do. I get that he was trying to drum up some excitement for a guy who'd been long dismissed as a self parody by the early '90s, but boy does he do it in the worst possible way. That this book was praised so highly is absolutely wild to me, it reads almost like a parody comedy sketch of mobsters.
When Tosches stops with his 'n****r whoredom of slutitude' word wankfests (always with some italian thrown in despite the fact that he even quotes Dean Martin saying he only spoke a dialect and he wasn't even that great at it), I will admit there is some good information here about Dean Martin. Tosches obviously did a lot of research and put a lot of time into compiling what he could get his hands on, even if it doesn't amount to a whole lot of detail outside of the Martin and Lewis years. I do think he made a mistake by focusing more on mob ties than on Dean's family and friends. There's barely any information about his brother here, for instance, or about his marriage or home life. You can learn more through Google and YouTube at this point, through interviews from people Tosches easily could have tapped. Then the book ends as it starts, devoid of any meaningful information. After Martin and Lewis dissolve, he positively gallops through Dean's movie years, unfortunately. It morphs into this increasingly looser sketch that just sort of peters out, like a senile Dean Martin forgetting his lines.
But Dean Martin never seemed at all like that extremely 1990s middle-finger-and-Penthouse attitude that Tosches uses as a crutch for all things "uncaring" throughout. Sure, he womanized like hell and did what he wanted when he wanted, but that was out of convenience, not malice. Tosches gets so focused on this menefreghismo stuff that he sort of misses the forest for the trees–what is all of this manly posturing than insecurity disguised as power? Tosches quotes Jerry Lewis as calling Dean Martin out as more insecure than he realized, but Tosches doesn't seem to ever acknowledge it further. I get the sense that Dean Martin was the type of guy who never wanted to truly put his all into anything for fear of failure and embarrassment. It explains why he never was comfortable with change and never wanted to do several takes in music or tv/film despite always being on time and knowing every word. It also explains why he gravitated towards comedy and especially drunk comedy (it's never a mistake, it's part of the joke!). Then when his projected easy-going attitude was mistaken for pure masculine confidence, he rode that wave straight to the bank. Of course that all backfired on Dean when he realized all that was expected of him was to show up, drink a glass of bourbon and pretend to sing. The bar was set too low and the acceptance came too readily in spite of it; he lost respect for himself and, in turn, he lost respect for his own audience. Eventually Dean did embody the carelessness everybody presumed he started with–his later years were definitely defined by a 'if that is all there is to it then fine, fuck off, that'll be all you get' attitude.
When Tosches stops with his 'n****r whoredom of slutitude' word wankfests (always with some italian thrown in despite the fact that he even quotes Dean Martin saying he only spoke a dialect and he wasn't even that great at it), I will admit there is some good information here about Dean Martin. Tosches obviously did a lot of research and put a lot of time into compiling what he could get his hands on, even if it doesn't amount to a whole lot of detail outside of the Martin and Lewis years. I do think he made a mistake by focusing more on mob ties than on Dean's family and friends. There's barely any information about his brother here, for instance, or about his marriage or home life. You can learn more through Google and YouTube at this point, through interviews from people Tosches easily could have tapped. Then the book ends as it starts, devoid of any meaningful information. After Martin and Lewis dissolve, he positively gallops through Dean's movie years, unfortunately. It morphs into this increasingly looser sketch that just sort of peters out, like a senile Dean Martin forgetting his lines.
But Dean Martin never seemed at all like that extremely 1990s middle-finger-and-Penthouse attitude that Tosches uses as a crutch for all things "uncaring" throughout. Sure, he womanized like hell and did what he wanted when he wanted, but that was out of convenience, not malice. Tosches gets so focused on this menefreghismo stuff that he sort of misses the forest for the trees–what is all of this manly posturing than insecurity disguised as power? Tosches quotes Jerry Lewis as calling Dean Martin out as more insecure than he realized, but Tosches doesn't seem to ever acknowledge it further. I get the sense that Dean Martin was the type of guy who never wanted to truly put his all into anything for fear of failure and embarrassment. It explains why he never was comfortable with change and never wanted to do several takes in music or tv/film despite always being on time and knowing every word. It also explains why he gravitated towards comedy and especially drunk comedy (it's never a mistake, it's part of the joke!). Then when his projected easy-going attitude was mistaken for pure masculine confidence, he rode that wave straight to the bank. Of course that all backfired on Dean when he realized all that was expected of him was to show up, drink a glass of bourbon and pretend to sing. The bar was set too low and the acceptance came too readily in spite of it; he lost respect for himself and, in turn, he lost respect for his own audience. Eventually Dean did embody the carelessness everybody presumed he started with–his later years were definitely defined by a 'if that is all there is to it then fine, fuck off, that'll be all you get' attitude.
January 11, 2009
Totally enjoyable book. Part straight show-biz bio, part impressionistic reverie, part filthy gutter gossip. It's an unlikely mix that works perfectly in this case. Dean Martin has always puzzled me -- he sang with such undeniably genuine warmth and yet he also made sure we all knew he never actually gave a f*ck. Turns out this duality colored all his personal relationships, as well. How sad. Tosches book is by turns overblown, blunt, purely speculative and meticulously researched. And darkly funny:
That fall of 1958, [Dean Martin:] also sold his name and likeness to Liebmann Breweries in New York: " 'You may need good luck on the links,' says the famous crooner, 'but not at the nineteenth hole. You always score with Rheingold Extra Dry.' " He was now in the company of Ernest Hemingway, who, six years before, had put his name to the immortal advertising prose: "I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish." A few months later, a "Playhouse 90" production of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls shared a television evening with "The Dean Martin Show." One New York reviewer found the former "hopelessely confused, pretentious, dated"; the latter, with "no pretenses at art or esthetics," on the other hand, "was thoroughly pleasant." Beaten now by Dean in both the literary and television arenas, Hemingway spent his final two years on earth in a slow, sad march to the grave.
July 15, 2018
This ranks as one of the least satisfying of the many biographies I've read, and Tosches is one of the most pretentious writers I've ever encountered. He's so busy being impressed with himself, and carrying out his apparent mission to dazzle the reader with his prose, that in the end he gives very little insight into Dean Martin as a human being. My impression is that he's one of those writers who actually envy their subjects and their success in life, and who, possibly without really realizing it, have an agenda to cut down and tar-brush the celebrity in question rather than give an honest and objective appraisal of his admirable characteristics along with his flaws.
I'm not the least bit impressed.
I'm not the least bit impressed.
December 5, 2017
(1 1/2). Lots of information but not enough insight into one of the most famous entertainers of the 1950's-80's. Singer, actor, ladies man, night club star extraordinaire, his ability to deal with mobsters and not his own life or finances is unbelievable. The Jerry Lewis thing is equally nuts, but it sure made them famous, and lots of money that they sure had a hard time keeping. Dino turned out to be a very lonely soul, even though it seemed that any woman around was always available. A hard book to plow through, but there is some fun in the details when you get through the never ending stream of chaff.
May 7, 2020
Vactaion 2008/2009 reading, part 3:
This book was pretty cool, even though the author was a bit long-winded. Also the second book I've read about a Rat Pack member. Crazy to see how different showbiz was back then, but how similar it was in many regards: movies were mostly just remakes, the press sucked, and everyone was fucking everyone else.
Worth checking out, though.
This book was pretty cool, even though the author was a bit long-winded. Also the second book I've read about a Rat Pack member. Crazy to see how different showbiz was back then, but how similar it was in many regards: movies were mostly just remakes, the press sucked, and everyone was fucking everyone else.
Worth checking out, though.
June 14, 2017
I had SO looked forward to this book, and it is awful. It is way too wordy and poetic for my taste. I love biographies, and I read a lot of them. This one is one of the worst. I couldn't even learn anything about Dean Martin because I was too busy deciphering this guy's poetic nonsense. Not good.
January 4, 2011
Fifties and sixties chicanery--from Steubenville to Vegas. Great subtitle. With Nick Tosches, you always get more than a straight bio, and especially when the subject is Dean Martin.
August 29, 2017
I've been meaning to read this book since it came out 25 years ago. A must-read for anybody who is interested in the Rat Pack and old Hollywood.
June 29, 2023
I came to this book in a roundabout way � I had read Nick Tosches� Sonny Liston bio many years before, and had enjoyed it, so I thought that by choosing it for the reading challenge, I would kill 2 birds with one stone.
Simply put, this might be the best bio I have ever read, music, film, or otherwise. Martin is so interestingly situated in twentieth century popular culture, and Tosches style of inserting himself into the vernacular and attitudes of his subject matter sweeps you along.
When you consider the era of the Rat Pack, the word cool was never so richly appropriate. The late 50’s and early 60’s were a time when Hollywood was King, television was in it’s infancy, and rock and roll was just starting to get ready to exert itself. The tentacles going out from the Pack reached the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis (who idolized Martin), The Beatles, and mob superstars like Sam Giancana. They stood at the center of it all.
Dean Martin’s story is first the story of Italian immigration and assimilation in America, and in this regard, Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams succeeds where a lot of bios don’t � It makes the early formative years interesting. In this case, it illustrates Martin’s upbringing in the second-tier gambling hive that was Stuebenville, Ohio, and his early exposure to organized crime. As in the case of his contemporary and friend Frank Sinatra, the shadow of the mob has always been a part of Martins mystique. “Dino� is so engrossing because it knows names, dates, dollar amounts. It is unquestionable that Martin’s rise was abetted by his proximity to the right people and their clubs and casinos.
It would be inconceivable that a book about Dean Martin didn’t also prominently feature Jerry Lewis, and “Dino� really takes wing as it walks the reader through the Martin and Lewis years of the fifties. Tosches often refers to the team as the Monkey and the Organ Grinder, and the book is fascinating as it recounts the ascendancy of M & L, all the while highlighting the tensions and the struggle for dominance between the two men. They were 2 large egos who both recognized that their chemistry together was special, and that got them through the tensions. For a while.
As far as Martin and his relationships with those close to him, there’s one point that gets hammered on time and time again � He did not let anyone inside, not really. Tosches makes a point of contrasting Martin with Sinatra, who he describes as an arrested adolescent who always craved validation. Martin’s self deprecating “I don’t give a shit� attitude towards his careers reminds one of another icon of the era - Marlon Brando, who Dean Co-starred with in 1958’s The Young Lions, and bonded with immediately.
One of the treats for me with this book, was grooving on Tosches� irreverent, blistery style, cribbed from people like Hunter S Thompson. Much more than any other biographer that comes to mind, Tosches inserts his own attitudes into the narrative. It gives the book a feeling of being right there, in the moment. By basically adopting the language and verbal style of the era, he risks alienating some modern readers, but I though it was hugely entertaining. A couple of examples:
On Martin’s style of singing to the men in the audience:
“Other singers worked to seduce the women in the audience. To him, that came naturally. He wanted to seduce the men, winning them, bonding them to his side with the illusion of camaraderie. It was them he wanted, them he needed. And he got them. Night after night, they would come, without jealousy or intimidation, enjoying him as a man’s man, while their wives and lovers sat moistening beside them.�
On the emergence of the television in America:
“But now those ugly little devices were beginning to hum and flicker with gathering gales of gray insect fury, joy, and Plague, mediocrity and madness, from the vast funhouse of metastatic delights.�
Or on Martin and Lewis at their peak:
“The early 50’s belonged to them. It was the age of television, or whitewalled, tail-finned mindlessness; a world gone mad with mediocrity. Willian Faulkner, the winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature, would have nothing to do with it; “Television,� he said, “is for niggers�. Ernest Hemingway, who won the prize four years later, was a made-for-TV character. Soon it would not even matter. Most people, like Dean and Jerry, would not even read.�
Simply put, this might be the best bio I have ever read, music, film, or otherwise. Martin is so interestingly situated in twentieth century popular culture, and Tosches style of inserting himself into the vernacular and attitudes of his subject matter sweeps you along.
When you consider the era of the Rat Pack, the word cool was never so richly appropriate. The late 50’s and early 60’s were a time when Hollywood was King, television was in it’s infancy, and rock and roll was just starting to get ready to exert itself. The tentacles going out from the Pack reached the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis (who idolized Martin), The Beatles, and mob superstars like Sam Giancana. They stood at the center of it all.
Dean Martin’s story is first the story of Italian immigration and assimilation in America, and in this regard, Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams succeeds where a lot of bios don’t � It makes the early formative years interesting. In this case, it illustrates Martin’s upbringing in the second-tier gambling hive that was Stuebenville, Ohio, and his early exposure to organized crime. As in the case of his contemporary and friend Frank Sinatra, the shadow of the mob has always been a part of Martins mystique. “Dino� is so engrossing because it knows names, dates, dollar amounts. It is unquestionable that Martin’s rise was abetted by his proximity to the right people and their clubs and casinos.
It would be inconceivable that a book about Dean Martin didn’t also prominently feature Jerry Lewis, and “Dino� really takes wing as it walks the reader through the Martin and Lewis years of the fifties. Tosches often refers to the team as the Monkey and the Organ Grinder, and the book is fascinating as it recounts the ascendancy of M & L, all the while highlighting the tensions and the struggle for dominance between the two men. They were 2 large egos who both recognized that their chemistry together was special, and that got them through the tensions. For a while.
As far as Martin and his relationships with those close to him, there’s one point that gets hammered on time and time again � He did not let anyone inside, not really. Tosches makes a point of contrasting Martin with Sinatra, who he describes as an arrested adolescent who always craved validation. Martin’s self deprecating “I don’t give a shit� attitude towards his careers reminds one of another icon of the era - Marlon Brando, who Dean Co-starred with in 1958’s The Young Lions, and bonded with immediately.
One of the treats for me with this book, was grooving on Tosches� irreverent, blistery style, cribbed from people like Hunter S Thompson. Much more than any other biographer that comes to mind, Tosches inserts his own attitudes into the narrative. It gives the book a feeling of being right there, in the moment. By basically adopting the language and verbal style of the era, he risks alienating some modern readers, but I though it was hugely entertaining. A couple of examples:
On Martin’s style of singing to the men in the audience:
“Other singers worked to seduce the women in the audience. To him, that came naturally. He wanted to seduce the men, winning them, bonding them to his side with the illusion of camaraderie. It was them he wanted, them he needed. And he got them. Night after night, they would come, without jealousy or intimidation, enjoying him as a man’s man, while their wives and lovers sat moistening beside them.�
On the emergence of the television in America:
“But now those ugly little devices were beginning to hum and flicker with gathering gales of gray insect fury, joy, and Plague, mediocrity and madness, from the vast funhouse of metastatic delights.�
Or on Martin and Lewis at their peak:
“The early 50’s belonged to them. It was the age of television, or whitewalled, tail-finned mindlessness; a world gone mad with mediocrity. Willian Faulkner, the winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize for literature, would have nothing to do with it; “Television,� he said, “is for niggers�. Ernest Hemingway, who won the prize four years later, was a made-for-TV character. Soon it would not even matter. Most people, like Dean and Jerry, would not even read.�
January 8, 2023
The author seemed to desperately want to be a character in this book. He interjected lots of impressionistic monologues for Dean Martin which made them both seem like utter neanderthals. If I were one of Dean Martin's descendants, I'd sue. Spoiler alert: Dean Martin dies in the end.
March 8, 2024
I love Dean Martin. I've even been to the Dean Martin Festival in Steubenville. Nick Tosches sucks as a biographer. He sucks as a writer. He's foul, crass, and, worst of all, boring. 🥱
April 23, 2014
Follow the lineage of the so-called Cult of Celebrity- whatever that is- and you won’t get much further back than Dino Crocetti. Martin was the original famous-for-being-famous face, be it sloshing around in nightclubs, fart-arseing across the putting green or squiring some brainless gold-digging chorus-liner, pursuing all of these well in to his dotage. Never afraid to let light in on magic, Tosches burns a hole through the talent myth that preceded, and indeed proceeded, the ‘Rat Pack�- a tag they collectively hated- and introduces us to the real ‘talent� behind Martin’s success: the Mafia, in the fedora’d guise of the likes of Sam Giancana, Skinny D’amato, and Jonny Rosselli.
Tosches� research, even by his own exhaustive standards, is about as comprehensive as it was possible to be at the time of writing. The bibliography and source list runs to well over 50 pages and also includes Martin’s 40 year-spanning musical career and filmography. The author gets as close to Dean as any other of the book’s subjects, the constant theme being that Dean never really allowed himself to get close to anyone- not least his early comedy partner Jerry Lewis, who’s exploits take up a considerable chunk of the book, as you’d expect.
Tosches� slight tendency to overwrite- most often in using seemingly unrelated events as framing devices- pushes the book up to a bumper 450 pages, but contains gems such as his description of Martin at the height of his fame as ‘a mob-culture Zeus� and chapter headings like ‘Aristeia in Sharkskin.�
Amidst the deluge of recording sessions, hokey film scripts, and the tragedy of a lost son, we’re reminded that there’s no fool like an old fool as Martin lurches, like so many ‘legends� into the realms of self-parody and mental torment, but as the man himself once sang ‘I don’t care if the sun don’t shine.�
March 20, 2015
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley are arguably the two most influential male singers of the 20th century, with an impeccable body of work between them. However, if you asked them who they most admired, they would both give the same answer: Dean Martin.
Dean Martin was a fine singer of romantic songs, who had the good fortune to work with some of the greatest songwriters and arrangers of the day (most notably Sammy Cahn and Nelson Riddle). However, it wasn't Martin's voice that made him a legend, it was the simple fact that he didn't care. He had a hit record? Great. He could command over a million dollars working Vegas? Fine. He could screw any broad he wanted? Whatever. He was as cool and collected as his public persona. It was the reason he continued to have hits well into the rock and roll era. He stubbornly refused to be anything other than Dean Martin.
Martin's unwillingness to change is the reason why he is not spoken of in the same breath as Sinatra. Sinatra was an extraordinarily insecure and sensitive person. This insecurity fueled his art, and he never let himself be boxed into a persona. One album could be a melancholy collection of saloon songs, and the next could be a potpourri of travel music. This is the reason Sinatra's music has never died.
While Martin's music and film career may have faded into the ether, the idea of Dean Martin survives. Dino is all about the idea. What separates Tosches work from most other Rat Pack books is that he doesn't sugarcoat the danger of that idea. Dean Martin was a cool guy, yes, but he also had no friends, He barely knew his children. He barely knew his wives. The idea of Dean Martin eventually killed the creator of the idea.
Even if you only have a passing interest in this era of entertainment, do not pass Dino up. It's not just a chronicle of a notable life, but a chronicle of certain era, and a man who held onto it as long as he possibly could
Dean Martin was a fine singer of romantic songs, who had the good fortune to work with some of the greatest songwriters and arrangers of the day (most notably Sammy Cahn and Nelson Riddle). However, it wasn't Martin's voice that made him a legend, it was the simple fact that he didn't care. He had a hit record? Great. He could command over a million dollars working Vegas? Fine. He could screw any broad he wanted? Whatever. He was as cool and collected as his public persona. It was the reason he continued to have hits well into the rock and roll era. He stubbornly refused to be anything other than Dean Martin.
Martin's unwillingness to change is the reason why he is not spoken of in the same breath as Sinatra. Sinatra was an extraordinarily insecure and sensitive person. This insecurity fueled his art, and he never let himself be boxed into a persona. One album could be a melancholy collection of saloon songs, and the next could be a potpourri of travel music. This is the reason Sinatra's music has never died.
While Martin's music and film career may have faded into the ether, the idea of Dean Martin survives. Dino is all about the idea. What separates Tosches work from most other Rat Pack books is that he doesn't sugarcoat the danger of that idea. Dean Martin was a cool guy, yes, but he also had no friends, He barely knew his children. He barely knew his wives. The idea of Dean Martin eventually killed the creator of the idea.
Even if you only have a passing interest in this era of entertainment, do not pass Dino up. It's not just a chronicle of a notable life, but a chronicle of certain era, and a man who held onto it as long as he possibly could
October 15, 2017
Pretty amazing. Tosches blows the doors out with research, and he seems to use all of it. Every gig, paycheck, movie, TV show, radio show, guest shot, recording session, court appearance, and bowel movement (there actually are references to this) . . . it's in there. Which you'd think would be boring. Until you start reading. Tosches puts a framework around Dean Martin and his life, mainly two things: 1. his preference to maintain great distance between himself and others, and 2. the attitude of 'I don't give a fuck' (and that he really didn't).
This is Tosches take on Dino. Through this lens he portrays pretty much all of show business as the lowest of tawdry shams, bordering on actual fraud. And he's not talking just the business end, though that is the cause, he's talking about the "art" itself. And Tosches would use the quotes. Somehow, Dino, himself, comes off a little bit sympathetic, while everything and everyone else is basically a shit show.
Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Dean's directors and co-stars, his producers and agents, his wives and lovers, his children - no one makes it out unscathed. And it might seem harsh, but really, how many saints are there in the world? Dig long enough - and it usually doesn't take long - and you'll eventually hit a dead body.
All of which should make for a grim and bitter read. But this is a great page-turner. Tosches has a lust for his topic and premise, and the prodigious chops and attitude to make a masterpiece out of it. I believe the premise, but I also believe Tosches has exaggerated for effect, much as all of show business and art does in service of communicating and entertainment. Dino was probably only 75% as artistically corrupt, morally bankrupt, and emotionally empty as Tosches would have you believe.
This is Tosches take on Dino. Through this lens he portrays pretty much all of show business as the lowest of tawdry shams, bordering on actual fraud. And he's not talking just the business end, though that is the cause, he's talking about the "art" itself. And Tosches would use the quotes. Somehow, Dino, himself, comes off a little bit sympathetic, while everything and everyone else is basically a shit show.
Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Dean's directors and co-stars, his producers and agents, his wives and lovers, his children - no one makes it out unscathed. And it might seem harsh, but really, how many saints are there in the world? Dig long enough - and it usually doesn't take long - and you'll eventually hit a dead body.
All of which should make for a grim and bitter read. But this is a great page-turner. Tosches has a lust for his topic and premise, and the prodigious chops and attitude to make a masterpiece out of it. I believe the premise, but I also believe Tosches has exaggerated for effect, much as all of show business and art does in service of communicating and entertainment. Dino was probably only 75% as artistically corrupt, morally bankrupt, and emotionally empty as Tosches would have you believe.
July 7, 2013
This is an interesting book on a very difficult subject. Dean Martin didn't really care about anything. After his death, his second wife, Jeanne, said he was "always content in a void, he's content right now." So the author had an almost insurmountable task before him, to make us care about a remote subject.
There's quote after quote about how charming Dean Martin was. But there's also story after story about his casual cruelty, his passive aggression. In one jaw dropping episode, he simply doesn't show up for a benefit for a children's charity ... after he gave his word he'd be there, as a favor to the Paramount producer who had paid Martin and Lewis' IRS debt out from his personal checking account ... simply because Dean was mad at Jerry. There aren't any stories of kindness or generosity to balance these stories out. He lived through WWII, Korea, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement but none of it seemed to touch him. At the height of the women's movement, he thought it was amusing to appear on his TV show walking a woman on a leash.
As I read I felt sorry for his first wife, Betty. For second wife, Jeanne and the children. (His third wife is a cypher.) For Sinatra and Lewis. For the audiences who paid to see him in Vegas, even though at the end his only blaze of creativity was figuring out how to work the "f word" into the lyrics of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon." And I felt sorry for myself for wasting my time reading about this man who was so painfully absent from his own life.
Is that the author's fault? Probably not. After all, he held my interest cover to cover. But I still can't recommend this book to anyone. There's nothing edifying within its pages.
There's quote after quote about how charming Dean Martin was. But there's also story after story about his casual cruelty, his passive aggression. In one jaw dropping episode, he simply doesn't show up for a benefit for a children's charity ... after he gave his word he'd be there, as a favor to the Paramount producer who had paid Martin and Lewis' IRS debt out from his personal checking account ... simply because Dean was mad at Jerry. There aren't any stories of kindness or generosity to balance these stories out. He lived through WWII, Korea, the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement but none of it seemed to touch him. At the height of the women's movement, he thought it was amusing to appear on his TV show walking a woman on a leash.
As I read I felt sorry for his first wife, Betty. For second wife, Jeanne and the children. (His third wife is a cypher.) For Sinatra and Lewis. For the audiences who paid to see him in Vegas, even though at the end his only blaze of creativity was figuring out how to work the "f word" into the lyrics of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon." And I felt sorry for myself for wasting my time reading about this man who was so painfully absent from his own life.
Is that the author's fault? Probably not. After all, he held my interest cover to cover. But I still can't recommend this book to anyone. There's nothing edifying within its pages.
March 22, 2020
This book had been overhyped for me (ahem...Mike Maron's WTF podcast). It's also taken me a while to find a used copy in paperback as I believe this is still out of print and without a e-version. Because of that long delay from really WANTING to read it, to actually reading it, that I think I was a little disappointed. Regardless of all that, Tosche's writing is incredible with some amazing passages scattered throughout (Rest in Peace, Nick). Also....I think I was a little bit daunted by the size of book, as I was running out of gas/interest once I got about half-way through the physical book. Once I realized that the last 20-25% of the pages research notes and appendix, I breezed through the rest of it at a much faster pace. As a side-note, this is the first book I've read that was NOT a Kindle version in probably 4-5 years. It helped me realize just how bad my eyes had gotten, so I've since picked up a pair of OTC readers and have my first prescription lens coming in the mail soon. So thanks for THAT old school book format....fitting that it would be a book about the king of "Old School" himself, Dean Martin. Recommended for those with a deep interest about the music & movie industry during this time period......it's probably too much detail and too slow of a pace for those looking a "tell all" type book or a summer page-turner. Given a more granular rating scale, I would have assigned this a 3.9.
July 12, 2016
Dino! Yeah, this is the biography that re-shaped the way celebrity biographies were written. It also brought Dean Martin back to the forefront, just three years before he died. This is the type of book that can polarize fans, but there is no doubt that it breaks the barriers. After this, Dino became a cult god, the Swinger of Swingers for the Generation X crowd.
I actually read this again, about 15 years after the first read-through. It still stands up, although I've read so many other Dean Martin biographies since then that some of the information is old news. But lordy, it truly rocks. In essence, Tosches tackled a subject that could not be tackled. Dino wasn't Frankie. Dino presented a mask to the outside world, so he could enjoy his own world. Work was work and play was play, even if 'play' constituted a night in front of the telly. Martin never wanted to be the best of anything, yet he became a giant without a whole lot of effort. Tosches has to create something out of nothing and he succeeds. Whether you like it or not doesn't make the book any less compelling.
Funny. As a kid, I always thought it was "Dean-No." I yelled that at the book whenever I found another incident not to my liking. In the long run, I ended up admiring the Deanster even more for being able to tell Hollywood, and the world, to sit on it and twirl.
Book Season = Year Round (bio classic)
I actually read this again, about 15 years after the first read-through. It still stands up, although I've read so many other Dean Martin biographies since then that some of the information is old news. But lordy, it truly rocks. In essence, Tosches tackled a subject that could not be tackled. Dino wasn't Frankie. Dino presented a mask to the outside world, so he could enjoy his own world. Work was work and play was play, even if 'play' constituted a night in front of the telly. Martin never wanted to be the best of anything, yet he became a giant without a whole lot of effort. Tosches has to create something out of nothing and he succeeds. Whether you like it or not doesn't make the book any less compelling.
Funny. As a kid, I always thought it was "Dean-No." I yelled that at the book whenever I found another incident not to my liking. In the long run, I ended up admiring the Deanster even more for being able to tell Hollywood, and the world, to sit on it and twirl.
Book Season = Year Round (bio classic)
November 11, 2016
Took a break from this one after the breakup between Martin and Lewis to read Pynchon and then Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" for an appropriately timed Halloween aside. When I returned to Martin's post-Lewis years, I jumped right back in to Tosches with ease and sadly watched the decline of elderly Martin and his withdrawal from the external. I don't have much to complain about regarding the method Tosches uses to write this extensive biography, sometimes drifting into what is supposed to be the voice of Dean himself, replete with vulgarity and formed by guesswork of the inner thoughts of a quiet man. I did find myself almost rolling my eyes in moments where it felt Tosches, aptly dressed in grey wool suitcoat, white cotton button down, and skinny black tie gets lost in his impersonation and reaches heavily in lofty and ostentatious prose, alluding to apples of sin, Eve (the fat bitch) and the like. The moments where these passages did not work for me, however, were few and far in between. For the most part, I got lost in them myself. This is a wonderfully told story of a bygone era centering around one of the kings of the time, a man who rose to mythic renown, and Tosches reaches deeply into his bag of tricks to bring us an exhaustive and still entertaining look into the mind of a giant.
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August 27, 2021Dino was a good book, but you know what’s funny, I’d have little interest in a book on Dean Martin if it was anyone but Nick Tosches working the writing for it. It’s not an “authorized� biography and so it doesn’t read like a straight story. But it’s well researched and actually felt. In an interview with Richard Meltzer (San Diego Reader) they describe history as being malleable, and though that should be obvious, a lot of biographers don’t write like it is. Tosches uses his own language to describe events surrounding Dean’s life, as well as the language of Italians in the period, and relates Dino’s life to Greek Myth and the biblical texts. Then he tosses in some vulgarity to establish a high/low dichotomy. In the end it’s more real than real, or comes closer to the real than a book of mere actualities.
January 22, 2012
this book is one of the meanest biography I've ever read.. all the people he depicted are manipulative bastards really ... and man! is there a lot of law suits and money going around ....it will probably burst the allusion and allure of showbiz ...but i think he failed to capture the charisma and relationships of Dean Martin ...especially with Jerry Lewis ...all the book described about their partnership is jealousy,hate and money of course ....but the huge success they had was due to how much fun they had onstage and trying to make each other laugh ....there was this movie ad for instance that they made and were cursing through it, if u heard it u would laugh and know they were just kidding around but when he wrote it in the book it seemed like they were fighting ...sure there were fights later on between them but there's more depth to the relationship than that ...There's gotta be books about serial killers that the author goes easier on him than Nick does with Dean Martin ...anyone reading this book without knowing who Dean Martin is will hate his guts ...but there's more to Dean martin than keeping everyone at bay and not giving a damn...and for God's sake how is Nick so sure that Dean never loved another human being ...nobody is that one-dimensional ...
December 24, 2017
This was exceptional. I've always been a fan of Dean Martin and read about this biography in a Greil Marcus book. It was nowhere to be found locally. I finally found it at the U of W - Laramie library, which was bizarre. At any rate, this was one of the best biographies I've ever read. There was no sugar here, just a lot of darkness. The prevailing theme - over and over - was that no one really knew Dean Martin because he shut himself off from everyone, including numerous wives, girlfriends, his children, and all of his "pallies". On one hand, he worked ALL of the time, never stopping, never slowing down, even until the very end. On the other hand, he was incredibly bitter and detached from everything and everyone. His relationship with Jerry Lewis was beyond volatile and all of the Rat Pack mystique was mostly just living to excess to the point of being self-destructive (beyond even what I imagined already) and emotionless. I think what makes this biography different from virtually any other was the fact that there was no happy ending, just the story of a depressed, aging icon who saw fame and fortune (experiencing it to the absolute hedonistic fullest) and then embraced his decline with bitter laughter and acceptance - pure, unquestioned honesty, truth, and darkness.
August 5, 2020
Fascinating. Dean Martin was always my favorite member of the Rat Pack and Tosches does nothing to dissuade me of this opinion. In fact, if anything, his nuanced depiction of Martin has deepened my fascination with Dino’s inscrutable persona. He moved like a whiff of smoke through the seedy Hollywood of the 20th century, taking advantage of all the perks and seemingly unfazed by the crime and sycophancy. Disdainful of gangsters and his former partner Jerry Lewis and all the other trappings of stardom, all Tosches� Martin wants to do is show up, hit his mark, sing his songs and then go golf. Dean Martin was a fascinating if elusive figure and Nick Tosches is able to get as close to the essence of the man as possible. How talent and charm can make one a leading man in a mirage. Dino is what happens when celebrity biographies are written by talented and insightful writers. It’s something I’d like to see more of.
November 27, 2014
Martin was a better Singer than Frank, more charisma than Sammy and funnier than both. So why wasnt he as popular as either? This book delves into his upbringing and what made him tick.
Ultimately he lived life on his terms. Sinatra bowed to the Mafia, Dino played them on his own terms, Sammy got too political, Dino didnt get involved and when it came to singing? He sometimes sang, sometimes he didnt.
He simply didnt care. A drink, a golf course and that was all he ever wanted. Deeply insular person who gave his outer self to the world, but liked nothing more than his own company.
Very good and really well written high brow biography.
Ultimately he lived life on his terms. Sinatra bowed to the Mafia, Dino played them on his own terms, Sammy got too political, Dino didnt get involved and when it came to singing? He sometimes sang, sometimes he didnt.
He simply didnt care. A drink, a golf course and that was all he ever wanted. Deeply insular person who gave his outer self to the world, but liked nothing more than his own company.
Very good and really well written high brow biography.
September 9, 2015
I liked this book, but, ultimately, a book about a person who abjectly refused to reveal anything about himself to anyone in his life was a little too ambitious. Tosches tries a kind of loose, slang driven, style to approximate Dean's thoughts and it all rings a little forced. (A charge the author, himself, makes against "On the Road" multiple times in the book, ironically. I'm not sure what his beef with Kerouac is.) That said, the last section IS devastating and there's a lot of fascinating stuff, but too often the book feels like a juggler only indicating that he's throwing balls.
September 2, 2010
Been looking for a copy of this for years and finally stumbled across a stack at 1/2 Price Books.
The details of his life were fascinating, but the writing style, while interesting at first, began to drag after a while. It was a bit pseudo first-person and a bit of trying to write in the slang of the time. Still, an interesting read.
I need to pick up the Jerry Lewis autobiography sometime, though I wonder how much of that could be considered fiction.
The details of his life were fascinating, but the writing style, while interesting at first, began to drag after a while. It was a bit pseudo first-person and a bit of trying to write in the slang of the time. Still, an interesting read.
I need to pick up the Jerry Lewis autobiography sometime, though I wonder how much of that could be considered fiction.
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