{"id":88864,"date":"2024-12-25T23:13:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-25T23:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/25\/remembering-las-vegas-legend-dean-martin-on-the-anniversary-of-his-death\/"},"modified":"2024-12-25T23:13:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-25T23:13:44","slug":"remembering-las-vegas-legend-dean-martin-on-the-anniversary-of-his-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/25\/remembering-las-vegas-legend-dean-martin-on-the-anniversary-of-his-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Las Vegas Legend Dean Martin on the Anniversary of His Death"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n Posted on: December 25, 2024, 01:25h.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n Last updated on: December 25, 2024, 02:32h.\n <\/p>\n

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December 25th isn\u2019t only Christmas. It\u2019s also the day, 29 years ago, that the world lost Las Vegas icon Dean Martin.<\/p>\n

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Dean Martin sings at the Copa Room at the Sands in 1960. (Image: George Sidney\/UNLV Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Martin, who came to fame playing the straight man to cutup Jerry Lewis in one of the most successful comedy duos of all time, had enough of the act by 1954.<\/p>\n

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Marin & Lewis pose for an undated 1950s publicity shot. (Image: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though Martin & Lewis were still cooking on stage and in the movies, their offstage relationship had iced over. Lewis had made it clear that there was no room in the act for Martin to be anything but his less-talented sidekick.<\/p>\n

When Martin quit in 1956, Lewis assumed he would be lost without him. But Martin had other talented friends in show business. While he was still trying to make it as a lounge singer in 1944, the former Dino Crocetti from Steubenville, Ohio first crossed paths with Frank Sinatra.<\/p>\n

Not\u00a0<\/em> the Rat Pack<\/h2>\n

Martin became more famous than ever singing tunes and slinging insults at the Sands in Las Vegas with Ol\u2019 Blues Eyes and his other showbiz friends, Sammy Davis Jr., comedian Joey Bishop and actor Peter Lawford. They called themselves the Clan and later, the Summit. (Never once did they perform as the Rat Pack<\/a>, by the way.)<\/p>\n

The Summit changed Las Vegas forever, recasting it as Hollywood\u2019s weekend playground. The group managed to film 1960\u2019s \u201cOcean\u2019s 11\u201d while performing twice a night. (In the film\u2019s final scene,<\/em>\u00a0the characters they play walk past the Sands marquee listing their actual names.)<\/p>\n

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Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. perform at the Sands in 1963. (Image: UNLV Special Collections)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Summit found Martin boxed into another pigeonhole, but it was one of his own making. He enjoyed playing the loveable drunk. It\u2019s a schtick he learned from comedian Joe E. Lewis, while both performed at the Havana-Madrid nightclub in New York City.<\/p>\n

Martin \u2014 whom Sinatra joked was so tan because \u201che found a bar with a skylight\u201d \u2014 went as far as getting the California DMV to issue him the vanity plate \u201cDRUNKY.\u201d<\/p>\n

In reality, though, that glass of scotch in Martin\u2019s hands on stage was more likely than not to be apple juice, and he was the first to leave every after-hours Summit party.<\/p>\n

You Alone (Solo Tu)<\/h2>\n

By 1965, Martin left the Summit. Officially, it was to launch his own Hollywood-based TV variety series. \u201cThe Dean Martin Show\u201d allowed him to reach a broader audience with his singing and comedy.<\/p>\n

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Whenever only one member of The Summit was booked to perform at the Sands, others would often turn up for an impromptu collaboration. Marquees began to read \u201cDEAN MARTIN, MAYBE FRANK, MAYBE SAMMY.\u201d (Image: flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Unofficially, he was burned out from the toll that all the traveling and partying took on his second marriage, to Jeanne Biegger. Also, he felt that Sinatra had become, like Lewis, just another dominant personality he had to play second fiddle to.<\/p>\n

Unlike Lewis, however, Martin and Sinatra remained lifelong friends \u2014 no doubt because Martin didn\u2019t wait until the blood went bad to leave.<\/p>\n

Other than two divorces, Martin\u2019s life and solo career sailed relatively smoothly until March 21, 1987.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Dino Martin \u2014 a tennis pro, fighter pilot, rock musician, and the fifth of Dean\u2019s eight beloved children \u2014 died in a plane crash while flying a routine training mission near Mount San Gorgonio over the California desert. He was 35.<\/p>\n

Sinatra stuck by his old pal\u2019s side throughout the four-day search and inevitable bad news. A decade earlier, Sinatra had lost his mother, eerily, to a plane crash near Mount San Gorgonio.<\/p>\n

A Kick in the Head<\/h2>\n
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Dean and Dino Martin in the 1980s. (Image: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Martin was never the same afterward. To those around him, he seemed depressed, defeated and unmotivated. Somehow, Sinatra convinced him to try healing his grief by hitting the road again, less than a year after Dino\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

He was the only person alive who could have.<\/p>\n

On March 13, 1988, Sinatra, Martin and Davis began a reunion tour of 29 American arenas called \u201cTogether Again.\u201d But ultimately, Sinatra\u2019s plan to cheer Martin up failed.<\/p>\n

At 70, Martin wasn\u2019t only dealing with depression but kidney issues. After only four shows, he left the tour and was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA.<\/p>\n

The tour went on without him, with Liza Minnelli eventually attempting to fill the unfillable void.<\/p>\n

In 1993, Martin, a lifelong smoker, was diagnosed with the lung cancer that eventually did him in. Against his family\u2019s wishes, he refused the surgery doctors prescribed to prolong his life. He died of acute respiratory failure at his Beverly Hills home on Christmas Day, 1995. He was 78.<\/p>\n

At 7 p.m. that night, the lights of the Sands, Flamingo, Stardust, Dunes, Tropicana, Caesars Palace and Desert Inn were all dimmed in Martin\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Posted on: December 25, 2024, 01:25h.\u00a0 Last updated on: December 25, 2024, 02:32h. December 25th isn\u2019t only Christmas. It\u2019s also the day, 29 years ago,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gambling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}