Born Dino Paul Crocetti on June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio (on the border of West Virginia), Dean Martin was the son of Italian immigrants. Martin spoke only Italian for the first five years of his life. His uncle was the actor and comedian Leonard Barr, who starred in Under the Rainbow. Never a keen student, Martin dropped out of school at the age of fifteen and became a boxer, though he was never a great success. He did a series of odd jobs as a steelworker, coal miner, drugstore clerk, croupier, and bootlegger, while developing his vocal talents singing with local bands. For the stage, he called himself Dino Martini (after opera singer Nino Martini), changing the name to Dean Martin when singing with the Sammy Watkins Orchestra. A hernia kept Martin out of the army during World War II, and he soon married Elizabeth Anne McDonald, with whom he had four children, including actresses Claudia Martin, who starred in Curt Siodmak's Ski Fever, and Deana Martin, who was in Strangers at Sunrise with George Montgomery.

Martin's most important career break came in 1946 when he teamed up with comedian Jerry Lewis in Atlantic City's 500 Club. Martin had already developed a distinctive talkative and comedic way of introducing his songs, never seen without a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, continually hitting on women in the audience. He and Lewis soon became the most popular nightclub act in the country. In 1949 they got their own radio show and appeared in the film My Friend Irma with John Lund and Marie Wilson. This was the first of sixteen films that they made together, including That's My Boy, with Ruth Hussey and Eddie Mayehoff; Jumping Jacks, with Mona Freeman and Robert Strauss; Scared Stiff, with Lizabeth Scott and Carmen Miranda; and You're Never Too Young, with Diana Lynn and Raymond Burr. They also co-hosted The Colgate Comedy Hour for five years. When the partnership broke up, Martin found himself struggling for direction. His next film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, with Anna Maria Alberghetti and Eva Bartok, was a dismal failure, so he took a salary cut in order to appear in The Young Lions, giving himself the chance to work with and learn from Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. This film was a great success and turned Martin's career around. He made over forty more films, receiving particular acclaim for Rio Bravo, in which he starred alongside his close friend John Wayne.

When he wasn't acting, Martin was busy working as a singer. Though he never learned to read music, he recorded more than a hundred albums and six hundred songs, including the classics "That's Amore" and "Everybody Loves Somebody," mostly on his friend Frank Sinatra's label Reprise. Martin and Sinatra formed The Rat Pack at The Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, along with Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis Jr., performing sold-out shows every night. For nine years, Martin hosted The Dean Martin Show on NBC, singing and introducing comedy greats such as Rodney Dangerfield, Lou Jacobi, and Dom DeLuise.

Martin's personal life was not such a success. In 1949 he had divorced his first wife and married Jeanne Biegger, who also gave him four children, including the actors Ricci Martin, and Dean Paul Martin, known as Dino, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1987. Martin never really recovered from the loss of his son, and his own health soon began to fail. He divorced Jeanne and less than a month later married much younger Catherine Hawn, but the marriage lasted only three years, as he became convinced she was only after his money. Later, he and Jeanne became close again. She stayed by his side through his later years as he struggled with lung cancer and emphysema. He died on Christmas morning in 1995.

YUDDY