This season, we look at the movies, music and lives of Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin. Singers, actors, TV stars and nightclub performers, Davis and Martin became rich and famous selling versions of mid-20th-century hipness as the biggest stars in the Rat Pack who weren’t Frank Sinatra. The standard-setter for masculine cool in the second half of the twentieth century -- as well as a nexus where Hollywood power, political power and mafia power came together -- the Rat Pack feels uniquely uncool today. As its mystique recedes, it’s the perfect time to begin to unpack its allure, and take a cold hard look at the art it produced.
But Sammy and Dino were both more than the Rat Pack, and examining their lives and careers in tandem reveals tons, about the evolution of racial attitudes from the beginning of the 20th century -- when Italians and Italian-Americans like Dean were widely considered to be non-white; about how Hollywood responded to, and influenced, changing ideas about masculinity and “the man” from World War II to Vietnam and beyond; and above all, about the differences and similarities between mainstream capitalism and underground criminal economies, which is laid bare by the intersection of the music industry and the mafia.
Episodes:
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 1: THE HUSTLE: Today, we’ll talk about Sammy and Dino’s childhoods and early years as entertainers -- years which formed their talent, their stage personas, and taught them their first lessons in the racket that was, and is, the music business. Both grew up in marginalized communities where they learned an ethos of success based on hustle. We’ll track both Dean and Sammy to major coming-of-age moments in the middle of World War II. Coming up in industrial Ohio as both a card dealer and a nightclub singer, Dean learns how and why the house always wins. As a child, Sammy joins his father’s touring dance act, and eventually becomes the main attraction -- before the war forces him to encounter racism at a level he’d never experienced before. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 2: MARTIN AND LEWIS, SAMMY AND MICKEY AND FRANK: Dean Martin meets and begins collaborating with Jerry Lewis. Martin and Lewis — an Italian and a Jew — become the most successful nightclub act in the country, and transition to Hollywood. Meanwhile, Sammy Davis Jr, determined to get the attention of the white entertainment world, starts working impressions of white stars into his act. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 3: NOTHING BUT A DOLLAR SIGN: In the first half of the 1950s, Martin and Lewis mint money as movie stars--and find unique ways to make their access to gangsters payoff--but stardom tears them apart. During this period, Sammy tries to prove himself to a Hollywood that still has little use for Black performers. Then, a horrible accident changes Sammy’s life--and changes his perceived value to the gate-keepers of the entertainment industry. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 4: MR. WONDERFUL: Sammy tests the power of his new celebrity, on Broadway and in Hollywood, where he stars in the most controversial movie musical with an all-Black cast of all time -- a movie which is still being suppressed today. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 5: A SERIOUS MAN: After the breakup of Martin and Lewis, Dino has to figure out how to stand on his own as a solo act. He ends up developing an on-stage persona as a happy drunk, while at the same time, developing a resume as a serious actor in some of the biggest hits of the late 1950s, such as Some Came Running and Rio Bravo, through which he emerged as a kind of icon for the white masculinity crisis of the 1950s. How did Dino pull this off, and why was his interest in being taken seriously so apparently short-lived? Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 6: THE RAT PACK: In the early 40s, both Dean and Sammy idolized Frank Sinatra. 20 years later, they became Sinatra’s cohorts in the Rat Pack, and, through Vegas gigs and increasingly disposable movies, the trio set a standard for grown men behaving badly that’s still influential today. In this episode, we’ll reveal what the Rat Pack’s Vegas shows were really like -- racist, homophobic, misogynist warts and all. We’ll also discuss the web of corruption linking these performers to the Mafia and the Kennedys, culminating in the death of an actress, and the death of the pretense that the Rat Pack racket was all innocent fun. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 7: YES I CAN: Released in 1965, Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography became an instant classic, one of the most dynamic celebrity memoirs ever published and a testament to Davis’s barrier-breaking success as a black man in America. But the story behind the book, which was conceived and developed by two white ghostwriters -- and the racial and sexual dynamics of Davis's life during the years leading up to its release, which included two marriages and one relationship with a white movie star which almost got him killed -- are even more fascinating. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 8: GENERATION GAP: In the mid-1960s, 47-year-old Dean Martin proves he's still got it by knocking the Beatles off the top of the pop charts, and by launching his long-running TV show, which brought a version of his nightclub act into America’s living rooms every week. But his middle-aged drunk schtick sours as the decade of hippies and Vietnam wears on. Sammy Davis Jr has his own challenges, living up to the expectations of a new generation of activists--and he only makes matters worse by embracing Richard Nixon. After disastrously dabbling with Motown, Sammy records “The Candy Man” -- a silly novelty single that he hated, but which ended up saving his career. Listen
SAMMY AND DINO EPISODE 9: IS THAT ALL THERE IS?: Desperate to be seen as cool and not a relic of an earlier age in 70s America, Sammy gets into porn and drugs. A Rat Pack reunion gives him renewed purpose, but causes Dean to alienate himself further. As their time begins to run out, both Sammy and Dino are forced to contemplate what it was all for. By the late ‘90s, they’re both gone. We’ll try to sort out the incredibly murky legacies they left behind. Listen