Martin and Lewis
How They Got On The Air
The story of Martin and Lewis on radio is really the story of NBC in a panic. In late 1948, CBS had been systematically raiding NBC's talent roster, luring away big names like Jack Benny in what became one of the most dramatic reshufflings in broadcast history. NBC's response was to go looking for new blood — younger performers who hadn't yet been scooped up. An NBC executive caught Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis doing their nightclub act, and that was all it took. In December 1948, the network signed them to a five-year radio contract guaranteeing $150,000 a year and "a choice time slot," according to Billboard magazine.
Getting the show on the air took longer than anyone planned. The premiere had been set for January 16, 1949, but the actual broadcast didn't happen until April 3. Part of the delay was logistical — Martin and Lewis were simultaneously filming My Friend Irma for Paramount, and the production schedule had to work around their nightclub commitments. Billboard reported that NBC spent roughly $400,000 over five months preparing the show for its premiere. The pilot episode was recorded on December 21, 1948, with Lucille Ball as guest star, and two versions of that recording survive — one edited and one unedited. Ball also appeared on the first actual broadcast, giving the show a strong celebrity opening.
Before the premiere, the duo made promotional appearances on several other programs, including The Bob Hope Show in February 1949 and the March of Dimes Special in January. By the time the show launched, Martin and Lewis had some industry recognition, but they were largely unknown to the general public. The radio show was NBC's bet that they were worth the investment — a bet complicated by the fact that the program launched without a sponsor, and as late as January 1950, Billboard reported that it still had none and was "costing NBC close to $10,000 per week." That same month, Billboard noted that CBS was "making a determined effort to sign, among others, the comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis," which only sharpened NBC's resolve to hold on to them.
The Format and the People Behind It
The first-run show, which ran Sundays at 6:30 until June 1949 and then shifted to Fridays and later Mondays, had a situational comedy structure. Martin and Lewis played themselves in the process of putting together their radio show, with a running storyline about launching a nightclub. The format included an opening song by Martin, verbal slapstick, a guest spot, more Lewis antics, and a closing number. Sheldon Leonard played a recurring shady conman character named Soapy Leonard, whose schemes typically dragged the duo into trouble. Florence MacMichael played a maid who evolved into something of an assistant to the pair, later taking on other female roles. Ben Alexander, announcers Jimmy Wallington and Johnny Jacobs, the vocal group The Skylarks, and actress Mary Hatcher rounded out the regular cast. Dick Stabile led the orchestra and, as the season went on, became one of Lewis's main comic foils. Guest stars during the first run included William Bendix and Victor Moore.
Robert L. Redd directed the first season, with Dick Mack taking over afterward. The show was produced by Bob Adams. The writing team during the second run included Ed Simmons and Norman Lear — yes, that Norman Lear, who was just starting out. According to Lear's own account in a 2015 Variety interview, Lewis hired him and Simmons three weeks before the duo's first appearance on the Colgate Comedy Hour in 1950, after Lewis saw a sketch they'd written for Jack Haley's Ford Star Revue and decided he could do it better. Both shows were handled by MCA, which made the transition easy. Lear acknowledged in 1986 that he and Simmons were the main writers for the show for three years. Simmons, who was Lear's cousin-in-law, later won five Primetime Emmy Awards writing for The Red Skelton Show and The Carol Burnett Show.
What the Critics Thought — And Why They Had a Point
The show launched with a reported budget of $10,000 a week, which was high enough to attract top-tier guests. But the critical reception was cool from the start. Reviewers said the nightclub act didn't transfer well to radio, and they weren't entirely wrong. Jerry Lewis was fundamentally a visual comic — his comedy depended on mugging, physical contortion, and timing that an audience could see. Critics compared this problem to the one Milton Berle faced in the medium. On radio, Lewis came across as screechy and shrill, with the visual element that made the mugging funny simply absent. NBC raised the weekly budget to $12,000 for the second season anyway, but the first run closed at the end of that season, after which Martin and Lewis moved into movies.
The second run, which began October 5, 1951, dropped the situational format entirely. Dean Martin was now billed as master of ceremonies, and the structure shifted to a pure variety format: Martin hosting and singing two or three songs per episode, with a guest star each week, and Lewis arriving conspicuously "late" to interrupt Martin mid-song and continue it in his screechy register. The second run was retitled The Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis Show, sponsored by Chesterfield and Anacin, and Variety called the premiere episode — which featured Dinah Shore as guest — "one of the most hilarious 30 minutes in radio." That was an encouraging sign. The show was even named Favorite Radio Comedy Show in Radio-TV Mirror magazine's 1952 poll.
But the structural problem never fully resolved. Newspaper columnist Hal Humphrey wrote in 1952 that both the Martin and Lewis show and Red Skelton's radio program were coming up short compared to their television counterparts. Radio historians Robert Reinehr and Jim Swartz, in their old-time radio reference book, concluded that the program "was never as successful as the network had hoped, because much of Martin and Lewis's comedy was visual." The second run was also described as short and uninspired. The show ran 73 of a contracted 78 installments before NBC cancelled it in July 1953.
Who These Two Actually Were
Dean Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti on June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents — his father Gaetano Alfonso Crocetti was a barber. Martin didn't speak English until he started school. Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch on March 16, 1926, in Newark, New Jersey. Before the two formed a partnership, Lewis had a solo comedy act built around lip-synching to records.
The pair first met — depending on the source — in either 1944 or 1945 at the Glass Hat Club at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City, where both were performing separately. They debuted as a team at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24 or 25, 1946. By most accounts, the first show failed, and owner Skinny D'Amato threatened to fire them. They improvised a new act on the spot — Martin singing while Lewis appeared as a busboy dropping plates — and that rough, anarchic chemistry became their signature.
By 1951, Life magazine described them as the highest-paid act in show business, running a profile during the promotional tour for their film That's My Boy. Audiences at that tour reportedly refused to leave their seats after performances, leading the duo to start doing informal shows from fire escapes and dressing room windows, jamming streets with fans. They had already appeared on the first episode of Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town in June 1948, and they were stars on the first two episodes of NBC's Welcome Aboard in October of that year, before the radio show even launched. Their television work — particularly their many appearances on The Colgate Comedy Hour — showed them to better advantage than radio ever did.
After the Microphone
Martin and Lewis made 16 films together between 1949 and 1956, starting with My Friend Irma — the one they were filming when NBC first put the radio show into production — and ending with Hollywood or Bust. They made a cameo in the 1952 Bob Hope–Bing Crosby picture Road to Bali, and Hope and Crosby returned the favor with appearances in Scared Stiff the following year.
The partnership ended on July 25, 1956 — exactly ten years to the day from their first appearance together at the 500 Club — following a final contractually obligated stage performance. Both men went on to substantial solo careers. Martin recorded for Capitol and Reprise, appeared in films including Rio Bravo and The Young Lions, became part of the Rat Pack, and hosted his own television variety series, The Dean Martin Show, from 1965 to 1974. Lewis stayed with Paramount, starring in and directing films including The Bellboy and The Nutty Professor, and hosted the annual MDA Telethon until 2010.
Frank Sinatra arranged a surprise reunion on September 5, 1976, when Martin made an unannounced appearance on Lewis's Labor Day MDA Telethon. Lewis later said they spoke every day after that. In 1989, Lewis presented Martin with a birthday cake at Bally's in Las Vegas, reportedly saying "Why we broke up, I'll never know." It was their last public appearance together before Martin's death on December 25, 1995. Lewis published a memoir of the partnership, Dean and Me: A Love Story, in 2005. A 2002 CBS biographical film, also titled Martin and Lewis and written and directed by John Gray, starred Jeremy Northam as Martin and Sean Hayes as Lewis — Hayes earned a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for the role, and Lewis himself coached Hayes on how to play him. The film was based on Arthur Marx's book Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself): The Story of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, with Dean Martin's son Ricci Martin serving as a consultant on the production.