‘Dean Martin: King of Cool’ Review: Not Giving A Damn Has A Price [Doc NYC]

Defining cool is as hopeless as explaining what makes a joke funny. That doesn’t stop Tom Donohue from trying anyway in his (arguably deeply uncool TMC-bound) documentary “Dean Martin: King of Cool.” A cavalcade of colleagues and friends, along with a motley string of celebrity fans (Jon Hamm, RZA), do their best to figure out what about the awkward Italian kid from Steubenville, Ohio helped him embody (as one writer puts it) “all-American cool” during that postwar period when nightclub hip briefly went mainstream. Was it the effortlessly smooth singing voice, the wary vulnerability of his dramatic acting, the delicately cocked cigarette and snappy suits, his athletic dancer’s grace, or his confident stage spontaneity that let him goof off with other cool cats while never losing control? The answer appears to be all the above, alongside a not-inconsiderable self-isolating streak.

Donohue’s film is an amiable piece of work about a largely unknowable cipher that traces the biographical outlines of Martin’s life, career, and style in broadly vibrant strokes. It gets closer to the target the deeper it digs underneath that smooth and unflappable entertainer’s carapace. Reaching for the characteristic that defined Martin’s coolness, some interviewees reference the Italian word infischiarsene, which can roughly translate to “not giving a damn.”

To some degree, this description makes little sense. After all, Martin was, if nothing else, a classic first-generation immigrant striver. But he knew how to act like the years of dedicated effort that took him from Steubenville to Hollywood was no big thing. The difference could be seen in his Rat Pack comrade-in-arms, Frank Sinatra. Another Italian-American from humble beginnings, Sinatra wanted to hit every club, have every drink, and never met a grudge he couldn’t nurse like a long-held note in a ballad. But Martin, while enjoying playing his (highly scripted) drunk act on stage, was pleased when the show was over, just having a family dinner or playing golf. He cared not a whit if people discovered the yawning gap between his carefully constructed image and his private reality in which he was less the nightclub swell and more a guy who would slip away from his own parties to watch television in a spare bedroom.

Martin grew up in a blue-collar town filled with miners and mobsters, did not learn English until he was six years old, and worked every kind of job possible once he realized that breaking his back in the coal mines was no way to earn a living. After stints as a boxer and blackjack dealer—which could help explain the quick-thinking dexterity that underlay his nothing-sticks-to-me persona—he took to singing in the town’s many nightclubs. According to professor and author Gerald Early, Martin crafted his in-control yet still detached style from the Mills Brothers, a little-remembered Black vocal quartet from Ohio whose rich, smooth harmonies sold millions of records.

Somewhat loose in its characterization of Martin’s singing career, the film is on firmer footing when it takes on his unusual (and temporary) transition to comedy. Curiously, though known today primarily as a singer, Martin’s first true stardom came when he met Jerry Lewis, the hyperactive and rubber-faced Jim Carrey of his day, and between them created the most popular comedy act of the period. Norman Lear, who worked with the duo on the ‘Colgate Comedy Hour’ show, notes the deep and loving friendship between the two (the ever-lonely Lewis looking for a big brother and Martin delighted to find a kindred spirit to play around with on stage). The act’s still-electric chemistry can be seen in the clips included here, with Lewis as anarchy personified and Martin, the ever-put-upon straight man. But whether or not the slew of films they made between signing a Paramount contract in 1949 and imploding in 1956 (the film unsurprisingly indicts Lewis, blaming the little brother’s insecurities and controlling nature) are worthy of consideration today, they made Martin a star.

‘King of Cool’ flies right by while tracking Martin’s multi-track post-Lewis career. While releasing a steady string of achy-heart ballads and bouncier numbers, Martin turned himself into a surprisingly credible actor during the late 1950s with ‘The Young Lions’ (holding his own with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift) and ‘Rio Bravo’ (stealing the film right out from under John Wayne with his acting while also delivering a heart-melter of a duet with Ricky Nelson on the song “My Rifle, My Pony and Me”). He followed that higher-minded success with the loose camaraderie of the Rat Pack’s combination nightclub act, celebrity gravitational force, and occasional filmmaking collective (“Ocean’s 11”). Most rewarding in this section for some viewers might be the inclusion of numerous bits from Martin’s long-running and ridiculously popular variety show, which even though he refused to rehearse and would only tape one day a week (more than that would threaten his golf game) still managed to knock out some lovely comedic-musical gems.

As with many big-name actors of his generation, Martin’s style was a poor fit for Hollywood in the post-big studio era. Donohue elides nearly all of his film work after 1964’s “Kiss Me, Stupid” (no clips from “Airport” or “Charlie’s Angels”), which is probably for the best. Though ‘King of Cool’ feels at times far too close to the kind of hour-filling advertorial that would promote a boxed set of Martin’s greatest hits, it does not ignore the central mystery of his life. A poorly-handled sequence where interviewees try to determine the identity of Martin’s “Rosebud” aside, Donohue provides some bracing glimpses of the star’s detachment. At one point, a producer on the “Colgate Comedy Hour” tried to take Martin out for a meal so they could get to know each other. Martin gave him the brush-off: “No one gets to know me.”

Is that cool? Unassailably. But not giving a damn has a price. [B]