Items related to Dino
Synopsis
This biography of the 'fifties superstar Dean Martin takes an irreverent inside look at American entertainment from the 1930s to the 1980s. It examines the underworld secrets, the hidden regions of the American dream racket and the despair of a man driven into his own shadow by fame. There is also material on Sinatra, Monroe, Jerry Lewis, and the Hollywood / White House connection. By the author of "Hellfire", a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis.
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Review
Only a handful of showbiz biographers can lay claim to posessing the literary acumen of writers like Michael Holroyd and Peter Ackroyd. Nick Tosches is one of these writers, and his unauthorized biography of Dean Martin stands as a testament to his genius. Several inimitable sequences in which Tosches adopts his subject's perspective (most of which are regrettably unsuitable for quotation here) make the book a real standout.
Dino is a fascinating portrait of a man who had it all--money, fame, women--and didn't give a damn about any of it and suggests that, even as he wallowed in the excesses of Hollywood and the Rat Pack, Martin stayed critically aloof from that world, albeit often in a booze-and-pill-addled haze. He got into showbiz precisely because it required so little effort of him: "I can't stand an actor or actress who tells me acting is hard work," he once said. "It's easy work. Anyone who says it is hard never had to stand on his feet all day dealing blackjack." Nobody could impress Martin. While Frank Sinatra would do anything just to hang out with reputed Mafioso, the Mob would have to make special trips to ask Martin in person to play a show at one of their casinos.
Tosches' portrait, written only a few years before Martin's death in 1996, depicts its subject as nothing so much as a Zen master without the spiritual anchor; after sampling everything that life had to offer and finding it lacking, Martin spent the last years of his life waiting to die in virtual seclusion.
From the Publisher
From dealing blackjack in the small-time gangster town of Steubenville, Ohio, to carousing with the famous "Rat Pack" in a Hollywood he called home, Dean Martin lived in a grandstand, guttering life of booze, broads, and big money. He rubbed shoulders with the mob, the Kennedys, and Hollywood's biggest stars. He was one of America's favorite entertainers. But no one really knew him. Now Nick Tosches reveals the man behind the image--the dark side of the American dream. It's a wild, illuminating, sometimes shocking tale of sex, ambition, heartaches--and a life lived hard, fast, and without apologies.
"One-hundred-proof prose at its most scorching!" -- Kirkus Reviews
"More than a biography; it's a tour de force...Keep[s] readers glues to the pages." -- West Coast Review Of Books
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- PublisherVINTAGE
- Publication date1993
- ISBN 10 0749398973
- ISBN 13 9780749398972
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages592
- Rating
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Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams
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Vintage Publishing, United Kingdom, London, 1993
ISBN 10: 0749398973
ISBN 13: 9780749398972
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Paperback
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Offering an irreverent inside look at American entertainment, from the heyday of Hollywood and Las Vegas and the rise of television, this is a biography of Dean Martin. Born in Ohio, Dino Crocetti came up the hard way, pumping petrol, boxing, working in a steel mill and dealing craps in a local mob joint, before turning to singing. After two changes of name and a nose job, he rose to great heights of fame, wealth and power, and as his notoriety and fortune grew he withdrew more and more into the silence of seclusion. Eventually he ceased to perform. The book tells of Martin's rise to fame, and exposes the dark side of this success: the underworld secrets, the hidden regions of the American dream racket and the despair of a man driven into his own shadow. And along the way there are revelations about Sinatra, Monroe and the Hollywood/White House connection, and portraits of the Rat Pack, Jerry Lewis, and the mob's virtual invention of Las Vegas. The author's other books include "Hellfire", a biography of Jerry Lee Lewis. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001427243
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