Word: crooners
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Stupid plays cupid for a whisky-throated crooner named Dean Martin, played by Martin himself in an orgy of self-parody. En route to Hollywood from Las Vegas, the swinger has to detour through the town of Climax, Nev. "The only way to go," he leers. In Climax his Dual-Ghia is sabotaged by a garage mechanic (Cliff Osmond) and a piano teacher (Ray Walston) who want to peddle their songs. Martin's only interest is broads ("If I skip one night, I wake up with such a headache"). Unwilling to peddle his own wife (Felicia Farr) along with...
Dean Martin, 46, is a reconditioned crooner who looks like a Vitalis ad, but too often his behavior on the screen is just greasy kid stuff. He has a low flair for stand-up comedy and lie-down love scenes, but he tries so hard to be smooth that he mostly seems oily. What's worse, in recent years his style has been influenced by one of his best friends, and something like Sinatrophy appears to be setting...
...Crooner. At 54, she looks her age, with sunburst wrinkles around her boot-button eyes. But she wears her years with indifference. And age has very little to do with her appeal. She was 21 when she started and brought the house down with I Got Rhythm. But she was never a sex object. She was mostly the hearty hostess, amused by the raucous comedy of life and essentially detached. Her manner suggested that sex wasn't everything, that exuberance could give vitality to even the middle-aged and the homely. She palpably could never see herself...
Married. Vic Damone (real name: Vito Farinola), 35, Brooklyn-born crooner; and Judy Rawlins, 27, his secretary; both for the second time; in a Middle Eastern Bahai ceremony in Beverly Hills, followed a few hours later by a civil service in Las Vegas, because, said Damone, though the vows of the quasi-Islamic sect are binding in California, "We wanted to cover ourselves for the rest of the world...
...Good Way. Trading on a second-growth tonsil that gives his voice a pleasantly fuzzy purr, Tormé tried hard to be a balladeer. But his syrupy approach to hits like Blue Moon won him the unfortunate nickname "The Velvet Fog," typecast him as a limp crooner, and tempted tricksters to heckle him by slipping the irresistible r into "Fog." "Life was nothing but traveling," he says. "I was very unhappy with my recording career. Everywhere people would give me the 'so-you're-the-cocky-little-kid' bit." Mel's obstinacy never withered...