Dean Martin’s Daughter Revealed Her True Feelings About Him – And Cleared Up Some Tall Tales Too

There’s a decades-old rumor about Dean Martin that just won’t quit. And the legendary crooner did little to refute it while he was alive. In fact, he positively encouraged it. One person who’s well qualified to shed light on the story is the Rat Pack star’s daughter, Deana Martin. Which she did, in an interview with Fox News. And as it turns out, the truth is pretty shocking.

Beloved songs

Even if you aren’t familiar with the wise-cracking, good-time-guy public image of Dean Martin, you’ll likely know his music. For example, if someone were to sing, “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie,” there’s a good chance you’d warble back, “That’s Amore!” This popular track has featured in everything from TV commercials to massive shows such as Friends. It’s part of the pop-cultural fabric.

Famous friends

You might also know that Martin was part of the legendary group of pals known as the Rat Pack. He, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. sold out Las Vegas venues in the 1960s with their iconic shows – which are still successfully touring with impersonators to this day. But what you might not know is that Martin’s daughter, Deana, is a famous singer in her own right.

Like father, like daughter

Yes, proving that she’s a chip off the old block, Deana – the youngest of Martin’s four kids with his first wife, Betty McDonald – has forged a glittering career in show business. Both an actor and singer, she began performing in theater before moving into movies and television. Her first TV appearance came in 1966 when she starred with her famous dad on The Dean Martin Show.

Becoming a star

Performing with her high-profile pop and equally big names such as Sinatra got Deana hooked on being an entertainer. She became a regular on Martin’s show, as well as recording a handful of hits throughout the 1960s. But it wasn’t until after her father’s death in 1995 that the singer’s music career really took off. Her 2006 album Memories Are Made of This featured covers of her dad’s hits such as “That’s Amore” and “Everybody Loves Somebody.”

Continuing the legacy

The album also featured the charming standard “Time After Time” – not to be confused with the Cyndi Lauper track – with Martin’s one-time sidekick Jerry Lewis. The magical mix saw the album make it to the downloads top 10 and stay there for an incredible 40 weeks. Deana’s since toured the globe with a repertoire including her dad’s hits and jazz classics.

Racking up the hits

Further hit albums followed for the singer, including a 2011 compilation of festive favorites, White Christmas, featuring a duet with Andy Williams. Deana also released another record in 2016 called Swing Street, laid down at the very studio in which her dad had made his 1955 chart-topper “Memories Are Made of This.”

In memory

And speaking of memories, Deana marked what would’ve been her beloved father’s 100th birthday in 2017 with special performances in Las Vegas and Ohio. Talking at the time to the Los Angeles Times about the shows, the star said, “There’s, of course, a lot of Dean Martin music plus ‘Uncle’ Frank Sinatra, ‘Uncle’ Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Darin, a little Ella Fitzgerald,” she said. “It’s all the great songs and then, of course, my own songs.”

Do we really know Dino?

So it’s clear that Deana owes a lot to her dad “Dino” and his musical peers. Keeping their legacies alive is obviously important to her, too. But what of the singer’s relationship with her dad? Were they close? And is the public image of the Rat Pack star in line with the father she remembers? We already know there’s one widely believed rumor she’s keen to address...

Career beginnings

And there’s also the little-known fact that Martin’s birth name was actually Dino. Yep, he actually began his performing career with the handle “Dino Martini,” inspired by the famous tenor Nino Martini. It was musician Sammy Watkins who inspired the future star to change his name to Dean Martin. The caramel-voiced crooner performed with Watkins regularly until WWII intervened.

The funny one

Despite some Hollywood interest, Martin’s movie career failed to take off. And so he stumbled into comedy after becoming great pals with comedian Jerry Lewis. They established a successful singing/comedy double act that scored them a run at NYC’s Copacabana club. You might have heard of that one, thanks to a certain Barry Manilow song!

Fame and fortune beckons

The Martin/Lewis pairing grew into a multi-million-dollar partnership that lasted a decade. But after things turned sour, the duo went their separate ways and Martin set his sights on Hollywood stardom once again. He met his long-time pal Sinatra when the two appeared in Some Came Running in 1958. They would be paired again in a number of other films, including the original Ocean’s 11. Martin met another future Rat Pack buddy, Sammy Davis Jr. on a movie set, too.

Superstar singer

Now a bona fide movie star, Martin was also proving his prowess as a singer. Soon he was crooning alongside Sinatra and Bing Crosby – and doing a good job of it, too. His hit “Everybody Loves Somebody” even replaced The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” at the top of the American charts. No mean feat! And Elvis Presley was apparently inspired by Martin’s vocal style when he recorded “Love Me Tender.” Wow.

King of Cool

“Elvis idolized my dad,” Deana Martin told Fox News in 2017, “I remembered meeting Elvis and he was the one who told me my dad was the king of cool. I’ll never forget that.” Martin’s daughter also recalled how the Rat Pack were regular visitors to her father’s Beverly Hills residence and became like “uncles” to her.

“Uncle Frank”

In fact, Deana credits “Uncle” Frank Sinatra for being the person who really taught her how to sing, not – surprisingly – her star-singer dad. She told Fox News, “Frank Sinatra was really the one who turned the light on for me. I said to Frank, ‘How do you do it?’ He said, ‘Oh, by taking a big breath, I push from the diaphragm, and I can tell before a note comes out if I’m going to be on pitch or not.’”

The Rat Pack is born

Martin’s daughter continued, “I said, ‘Really, does my dad do that?’ He said, ‘No, he has no idea what he’s doing. He just does it.’” The “Volare” singer’s friendship with Sinatra led to them establishing the Rat Pack towards the end of the 1950s. The group, which also included Sammy Davis, Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford, became legendary. Their Las Vegas shows were raucously entertaining, with risqué humor that focusing on Davis’ race, Sinatra’s love of women and Martin’s liquor-swilling.

Hell-raiser

Yes, the crooner had begun to cultivate a reputation for being a loveable drunk. And The Dean Martin Show, which Deana would later become a regular on, did nothing to discourage this image. In fact, it did the opposite. Martin would flirt outrageously with his female guests and slur insults at others – and audiences loved his humor.

Flawed hero

It was actually this charming stage presence that inspired daughter Deana to follow in her father’s footsteps. She recalled to Fox News, “My dad would walk out in a tuxedo with a red pocket square. He would sing and he was funny. He looked great and the audience loved him. It was like magic. So I always wanted to be an entertainer.”

Introducing The Stones

Having a parent in show business clearly had other perks, too. Like the occasion Deana got to see “newcomers” to the biz, The Rolling Stones, at a show Martin was compering. “I was 16 when my dad called me on the phone. He said, ‘I don’t know who they are, but I think you and your sisters would want to come down here and see these guys. It looks like they just got off the boat!’”

Lightning wit

“When we got there, my dad comes out and says, ‘Alright ladies and gentlemen, we’ve got this next group. I’ve been rolled and I’ve been stoned, but I’ve never seen anything like this!” Martin definitely had one heck of a sense of humor! But as we all know, even the coolest of parents can still be embarrassing when you’re a teenager.

Cringe moment

Deana can certainly testify to that, as she still remembers a particularly awkward moment involving her dad and a certain Beatle. She recalled to Fox News, “My dad went to a party and Paul McCartney was there. He came up and said, ‘Hi John, it’s nice to meet you.’ Paul said, ‘I’m not John, I’m Paul McCartney.’ Dad responded, ‘I call everybody John.’ And he came back home and told me this. I was like, ‘Dad, you’re embarrassing me!’”

Beating The Beatles

Ever the joker, Martin knew the magnitude of The Beatles’ star-status really. So when his song “Everybody Loves Somebody” replaced the Fab Four at number one on the Billboard chart, the singer knew what it meant. “Nobody else could do that,” Deana told Fox News. “Not Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley. Dad sent two telegrams, one to Presley and another to Sinatra. And it just said, ‘I did it.’”

Devoted father

So, given that Martin was forever playing the clown on stage, was he like that with his family at home? Not according to Deana. She says the “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” singer was actually a pretty tough parent to his seven biological kids, from two marriages. “He was an Italian father,” Deana stated.

Tough love

Deana continued, “He would go, ‘These are the rules. You make your bed in the morning, you clean up, you come straight home after school, you do your homework, you’re on time for dinner. And this is it. If you don’t want to live by those rules, there’s the door.’ I would go, ‘Dad, I’m 9!’ He’d say, ‘Come on! Rules are rules!’ We never wanted to do anything to disappoint him.”

The truth behind the rumors

And what of the longstanding rumor that Martin was a drunk? Is this the man Deana knew? No, as it turns out. Dino’s daughter revealed in a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times that it was in fact apple juice – not liquor – that her dad was seen knocking back on stage.

All an act

Deana told Fox News, “I’m amazed when people come up to me after a show and say, ‘How could your dad do so much work when he was always drinking? My jaw drops. Because that was his gimmick! I guess he really was a good actor because people always thought that was true… I get a chill when people say that… I still have to clear it up.”

Icon

So how did this “gimmick” come about? “It was like Jack Benny who had the violin thing and made fun about being cheap,” Deana explained to the Los Angeles Times. She went on, “Dad was so handsome, so debonair. They just thought, ‘We’ll put a drink in his hand and a cigarette.’ Every man wanted to be him, and every woman wanted to be with him.”

Family man

But the real “Dino,” the family man, was very much the wholesome, devoted husband and dad, according to Deana. “He would be home for dinner every night,” she added. “He would come home, and he and mom would have their one cocktail at the bar. He was kind. He was so different from what everybody thought he was.”

Incredible legacy

Given all of this, it understandably makes Deana pretty mad when people still float words such as “alcoholic” in reference to her father. She told Fox News, ““After all of these years, after the body of work he accomplished from singing in nightclubs to Martin and [Jerry] Lewis, the greatest comedy team ever.”

Fighting the gossip

“And all the movies, all the albums, all the number one hits,” Deana continued. “And the TV show for 20 years. How can people even think that? Obviously that’s not true! So when people say weird things, I just smile. Because that’s not how it happened.” We can certainly understand why she feels defensive of her beloved dad. After all, wouldn’t anyone feel the same in a similar position?

Right on the nose

But there are some tales about her father that the singer’s willing to admit are based in reality. Such as the one that the Rat Pack star supposedly had a nose job before finding stardom. Reportedly, the surgery was paid for by an unnamed donor whom Martin later reimbursed. “He did have one. I have pictures!” Deana revealed.

All about the swing

Alongside his love for his family and performing, it seems Martin had another amore in his life: golf. “He would go to bed early just so he can get up early and play golf. In fact, he told me, ‘Deana, the reason why I work so hard is so I can play with all you kids and play golf.’ He was a scratch golfer at one point.”

Secret phobia

And there are some lesser-known facts about Dino. In her interview with Fox News, for instance, Deana revealed that her dad was claustrophobic. “He never wanted to go in elevators,” she said. “So when he would go to hotels, whether it was the MGM Grand or whatever, his suite always had to be on a low floor so he [could] just walk up the stairs.”

Taking a downturn

Early in the 1970s, though, both Martin’s career and personal life began to falter. Just as his 24-year marriage to second wife Jeanne ended in the divorce courts, his deal with the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas also concluded. It was apparently a disagreement over the conditions of his contract that led Martin to walk. Instead, he took up with the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, where he became the headline act.

Flops and failures

The star’s movie career was hitting the skids, too. Mr Ricco, a 1975 legal drama featuring Martin in his final leading role, received a critical panning. As did 1981 action romp The Cannonball Run, in which Martin joined an all-star ensemble cast, though the latter was at least a huge success commercially.

Finding love again

The entertainer gave marriage a third try in 1973, tying the knot with 20-something receptionist Catherine Hawn. It would sadly end in another divorce just three years later. There was then a fleeting engagement to former Miss World USA, Gail Renshaw. But in a rather lovely twist of fate, Martin would reunite with his second wife and the love of his life, Jeanne.

Making amends

There were other reconciliations, too. During a 1976 charity telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis, guest Frank Sinatra surprised the heck out of Lewis by walking on with his old friend Martin. The two hadn’t spoken since their working relationship had broken down years earlier. Sinatra, it seems, had been dealing with some difficulties in his personal life. But the live reunion, which saw the men hug out their differences, thrilled the TV audience and brought in donations at an unprecedented rate.

A tragic loss

In 1988 Martin embarked on a tour with Rat Pack pals Davis and Sinatra. It was partly to help him get over the loss of his son Dean, who’d tragically died in a plane crash the previous year. But Vegas veteran Martin felt uncomfortable performing to stadium crowds, so the tour ground to a halt. His final couple of television appearances came in tributes to his Rat Pack buddies, though – celebrating Davis’ 60th anniversary and Sinatra’s 75th birthday respectively.

Passing of an icon

On Christmas Day in 1995, Martin died aged 78 due to respiratory problems. His ex-wife Jeanne was by his side as he passed away at his home in Beverly Hills. She told People magazine shortly afterwards that, poignantly, the singer’s last words were, “You’re the only girl I ever loved.” The lights of Las Vegas were dimmed when the news of Martin’s passing broke.

Memories are made of this

One of the people who remembers him most fondly is of course daughter Deana. As well as keeping the memory of his music alive, she told Fox News that her father’s never far from her thoughts. “I’m always thinking about dad, what he went through in his life and how the world has changed,” she said. “He was a sweet, generous man who would just get up and do his thing.”