Ghost Town (1988)

 

Christmas with The Martins and the Sinatras (1967)

    Dean Martin made a great deal of money out of ruining his own reputation. Originally something of a straight man to Jerry Lewis, who was the first to admit that Martin was every bit as funny as he was, Martin eventually felt stifled by the kinds of film roles they were getting and the expectations of the act and they split up in 1956. Still popular as a nightclub performer he started making his way into more and more movies with dramatic roles and began teaming with Sinatra in a group that would come to be known as The Rat Pack, consisting of the two of them, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford. It was during this period in the mid-60’s that he firmly established his comic persona as a drunken womanizer and it was his subsequent television show ‘The Dean Martin Show’ that would cement it in the public consciousness.

    As the story goes he didn’t actually want to commit to a television series as he felt it would take away from his movie and nightclub revenue so he presented the executives at NBC with a ludicrous list of demands including an astronomical salary and only showing up for the actual taping of the show with no rehearsal time. To his surprise they agreed and he ended up starring in the show for nine years.

Ok, which one of the kids drew this?

    The lack of rehearsal lead to much of the show being made up of ad-lbs and flubbed takes which Martin would just incorporate into the act using his deep familiarity with working a live audience from his nightclub gigs. This, coupled with his drunken persona, lead to people today thinking of him merely as a hopeless drunk. If you pay any amount of attention to his performances, however, you’ll see his quick wit and sharp reaction times and that he simply uses the glasses of what was apparently apple juice as just props. No one can be actually constantly drunk and have such a busy schedule for that many years.

    On December 21^st, 1967, a special Christmas episode of his television show aired. As the name subtly implies the guests were made up of his own family as well as Frank Sinatra and his family. Many of their children were also performers by that point but many were not and it’s fairly easy to tell which was which. It opens fairly traditionally with Martin greeting the audience then sliding down a fireman’s pole, his regular show opening, only to crash through the floor with Sinatra popping back up to reassure everyone Martin is fine as he fell into the wine cellar.

    After a ludicrously long credits sequence where they list off all thirteen Martins and Sinatras the two of them descend down a Christmas-themed staircase and end up in the living room set where they start singing about a marshmallow world. This is where the interplay between the two is set for the evening: Martin more or less keeping up with the songs and cue cards but going off on frequent tangents and Sinatra gamely playing along. Sinatra has something of a reputation as a hard-ass these days and it’s a little surprising, in a good way, to see him react to Martin’s clowning with genuine amusement. He seems utterly up for it and gives just as good as he gets.

Trust me, Sinatra gets a lot looser than this.

    Afterwards what I’m sure was somewhat scripted banter gets tossed back and forth but a lot of it seems genuinely improvised and thus comes off as actually pretty funny. For example Sinatra suggest Martin surprise his family by crawling down the chimney that night to surprise everyone when Martin slurs back to ask why would that be a surprise, he does that every night. They then introduce Gail Martin and Nancy Sinatra to perform what starts off as a normal medley duet before it goes rather sideways during ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ when some slinky Santa dancers emerge and they mash the song together with ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’’ to a very strange effect. Eventually the two dads join their daughters for a somewhat creepily repurposed love song.

Santa was not, however, made for sexy dancing.

    After some commercials it’s time for the Martin and Sinatra boys to have a number so there’s a fairly boring dads vs. sons song about kids these days not listening and dads don’t know what they’re talking about and I really don’t care about Frank Sinatra Jr. so we’re moving on. The next number is two more daughters (who are not nearly the singers as Gail and Nancy) to supposedly teach their dads how to sing ‘Do-Re-Mi’ from ‘The Sound of Music.’ Sure, kids.

They are humoring these children.

    Back from the commercial we have a regular show bit where Dean sidles up to a piano being played by Ken Lane and sings a standard during which he inserts an ad-lib in an attempt to make him break his concentration and stumble over the piano. He’s eventually interrupted by a knock at the door to find Sammy David Jr. in a Santa hat. Per oral histories of the show Dean would often not know who was about to appear at the door so his reaction would be genuine. Dean follows up with a serious song I don’t care about because it segues into hands-down the best part of the show and reason enough to seek it out.

Well how would you react to Sammy David Jr. in a Santa hat?

    It opens with a standard two-shot of Martin and Sinatra launching into a medley of their usual nightclub songs. It starts normal enough but eventually Martin starts getting looser and looser, dancing along to the music, jogging in place, pretending to wander off, and Sinatra finally breaks and starts playing along, dancing and jogging and darting away from the camera as they both keep pulling each other back to center frame. They start making fun of the cue cards and eventually are just barely singing along to the melodies. It gets more and more anarchistic as the songs go on and it’s rather fascinating watching these two just give less and less of a shit about the performance as it goes on until they’re almost falling over each other laughing. It goes on for nine full minutes and it’s just about the best individual part of any of these specials I’ve seen.

Sinatra makes a break for it.

    The show ends with the standard Christmas medley sung by both families, and I’ve said more than enough already about these stupid show-ending medlies, but then it’s followed by a rather unexpected display of toys they’ll be donating as well as a list of charities and hospitals for the audience to give to. It seems like a fairly genuine effort to do some good. It ends with a simple “happy Christmas” and then credits.

The kids off screen are the ones they loved the least.

    Well, that was quite a bit more fun than I was expecting and it’s almost all down to Martin’s demeanor and ability to improv as well as a very game Frank Sinatra. For years I’d been on the fence about whether or not to believe that the lush act was simply a put on but to put on a show like that with little to no rehearsal and have it turn out that well finally puts that mystery to rest. Out of all of the actual hosts of these specials I think Dean Martin might be the first one that’s actually genuinely funny and compelling as a performer. His singing is fine but it’s second to his persona which is a solid comic invention. For the first time I think I’m looking forward to more of these.