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Dean Martin was was an actor and singer from the 1940s to the 1980s. He was a member of the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford. He was partnered with Jerry Lewis in live performances and in a series of memorable movies until they had a very publicized break-up, after which each had long solo careers. Some of his roles included Rio Bravo, The Young Lions, and Some Came Running AND Jerry Lewis was born Joseph Levitch in Newark, New Jersey in 1926. He began performing at an early age. His father was an entertainer and M.C. who performed as Danny Lewis, and his son used the stage name Joey Lewis at first, but changed it to Jerry to avoid confusion with either Joe E. Lewis or boxer Joe Louis. In the late 1940s, he met singer Dean Martin, and Dean served as his "straight man", and they performed in night clubs and TV, and in a string of incredibly successful movies. But as Jerry became more and more the focus of the act Dean became increasingly dissatisfied, and the two broke up in 1956. Jerry continued making movies (writing, directing, and starring in most of them), and many feel many of his solo movies were superior to the ones he made with Dean. Perhaps his best was The Nutty Professor in 1963, where he played a mild mannered professor who turns into Buddy Love, in a wacky parody of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In 1965, Jerry injured his back while performing and became addicted to Percodan, and he battled this addiction for at least a decade. From 1966 to 2010, Jerry hosted the annual Muscular Dystrophy Telethon on TV, which raises millions of dollars every year. In 1976, Dean appeared on the Telethon, and even though they had made some minor appearances together in the past decade, this was widely touted as the first reconciliation of the legendary comedy team. In 1981, Jerry attempted a comeback with Hardly Working, and although the movie made some money, his style of humor (which basically made fun of mentally and physically disabled people) had fallen out of favor, and mercifully it was the only such movie Jerry made. He switched to dramatic roles, and in 1983 he took the Johnny Carson-like role in Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, and was great. He also was memorable as Eli Sternberg in an arc of the cult favorite TV show, Wiseguy. There is an urban legend that "the French" love Jerry Lewis. I traveled to France twice, and both times I asked numerous people about this, and they all had no idea what I was talking about. Perhaps it started because some French critics in the 1960s praised Lewis as an "auteur" at a time when some American critics were calling his movies "lowbrow"!

Important Added Info: Note that this Dixie Ice Cream Premium has been personally autographed (signed) by BOTH Dean Martin AND Jerry Lewis (our consignor sent it to each star separately, and they signed at separate times)! Also note that this is a special color 8" x 10" item that was given away as a premium from the Dixie Cup company. The Dixie Cup company created a large number of such premiums, which were given away to kids who sent in Dixie Cup lids. Each premium would have a full-color image of the star on the front, and on the back was biographical information of that star, along with black & white scenes from some of their movies. Every Dixie Cup premium would have two punch holes in one border, and kids would be sent two "covers" (one front and one back) to create a "scrapbook" (the covers gave the instructions on how to make the scrapbook by binding the Dixie Cup premiums between the two covers "with color cord, shoe string, or ribbon". Note that these were first made in the mid-1930s, and they continued all the way to the early 1950s (when the two holes switched to the top of the premium).

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In our last all-signed auction, we auctioned nearly 500 items from this collection and now we are auctioning 162 more items!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this photo (and the vast majority of the other photos we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves. As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

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Bruce Hershenson,
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