Nobody, I swear, ever had it in his bones like Dean (Martin) had. My dad used to agree with me. Danny Lewis worked with strait men all through his career. Good ones. But nobody could touch Dean.
George Burns saw us at the Sands in the mid-fifties, and said to me over dinner one night, "He's the greatest strait man I've ever seen."
George Burns! Who lived through all the two-acts—Smith and Dale. Olsen and Johnson. Gallager and Shean.
Not to mention Burns and Allen.
George used to tell the classic self-deprecating joke about strait men—namely, that all you really had to do to hold up your end was repeat what the comic said. If the comic says, "I lost my shoes," you say, "You lost your shoes?" George joked, "It's terrible, because I was at the beach, and there was a kid in the water yelling 'help-help-help', and I yelled 'help-help-help?' And by the time I got to him, he drowned."
George was so much better than that, of course. And George thought Dean was the greatest of them all.
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