COMEDY team legends DEAN MARTIN and JERRY LEWIS had one of Hollywood’s most vicious breakups, but Dino’s surely smiling down from heaven at his former partner.
Lewis, 87, has become a father figure to Dean’s daughter, Deana – and he’s a big backer of her singing career.
“If I have problems with anything, I can call him and he’ll give me great advice,” Deana told The ENQUIRER in an exclusive interview. “I adore him.”
The two reconnected when Deana was writing her bestselling memoir “Memories Are Made of This.”
“We sat down in Jerry’s boat in San Diego and we talked about all the old times,” said Deana. “He was just wonderful and gave me a lot of insights.
“He wrote a beautiful forward and we’ve been very good friends ever since.”
Martin and Lewis rose to incredible stardom together as an inseparable comedic duo, before a bitter feud over the direction of their act tore them apart.
The pair stopped speaking to each other for several decades, until 1976, when their buddy Frank Sinatra arranged for Martin to make a surprise appearance on Lewis’ Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.
“I’m so glad that they got back together,” said Deana.
But despite the public reconciliation, that was the final time the two would be on stage together. In Lewis’ memoir, he explains that it wasn’t until 1987, after Dean’s son Dean Paul Martin died in a tragic plane crash, that the two began speaking periodically on the phone.
Martin died of emphysema in 1995 at age 78. Like his comedic partner, Lewis has suffered a string of health problems, including two heart attacks, prostate cancer, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis and viral meningitis.
“There’s something very special about Jerry Lewis,” says Deana, who just released her fourth studio album, “Destination Moon.” “He keeps going on and on.”
