Before long, they were as big as Elvis or the Beatles would be after them, creating hysteria wherever they went and grabbing an unprecedented hold over every entertainment outlet of the era: radio, TV, movies, stage shows, and nightclubs. Martin and Lewis were a national craze, an American institution. The millions (and the women) flowed in, seemingly without end—and then, on July 25, 1956, ten years to the day after the two men joined forces, it all ended.

Torn asunder by their success itself (and as Jerry Lewis candidly reveals, by the unchecked growth of his own ego), Dean and Jerry split up. After that traumatic day in July, the two wouldn’t speak again for twenty years. And while both went on to forge triumphant individual careers—Martin as a movie and television star, recording artist, and nightclub luminary (and charter member of the Rat Pack); Lewis as the groundbreaking writer, producer, director, and star of a series of hugely successful movie comedies—their parting left a hole in the national psyche, as well as in each man’s heart.

In a memoir by turns moving, thrilling, tragic, and hilarious, Jerry Lewis recounts with crystal clarity every step of a fifty-year relationship, from the afternoon in springtime 1945 when the two vibrant young performers—destined to conquer the world together—met on Broadway and 54th Street, to their tragic final encounter in the 1990s, when Lewis and his wife ran into Dean Martin, a broken and haunted old man, eating alone in a Beverly Hills restaurant.

In DEAN AND ME, Jerry Lewis makes a convincing case that Dean Martin was one of the great—and most underrated—comic talents of our era. But what comes across most powerfully in this definitive memoir is the depth of affection Lewis felt, and still feels, for his partner, and which his partner felt for him: truly a love to last for all time.