DEAN VS. ERNIE by Nick Tosches
In the fall of 1958, Dean Martin, principe della cool, sold his name and likeness to Liebmann Breweries in New York, makers of cheap beer: "'You may need good luck on the links,' says the famous crooner, 'but not at the nineteenth hole. You always score with Rheingold Extra Dry."
Thus Dino joined the company of Ernest Hemingway, who, six years before, had sold his name and likeness, as well as his prose, to another brewery. "How would you put a glass of Ballantine Ale into words?" asked the advertising copy. "Here -- Ernest Hemingway turns his famous hand to it." Hemingway, who by then had perhaps chased after one marlin too many, took the task to heart: "I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish."
Whose beer-prose was finer, Dean or Ernie's?
Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and Sinatra stood in silence and took
no side. It was, in all honesty, close to a stand-off, with deciding
points going to Dean, whose brevity and choice of metaphor outclassed
those of the over-the-hill Nobel-winner.
On March 19, 1959, a few months after the Rheingold ads ran,
Dean and Ernie squared off once again, as a Playhouse 90 production
of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls shared a television
evening with The Dean Martin Show.
Harriet Van Horne of the New York World Telegram found the Hemingway production "a massive accomplishment." Dino, on the other hand, was "a rather offensive young man." But massive was no match for cool and offensive. Another New York reviewer, hepster Jack O'Brian of the Journal-American, found the Hemingway "hopelessly confused, pretentious, dated." Dino, however, with "no pretenses at art or esthetics...was thoroughly pleasant."
Beaten now by Dean in both the literary and television arenas, Hemingway's final two years on earth became a slow, sad march to the grave.
Further reading: Dino by Nick Tosches.
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