Excerpt from Peter Bogdanovich’s Who the Hell’s in It: Conversations with Hollywood’s Legendary Actors
Bogdonavich is asking about Dean – he says “he worked on a totally instinctual level”.
Lewis responds:
Oh, yes. Because he always told everybody, “I can go out and drift, he’ll always pull me back.” And vice-versa. Jerry can get as crazy as he wants and who’s the best judge of what Jerry does but Dean. And Dean knew when to pull me back if I was getting in trouble or something. So, we never sat and discussed the enormity of our emotional ties together. But it was always underlined. It was always underneath it all. I would reprimand him sometimes: “Would you sing one, just straight? You’ve got a marvelous voice. Go out in the Copa and let the honeymooners hug while you sing a love song.” “I do.” “No, you don’t.” “Yes, you do.” “No, you don’t.” “Yes, I do!” “No, you don’t!” He felt his oats really good and clean and solid when we split up. Then he didn’t have to do what I thought he did all those years, and that was cop out. Have me as the cop out. “Well, that’s not what got us here – singing.” “No, but it was part of it. So you should do it. I mean, honor those who think you’re a wonderful singer, that buy your records and so on.” He said, “You know what we’d be getting if we were two singers?” I said, “What’s that got to do with it?” He said, “Tell me, what if we were two singers and we were hot in the business. Do you think we’d get a grand a week?” I said, “Oh, that’s fucking ridiculous. We wouldn’t be. Two singers wouldn’t have made it.” He said, “How about that?” Now, July 25, 1946, the team legally started. And we ended July 25, 1956, to the night.
