Dean Martin (l.) and Jerry Lewis during their salad days.
According to his daughter Deana, Dean Martin didn’t want to accept an NBC offer for a new television variety show in 1965, and told his family what he would do to discourage the network at their meeting that next morning.
“He told us, ‘When I go in tomorrow, I am going to ask them for a ridiculous amount of money so they will turn me down. I am going to tell them I don’t want to rehearse, so I’m sure they will turn me down. And then I am going to tell them I only want to tape it on Sunday afternoons after 1. So for sure they won’t go for it.’”
Apparently the NBC negotiators didn’t blink and Martin got trapped into doing the show that ran successfully for ten years. With hardly working for a ridiculous amount of money.
All this from the Los Angeles Times Classic Hollywood column from Susan King.