Teaming with Dean Martin

Lewis initially gained fame with singer Dean Martin, who served as straight man to Lewis's zany antics in the Martin and Lewis comedy team. Martin's diminished participation became an embarrassment in 1954, when Look magazine used a publicity photo of the team for the magazine cover, but cropped Martin out of the photo. Attesting the team's popularity, DC Comics published the best-selling The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis comic books from 1952 to 1957. The series continued a year after the team broke up as DC Comics then featured Lewis solo, until 1971, in The Adventures of Jerry Lewis comic books. The pair eventually reconciled in the late 1980s after the death of Martin's son, Dean Paul Martin. In Lewis's 2005 book Dean and Me (A Love Story), Lewis wrote of his kinship with Martin, who had died in 1995.