DEAN MARTIN DISS JERRY LEWIS with a lookalike, alludes to breakup 1975

DEAN MARTIN SHOW DISS JERRY LEWIS
During the 1974-75 season, sometime after the October __ 1974 appearance of Arthur Marx on the Tomorrow Show (and after the subsequent talk show round appearances) promoting the mean book: "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime, Especially Himself," one episode of the "Dean Martin Show" had something that made me say, "What the hell was that?"

That mean book brought up the acrimonious breakup of the popular comedy team of Martin and Lewis, placing it again into the public consciousness. Much was made of how if the two chanced to meet, they avoided one another (since that time, Jerry Lewis refuted that, with his memoirs: "Dean and Me, a Love Story," and related the times they did have contact prior to their famous reunion on the 1976 Telethon). On one episode of "The Dean Martin Show," Dean was doing his routine where he was sitting in a "bar," making comic remarks, then suddenly, Dean turns around and looks to his left; then we see a man sitting at a table, dressed as a Jerry Lewis lookalike -- he was wearing the black, shiny, plastic wig worn by Johnny Carson when he did his "Art Fern" character, and with large white teeth, and he opened his mouth widely in mimed laughter, while "chatting" with friends at his table. The next shot is of Dean, his back to the camera, walking fast out of that "bar"!


I made a note of what date that show was, who were the guests, and waited for its rerun. When it did rerun, that bit was edited out. (I can't recall which episode it was at this moment, but I will try to investigate.)
But what I wanted to find out was: what the hell? Was that Dean making fun of something that was then being talked about again? But then, why cut it out of the rerun? Were there complaints from viewers who thought he might have been deliberately insensitive and cruel to Jerry? Jerry had been especially angry, hurt and incensed at that nasty book, which styled Dean as the king of cool and painted Jerry in such ugly and false lights. This bit was not funny at all, and was indeed shocking. But we never heard Jerry publicly complain or mention it; of course, he tended to try to cover up things like this, because maybe they would make him look worse.


In Jerry's book and in others, it is noted that during the run of The Jerry Lewis Show on NBC in the late 1960s, Dean would try to help out his ex-partner by adjuring the audience at the end of episodes of his show, "You be sure to watch the Jerry Lewis Show."



Does anyone else remember seeing this? What did you think of it?