American singer and actor Dean Martin was BOTD in 1917. Born Dino Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio to a working-class Italian immigrant family, he began his singing career in a local spaghetti restaurant. As a teenager, he was an amateur welterweight boxer, and alternated between singing gigs and working as a croupier in casinos. In 1944, he met comedian Jerry Lewis at the 500 Club in Atlantic City. Two years later, they began a comedy act, with Martin playing the suave straight man to Lewis’ infantile clown. After working the East Coast nightclub circuit, they rose to public attention with a successful residency at the Copacabana Club, leading to radio and television appearances. Hollywood came calling, and the pair made their first comedy film My Friend Irma in 1949. Fifteen other films followed over the next seven years, making them both household names. While completing Hollywood or Bust in 1956, they had a monumental bust-up (described by some as a lovers’ quarrel) and parted company. Martin quickly established himself as a singer, developed a intimate crooning delivery with sexily slurred diction to contemporary songs and standards from the Great American Songbook. Dubbed “The King of Cool”, he became one of the most popular recording artists in post-war America, selling 50 million records worldwide. His best-known recordings include Ain’t That a Kick in the Head?, Memories Are Made of This, That’s Amore and Everybody Loves Somebody. He returned to Hollywood as a serious actor, earning critical praise for the World War Two drama The Young Lions, and appearing in Some Came Running, Rio Bravo and the James Bond-knockoff The Silencers. He formed a now-legendary friendship with fellow crooners Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., collectively known as the Rat Pack, taking Las Vegas by storm and appearing together in several comedy films. Martin also developed a hugely successful television career, charming Middle America with his singing and comic schtick in The Dean Martin Show and The Dean Martin Comedy Show, and cheerfully destroying fellow celebrities on the The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Married three times and with seven children, he was an Olympian-level alcoholic, which perversely formed part of his soft-focus appeal. Despite his heterosexual credentials, Martin’s biographers continue to debate the exact nature of his relationship with Lewis, and the degree to which their fall-out was romantically motivated. The two reconciled later in life, reuniting publicly during a 1976 Telethon. In 1987, Martin’s son Dino was killed in a plane crash, aged 35. A devastated Martin retreated from public life, dying in 1995 aged 78.