The Dean Martin Show - Regular Segments

Regular Segments

• Martin sang two solo numbers per show, one a serious ballad. He would join his weekly guests in song medleys, trading lyrics back and forth. Some of these duets were deliberately played for laughs—Dean and Liberace, for example—with special lyrics by Lee Hale to suit the performers.

• One recurring segment was based on Martin's club act, in which he would begin to sing a popular song and suddenly insert a gag punchline. Martin often tried to make his pianist, Ken Lane, laugh hard enough to break his concentration. The segment usually began with Martin leaping onto Lane's piano; in one episode the real piano was secretly replaced with a phony one. When Martin did his leap the entire faux-piano collapsed under his weight, all to the surprise and delight of the studio audience.

• A knock on the "closet" door occurred each week, with Martin opening the door to reveal an unannounced celebrity guest. Most of the time, Martin did not know who the guest would be, to keep his reactions more spontaneous, according to Hale's book Backstage at the Dean Martin Show.

• A regular gag during one season was the "Mystery Voice Contest," wherein Dean invited viewers to write in to guess who was singing a particular song. Invariably, it was the famous Frank Sinatra hit "Strangers in the Night." Finally on one episode, Sinatra himself showed up to announce that he was the mystery singer. Martin dutifully handed over the prize — a trip to Los Angeles, the city where the two of them already lived.

• The finale was typically a production number featuring Dean and the guest stars. Occasionally it would be a musical sketch with Martin appearing as "Dino Vino," a disc jockey who played old records. A vintage record would then be heard, with Dean and his cronies mouthing the words and pantomiming outrageously for comic effect.

• One of the most highly rated of Martin's programs was a Christmas episode featuring only his and Frank Sinatra's family members: Martin's wife Jeanne with children Craig, Claudia, Gail, Deana, Dean Paul, Ricci and Gina along with Sinatra's three children, Tina, Nancy and Frank Jr.

• During the show's 8th season, the finale was a selection of songs from a popular MGM film musical. Clips from the film in question would be shown, with Martin and guests singing a medley from the films. Among those saluted were Easter Parade, Words and Music, Till the Clouds Roll By, and the 1951 film version of Show Boat.

• When the show was cancelled in 1974, a series of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts was produced in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Hotel. This tradition was started during the final season of the variety show, and continued until 1984.