On this day in 1946, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis first appeared as a team. They will definitely go down in the history books as one of the greatest comedy duos ever.

Crooner Dean Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis staged their first show as a team this day in 1946 at Club 500 in Atlantic City, NJ. Actually, the two had met while performing — separately — at the Glass Hat in New York City and decided to try an ad-lib act together. The rest is entertainment history.

The duo went from earning $350 a week to $5,000 a week in under eight months, with Martin playing the romantic straight man opposite Lewis as his goofy, unpredictable partner. Ten years later, the curtain came down on their final team performance at the Copacabana in New York. Over that decade, the zany two made seventeen movies including My Friend Irma, That’s My Boy, The Caddy, Pardners, Jumping Jacks and The Stooge.

You can find out more about this day in history at Those Were The Days, and InfoPlease.

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