That's Amore: a Son Remembers Dean Martin.

• Author: Nuttycombe, Dave
• Position: Living la vida loca: Dean Martin's son shows that baby boomers learned self-indulgence at home

THAT'S AMORE A Son Remembers Dean Martin by Ricci Martin, with Christopher Smith Taylor Trade Publishing, $24.95

OVER THE YEARS, INTERPRETERS OF Hollywood tea leaves have learned that the happening place to be if you were a kid in swinging `60s Tinseltown was Dean and Jeanne Martin's Beverly Hills pad, preferably poolside. Previously, this information had been gleaned from secondhand sources, winking hints, and name-checks dropped in puffy interviews with celebrity children in fluffy magazines.

Now, Martin's youngest son Ricci delivers a splash-by-splash account of just how incredible this pee-wee playhouse. really was. His book, That's Amore: A Son Remembers Dean Martin, begins, in fact, with a walking tour through his fabled home at 601 Mountain Drive, from grand foyer to literal home theater (it included two 35mm movie projectors--the same furnace-size machines used in commercial theaters, for which a studio projectionist was required). The original house was expanded greatly to contain the large brood--four children from Dean Martin's first marriage (Craig, Gaff, Claudia, and Deana) and three he had with second wife Jeanne (Dean-Paul, author Ricci, and Gina), as well as Jeanne's mother and the usual flotilla of servants, secretaries, bodyguards, and hangers-on. In fact, the rarified quality of life at the Martin home is perhaps best captured in one of the book's snapshots which depicts a' gaggle of Martin kids, their pals--and, hey, there's Ursula Andress!

Dean Martin and his Rat Pack pals continue to hold a particular fascination for both boomers and their offspring (witness the otherwise unnecessary re make of Ocean's Eleven and the overextended swing revival). After all, most of the sources of `50s and `60s nostalgia were part of the youth culture--James Dean, diners, etc. But the Rat Pack was associated with boomers' parents' culture. Part of the appeal was, of course, the music. But another reason was the Rat Pack style. It embodied an ethic of hedonism and permissiveness that, through their popularity, came to be understood as quintessentially American. Conservatives prefer to blame the decline of values and rise of self-indulgence on the `60s generation, but clearly, kids didn't learn these traits on their own. It was already being celebrated in the broader American culture of their parents, which adored Rat Pack cool. As the saying goes, quoted several times in That's Amore, "It's Frank's world, we only live in it."

Young Martin...