Comedian Red Buttons once quipped of Dean Martin and his songs, “Let me put it this way: If Dracula bit him in the neck, he’d get a bloody Mary!” While Martin did admit that he enjoyed his cocktails, he long asserted that his boozy, lazy image was more the stuff of legend. “Down deep, [people] know I’m not a lazy guy.

If there’s ever a benefit [and] somebody calls me, Frank [Sinatra] and I are always there,” the philanthropic entertainer said in a 1983 interview. “Could I be where I am today if I were lazy and if I were a boozer?” he continued, insisting that “family is always first. I don’t have fun all the time. I work! And the only reason I work is to provide for my family.”