Rio Bravo

DEAN MARTIN picked up a brutal nickname as he carved out a career which led him to become a member of the famous Rat Pack, unearthed accounts show.

There was no one who could do Dean Martin better than Dean Martin." He was kind. This afternoon, the legendary crooner Dean Martin stars opposite John Wayne in the 1959 western drama Rio Bravo, which airs at 1.15pm on BBC Two. The Howard Hawks-directed piece is set in a Texas border town, where the brother of a dangerous cattle baron is sent arrested on suspicion of murder after a saloon bar fight. Deanna admitted that Martin's personality as "Dino" was a gimmick, and that the perception of his being a hard drinker was often misguided. "In later years, he turned his mostly hooked-up alcoholic shtick into a reality: When he was stopped for describing a sine wave down the highway in his souped-up car, it didn’t help that his vanity plate read DRUNKY.. It was claimed that Dino was "rarely seen without a lowball glass" and that his "Vanity Licence Plate read DRUNKY".