A Night Security Guard Let Dean Martin In After Hours — What Dean Did Inside Left Him Shaking D

Steubenville, Ohio, November 14th, 1972, 1:17 a.m. The building on South 4th Street had been the Steubenville Civic Auditorium since 1938 when the city had commissioned it as part of the specific municipal effort of a mid-sized Ohio steel town to provide its residents with a building whose function was not industrial.

It seated 412 people when full. On the night of November 14th, 1972, it was not full. It was empty. It had been empty since the previous evening’s performance, a local theatrical production that had run three weekends and concluded the night before to an audience of 207 people, which was considered successful for the Steubenville Civic Auditorium’s standard programming.

The lights were off in the main hall. The box office was locked. The stage was dark. Thomas Novak was 58 years old. He had been the night security guard at the Steubenville Civic Auditorium for 9 years. He had grown up in Steubenville in the 1920s and 1930s. He had worked at Republic Steel for 21 years before the back injury that had made the physical work impossible and that had eventually led him to the night security position, which was work that a man with a bad back could do, walking rounds, checking locks, sitting in the guard booth, reading until the next round was due. He was in the guard booth at 1:17 a.m. when he heard the knock, the knock on the side door. He put down the newspaper. He walked to the side door. He opened it. The man standing at the side door of the Steubenville Civic Auditorium at 1:17 in the morning was

wearing a plain dark jacket over a plain dark shirt and dark trousers. He was 55 years old. He had dark hair that was now predominantly silver-gray and a deeply weathered handsome face and the specific build of someone who had been lean his whole life. Thomas Novak looked at him. He knew immediately who he was looking at.

You did not grow up in Steubenville in the 1930s and not know who Dino Crocetti was. Even when Dino Crocetti had become Dean Martin. Even when the name had changed and the career had happened and 30 years had separated the Dino of South Sixth Street from the Dean Martin of the Copa Room and the television show and the records, you still knew the face, the jaw, the laugh lines, the specific Italian-American features of Guy Crocetti’s son.

Thomas said nothing for a moment. Dean Martin said, “I know it’s late.” Thomas said, “Yes, sir.” Dean said, “I was in the area.” He said it the way people say things that are true but incomplete. He had been in the area in the sense that he had been in Cleveland the day before for reasons that Phil Baker had arranged and that were the business of the entertainment industry and he had driven to Steubenville after the Cleveland engagement instead of flying back to Los Angeles, which was not the arrangement Phil had made and which Phil would find out about in the morning. Thomas said, “I know who you are.” Dean said, “I know you do.” There was a pause. Dean said, “I used to perform here when I was younger.” Thomas said, “I know that, too.” Dean said, “I’d like to go in.” Thomas Novak looked at Dean Martin for a moment. He was 58 years old. He had a

bad back and a night security job and a small house on Bromley Avenue and a wife named Irene who would be asleep. He had been told in the 9 years he had held this position not to let unauthorized people into the building after hours. He said, “Come in.” Subscribe to this channel right now and hit the like button.

Because what happened in the next 27 minutes inside the Steubenville Civic Auditorium, what Dean Martin did in the empty hall at 1:00 in the morning with only a night security guard watching from the back, is one of the true stories about what it means to go back to where something started and what you find when you get there and why what Thomas Novak saw left his hands shaking when he locked the door afterward.

Stay now. Thomas Novak has just opened the door. Dean Martin is coming in out of the Steubenville November night and the building is completely dark. Thomas led him through the side corridor with a flashlight. The side corridor connected the building’s entrance to the backstage area of the stage, which was the quickest route to the main hall.

They walked through the corridor in the quiet of a building that was used to being full of people and that had the specific quality of empty spaces that have held many people. A residual warmth, a held quality, the acoustic quality of a room designed for sound and now containing none. They came to the stage from the backstage side.

Thomas turned on one work light, the single low wattage work light that illuminated the stage during setup and breakdown without the full theatrical lighting rig. It produced a dim specific light that showed the stage in the way of something seen in the middle of the night, accurate but incomplete, sufficient for navigation without being sufficient for performance.

Dean Martin stepped onto the stage. He stopped. He stood there. Thomas Novak stood at the back of the stage in the wings with his flashlight at his side. Dean was looking at the hall. The hall was 412 seats in the dark. The specific darkness of a performance space without its lighting, not absolute darkness, because the work light on stage reached into the first several rows, and the exit signs provided ambient illumination throughout, but the functional darkness of a room that was not open and not performing and not lit for any purpose. 412 empty seats. Dean Martin looked at them. He stood on the stage for approximately 3 minutes without moving. Thomas Novak, in the wings, did not move. He had been a night security guard for 9 years. He understood the specific obligation of the position, which was to be present and alert without being

intrusive. He had let this man into the building outside of his authorization to do so. He was going to stand in the wings and be present and alert and not intrusive and allow whatever was going to happen to happen. He watched Dean Martin stand on the stage and look at 412 empty seats in the dark.

After approximately 3 minutes, Dean Martin found a chair. It was a plain wooden chair, one of the stage chairs that the theatrical production had used and that had been left in the wings rather than struck to storage. He picked it up. He carried it to center stage. He set it down facing the hall. He sat in it.

He sat in the chair on the empty stage of the Steubenville Civic Auditorium and he looked at the empty seats. He did not speak. He did not perform. He sat. Thomas Novak, watching from the wings, understood that he was watching something he was not supposed to be watching. Not in the sense that it was hidden or forbidden, but in the sense that it had had audience.

The man on the stage had not come to the Steubenville Civic Auditorium to have an audience. He had come to be alone in the space, and Thomas Novak, who had let him in, was not an audience. He was a night security guard standing in the wings of a stage. He was still. He was watching. And what he was watching, he would say later, was a man looking at something that was not visible to anyone else in the room.

He was looking at 1941 or 1942 or whichever year it was when Dino Paul Crocetti, 17 years old, son of the barber on South 6th Street, had stood on this stage or a stage like this one and done what he had come to do, which was to sing and had found in the doing of it the specific confirmation that the doing was the thing, that the voice that had been forming in the barber shop across hundreds of afternoons of his childhood was a voice that worked in the presence of other people, that the quality he had absorbed from his father’s Italian songs between customers was a quality that transferred from the private space of a barber shop to the public space of a stage with 400 people watching. He had been 17. The stage had been large. The 400 seats had been not full, probably, for a local 17-year-old performing in a

Steubenville venue in the early 1940s, but some of the seats had been filled, enough of them, enough to be the first audience. Dean Martin sat in the chair on the stage for 22 minutes. Thomas Novak stood in the wings for 22 minutes. Neither of them spoke. At some point during the 22 minutes, Thomas could not have said exactly when, he understood that his hands were not entirely still.

The flashlight in his right hand was not shaking. His hands were not shaking in the visible physical way of someone frightened or cold, but they were not still. The specific quality of hands that are not still because the person holding them has received something that has not finished being received.

He was watching a man look at what was not there. And what was not there was 30 years. What was not there was the distance between the 17-year-old boy from South 6th Street who had stood on this stage for the first time and the 55-year-old man who was sitting in a chair on the same stage at 1:00 in the morning in November of 1972.

What was not there was everything that had happened in between. The Copa Room and the television show and the records and the Las Vegas residencies and the films and the years and the specific accumulation of what happened when the voice that had been formed in a barber shop was given to the world in full measure. None of that was in the room.

What was in the room was the stage and the empty seats and the dim work light and the man in the chair who had come back. After 22 minutes, Dean Martin stood up. He picked up the chair. He carried it back to where he had found it in the wings. He set it down. He walked to the edge of the stage.

He looked down at the floor of the hall, the open floor in front of the first row of seats, the area between the stage and the audience that performers called the pit and audience members called the front. He stepped off the stage not from the stairs at the side, from the front, the specific step down that a performer takes when they walk off a stage toward the audience rather than away from it.

He walked to where the third row would be. He turned around. He looked at the stage. He stood there looking at the stage for 5 minutes. Thomas Novak had moved from the wings to the side of the hall. He stood at the edge of the room in the shadow beyond the work lights reach and watched Dean Martin stand in the third row of the empty Steubenville Civic Auditorium and look at the stage.

He was looking at the view from the audience. He was looking at what the 17-year-old boy would have seen if he had been in the audience instead of on the stage. He was looking at what everyone else had seen that first night and every night after. He stood there for 5 minutes. Then he turned and walked back toward the stage and then past the stage and toward the backstage corridor where Thomas was waiting. He passed Thomas.

He said, “It looked bigger then.” He walked through the backstage corridor. He went out the side door. He was gone. Thomas Novak stood in the backstage corridor for a moment. Then he walked to the side door. He looked out at South Fourth Street. Dean Martin’s car was not visible. He had already gone.

Thomas locked the side door. He walked back through the building to the guard booth. He sat down in his chair. His hands were not still. He looked at his hands. He put them flat on the desk. He sat there for a long time. He was thinking about it looked bigger then, which was not a complicated sentence.

It was the simplest available description of the difference between being 17 years old in a place for the first time and being 55 years old in the same place after everything that had happened in between. It looked bigger then. The stage, the hall, the 412 seats, the thing that the 17-year-old had walked onto for the first time.

It looked bigger then because it was bigger then. Because when you are 17 and standing on a stage for the first time in a civic auditorium in Steubenville, Ohio, the stage is the whole world. It is not a stage in a city in Ohio. It is the thing the voice was made for. It is the place where the barbershop songs and the father’s guitar and the specific formation of a person across a childhood all arrive at their purpose.

When you are 55 and you have been on every stage there is, the Copa Room and Carnegie Hall and the NBC television studios and the stages of Las Vegas residencies that seated thousands, the stage in the Steubenville Civic Auditorium is a stage in Steubenville, Ohio. It is smaller not because it has changed, because what it measures against has changed.

Thomas Novak understood this. And the understanding was what his hands were still not finished receiving. He had let a man into a building after hours. He had stood in the wings of a stage and watched a man sit in a chair and look at empty seats. He had watched the man step off the stage and stand in the third row and look back.

He had heard four words and his hands were not still. He would tell his wife Irene the next morning. He would tell her the whole of it, the knock on the side door, the recognition, the decision to let him in, the 22 minutes, the five minutes in the third row, the four words. Irene said, “What did you do?” Thomas said, “I let him be in it.

” Irene said, “Why are your hands still not still?” Thomas said, “Because I saw something I was not supposed to see.” She said, “What do you mean?” He said, “I mean it was not for me. It was not for anyone. He did not come there to be seen. He came to see something and I was there and I saw him seeing it.

” He said, “That’s why.” Irene said, “What was he seeing?” Thomas thought about this. He said, “Himself at 17.” He said, “The first time.” He said, “Before it was anything.” His hands were still not entirely still. Irene looked at him. She said, “It looked bigger then.” She was repeating what Thomas had told her Dean Martin had said.

Thomas said, “Yes.” She said, “That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” Thomas thought about this. He said, “I don’t know if it’s sad.” He said, “I think it’s just true.” He said, “Everything looks bigger the first time. That’s not sad. That’s just what the first time is.

” He said, “He went back to see what the first time looked like from where he is now.” He said, “And he saw it.” He said, “And then he left.” Irene looked at him. She said, “Are you all right?” Thomas said, “Yes.” He put his hands on the kitchen table. He looked at them. He said, “I’ll be fine.” He said, “I just I need to sit with it for a little while.

” He sat with it. His hands were still. Eventually, that is the whole of it. A night security guard let Dean Martin into an empty building after hours. Dean Martin sat in a chair on an empty stage for 22 minutes. He stood in the third row and looked at the stage for 5 minutes. He said four words, “It looked bigger then.

” And a night security guard’s hands were not still for a while because he had been present for something that was not meant for an audience. And being present for something that is not meant for an audience is the specific experience of witnessing something true that is being true at you rather than being performed for you.

And the truth of it was it looked bigger then. That is still the whole of it. Still, Thomas Novak told the story of November 14th, 1972 three times in his life. He told it to his wife Irene the morning after. He told it to his son Michael in 1985 when Michael was 32 years old and had come home for Thanksgiving.

He told it to a local historian named Patricia Walsh in 1991 who was compiling oral histories of Steubenville for a city centennial project. The Patricia Walsh version is the one that exists in the record, the one she transcribed and placed in the Steubenville Historical Society archive where it was found in 2003 by a researcher working on a study of mid-century American entertainment figures and their relationships to their places of origin.

Thomas Novak had died in 1998. The transcription of what he told Patricia Walsh in 1991 is 11 pages. Most of the 11 pages are about the 22 minutes and the five minutes and the four words. Most of the 11 pages are Thomas Novak, 77 years old, trying to explain why his hands were not still. He said, “I have been asked why it affected me, why a man sitting in a chair on an empty stage and then standing in an empty house and then saying four words would produce in a night security guard the specific physical experience of hands that are not still.” He said, “I have thought about this for 19 years since November of 1972.” He said, “What I have arrived at is this.” He said, “Most of what we see in life is people performing what they are.

We perform our emotions. We perform our reactions, we perform our histories, we perform what we want other people to see, and we manage what we don’t. This is not dishonesty. It is simply the way people exist in the presence of other people. He said, “What I saw that night was not a performance.

” He said, “He did not know I was watching in the way that people know they are being watched and adjust to being watched. He knew I was there. I was the guard who let him in. I was standing in the wings, but I was not the audience. The empty seats were the audience. Or what he was looking at when he looked at the empty seats was the audience.

” He said, “I was just the man in the wings.” He said, “And from the wings I watched him do something that required no one to watch it. Something that was happening because it needed to happen and not because someone was going to see it happen.” He said, “That is very rare.” He said, “I have been in this building for 9 years.

I have watched performances. I have watched rehearsals. I have watched set up and break down. I have watched all of the things that happen in a performance space.” He said, “I have never watched what I watched that night.” He said, “And when he said it looked bigger than when he turned at the stage door and said that I understood that in four words he had described the whole thing, everything that had happened in the building that night, everything that had happened in between 1941 or whenever it was that he first stood on that stage and November of 1972 when he came back.” He said, “The first time it looked bigger, that is simply true. And the fact that it is smaller now is also simply true. And the difference between the two sizes is 30 years of everything.” He said, “My hands were not still because I had watched a man hold 30 years of everything in the room by himself. He said, “That is not something you

watch and then your hands are still.” He was quiet. He said, “I let him in because he knocked. That’s all. I let him in because he knocked and I knew who he was and I knew where he was from and I knew that sometimes the right thing to do when a man from your town knocks on a door in the middle of the night is to open it.

” He said, “I don’t know if I was right to let him in.” He said, “I don’t think it matters.” He said, “He needed to be in there.” He said, “and I let him.” He said, “and now I’m an old man and I remember it better than most things I’ve seen.” He said, “because it was true.” He said, “the most completely true thing I’ve seen in a building I’ve worked in for 9 years.

” He said, “he sat in a chair and looked at empty seats and then he stood in the empty seats and looked at the stage and then he said it looked bigger then.” He said, “and I locked the door.” He said, “and my hands were not still.” He said, “I think they were right not to be.” That is the whole of it. Thomas Novak, night security guard, South Fourth Street, Steubenville, Ohio, November 14th, 1972, 1:17 a.m.

, 412 empty seats, one chair on the stage, 22 minutes, 5 minutes in the third row, four words, “It looked bigger then.” and a man’s hands that were not still because they were right not to be. That is still the whole of it. Phil Baker found out about Steubenville on November 15th, 1972. He found out because Dean Martin called him from a gas station payphone outside of Steubenville at approximately 2:30 in the morning, which was the specific hour at which someone might call their road manager from a payphone to explain that they had not taken the flight back to Los Angeles as arranged. Phil said, “Where are you?” Dean said, “Steubenville.” Phil said, “Why?” Dean said, “I drove.” Phil said, “From Cleveland?” Dean said,

“Yes.” There was a pause. Phil said, “Are you all right?” Dean said, “I went to the civic auditorium.” Phil said, “It’s 2:30 in the morning.” Dean said, “The guard let me in.” Phil said nothing for a moment. He said, “How long were you there?” Dean said, “27 minutes.” Phil said, “And?” Dean said, “And I’ll fly back in the morning.

” Phil said, “From Pittsburgh?” Dean said, “From Pittsburgh.” Phil said, “I’ll arrange the flight.” Dean said, “Thank you.” He said, “Phil.” Phil said, “Yes.” Dean said, “The stage is smaller than I remembered.” Phil said nothing. Dean said, “Good night.” He hung up. Phil Barker put down the phone in his Los Angeles hotel room at 2:30 in the morning.

He did not write anything in the small notebook. He did not need to. He knew what it meant. He had been beside Dean Martin for 26 years. He knew the size of the Steubenville Civic Auditorium. He knew it was not small. He also knew that it was smaller than it had been in 1941 or 1942 or whenever the first time was. He knew that this was the kind of thing that a man went back to see.

And that what he found when he got there was the only thing available to find, which was the accurate size of the thing he had left. He turned off the light. He arranged the Pittsburgh flight in the morning. Dean Martin flew back to Los Angeles on November 15th, 1972. He did not mention Steubenville to Phil.

Phil did not mention Steubenville to Dean. Thomas Novak went to work the following evening and did his rounds and sat in his guard booth and read his newspaper. His hands were still. Eventually, they were still. That is the whole of it. It looked bigger then. That is still the whole of it. Still.