The vanity plate read DRUNKY and the image was pure carefree cool: tuxedo, drink in hand, not a care in the world. But the man in that tuxedo was a painstakingly disciplined professional who rarely drank on the job, went home for dinner every night, and outsmarted an entire television network to get exactly what he wanted.

This deep dive strips away the Rat Pack mythology to reveal Dino Crocetti, a steel-town kid who boxed bare-knuckle for rent money and reinvented himself every time Hollywood tried to box him in. We trace the Martin and Lewis split, his gamble on serious drama, the chart triumph over the Beatles, and the brilliant negotiation that accidentally created a television empire.

• From Kid Crochet, the boxer with fractured knuckles, to charging spectators to watch living-room fights
• The bread-roll disaster that t ...