Vivian and Dorothy

Jack Denison, Failure and Womanizer

Failed Restaurant



Copper Cart

Copper Cart was known as a favorite eatery and known for it's prime rib.

"Denison was a con-artist who wanted to live off her earnings and have her provide financially for his sinking restaurant businesses. He put a good front, but on their wedding night he was broke." ~ Earl Mills, Dottie's Manager

When they wed, Dorothy was earning about $250,000 a year.  Denison was persuasive enough to get his wife to make a series of bad decisions.  Pouring money into his failed restaurants and even sang regularly at his "third-rate" club, a move she knew would drastically reduce her standing in the show business world.  But she did it anyway.  Then, again, heartache entered the picture.  When Dandridge's bank account had been milked dry, the marriage ended. ~ Geri Branton, Dottie's Best Friend

The Womanizer

Slick and Petty Denison with Beautiful Dorothy

Friends of Dorothy say that Jack was "the most disastrous and destructive element in Dorothy's life."

Jack was handsome, smooth-talking man who reportedly jumped at the chance to woo a vulnerable heart-sick woman.

In her autobiography, Everything and Nothing: The Dorothy Dandridge Tragedy, she said: "Some people kill themselves with drink, others with overdoses some with a gun; a few hurl themselves in front of of trains or autos. I hurled myself in front of another white man” 

Punk Ass Denison...even in this photo you can tell he is up to no good

During the divorce proceedings Jack reportedly wanted half of everything she had left and allegedly cut sheets, pillow cases and other items right down the middle.

Whenever I returned from a singing engagement or a picture, Jack Denison was there. Sometimes he talked of doing a book. He knew Las Vegas very well and understood the inner workings of that notorious center. He was ambitious to make ...

John Demetelin AKA Jack Denison, New Information

YOU CAN SEE HOW PATHETIC JACK DENISON WAS.  FAST FORWARD TO 11:21.

Met a lady through her reaching out to me through FaceBook Messenger.  This is what she shared with me about Jack Denison: 

Hi Karmen.  

I see that you are the blogger for Dorothy Dandridge.  Amazing all the information you have collected about her marriage to Jack Denison.  

A distant cousin of mine, Tina, who discovered me through ancestry dot com,  has been doing research to help find the real parents and grand parents for a guy named David who is half Greek, was adopted and born in Canada in 1958.  

Tina sent me the link to your blog after I told her what I’m about to tell you.  To try to make a long story short, DNA testing led her to me because of my relations to Greeks from Canada related to my dad.  

My dad met my mom, who was living with her sister in Montreal, while visiting his relatives in Canada in 1934.  My dad lived in Washington DC.  My mom dated Jack Denison in Montreal, Dorothy’s Greek husband,  and broke up with him right before she met my dad.  Somehow my dad was related to Jack and his sister Mary and that’s whose family he was visiting.  My mom told me this story many times—Jack Denison was NOT his real name!  His real name was John Demetelin and his sister Mary, shown in one of the pictures in your blog, was Mary Demetelin, not Denison.

My mom, who was very beautiful BTW,  broke up with him because she found out he was sleeping with one of the waitresses where she was working.  Her exact words were, “he was a womanizer!” just like your article said, lol.  According to my mom, he begged her to take him back many times and she refused.  She claims that’s why he left Montreal, moved to Los Vegas and changed his name to Jack Denison.  But who knows what the real reason was.  

I always knew who Dorothy Dandridge was growing up because of my mom.  My mom remained friends with his sister Mary and they corresponded by mail for many years.  I was born in 1953 and I even remember her writing Mary and getting letters from her.  My mom would talk about John like she never got over him.  Would tell me how handsome he was and how she loved his thick black hair.  (Of course she never spoke of him around my dad.) I’m trying to find a picture I have of him with my dad and his sister Mary taken in Canada.  I’ll send it when I do find it.  It’s definitely him.  My mom passed away in 2009 at the age of 95.  I showed her the well known picture of him with Dorothy that I found on the Internet after seeing the movie with Halle Berry and told her it’s a good thing she broke up with him because he was abusive.  She agreed and repeated about what a womanizer he was.  

So that’s what I know and thought you might like to know about Jack Denison’s true identity.  As for Dave, who is still trying to find out who his real Greek grandfather was in Canada, Tina is still working on that for him.  The name Denison came up as a possible relative to Dave, as well as my maiden name Zazanis, my dad’s sister’s married name Deoudes, and many other relative names I’m familiar with.  Because Dave, who now lives in CA, was adopted there’s a lot of red tape in Canada to find out who his true relatives are.  Hopefully he will find out soon.

Sincerely, Tula.

MA