BY RICHARD A. LERTZMAN
“The Rat Pack? Hasn’t that topic
been done to death?â€
That
is the question I was asked by some skeptical fellow writers when I mentioned I
was working with author Lon Davis on Deconstructing
the Rat Pack, our new book, published by Prestige Cinema Press.
It’s
true: there have been a stack of books on the myth that surrounds Rat Pack
members Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter
Lawford. But the fact is, myths are what have most often been printed. It
reminds me of the line in The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the
legend.†Lon and I subscribe to a different belief: print the facts. PR reports
of the time will lead one to believe that the Rat Pack came about organically,
that their onstage hijinks and wisecracks were off the cuff, that these
middle-aged men were basically superhuman, carousing all night with whatever
broads they summoned to their rooms. The truth differs.
The
Rat Pack has more to do with the history of our nation—as well as the history
of entertainment—than even their staunchest fans might realize. It started in
the late fifties. Frank Sinatra was already the Chairman of the Board, the most
influential popular singer of his time. Dean Martin, recently estranged from
his high-octane comic partner Jerry Lewis, was making his mark as a solo nightclub
performer and movie actor. Sammy Davis Jr., a multi-talented phenom, had just
made a stunning comeback following an automobile accident which resulted in his
losing an eye. Joey Bishop, a veteran nightclub comic, was coming into his own
as a witty guest on the mega-popular Tonight Show starring Jack Paar. Teaming
these performers was the idea of Al Freeman, the director and promoter at the
Sands Hotel. He believed that featuring this new act, known informally as the Clan,
and later, as the Rat Pack, with the help of the biggest publicity machine in
the history of show business, for thirty consecutive nights in Las Vegas in
February 1960 (while making a hit heist movie called Ocean’s 11 during
daylight hours), would put this desert town on the map. And it did, big time. That
Las Vegas today is the glittering entertainment capital of the world owes much
of its success to that month of unforgettable, widely publicized performances,
known officially as The Summit.
History
has always been my passion, and in gleaning the facts of an event in recent
times it is important to me to learn about it from the surviving participants.
In the mid-1970s, when I was still in my teens, I began to seek out and
interview countless individuals who were in some way associated with show
business. One of the eighty-five celebrities interviewed for this book was bona
fide Rat Pack member Joey Bishop, the self-described “glue that held the act
together.†By the time I knew him, he was an embittered man in his eighties,
living an isolated existence on Lido Island in Newport Beach, California. It is
Joey’s unique, and heretofore little-known, perspective on which Lon and I have
based our book. Granted, talking with Joey about the Rat Pack was always a slippery
slope: he felt, justifiably, that his association with the group overshadowed
every other aspect of his career. But who can compete with, or ignore, a legend?
For that’s what the Rat Pack has become. So much so that sixty years after the
Summit, there are tribute acts in casinos around the globe, with actors personifying
Frank, Dean, Sammy, and Joey. Of course, whether the act deserves to be
emulated in these more progressive times is a matter of debate. The collective
reputation of the Rat Pack is that of macho, hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking, skirt-chasing
entertainers who glorified misogyny.
It
was the mob that used these well-compensated song-and-dance men to establish Las
Vegas as the world’s leading den of vice. I talked to many of these "wise guys"
as well, some of whom were members of my own family. My cousin Carl Cohen was
the six-foot-five-inch-tall manager of the Sands who stopped a fractious Frank
Sinatra, a 9 percent owner of the hotel, from wreaking havoc in the lobby with
a fist to the mouth, knocking the caps right off his teeth. Moe Dalitz, another
relative, proudly told me how he had looked out for Joey Bishop, whom he
considered to be “a good family man.†Although it has always been Frank Sinatra
who is linked to the mob, Bishop is the only member of the group to serve as a
witness for the defense of Mickey Cohen when the notorious gangster was accused of murder. Max
Diamond, yet another gangster who foresaw the possibilities of Sin City, worked
for my family for twenty years after retiring from the rackets.
Fans
of the Rat Pack have often wondered how Peter Lawford, a rather colorless movie
actor from the 1940s, could share the stage with the likes of the dynamic Sinatra,
Martin, and Davis. The answer has more to do with the family he married into
than his modest talents. His brother-in-law was John F. Kennedy, the
charismatic, youthful senator who was being groomed for the presidency by his
father, star-maker Joseph Kennedy. Frank Sinatra, a man drawn to power,
welcomed JFK into his orbit, even temporarily rechristening the group “The Jack
Pack.†Attracting the country’s younger voters who preferred the good-looking
senator to the stodgy Republican candidate Richard Nixon, the endorsement of
the coolest group in the known world helped significantly in landing JFK in the
White House. The mob was at first delighted by his election, believing they would
get a pass to go about their business. They had no way of knowing that JFK’s
younger brother, Robert Kennedy, who was appointed Attorney General, would
become their worst nightmare. When JFK turned his back on the Rat Pack, Sinatra
turned his back on Lawford. Joey would also lose the Chairman’s favor, although
for a different kind of betrayal.
The story of the Rat Pack has many twists and
turns. But don’t take our word for it. Read the book and see for yourself.
You’ll be glad we chose not to print the legend.
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