Things came to a head in 1962 when plans for JFK to stay at Frank's Palm Springs home during a tour of the West Coast were called off at short notice Frank, who'd been bragging about the President's forthcoming visit to just about everyone and had even gone to the trouble of building a helipad in anticipation of it, was furious. Relations were rarely easy, though - Sammy was uninvited to JFK's inauguration ball on account of his recent marriage to a white actress, and there was a wariness, particularly on the part of Bobby Kennedy, about Frank's supposed Mafia ties which have long been rumoured to have been used to the Kennedy campaign's advantage. Kennedy, whose sister was married to Peter - hence Frank's nickname for him, "Brother-in-Lawford". In 1960, the Rat Pack campaigned actively for presidential candidate John F. In terms of race relations, the Rat Pack are considered to have been influential in causing Vegas to become one of the first cities in the USA to fully desegregate, thanks to Frank and the other white members refusing to stay or perform at any hotel that would not allow Sammy to stay there. That was only a gag! And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away!" Joey, though, downplayed this in a 1998 interview: "I never saw Frank, Dean Martin, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances.
The group had a reputation for heavy drinking and womanizing - Tony Bennett once said that the reason why he wasn't in the Rat Pack was that he couldn't keep up with them. Unable to guarantee exactly which of the Rat Pack would be on-stage on any given night, the Sands took to displaying a billboard which proudly presented: Everybody who was anybody showed up, and audience members were frequently incorporated into the act. Scoring a ticket for the "Summit at the Sands" was like winning the lottery. Their peak was perhaps the three-week period in 1960 during the filming of Ocean's 11, when the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel and Casino (which was used as a filming location for the movie) became the place to be as the movie's stars - Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter and Joey - performed on stage together at night after the day's filming had wrapped up. The Rat Pack were legendary for their Las Vegas performances, which were seldom scheduled in advance sometimes, what was advertised as a solo performance by one of them became a group act if one or more of the others happened to be around, or they'd crash the stage when someone else was performing and more or less take over. The likes of Angie Dickinson, Shirley MacLaine, Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Greco and Don Rickles were all associated with the Rat Pack, sometimes being referred to as "Rat Pack Mascots" Rickles later commented that: "I never received an official membership card, but Frank made me feel part of the fun." The other four core members were therefore his friends who were also fellow-performers - Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., along with the actor and socialite Peter Lawford and comedian Joey Bishop.
While he always had an entourage which was to all intents and purposes a support crew, he particularly enjoyed the company of fellow-performers, and the Rat Pack served this purpose for him. According to long-standing Hollywood legend, Bogie and his buddies ( Frank Sinatra, David Niven, Swifty Lazar (Bogie's agent), etc) came home around dawn after a hard night in Las Vegas, and Bogie's wife, Lauren Bacall, said, "You look like a goddamn rat pack!"įollowing Bogie's death in 1957, the group coalesced around Sinatra, who became the de facto leader.
Originally, it was a loosely defined and informal group of actors (and a few actresses) that sprang up in the Fifties, centred on Humphrey Bogart.
Remember that gang of cool kids at school you wanted to hang out with, but weren't cool enough to do so? This was the grown-up, showbiz version of that.
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