THE RAT PACK
THE ORIGINAL BAD BOYS
BY JAMES KAPLAN
THE CORE OF THE PACK IN 1962 in Los Angeles: Martin, in shirtsleeves, and Sinatra rising above Sammy Davis Jr.
DEAN MARTIN embraces Frank Sinatra on the set of Marriage on the Rocks, in 1965.
Contents
INTRODUCTION: THE KINGS THE COOL
THE SUMMIT OF SOMETHING
JUST ONE MORE
INTRODUCTION
THE KINGS OF COOL
BY STEVE DOUGHERTY
SID AVERY/MPTVIMAGES
We have Davis, Martin, Sinatra and Bishop engaging in fisticuffs, which might well have occurred with this gang. But it turns out this, too, is playacting, as they stage a scene for their first film together, Oceans
As the 60s dawned that election yearsix extraordinary decades of American history agoan historic convergence of show business and politics occurred in the Copa Room at the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. For three weeks in the first months of 1960, the packed nightclub was the glittering center of the showbiz universe, where the combined star power of the performers onstage and the constellation of Hollywood luminaries in the audience outshone the blinding neon blaze that lighted the desert skies outside.
Headlining was the now legendary Rat Pack, starring three of pop historys great entertainersFrank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.and two lesser showmen enjoying the ride of their lifetimes, Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop.
In the audience over the course of those three weeks were so many marquee names: Kirk Douglas, Cary Grant, Cole Porter, Lucille Ball, Gregory Peck, Shirley MacLaine, Kim Novak . . . the list went on.
Taking it all in from a ringside seat one night was the political meteor whose rise and reign and tragic fate would come to define the era. Ladies and gentlemen, Sinatra announced from the stage, the next President of the United States. And Jack Kennedy stood up and took a bow.
He and the rest of the megawatt multitude came to see a sensational show that spotlighted signature songs and shtick by each of the five. And one that broke every showbiz taboo in the book. The Pack men smoked and drank, cracked locker-room jokes and carried on as if they were already offstage and loosening their ties and tongues at the after-party. Their sharp suits, bad-boy camaraderie and off-the-charts charisma, on display later that year in Oceans 11, the smash caper flick that spawned todays franchise, lifted the Rat Pack straight to their place in Hollywoods pantheon.
One year after Sinatra introduced JFK at the Copa Room, he presided over the festivities celebrating his inauguration. With the new-minted Presidents movie star looks, narrow ties, tousled hair and Ray-Bansand, as the world would only later learn, his own Hollywood swingers parade of mistressesthe Rat Pack leader might have been welcoming one of his own to the highest office in the land.
Throughout Jack and wife Jackies brief, shining reign as the king and queen of Camelot, Sinatra and his cohorts would enjoy their own finger-snapping, top-of-the-heap rule as the coolest cats in the land. It was a glorious reign that all but came to an end shortly after Camelots did. Not to the sound of gunfire in Dallas, but, less than three months later, in February 1964, to the infectious screams of Beatles fans. In the swift, seismic shift of pop geography that followed, the Rat Pack was left looking downright Paleolithic, their music, their look, their lingo, their highballseven their hairalmost instantly out of style.
Now, nearly years after they made their ring-a-ding-ding debut, the Rat Pack, dipped in the amber of legend, come back to life in these pages. Along with a lively and knowing narrative by James Kaplan, author of the acclaimed 2010 Sinatra biography, Frank: The Voice, youll find a treasure trove of photos from LIFEs archives and elsewhere. Together, in words and strikingly intimate images, we tell the stories of what went on in front of the footlights and behind the scenes in the lives of the five performers and the denizensfrom mobsters and screen goddesses to the honorary Rat Pack Presidentwho inhabited their kings-of-cool world.
CBS/GETTY
WHICH PHOTOGRAPH FROM 1960 represents the real Rat Pack? we have the boys behaving well and smiling pleasantly: From left, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop.
THE SUMMIT OF SOMETHING
BY JAMES KAPLAN
BOB WILLOUGHBY/MPTVIMAGES
THE DATES OF MANY OF THE photos on these pages are going to be circa, not least because many of the photographers back then were just shooting, not taking great notes as they bent elbows in various ways, and these days people are still figuring out when the guys pictured might have been togetheras here, at the Sandsat a given point in time. So then: Circa 1960, we have cavorting, from left, Dean, Peter, Sammy, Frank, Joeyand (were pretty sure) the character actor Buddy Lester, who was part of the gang in that years film Oceans As well as any, this active, fun-filled moment can be seen as the summit of the Summit.
This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
The line is from an old movie about myth and reality in the Old West, but it might as well have been written about a legend that was born a half century ago in Las Vegas, a town whose own myth has shimmered like a mirage on the high Nevada desert for as long as anyone alive can remember. The legend is the sometimes true, often highly imaginative story of the Rat Pack.
We will get to truth and fiction presently, but first, like the newspaperman in John Fords The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, we must acknowledge the very real power of legends. They compel us, they stir us, they fill our dreams and guide our behavior. The idea of the Rat Pack was born at a hinge of time in the American consciousness, a moment between the conformism of the 50s and the chaos of the 60s, an eye-blink when the horrors and heroism of World War II were still in recent memory (and nuclear fear underlay every diversion), when compensatory excess, in the form of sex, alcohol and cigarettes, was winked at and 20th-century ideals of manhood hadnt yet been subverted by the androgynous aesthetic of rock n roll.
The Rat Pack was an idea even more than it was a reality. And though Frank, Dean and Sammy were three real men, their respective myths tend, to this day, to jostle reality aside. Throw in Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford as window dressing, or ballast, and youve got a sharkskin-suited, skinny-tied, chain-smoking, chain-drinking, Dionysian parade float. Watch it trundle down Main Street; cheer as it goes by. We wont see its like again. Even if it wasnt quite there in the first place.
