I’m gonna warn you now, there’s a lot of videos in this one.
Bust out the Jack Daniels, it’s Frank Sinatra’s birthday today. In honor of Ole Blue Eyes himself, we’re gonna talk about the Rat Pack. Both of my Grandfathers were Frank Sinatra fans, as were their entire generation. Whatever that ‘it factor’ is, he had it. So much so that when he was in his late 40s early 50s he was at the top of his game.
If you want to see what Frank was like when he hit 50, I invite you to read the amazing article Gay Talese wrote for Esquire, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold. A little background, Frank was turning 50 and wasn’t in the mood to give an interview, so Talese kind of just hung out and interviewed the people around him. What transpired was a better insight into the man than any interview would have brought.
It starts like this:
Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo.
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, by Gay Talese for Esquire
Here’s your second chance at clicking on that link. I’m serious, there’s a reason that article is required reading in journalism school. And for all you Harlan Ellison fans out there, it talks about Frank picking a fight with Ellison because he didn’t like his boots.
The Holmby Hills Rat Pack
Originally, The Rat Pack was a group of friends who met at Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s house. As legend has it, the “Den Mother” Lauren Bacall said to her husband Bogie and his friends when they were coming back from a night in Vegas:
“You look like a goddamn rat pack.”
Lauren “The Den Mother” Bacall
If she was calling them out for looking worse for wear, they probably shouldn’t have driven the 4-and-a-half-hour drive from Vegas. But hey, it was the 50s.
By all accounts, the original members were: Frank Sinatra (pack master), Judy Garland (first vice-president), Sid Luft (cage master), Bogart (rat in charge of public relations), Swifty Lazar (recording secretary and treasurer), Nathaniel Benchley (historian), Lauren Bacall (Den Mother), David Niven, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, George Cukor, Cary Grant, Rex Harrison, and Jimmy Van Heusen. (That’s quite a group).
If that’s not enough people, the honorary members included Errol Flynn, Ava Gardner, Nat King Cole, Robert Mitchum, Liz Taylor, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Mickey Rooney, Lena Horne, Jerry Lewis, and Cesar Romero. But who knows, it’s just a bunch of drunks hanging out at Bogey and Bacall’s house, after a while it goes from a group to a party when you’re talking 20 people. Also, a lot of those links are to Christmas themed clips on YouTube because well, tis the season.
The more famous, post-Bogart version of the group never called themselves ‘The Rat Pack” – they called it the Summit or the Clan. “The Rat Pack” was a term used by outsiders and they’re still called that today.
Now, on to the Summit.
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was the leader of the pack. He won an Oscar for his role in From Here to Eternity and had an incredible string of Emmy worthy and winning albums. He’s not only the voice of an era but a voice for all time. I was struck by his timelessness and cultural transcendence when I went to Italy for the first time. From Venezia to Roma, his voice could be heard all over the boot.
He was fictionalized in The Godfather, as Johnny Fontaine, which did not please Frank. Fictionalized or not, he was kind of close to the mob. There’s a great story in The Dark Heart of Hollywood by Douglas Thompson about a time in 1946 when Frank went to Havana Cuba for a mob conference. The gangsters all said they went to Cuba to hear him sing. One of Meyer Lansky’s guys Dino Cellini later said that actually they paid Sinatra not to sing.
It’s not that he was a bad singer, they were just using him as a front. Cuba was as close to the United States as the recently exiled Lucky Luciano could get, and they had business to discuss. Frank was eager to be in their good graces.
Sinatra brought a girl on this trip, Dorothy Lyma (aka Alora Gooding). His date looked out the window of the Hotel Nacional and woke up a half-asleep Sinatra saying, “They’ve got guns! They’re going to kill us!” Sinatra scrambled for a revolver but before he could find it Lyma had a hunting rifle aimed at the door of the hotel room. Two guys burst in, they never walked out.
Sinatra was shaken, he lit his cigarette and said: “You killed those guys.” Lyma told him they meant to kill them, they had guns! Sinatra pointed out that those weren’t guns, they had walkie-talkies. She killed the security guys. Guys hired by the mob to protect them. When Sinatra said to the likes of Johnny ‘Handsome’ Rosselli, “I’m sorry.” He was told to forget it, it never happened.
Frank also partially owned the Cal-Neva Lodge & Casino which was linked to Joe Kennedy Sr., Jimmy Hoffa, and Sam Giancana. Because Momo Giancana was a silent partner in the Cal-Neva AND the mob boss of Chicago, the casino was part of a major FBI investigation with Frank in the crosshairs.
With that said, by all accounts, Frank was a wannabe gangster. Like Calogero’s friends in A Bronx Tale.
The Don Rickles Wormhole
Now, I apologize right now that this is going to take a Don Rickles left turn, but nobody could tell a Frank Sinatra story like Rickles. Also, whenever I watch one Don Rickles clip on YouTube I end up in a Rickles wormhole and I wake up three hours later with a bloody nose and no pants on wondering what happened. Anyway:
He may not have officially been a Rat Pack member, but he was Rat Pack adjacent. He even said, “I never received an official membership card, but Frank made me feel part of the fun.”
Stealing Sinatra
There’s a very interesting anecdote to the kidnapping of a teenage Frank Sinatra Jr. in the This American Life episode Plan B. The link will take you to that story, told from the kidnapper. It’s funny and interesting.
It’s got a happy ending don’t worry, Frank Jr. lived long enough to make a cameo in The Sopranos.
Dean Martin
Dino Paul Crocetti (June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995), aka Dean Martin, is my favorite of the group. He’s also my dad’s favorite, I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Like Frank, Dino had his mob connections. Unlike Frank, he tried his best to steer clear of them because he knew how bad it could get, and that nobody was safe once you went into their inner circle. The aforementioned Dino Cellini was a boyhood friend of Martin’s. Before Cellini worked for Meyer Lansky and Martin got his nose fixed they worked as dealers and stickmen at Rex’s Cigar Store, a casino in Steubenville, Ohio.
Dino was also a boxer in his younger days, much like Bob Hope. And like Bob Hope, he figured out he was better at being funny than throwing jabs.
I’ve gotta say, with the mob’s involvement in Vegas and nightclubs at this time, it’s safe to say all of the people who played nightclubs back then were “connected” somehow. It’s not fair to say they were crooked because of the people they were around, the mob literally owned these places they played in, and if you wanted to get paid you had to rub shoulders with some gangsters. During prohibition, the only places you could perform in were mob-run and after prohibition, it wasn’t much different. Just that the booze was now legal.
Sammy Davis Jr.
Sammy Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was probably the most talented of the group. He had a great voice, he could tap dance like a sonofabitch, he was a good actor, and a fine comedian.
Also, since his birthday was recent and we’re in the Christmas season here’s a clip from the end of Robin and the Seven Hoods. Where Frank, Dino, and Sammy are Salvation Army Santas. Bing Crosby replaced Lawford in this one, but the rest of the pack is there.
He wasn’t only a great entertainer but Sammy Davis Jr. was a strong activist for Civil Rights. Not only that, he was Jewish and married the very white Swedish actress May Britt. So it’s safe to say, he had balls the size of my head. To be Black, Jewish, and marry a white woman in 1960s America was a ballsy move. The fact that Frank stood by him spoke volumes.
Here’s a couple of examples of Sammy’s incredible talents:
He was more than a triple threat, look at him shoot guns!
Peter Lawford
Lawford, (September 7, 1923 – December 24, 1984) was born in England. He was the only son of Sir Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford who served in the Second Boer War and World War I. It’s said Peter Lawford was more famous for what he did off the screen than on. In other words, he was famous for being famous. He was a socialite, a bit of a dandy and wasn’t really acting in Oceans Eleven.
Famously, he was married to John F. Kennedy’s sister Patricia which earned him the nickname from Frank, “Brother-in-Lawford.”
Lawford was definitely pulled from both directions with JFK using Frank and Frank using JFK. I guess that’s politics and it wouldn’t have phased a socialite like Lawford. But the whole pack came to bat for Kennedy in the 1960 election.
Joey Bishop
The Bronx Born Bishop, (February 3, 1918 – October 17, 2007) guest-hosted The Tonight Show a bunch of times and even had his own late-night talk show with an up and comer Regis Philbin as his sidekick. You wouldn’t know it watching the next clip, Bishop seems like he’s flailing out there but I guess he got better?
Rat Pack Adjacent
I won’t put up another Rickles video, he’s already been in this thing enough. But here’s some other’s who were coming off the bench to be a part of the pack.
Bing Crosby
Not only was he in Robin and the 7 Hoods with other Rat Packers. When Frank Sinatra expected JFK to visit his house in Palm Springs he decked the place out. Frank installed a helicopter pad in his yard for Marine One and spent a fortune to add additions to the house for Secret Service and such.
However, JFK ended up at the more inoffensive to voters and unconnected to the mafia, plain-white vanilla Bing Crosby’s house. This did not please Frank and his famous temper.
Shirley MacLaine
I read this article about Shirley MacLaine recently and I figured if you’re interested enough to read this one you’d read a recent interview with her from a much more respected publication.
Marilyn Monroe
I kind of had to put up that clip right? Anyway, with that, I’m out. Marilyn is kind of a mic drop.
