Rat Trapped

FRANK SINATRA. DEAN MARTIN. SAMMY DAVIS JNR. The Rat Pack in their early 60s Vegas prime were a showbiz phenomenon like no other. They epitomised glamour and fame. Night after night, hookers, hoofers, mob heavies, the Hollywood elite, hero-worshipping fans, waitresses and bus boys would bust their guts laughing at the trio s punch-lines and irreverent, drink-soaked rapport.
A summit meeting of these showbiz giants, in that setting, was not the gig to go to if you wanted to hear their music, straight. Parody was more the order of the day.
Dino, for example, might drop the lyric if I had it in my power from Everybody Loves Somebody and sing instead, if I had you in my shower... Or he d stand in the wings while Frankie was singing Please Be Kind , wait for the line tell me your love is sincere then shout It is sincere, it is. And if Frank was really flying high courtesy of Jack Daniel s he d snap back: tell me you re not queer!
Sometimes, on stage the Pack was augmented by lesser showbiz luminaries: comedian Joey Bishop (who wrote the scripts) and movie heart-throb Peter Lawford the nucleus of the group. Their mascot was Shirley McLaine. Pack Associates included Tony Curtis (who once said of Sinatra he wasn t a womaniser, he was womanised! ), Janet Leigh, Judy Garland, Kirk Douglas, Robert Wagner and Sammy Cahn. This extended gang also occasionally included Mafia Don and mass murderer, Sam Giancana, plus John Fitzgerald Kennedy, both of whom shared with each other and with Frankie women such as Judith Exner. Exner represented a present given, at one point, to Kennedy in Vegas. So was Sinatra as has been suggested Kennedy s pimp ? Jacqueline Kennedy certainly believed so, which may be part of the reason she dismissed him as a creep with no class , and kept her distance. Apart from one night during the mid 70s when she felt it necessary to check out Frank s legendary sex appeal and shagged the man.
Either way, for one brief, seedy moment, back in the early 60s running parallel with Kennedy s vision of Camelot the Rat Pack were, arguably, the most powerful pop group on the planet. Hell, they even helped get JFK elected! They then became part of a mob-versus-Robert Kennedy battle that almost lead to Sinatra getting taken out. And similar death threats were directed at Dean Martin and Sammy Davis. This may not be the tale recently told in Frank, Sammy And Dean, The Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas, which ran in Dublin s Olympia Theatre from April 4th-April 9th. But in this version, the rough edges stay in!

So, when did the Rat Pack form? In June 1955, according to Shawn Levy s book Rat Pack Confidential. Its founding members were Humphrey Bogart and his wife at the time, Lauren Bacall, both of whom welcomed the Bogart-worshipping Sinatra into their home.
One night, Frank gathered a dozen or so chums, rented a train and took off to catch Noel Coward s opening at the Desert Inn (Vegas). During that particular spree, legend has it, Bacall was startled by their debauched appearance when she came upon them ringside in a casino showroom. She looked around at all the famous flesh Frank, Bogart,Judy Garland, David Niven . . . a few well-oiled others. You look like a goddam rat pack, she muttered.
And so the label stuck. An institution was formed and formally dubbed The Holmby Hills Rat Pack. Bogie was Boss, Sinatra was Pack Master: the guys even created a coat of arms a rat gnawing on a human hand and motto: Never rat on a rat .
Sounds sophomoric? It was. Even Bogie admitted so. Describing its ethos as anti-establishment and driven by a desire to party , Bogie told the Press: you have to be adolescent, to be a non-conformist, staying up late, laughing, drinking, not giving a damn about what anyone says or thinks about you.
Less than two years later, such claims may have returned to haunt Bogie when his wife, Bacall, became Sinatra s lover, while her husband lay dying of cancer.
J. Randall Taraborelli, in his book Sinatra: The Man Behind The Myth offers a magnanimous interpretation of this strange scenario.
To say that Lauren Bacall deserted her husband for Frank Sinatra or that Sinatra callously betrayed his dying friend is to paint the experience with too broad a brushstroke. To whatever degree Bacall and Sinatra were involved during the final month s of Bogie s life, it was important to both of them. Frank represented to Lauren wholeness and vitality, at a time when her life was filled with nothing but sickness and despair.
Frank Sinatra was not present at Bogie s funeral, in 1957. And soon afterwards he ditched Bacall when she told the Press they might marry. Out of this moral miasma grew Rat Pack Mark Two, with Sinatra donning the mantle of undisputed King Rat.
As for Dino? Well, Frank may have helped his buddy get a co-starring role in Some Came Running, a movie that helped prove Martin was far more than just the straight half of the now-defunct Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis team. But the ever-cool crooner was never so impressed by his leader that he took crap from the man. Sammy Davis Jnr. was different; as Shawn Levy puts it, he was short, maimed, ugly, black, Jewish, gaudy, uneducated. But Sammy could do anything: song, dance, pantomime, impressions, jokes and even drama.
He was so used to being excluded that he was willing to kill himself with work to be let in, Levy observes. He d suffer all manner of indignities: Frank s clumsy racial jokes; the years of Jim Crow treatment in theatres, hotels, and restaurants; the Nigger-baiting of high-rolling southerners in Vegas casinos; a patently bogus marriage to a black dancer intended to quiet journalists about his taste for white girls; the explicit disdain of mobsters and other bosses.
By 1960, however, Sammy s new-found status as a member of the Rat Pack clearly empowered the guy. He confronted Jack Entratter, manager of the Sands, for example, when integrationists threatened to picket the hotel, demanding that more blacks be employed. It s going to be very embarrassing because I m going to be on that picket line, he said.
Entratter backed down. And Sammy Davis was soon playing to one of the first integrated audiences in Las Vegas while black employees looked on with pride. Not long afterwards Davis also joined the likes of Harry Belafonte, Sidney Potier and, eventually, Martin Luther King, marching for Civil Rights in racial war zones like Selma, Alabama. Frank never marched and Dean just joked about it. I wouldn t march if the Italians were marching, he said. But, in their own way, the Italians were marching. For JFK. And then Davis was called to return favours . As the Rat Pack began to work for Kennedy s election, Sinatra said: let Sammy take care of all the ethnic people.
This was a political ploy that soon backfired. In fact, during the July 10th 1960 Democratic National Convention, when Sammy was introduced, a chorus of boos rose from the Alabama and Mississippi delegates. He was staggered; what should have been a crowning moment became another slap in the face.
Worse was to follow. After JFK was elected Sammy received a message, via a Kennedy aide. Mr Davis . . . sorry . . . the President has asked me to tell you he doesn t want you present at the Inauguration. There is a situation into which he is being forced and to fight it would be counter-productive to the goals he has set. He very much hopes you ll understand.
Adding even more injury to this insult was the fact that Sinatra was called upon to organise the Kennedy Inauguration Gala. On that night Sammy Davis Jnr was working in a night club, knowing that the rest of the Rat Pack was in Washington. But then President John Fitzgerald Kennedy soon rejected Sinatra too. As Levy says without his knowing it, his entree into Camelot, always tenuous, eroded. All the shit that Frank had steered Jack s way the broads, the Mafia money, the shadowy friends was about to be shoved back in his face by the Kennedys with heartless indifference.
JFK was set to visit Sinatra s home on March 24th 1960. Two days beforehand Peter Lawford (who had married into the Kennedy clan) was told by Jack and Bobby Kennedy to call Frank and tell him the President was cancelling that visit and would be staying, instead, at the nearby residence of Bing Crosby. Sinatra instinctively knew that d he d been shafted.
Once Bobby Kennedy was appointed Attorney General, he went for the Mafia, at one point telling JFK he d resign if the ties to Sinatra and his hoodlum friends weren t broken. This was despite the fact that mob money, and influence, had been used to swing Chicago , the electoral victory that ensured JFK would win the 1960 Presidential election.
Sinatra s falling out of favour with the Kennedy administration nearly led to his own death. Sinatra, apparently, had indicated to Sam Giancana that the mob s assistance with Jack s election would be recompensed with an easing of federal enquiries into racketeering . So when Robert Kennedy set out, instead, to nail the mob, they specifically Johnny Roselli and Johnny Formasa wanted to nail Sinatra and his buddies in return.
Let s show em, Johnny Formosa told Giancana. Let s show those asshole Hollywood fruitcakes that they can t get away as if nothing s happened. Let s hit Sinatra. Or I could whack out a couple of those other guys. Lawford and that Martin. And I could take the Nigger and put his other eye out.

But enough of all that. Let s focus on the life-affirming delight called sex. According to J. Randall Taraborrelli: Sexual activity was always high on the list of priorities for Sinatra and all of his pals whenever they played Las Vegas. Certainly none of them could resist the charms and temptations of a shapely showgirl.
Obviously not. One such shapely female, Betty Rose Lehman, has since revealed: All of us girls, from all the hotels, would go to the Sands and wait in a private lounge for the guys to get offstage. They always had terrific food and booze. Then, when they were ready, we would go off with them three with Dean, three with Sammy. Frank sometimes ended up with four or five.
But Betty Rose, having had sex with Sinatra, says he was a flop!
I admit I had intimate relations with Sinatra, once, with two other women. He wasn t what we had heard he would be, the great lover, you know? He was sort of disappointing, in fact. I expect, though, that was because he was completely drunk.
Frank Sinatra, at this point in his life his mid-forties was suffering from a sexual ailment that besets many a heavy drinker, Brewer s droop . But Frankie wasn t always hornily challenged.
If you want to know the real Sinatra and what made him tick, his childhood buddy Joe D Orazio explained, you gotta know he is well equipped hung like a horse, to be blunt and the dames liked that. The word got around that Sinatra would not let you down. He had the equipment to satisfy.
Maybe so. But a quarter century later Sinatra s sexual prowess was on the wane. Circa 61, when a doctor suggested he try cut down on an average of fifteen Jack Daniel s a day Frankie replied: If I gotta choose between gettin my bird up and gettin loaded, hey, fuck it, I m gettin loaded.
That was before he got involved with Marilyn Monroe. Sure, they d fucked, once or twice, during the 50s, but by the early 60s, they really were lovers, and Marilyn, according to Taraborrelli, said she didn t care how long it took; she was determined that he was going to perform in bed with her. They were innovative sexually. For instance, they began sharing intimacies outdoors. Sinatra had never done that before Monroe, and it excited him. According to Sinatra s friends, he and Monroe engaged in sexual activity on the roof of the Sands hotel, above the Las Vegas strip.
Come Fly With Me indeed!
Even so, Sinatra is said to have been deeply distressed when Marilyn drunkenly confessed that while attempting to cure him of his impotency, she had been faking it , not achieving sexual satisfaction herself. Jesus Christ, Frank responded, if I can t satisfy her, then what the hell am I doing with her? Why she d even have to tell me that? Did I have to know that? Hell, no.
But how, exactly, did Monroe help Frankie to, eh, rise above his sexual problems in the early 60s? She took a dip with him in a bubble bath! She would hold her breath and go down on him under the bubbles. Frank dug it. He used to say: if Marilyn Monroe is ever found drowned, you ll know why. She s so good I don t want to let her up for air!
That said, whether Frank Sinatra was in full working order sexually, or not, he remained as cocky about his sexual prowess as he had been during his teenage years. Indeed, when another of his lovers, Juliet Prowse, decided to shag Elvis, Frankie said: She wants to fuck Elvis Presley, fine, let her. But she s gonna be real dispppointed, going from him to me. Ha!
Dawn Linder Lewis, a Sands showgirl, has less than pleasant memories of the Rat Pack s sexual shenanigans. She remembered that Frank, Dean and Sammy acted as if they were spoiled high school boys, squirting champagne over each other and stripping the tops off some of the women present, says Taraborrelli. Frank went to each topless woman and buried his head in her bosom while making lewd noises. Dean took Polaroid photographs for posterity. Then the men went into the bedroom with a group of women, all of whom seemed to be delighted. Eventually, Frank emerged from the bedroom wearing only a skimpy white terry-cloth towel. Sinatra pointed at her. So, doll, I guess you re all mine , he said. You make me sick , she told him before throwing a drink in his face. Frank was enraged. He screamed at her. Jesus Christ, get the fuck outta here. Scram. What d you come in here for if you didn t want to do it?
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? You bet.

That was 1959. But by the time their movie Four For Texas opened and flopped in 1964 it was all nearly over for the Rat Pack. Kennedy had been assassinated, Camelot was crumbling and this bunch of kids from England with funny suits and haircuts had grabbed up five number one singles more than Frank, Dean, and Sammy ever had in their lives combined, says Shawn Levy.
There you had them a group consisting of the nation s greatest and most popular entertainers, with the blessing of a dynamic political star and fearsome crime lords, the favours of gorgeous women, an enviable playground, all the money in the world and within four years of commanding the world s attention they were deposed. What seemed like high-spirited fun in the winter of 1960 came to look like pathetic lechery by the summer of 1964; the high hopes of one generation a delusional sham which obscured a corrupt, licentious core were replaced with the simple adolescent cheeriness of the next. The kids looked on the Rat Pack, the undisputed kings of the last great moment of showbiz concensus, and saw old farts with a style more laughable than desirable.
Nearly forty years later the Rat Pack are hip again. Swanky nightspots, sharp outfits, neat haircuts, stiff drinks and cigarette packs free of the Surgeon General s warning vestiges of the glory days of their favourite city and a uniquely American brand of grown-up hip. In other words, kids of the 21st Century, raised on a movie like Reservoir Dogs which took its look, style and sense of cool from the Rat Pack flic Oceans Eleven do now see the world of Sinatra and his buddies, during the early 60s, as both glorious and phoney an originating moment of pop irony.
I ve barely even mentioned the music. But then, as I say, music didn t really play a major part in the mythology of the Rat Pack. It was merely a signifier, representing the kind of moral freedom and sexual excess that followed in the wake of America winning the Second World War according to one commentator. In other words, Frank, Sammy and Dino were the adult version of rockers like Elvis, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. Liberating forces, for their generation, to no less a degree. That s what makes their best music as potent as the most powerful rock n roll. From Elvis to Tricky.
And you know what s really glorious about the Rat Pack? Frankie, Sammy and Dino may now all be dead but the mark they left on pop culture is so deeply embedded. They are the undisputed lords of lounge music and soulful pop. The originals.
And the best.