Thursday, Aug. 20, 1998 | 9:34 a.m.
It was a gas, a groove, a ring-a-ding, coo-coo time.
It was a day when women were broads, men were Charlies and the two got together for a little hey-hey.
Now, it's strictly endsville.
But for a time back in the early '60s, the Rat Pack had it all: Frank Sinatra and his self-described "Summit" -- Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop -- holding court in the steam room at the Sands, ruling the city with a cig, some songs and a couple of shots.
Today, they have immortality.
All but the 87-year-old Bishop are gone now, but the Rat Pack lives on with a new HBO movie debuting at 9 p.m. Saturday, complete with premiere parties in Los Angeles, New York and tonight's Las Vegas premiere at the Desert Inn. The local shindig will showcase leading man Ray Liotta (as Frank) and co-stars Joe Mantegna (Dean), Don Cheadle, (Sammy), Angus Macfadyen (Peter) and Bobby Slayton (Joey), plus a host of Las Vegas' usual celebrity suspects.
Those not invited to the high-wattage premiere can snuggle up at home for a Rat Pack evening tonight, thanks to TVLand (Cable 41), which at 9 will rerun the recently "rediscovered" St. Louis charity concert featuring Frank, Sammy and Dean, with host Johnny Carson.
Or, you can wait to see it all on the big screen: Warner Brothers is developing the film "Dino," based on Nick Tosches' biography of Dean Martin, "Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams"; Martin Scorcese plans to direct.
On top of that, there are countess biographies, tributes, and even Rat Pack impersonation groups out there.
Why all the Rat Pack frenzy now?
Pack appeal
Shawn Levy, whose new book, "Rat Pack Confidential: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, Joey and the Last Great Showbiz Party," provides much of the historical framework covered in the HBO film, explained why the Rat Pack still "reigns as a standard of popular culture":
"The Summit was the epitome of opulence, confidence, class," he says. "If anyone grew nostalgic for it ... that was because it was the last moment of cultural unanimity," he writes.
Still, he concludes in a recent article for the New York Times that the story of the Rat Pack is a "venal, rancid sham, a particularly American con."
The term "Rat Pack" was famously coined by Lauren Bacall, who, seeing her husband, Humphrey Bogart, Sinatra and a host of pals returning from a night of carousing, snapped: "You look like a goddamned rat pack!" Time Magazine published the account and the name stuck, handed down to Sinatra and his cohorts as a second generation, although they never formally accepted the moniker.
Today, admirers such as Las Vegas comedian Steve Caito dream of ushering in a "new generation" Rat Pack in Las Vegas. Caito hosts "The Rat Pack Radio Hour" airing at midnight Fridays on KLAV 1230-AM and is shopping for a new venue for his lounge act, "Which Way to the Rat Pack?" which recently ended after a two-year run at the Casino Royale.
"Anything went, that was the rule," Caito rhapsodizes of the era he missed. "The creating of feel-good was what the Rat Pack was all about."
Pack memories
Much of the thrill of seeing them perform as a group was the impromptu spontaneity. Often, you wouldn't even know for sure who would show up ("Dean Martin" the Sands marquee would bullet, with smaller type below adding impishly: "Maybe Frank, maybe Sammy.") The shows would play on for hours, as opposed to today's 90-minutes-and-out philosophy.
Industry observers agree that this freedom would never play in today's corporate-conscious casinos, but because of the Pack's extraordinary draw and drop (the money the house took in) -- and because of Frank's partial share of ownership in the Sands -- it was condoned.
All the trademarks of those performances are now legendary: how Sammy would light up a cigarette in the middle of his number, how the lackadaisical Dean would never finish a song in favor of a drink ("you're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without hanging on," he would joke).
And though we know know that Sammy would later die of throat cancer, and the alcohol was often really just apple juice, it still doesn't seem to diminish the afterglow. Their mythology grows with each passing year, until it seems as though more people claim to have been in the 200-seat Copa Room at the Sands than could ever have actually fit.
Those who were indeed there, such as actress Angie Dickinson, who came to Las Vegas in 1960 to play Sinatra's wife in the prototypical Rat Pack film "Ocean's Eleven." She watched the five perform nine times while she was in town, and says she knows why the fascination lives on.
"It was unbelievable," she exclaims. "The town came alive when they were there -- when they would play craps, you couldn't see for the barriers of people watching. "There's every reason to say, 'Oh my God, I wish I was there then.' It was great as it was -- it doesn't need to be embellished."
Stories of their generosity also are accurate. Congressional candidate Shelley Berkeley remembers how her father, who was a waiter and maitre'd at the Sands for 40 years, came home one day in great excitement. "Frank had asked him to move a table from the back of the showroom to up front, " she recalls. "My dad did that, and he handed him a hundred dollar bill.
"They captured the imagination of an entire generation," she says of the Pack's panache. "People came to Las Vegas because they thought they were entitled to have a good time -- and the Rat Pack had a good time. Everybody wanted to imitate them, to be part of them, be considered one of the boys. It was an era that will never be repeated."
For those who didn't get to be there, there is a sense of missing the moment.
Pack nostalgia
"Our generation is getting to the point where we've seen the rock concerts, done the mosh pits, now it's time to sit down and get entertained," Caito says. "Guys in their 20s and 30s would walk up, saying, "This is what it must have been like, it must have been great then, huh? They were brats and every guy in America wanted to be like that, to walk into a lounge and start a fight."
Levy's book explains why the younger generation finds it all so appealing. "The Summit was symbolic of surfaces: swanky nightspots, sharp oufits ... vestiges of a uniquely American brand of grown-up hip. They saw it as both glorious and phoney -- an originating moment of pop irony. It was the posture of sophisticated maturity -- masking an indulgent immaturity -- that made the Rat Pack so powerful."
Part of the admiration for this generation is a reaction to the oppressiveness of these "politically correct" times. No longer can a man call a broad a broad, or joke about recklessly boozing it up or Sammy's penchant for watermelon.
"We're all very health conscious now, we're not going to knock back the bourbon and soda in a smoky nightclub," points out Megan Dodds, who plays May Britt, Sammy's Swedish wife, in the HBO film. "It doesn't have that appeal anymore -- but the nostalia certainly does."
The film's director, Rob Cohen, agrees that part of the longing is for a less contentious time.
"I'm not saying feminism is dead and Ratpackism is alive," he says, "but the balance was much clearer under the Rat Pack philosophy than it has been for 20 years. There's been a lot of male/female confusion which they didn't suffer from. They represented the kind of manhood that is a desirable thing, it has a certain kind of clarity."
Still, Cohen points out that the Rat Pack's significance is greater than just some entertainment Zeitgeist that congealed in Las Vegas in the '60s.
"I don't think it's an over-hyped bunch of hijinks at the Sands," he says. "Frank Sinatra was the person through which big Hollywood glamour, big Washington and big organized crime interests intersected. There were real political ramifications, and the linkages that started with Frank have continued long after."
Pack history
The film chronicles the years 1958-62, focusing on how Sinatra helped to get John F. Kennedy elected. That included pressure to distance himself from Sammy and his interracial wedding and a blacklisted screenwriter, and his eventual estrangement from Kennedy and Lawford, JFK's brother-in-law, when the President decided not to stay at his compound in Palm Springs.
In addition to political significance, the Pack also made its mark on America's social consciousness, helping to bring racial integration to Las Vegas. That was marked by moments such as: Sammy's family being allowed to sit in the showroom to see him; the 1960 "Moulin Rouge Agreement" in which casinos agreed to open their doors to black customers; and Sammy's support of a threatened strike if more black employees were not hired.
Sammy always dreamed that his talent would overcome the hatred some directed toward him -- and sometimes it did.
Once, there was a high roller who dropped the "n" word as often as he would his chips. His wife somehow convinced him to see Sammy, and when he came out, he looked "like someone hit him over the head," and never used a racial epithet again.
Or so the story goes.
"That's the kind of power that those guys had," says Caito, who was told that tale by a former Sands employee. "They were not only great performers but great men. They knew that changes had to be made."
Still, no retelling of the Rat Pack can avoid the critical side: their thoughtless ribbing of Sammy's skin color; the manipulation of Marilyn Monroe and careless trysts with countless women; Sinatra's fistfights with critics, his temper, his consorting with mobsters; the ostracizing of those who fell out of favor.
"He calls himself an '18-carat manic depressive,' and the movie does not shy away from the dark side," director Cohen says. "There is stuff that will make you cringe, but that's what I'm most proud of -- the movie is honest and bold that way. I think we caught the truth of it all.
"It's not a valentine, but a love letter to Frank, saying I know how complicated an artist you are, and it makes me love you more," adds Cohen, who, in a twist of fate, was editing the film when he heard of Sinatra's death in May. "I remember knowing that this complex, flawed, dynamic man was now gone, and that this world was now a much smaller place."
And Cohen suspects that there will never be anything like it again.
"I think they had a generosity of spirit, a feeling of camaraderie that actors don't have (today) -- they're jealous and competitive," he says. "But, for awhile, everyone had a ring-a-ding style clambake."
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