Las Vegas News Bureau
All five members of the Rat Pack, from left, Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop, perform at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Jan. 20, 1960. Their gigs were often improvised and when one member of the Rat Pack was scheduled to give a performance, other members would show up for an impromptu show.
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 | 10:41 a.m.
Even as litigation with his former Rat Pack tribute show partners heats up, comedian Sandy Hackett today announced the launch of a new Rat Pack show at the Sahara hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
Hackett, son of the late entertainer Buddy Hackett, said he will perform in the Sahara Congo Room as Joey Bishop in "Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show," set to open just before Thanksgiving.
Sandy Hackett said his father will appear in the show, via a voiceover recorded before he died in 2003, as the voice of God.
Sandy Hackett said "God" will send the Rat Pack -- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Bishop -- "down from their mischievous lair in heaven for one last spin."
Attorneys for Sandy Hackett, in the meantime, will be busy litigating two lawsuits pitting him against his former partners in a competing Rat Pack show at the Plaza hotel-casino in downtown Las Vegas.
On Sept. 28, TRP Entertainment LLC sued Hackett in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas after a dispute erupted between Hackett and his TRP Entertainment Rat Pack tribute show partners Richard Feeney and Arthur Petrie.
Because of the dispute, Hackett was fired from TRP's show at the Plaza called "the Rat Pack is Back."
TRP charged in the suit that Hackett was asserting copyright claims to the production and is asking the court to declare TRP can continue to produce the Plaza show "free and clear of interference or harassment by Hackett and without any obligation or liability to Hackett, under copyright law or otherwise."
The court has yet to rule on that request and Hackett's attorneys have not filed a response in court to that suit.
Attorneys for Hackett, however, filed their own suit Wednesday against TRP, Feeney, Petrie, Plaza owner PlayLV Gaming Operations and TRP's booking agent Broadway Booking Office NYC Ltd. of New York.
The suit accuses TRP of copyright infringement; and seeks cancelation of a deal in which Hackett sold his interest in the partnership, a dissolution of TRP, an accounting of its finances and an injunction preventing TRP from marketing and producing "the Rat Pack is Back."
"Sandy Hackett's business 'partners' victimized and discarded him, instead of rewarding him for creating, writing and producing his hit Las Vegas stage production of 'the Rat Pack is Back," the suit alleges.
Ruling in a separate lawsuit involving TRP, a federal judge in September found the phrase "The Rat Pack" in reference to tribute shows is generic and not subject to trademark protection. That ruling appeared to clear the way for various Rat Pack tribute shows around the nation to use that phrase in naming and promoting their shows.
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