Joey Bishop, 89; Mild-Mannered Comedian Grounded Hollywood's High-Flying Rat Pack

Joey Bishop, the understated funnyman who was the last survivor of Hollywood's Rat Pack and who once challenged Johnny Carson for late-night television supremacy, died Oct. 17 at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 89. The cause of death was not disclosed, but he had been in poor health in recent years.

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Mr. Bishop may be best remembered as the lone comedian among the better-known singers and actors of the Rat Pack, but he was a genuine star in his own right and was, in the view of many, the glue that held the high-living ensemble together.

The undisputed leader of the Rat Pack was Frank Sinatra, who met Mr. Bishop in 1952 and hired him to be his opening act in nightclubs. They worked together for years, culminating in a legendary three-week stint at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in 1960, when they were joined by Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.

Performing in the hotel by night, they filmed the caper movie "Ocean's Eleven" during the day. They came to embody a swanky, high-roller style that emerged as an enduring definition of male savoir-faire. Mr. Bishop was the least glamorous member of the Rat Pack and the one whose personal life never made the gossip pages. But his sharp ad-libs and mild-mannered presence were a steadying influence on the giddy group and made him one of the biggest comedy stars of his generation.

Mr. Bishop was a fixture on television in the 1950s and '60s as a deadpan standup comic and frequent substitute for talk-show host Jack Paar. From 1961 to 1965, Mr. Bishop starred in a sitcom in which he played a talk show host named Joey Barnes. (In the show's first season, he was in public relations.)

In some ways, the original "Joey Bishop Show" prefigured "Seinfeld," with Mr. Bishop's friends dropping by his apartment and getting into comic entanglements, often with improvised dialogue. Mr. Bishop's bewildered "Son of a gun!" exclamation became a catch phrase of the era.

"Joey has something going for him that a lot of others don't," Carson once said. "He's likable."

For much of the 1960s, he was Carson's most frequent guest host on "The Tonight Show," making hundreds of appearances before ABC gave him a late-night show in 1967.

The live, 90-minute program was the first network talk show produced in California and the first that directly challenged Carson's late-night preeminence. Mr. Bishop's sidekick was the little-known Regis Philbin. But after CBS put Merv Griffin in the same time slot, ratings for "The Joey Bishop Show" plummeted, and it was canceled in 1969.

Mr. Bishop would never recapture the gaudy splendor of those years in the 1950s and '60s, when he made as much as $60,000 a week in Las Vegas, but he didn't regret his diminished show biz stature. He resisted the temptation to write a tell-all memoir of his years with Sinatra -- or of his friendship with John F. Kennedy -- and he stoutly defended the professionalism and human decency of his Rat Pack pals.

He was one of the few people who could skewer Sinatra without incurring his wrath. As part of their act, Mr. Bishop would interrupt Sinatra onstage, saying, "That's enough singing, Frank. They know you can sing. Why don't you tell them some of the good things the Mafia has done?"

Such antics only endeared Mr. Bishop to Sinatra. In 1986, when Kitty Kelley published a scandal-filled biography of Sinatra, Mr. Bishop was one of the few members of Sinatra's retinue to go on television to defend his reputation. For years, writers sought him to ask about the Rat Pack's heyday and the group's after-hours exploits.

"I don't understand this searching for things that weren't there," Mr. Bishop said. "It's like a hunger."

As his public appearances grew rare, he appeared on Broadway for a four-week run in 1981 as Mickey Rooney's replacement in "Sugar Babies." Mr. Bishop happily settled into a quiet life of retirement in Newport Beach, where he had lived since 1971. He professed disdain for much modern-day humor, saying that it was too explicit and profane.

"The secret of comedy is when the audience can't wait to hear what you're gonna say," Mr. Bishop told the Dallas Morning News in 1998. "I see them doing comedy now so loud. My conception of true comedy is to be overheard, not heard. That's what made the Rat Pack so great."

Mr. Bishop, whose original name was Joseph Abraham Gottlieb, was born Feb. 3, 1918, in the Bronx. He moved to Philadelphia with his family as an infant and wanted to be an entertainer from an early age.

He learned Yiddish songs from his father, a bicycle repairman, and taught himself to tap dance and do impressions. He won many amateur contests and appeared on radio by his mid-teens.

He dropped out of high school and joined a three-man comedy group, the Bishop Brothers, borrowing the name from the group's driver. They worked in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the Catskill Mountains, but as the other members left the group, Mr. Bishop came into his own. He gave his first solo performance at a Cleveland club called El Dumpo.

"As soon as I walked out there, I knew it was going to be all right," he said years later. "I felt free, relaxed."

With his first big paycheck, he returned to Philadelphia.

"I came home, took my father's hat off, put it on the floor and started throwing $100 bills into it," he recalled. "He couldn't believe it."

Mr. Bishop seldom memorized jokes, preferring casual throwaway lines, a relaxed delivery and quick, improvised observations. His low-key style resembled that of Jack Benny, and he won early praise from no less an authority than Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy.

During World War II, Mr. Bishop served in the Army and ended his military career as recreation director at Fort Sam Houston, Tex. (He was also a champion welterweight boxer in the Army and later became a superb golfer.)

By 1952, Mr. Bishop was earning $1,000 a week, and Sinatra came knocking. When Sinatra opened at New York's Copacabana nightclub in 1954 after winning an Academy Award for best supporting actor in "From Here to Eternity," Mr. Bishop warmed up the packed house.

"I can't believe the size of this crowd," he quipped. "I sure hope Frank's fans show up, too."

Another time, an ermine-draped Marilyn Monroe walked into the club while Mr. Bishop was delivering his monologue, and the crowd turned to watch. When she sat down, Mr. Bishop whispered into the microphone, "Marilyn, I told you to wait in the truck."

With the Rat Pack, Mr. Bishop wrote many of the group's comic lines, including perhaps its most famous (and notorious): As Martin cradled the diminutive Davis in his arms, he said, "I'd like to thank the NAACP for this wonderful trophy."

If Mr. Bishop's role in the Rat Pack seems to have dimmed with time, contemporary audiences understood his importance.

"Theoretically, Joey has bottom billing -- fifth man after the show's four stars," a Time critic wrote in 1960. "But happily as soon as he starts talking he's recognized as the top banana in the newly assembled act that is breaking up Vegas."

In 1960, presidential candidate Richard Nixon asked Mr. Bishop to appear at the Republican national convention. Mr. Bishop declined, saying he was a "Kennedy man."

The night before Kennedy's inauguration in 1961, Mr. Bishop was the master of ceremonies at a Democratic gala for the president and, a month later, emceed the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Mr. Bishop appeared in many films, including the Rat Pack movie "Sergeants 3" (1962), "Valley of the Dolls" (1967), "The Delta Force" (1986) and "The Naked and the Dead" (1958).

"I played both parts," he said.

His wife of 58 years, Sylvia Bishop, whom he met while performing at a Miami Beach nightclub, died in 1999.

Survivors include his son, movie producer Larry Bishop; and two grandsons.