The Rat Pack's Final Curtain

The Paris summit conference of 1960 had been organized by President Dwight Eisenhower, French leader Charles de Gaulle and the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev. Frank said he'd have a damn summit, too: Hee, hee, hee. He said it was going to be a Rat Pack summit. The scribes of the day had their hook and ran with it. Sinatra and company all knew Jack Entratter, because he used to work at the Copacabana in New York City. Now Jack was at the Sands and began nodding happily as soon as Frank mentioned he wanted to stage a Rat Pack summit there.

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The shows sold out; those who couldn't get tickets cried. Perhaps no one benefited more than Sammy Davis Jr. His presence made the enterprise integrated. And it was a black and white time of simmering racial protest across the country.

At the Sands, the tablecloths were linen and the silverware gleamed. The mobsters mingled with the actors and actresses who had come over from Hollywood. Some of the blacks in Vegas tugged at Sammy's elbow, begging him to say something about the city's segregation.

One night onstage, Frank told Dean that Jack Kennedy was in the audience. Who? "What did you say his name was?" Dean cracked.

Sen. Kennedy was already running for the White House; Peter Lawford happened to be his brother-in-law. Dean picked up Sammy like a wounded animal and said to Frank, "Here. This award just came to you from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People."

The laughter didn't stop for a long time. There were blacks in the kitchen who twisted uneasily.

Blauner realizes that some of the statements made by Dean and Sinatra from the stage during Rat Pack evenings would hardly be acceptable in today's climate. "All the things that they did, many people would be scared to do today," he says. "It just wouldn't be politically possible."

When they rolled to California to appear at the 1960 Democratic convention, the Mississippi delegation booed them: Sammy was onstage. Frank called the Mississippians "bums."

The years rolled over and around them. There were Rat Pack movies, such as "Ocean's Eleven," "Sergeants 3" and "Robin and the 7 Hoods."

It was while they were filming a scene for the latter in a Chicago cemetery that someone tapped Frank on the shoulder. They told him Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Frank shut the production down for a while.

The Rat Pack seemed to die with Camelot. Only it didn't, because George Clooney remade "Ocean's Eleven," then he made "Ocean's Twelve" and "Ocean's Thirteen." The movies were huge hits. Waves of nostalgia erupted about the original Rat Pack, and there were books about Frank, about Sammy, about Dean, books about all of them. There was a cable movie. Vaults were opened and Christmas music by the Rat Pack poured out at holiday parties.

Joey outlived them all. He lived long enough to see them turned into kitsch, then magically back into a pop culture phenomenon. It was a rare return to top billing.