Prelude to a song of the Rat Pack and Frank Sinatra

The full Rat Pack never performed in the Coachella Valley. But they left their footprints all over the desert, as well as in the world at large.

The only known video of a Rat Pack performance featured Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Johnny Carson in a benefit for the Dismas House for ex-convicts at the Kiel Opera House in St. Louis in 1965. Palm Springs resident Trini Lopez was part of the opening act, earning rave reviews for his performance of “La Bamba.”

The Rat Pack that made movies and played the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas featured Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford and comedian Joey Bishop instead of Carson. The last Rat Pack movie, “Robin and the Seven Hoods,” featured Bing Crosby in place of Lawford.

But the entourage that hung out with Sinatra in those years also included guys like Milton Berle, Don Rickles and Steve Lawrence, and women like Angie Dickinson, Shirley MacLaine, Keely Smith and Ruta Lee.

Also on the fringe were Lopez, the best-selling artist on Sinatra’s Reprise Records; Jack Jones, who won two Grammy Awards and was cited by Sinatra as the next big thing after Tony Bennett’s generation; and Jerry Vale, who played the lounge while the Rat Pack was in the Sands’ showroom.

The Desert Sun will examine the legacy of the Rat Pack over the next five days by talking to many of those men and women. We’ll culminate our journey with a dinner and panel discussion at Sinatra’s favorite local steakhouse, Lord Fletcher’s, with Lopez, Jones and Jerry Vale’s widow, Rita. You can get tickets for the event at https://tickets.desertsun.com/

How has the Rat Pack retained its luster over 50 years? Well, one key was the relationship between Sinatra and Martin.

Many people don’t know Martin’s place in the lineage of pop culture-changing acts. We usually think the links go from Crosby to Sinatra to Elvis Presley to The Beatles to Michael Jackson. But Martin connected Sinatra and Elvis.

Sinatra launched his solo career by a) switching to the MCA talent agency, which had the clout to extricate him from a bad contract to big band leader Tommy Dorsey, and b) hiring publicist George Evans, who arranged for girls in bobby socks to scream for him at New York’s Paramount Theatre in 1942.

Martin launched his solo career by switching to MCA to get out of a bad contract to big band leader Sammy Watkins and by hiring Evans to promote his act with Jerry Lewis, which catapulted Martin & Lewis to success on stage and film. Elvis idolized Martin and made films with the same producer and director as Martin & Lewis: Desert residents Hal Wallis and Norman Taurog.

Teaming up

Martin and Sinatra knew many of the same guys before they met in the mid-1940s. Martin even roomed with Sinatra’s future manager, Sonny King, before he could afford a New York apartment.

Lewis recalls the first time he and Martin saw Sinatra perform. It was at the Paramount Theatre in New York in April 1946. Martin was stunned at how Sinatra phrased a lyric. Martin, like Sinatra, had been inspired by Crosby, but he hadn’t added the influence of jazz singers that could make beautiful, jazz-infused music sound conversational. Hearing Sinatra lit a fire under Martin – just one year his junior – that was rare for the notoriously laissez-faire Dino.

Sinatra first saw Martin & Lewis in 1948 at New York’s Copacabana nightclub. Sinatra jumped on stage after a show in the fourth week of their run and told the crowd, “These guys are going straight off into the stratosphere. They will be the biggest stars in our business.”

And they were, until their breakup in 1956. Lewis was the hotter of the two. People thought he’d go on to be the most success because Martin was his straight man. But Sinatra reached out to Martin. He did shows with him and put him in movies. Martin was cautious. He revered Sinatra, but he wouldn’t allow himself to get hurt again as he had been with Lewis. It was the perfect attitude to have with Sinatra. His reserve made Sinatra try to get close to Martin, although Martin didn’t compete with him for leadership.

Bishop wrote many of the Rat Pack’s seemingly ad-libbed lines. Davis created a “wow” factor with his amazing ability to sing, tap dance, play multiple instruments and do impressions – especially of Lewis. Sinatra was the best singer and Lawford, said Lewis, “would have been a ‘Star Search’ loser.”

Martin was the glue that held the act together.

“What Dean brought to that group was his half of Martin & Lewis,” Lewis said in his book, “Dean & Me (A Love Story).” “He just replaced Jerry with four other guys. And he made it work, big-time… Dean showed Frank how to play on stage, how to make it a party. The secret to Martin & Lewis’ success was that we had fun together… Dean brought that same quality to the Rat Pack. He even brought along many of the bits and lines that he and I had done, and they worked again for the same reason they had worked for us: fun!”

Coachella Valley packs

Frank and Dean performed together at benefit shows for the Palm Springs Police Association in the 1960s and ’70s. Frank and Sammy performed together at several benefits, the last one took place at the McCallum Theatre for the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center. Lawford was booted out of the Rat Pack in 1962 and Bishop just faded from it.

Sinatra moved on to other entourages. He had traveled in packs since being part of the Harry James Big Band in 1939 and he’d always have groups staying with him at his Rancho Mirage compound. They’d have parties at home and go out en masse to restaurants. Sinatra was rarely alone.

It was jaw-dropping to see Sinatra walk into a place with four to six celebrities, including his wife, Barbara, who had her own regal quality. Saxophonist Pat Rizzo, who played in Sinatra’s orchestra and performed for him at parties and nightclubs, recalls seeing him lead celebrity entourages into the old Rimrocks supper club (now Glory To God Ministries) in the 1960s. “It was like a movie!” he said.

But I saw him once in a Dodgers windbreaker, chowing down at the old Chaplin’s restaurant with just one guy friend. I felt his wrath when Frank encountered me interviewing Barbara in the compound, unaware his wife had invited a reporter into his confines. And I experienced his glow when a friend bought one of his paintings for $7,000 at an auction for the Children’s Center. “For $7,000,” he told me, “I would have painted his house.”

You had to know how to approach Sinatra. He could be a terror or the most benevolent man you ever met. I remember stumbling upon him outside of Temple Isaiah, for which he planned and performed benefits. I don’t get tongue-tied in front of many celebrities, but Rabbi Joseph Hurwitz introduced me to him and I must have said something stupid (no pun intended). I don’t remember what I said, but he saw my nervousness and joked to Hurwitz about how often people saw him and went, “Oh, it’s Frank Sinatra! It’s Frank Sinatra!”

But I was thinking, “Yeah, it’s Frank Sinatra.”

It’s my hope that the stories in the next few days will provide more insight into what it was like to be around Frank Sinatra and his friends.