“We ain’t figured out ourselves what the hell we do up here,” stated the Leader, stalking the stage. “But it’s fun, baby.”
Las Vegas, January 1960: He had called forth comrades he liked, whose talents he enjoyed, whose birds he could inquire after, and thrown them together, en masse, to play ex-members of the 82nd Airborne out to rob five casinos on New Year’s Eve. This was Ocean’s Eleven — the celluloid apotheosis of ring-a-ding-ding. Shooting by day, they cut loose at night, assuaging boredom by becoming the Rat Pack, as the press would call them. “I hate that stupid phrase,” said Frank. Naturally, he led all capering, in film and in life. Before they were the Rat Pack, which he claimed they never were, they were called the Clan: himself and Dag and Sam and Pete Lawford and Joey Bishop composing the quintessential membership. “I hate the name Clan,” Frank also said. When they gathered onstage, he always preferred that their convocation be known as the Summit. But this mattered little, for they were, alas and forever, the Rat Pack, whose satellite Charleys included Little Sister MacLaine (Shirl), Tony Curtis (Boinie, as in Bernie), Jimmy Van Heusen (Chester), Steve Lawrence (Boy Singer), Kirk Douglas, Don Rickles, Robert Wagner, and whomever else Frank wished to see drunk.
Camelot came to the Sands that February. Pulling himself off the campaign trail for a breather, the young senator from Massachusetts—whose sister was Lawford’s wife—became known as Chicky-Baby, when addressed by the Leader. As with any politician, he knew Sinatra’s endorsement translated to fund-raising dough ad infinitum. If Frank sang for him, his campaign coffers would brim. Meanwhile, Frank, who basked in power all his own, loved the idea of being near potential White House power. “Don’t forget I’ve got Lawford, and remember who Lawford’s got!” he would crow. (To show unabashed support, he momentarily renamed his merry cabal the Jack Pack.) John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who knew well how to recreate, thusly partook of the ongoing mothery gas. He watched ribald Clan meetings unfold onstage and afterward repaired to party suites to meet registered young female voters of Frank’s acquaintance.
He also found welcome in the Sands steam room, which was the unofficial Summit clubhouse, where the boys met daily at five to clear the mucus of the previous night and plot ahead. There they spoke in colorful language, ate hot dogs and pizza, blew cherry bombs, threw cream pies at each other, and wore white monogrammed robes—except Sam, whose white robe was switched for brown on mirthful occasion. Across the back of his robe was SMOKEY; Frank’s had FAS; Dean’s had DAG. Joey, whose robe bore his trademark catchphrase SON OF A GUN, likes to recall, “When I first saw Frank nude in the steam room, he became my idol. When Sammy first saw me, I became his idol.” Rickles gained introduction by being tossed out into the pool area, naked, by Frank and Dean. “Frank thought that was funny,” he says. “So I frightened a few small children, what did he care?” His robe said RHINO.
“You’ve got to go through the Bishop to get to the Pope,” Joey would joke, somewhat exaggerating his rank of echelon. (The Leader was also called the Pope.) The Philly-born deadpan comic actually knew better: He later flirted with titling his never-written memoir I Was A Mouse In The Rat Pack. But, in truth, he was the architect of all Pack stagecraft, author of their trustiest “ad-libs.” He hovered over the act, a needling moderator, concerned with pacing: “The casino bosses showed us how much money they lost if we went longer than an hour,” he says. Frank called him the Speaker of the House. After Kennedy became President, Joe cooked up a bit where Lawford would wander through the audience wearing a busboy uniform, gather some dishes, and intone, “Imagine what I’d be doing if he didn’t get elected!” Bishop remembers: “For the first two or three times, he wasn’t getting much of a laugh because he did not emphasize the word didn’t. So I told him this and he said, ‘Don’t tell me how to deliver a line!’ You know what Frank said to him? ‘Deliver the line the way Joey’s telling you or get the f*** out of the show!’” Lawford, who happily stayed on, mostly danced with Sam, flaunted his suave British charm, and acquiesced to Frank. (He named his daughter Victoria Frances, after Francis Albert.) Possessed of business savvy, he shared ownership with Sinatra in the Beverly Hills restaurant Puccini’s and in Ocean’s Eleven. It was Pete who first found the Vegas yarn, which was dreamed up by a Santa Monica gas station attendant. Once captured on film, the gas would flow eternally.
“We haven’t seen much daylight since we’ve been here,” Frank reported to audiences in the Copa Room. “Seen a lot of Jack Daniel’s, but not much daylight.” Their desert hijinks grabbed the imagination of the world, gave Las Vegas more romantic cachet than perhaps it ever deserved. They brought a better class of sin to Sin City. High rollers flocked to the Strip, always would whenever Frank and Dean performed in town—but this was Eventsville, and the Sands was now mecca with a dress code. Money poured in. The boys ruled; they floated through the casino, Frank and Dean dealt blackjack, turned up the cards, and let all the pretty ladies win. (Nancy Jr. recalls: “If the dealer had twenty showing—that is, if Sinatra had twenty showing—and you had nineteen, he’d just keep hitting you until you got two aces or a deuce and then he’d take the extra cards away and say, ‘Okay, you’ve got twenty-one!’ And pay you with the house’s money.”) They did as they liked.
After their second show each night, they eventually moved to the lounge for gasoline and soft-shouldered scenery. “Everybody knew we’d all meet at the Sands lounge, okay?” says Tony Curtis. “We’d be sitting there getting looped and these fabulous girls would start coming in around two o’clock, girls who were getting off work in the chorus lines. They’d sit with us, under that dim lighting, with that music playing—I mean, it was too good! It wasn’t about f***ing as much as it was about wooing, you know? I’d look across four tables and there was Frank with two or more girls. But let me tell you, HE WASN’T A WOMANIZER—HE WAS WOMANIZED! What a great position to be in!” He adds, “You know, those were carefree, intelligent, and very stimulating days and nights.”
Dean would come but never stay long. Only he could leave with impunity. He’d have one drink, two tops, then lie to Frank and say, “I’ve got a girl in my room.” It was never that big of a secret: “Do you know that I spill more than he drinks?” Frank would say. “That’s an actuality.” Dean’s license plate read DRUNKY, but it was a sham. He mostly sipped and pretended. “I drink about one-tenth as much as I pretend to,” he confessed. “I’ll have a slug of liquid in an old-fashioned glass that looks like scotch, but it’s really apple juice.” You could tell by his comic timing onstage, even more physically precise than that of the beloved monkey, former partner Jerry Lewis. “No one has ever seen me drunk,” he once said. (That was not entirely true—Frank, of course, bore witness on occasion—but it was true for the most part.) When he did drink, it was J&B scotch, with three tablespoons of soda.
But in the lounge, his presence was brief and vaporous. He loved to sleep, then hit the morning links, nursing his glorious six handicap. Frank knew. “He likes golf ball-thumpin’ like I like humpin’—to each his own!” the Leader sang when the Friars roasted Dag. “They gave one another space,” says Greg Garrison, Dean’s longtime TV producer. Not that gauntlets weren’t thrown: Once Frank gave a broad a grand to wait naked in Dean’s bed. Dean gave her two grand to go back and tell Frank he was fabulous. Such was their love and mutual understanding.
Excerpt from The Way You Wear Your Hat
