
Pack rats live in the desert in holes in the ground or under low foliage.Rat Pack members without Joey Bishop, from left: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Dean Martin. They pick them up (sometimes dropping something they’re holding in lieu of something new) and cart them back to the midden. These woodland creatures are attracted to new toys, objects that spark their interest.
View source History Talk (0) Character. “Jack” Kennedy (JFK) in his 1960 run for president. “The Jack Pack” moniker was actually a variant of “The Rat Pack,” a nickname for a coterie of Hollywood stars and Las Vegas entertainers that included: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.Kitty Katswell/Images/The Rat Pack < Kitty Katswell Images. “The Jack Pack” was the name briefly attributed to a famous group of 1960s entertainers who supported U.S. Click for Life “rat pack” edition.
Each museum-quality rat pack framed print may be customized with hundreds of different frame and mat options. In 1960, this group was temporarily dubbed “the Jack Pack” by Sinatra when they worked in various ways to support Kennedy’s election bid. Kennedy had socialized with Sinatra and the group on occasion and liked the camaraderie, which later turned to political and financial support on his behalf.Buy rat pack framed prints from our community of independent artists and iconic brands. The album was re-released in 1963 with a much. Sinatra and Martin take a cigarette break during the recording of Sleep Warm in 1958. Life with the Rat Pack: Rare photos of Frank, Dean and Sammy. Find your favorite art prints from.
Images Of The Rat Pack Plus A Few
The late-1950s-early-1960s “Rat Pack” era appears to have begun in Las Vegas in January 1959 when Sinatra and Dean Martin – then performing separately at The Sands lounge and casino – began appearing in each other’s acts. Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” – not initially called that at first – came about gradually from their work in Las Vegas and their Hollywood contacts. Sometime after Bogart passed on in 1957, Sinatra established his own inner group of cavorting buddies, all from Hollywood and the world of enter- tainment. Legend has it that Bogart’s wife and film star Lauren Bacall, saw the drunken crew of friends all together one night at a casino and remarked that they looked like a “rat pack.”Life magazine “rat pack” photo, from left: Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop, and Dean Martin. Then Hollywood rookie, Frank Sinatra, who had moved his family into that area in 1949, became a nearby neighbor to Bogart, and then a member of his group. Were also in on the fun, which took place on stage at the Sands Hotel and Casino and on screen in Oceans 11 (1960).Part 2 of this story – a separate post at this website – begins with JFK’s presiden-tial inauguration in January 1961, and also covers selected Sinatra, Rat Pack, and Kennedy Administration history through JFK’s assassination in November 1963, plus a few related outcomes beyond those years. First, some background on the Rat Pack.In the late 1940s, film star Humphrey Bogart had a loyal group of friends and drinking buddies in an area of Los Angeles known as Holmby Hills.
More on that relationship a bit later.By the early 1960s in any case, the Rat Pack became known for its multiple-person stage acts – with all five of the principals on stage together, plus others occasionally. Peter Lawford and Sinatra had worked in a few films together in the 1940s, but Sinatra came to know him much better as Jack Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Army, and Sinatra would later help Davis in his career. They reconnected some time later after Sammy was discharged from the U.S. Sinatra was singing with Tommy Dosey’s band in 1941 when he first met Sammy Davis, Jr., then an aspiring dancer with the Will Mastin Trio. He later asked Bishop to open for him at Bill Miller’s Riviera club in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and soon thereafter Bishop was regularly opening for Sinatra, becoming known as “Sinatra’s comic.” Bishop also began appearing in first-rate clubs even when Sinatra was not on the bill.Dean Martin, Sammy Davis & Frank Sinatra having a good time.
The Rat Pack’s nightclub act evolved into an entertaining and popular song, dance and comedy act with a lot of cutting up on stage, a rolling bar of alcoholic beverages, along with a measure of social commentary thrown in from time to time.The Rat Pack “schtick” was part Vaudeville, part Hollywood, and part “bad boys.” It became a unique stage genre and vintage Las Vegas. Las Vegas at the time was still growing, and the Rat Pack helped bring in the notice, the visitors, and the money. The core group of the Rat Pack, however – consisting of Sinatra and his co-performing buddies – basically set up shop in Las Vegas during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Shirley MacLaine, for example who starred with Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1959’s Some Came Running, would also become a Rat Pack “associate” from time to time.Dean Martin on stage at the Sands in Las Vegas, where Rat Pack performances drew large crowds of celebrities & VIPs from Hollywood and elsewhere.
Kennedy outside of The Sands hotel in Las Vegas, NV, Feb 1960, when Kennedy stayed there during a campaign swing. Musically and culturally, it occupied the transition period between the first surge of rock `n roll in the 1950s by the likes of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Buddy Holly – music which Sinatra initially derided – and the arrival of the Beatles in 1964.Frank Sinatra with then-U.S. In its day, however, the Rat Pack did the trick and fit the national mood.
At his meeting with FDR, the two shared stories with Sinatra giving the president some insight on the music business. Sinatra, too, had also received some unflattering ink from the Hearst papers. At the time, Roosevelt was under fire from conservatives in the press, especially the Hearst newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst. In 1944 he received an invitation to the White House from Franklin Roosevelt, then in his third term. But once he became famous as a young singer in the 1940s and caught the national limelight, politicians soon noticed and sought him out. His mother had worked as a Democratic Party committee woman in New Jersey, and as a boy he marched in political parades.

Actress Angie Dickinson, who sometimes cavorted with the Rat Pack, would later call Sinatra, “a very powerful, subtle force in civil rights… not only in Las Vegas.”Frank Sinatra with former President Harry Truman (center) and toastmaster George Jessel in November 1957 at Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner and fundraiser, Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles.In 1947, he urged former FDR vice president Henry Wallace to run for President, which Wallace did as a Progressive Party candidate. Sinatra would also put his career at risk at times when he refused to play clubs and hotels that discriminated against blacks. Sinatra appeals to them through the lyrics of the film’s song: “The faces that I see / All races and religions / That’s America to me.” This short film was scripted by Albert Maltz, a person who would later come into Sinatra’s life when he became involved with Jack Kennedy.Sinatra would sing “The House I Live In” on various occasions during his career, and sometimes at political gatherings, as he did at a 1956 Democratic party rally in Hollywood.
At the 1956 Democratic convention he sang the National Anthem, but remained at the convention to observe some of the politicking that occurred after Adlai Stevenson had thrown open the vice presidential nomination to the full convention. He campaigned for Stevenson in 1956, also the year he came into contact with the Kennedy family for the first time. In 19, he supported the unsuccessful presidential bids of Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson.
But their paths crossed again in the early 1950s under somewhat less cordial circumstances. Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford had known each other from working in Hollywood, dating to the 1947 musical comedy film, It Happened in Brooklyn, in which they both appeared. But it was British actor Peter Lawford, a subsequent “rat pack” member, who would help Sinatra become much closer to Kennedy and the Kennedy family.Patricia Kennedy Lawford and Peter Lawford, 1960s. From that point on Sinatra took an interest in the rising young senator he believed was heading places. Kennedy lost to Senator Estes Kefauver, but Sinatra had watched the Kennedy machine in operation on the convention floor. Kennedy, was making a run for that spot.
