Joey Bishop, Last Of Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack”, Dies In California

It is sometimes amazing to consider just how fleeting fame really is. A man who was once a household name died on Wednesday, and some from the younger generation may have no idea who he is.

But Joey Bishop was a huge star during his lifetime and became most famous as a member of the so-called Rat Pack, which consisted of legendary celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Bishop (pictured far right) was the wise-cracking comedian of the group and remained among the most under-rated, but would frequently pen the material that the others delivered with such aplomb.

“People would go see Frank and Dean and Sammy [in Vegas] and everybody would think these guys were going to chew him up on stage but that was never the case,” comedian Sandy Hackett observes. “In reality, he wrote almost all the jokes they all did. He’d come up with something funny and they’d go, ‘That was great, Joey,’ and then the next night one of them would use it and he’d have to come up with another joke.”

The man born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb in the Bronx worked his way up through the usual channels – vaudeville, burlesque and night clubs. He was spotted in one of the latter places in 1945 by Sinatra, who asked him to become his opening act.

The crooner invited Bishop to emcee the gala inaugural for President John F. Kennedy in 1960. He turned to the new occupant of the White House and floored him with this line: “I told you I’d get you a good seat.”

But despite the awe many held for Old Blue Eyes, Bishop refused to kowtow to his boss and friend. “He spoke to me backstage,” Sinatra once recalled. “He told me, ‘Get out of the way.'”

But their friendship became legendary and was marked in movies like the original classic ” Oceans Eleven.” Bishop also appeared in a number of other films and had two TV shows of his own that are long forgotten today. One was an early 60s sitcom, the other a talk show attempt to beat Johnny Carson. Both flopped, but the latter featured a rising star as an announcer who would one day make a name for himself on his own -Regis Philbin.

Still, his Rat Pack persona lives on. “They were the ultimate in cool,” film historian Leonard Maltin agrees. “I think guys admired and envied them, women wanted to be with them, and I think Joey Bishop’s deadpan style of comedy suited that group well. He was a combination straight man and comedian.”

Bishop never apologized for his crew’s “booze and broads” approach to life, a decidedly non-politically correct stance before that term became a fact of life. “Are we remembered as being drunk and chasing broads?” he asked rhetorically in 1998. “I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag. And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase ’em away.”

Bishop is survived by a son and two grandchildren. He was 89.

Photo credit: Getty Images/Newsmakers