frank sinatra

[den]

who were the members of the rat pack?

[bluedolphin]

dean martin, sammy davis jnr, peter crawford, frank himself and i think one other????

[Quizmonster]

Joey Bishop was the one that virtually everyone forgets.

[andy hughes]

Sorry to correct, but it's Peter Lawford, an English bit-art actor and a relative by marriage of the Kennedys, and therefore seen as 'cool'. Sinatra used to call him 'the brother-in-Lawford' which was about the level of humour among a gang of drunks with too much money and too many people to indulge them in dreadful behaviour and racist / chavenist attitudes.

[woofgang]

http://www.theratpack.org.uk

[sft42]

Andy it's very easy in this day and age to look back with hindsight and say that they were racist but the very fact that the most powerful entertaining group of men in the US had a jewish black man in their ranks surely said something for them?

I am off for a drinky poo...scotch on the rocks barman!

[andy hughes]

Apparently it does sft42, but if you look deeper into it, the abuse, religious, racial, and personal, heaped on SDJ in the name of 'humour' was appalling, and owes nothing to the climate of the times, they belittled Davies as an entertainer, as a Jew, and as a black man, probably because they were secretly in awe of his talent and popularity. The Rat Pack were a boorish group of overpaid overindulged unpleasant individuals, with no loyalty to even their 'own'.

[Monkian]

I'm sensing a little jealousy of your own here...

[BrumBob]

WHat about Sammy Bioshop and Milton Berle ...Angie Dickinson and Shirley Maclaine

[TheBrad]

There were loads of actors/actresses in the rat pack. They were all disenchanted with the way they were being treated by hollywood bosses/directors and the like. Humphrey Bogart was one of the main ringleaders but it was Sinatra who actually confronted the might of Hollywood. As such the stars and especially Sinatra were labelled by Hollywood as the Ratpack.