The Rat Pack Legacy

Frank Sinatra, "The Chairman of the Board", bid the world farewell in 1998, at the age of 82. Sinatra once said that you only live once, but that if you had lived as he had, once was quite enough. And what a life he and his fellow Rat Packers led, indeed. They had elegance, panache, glamour, and a stylish recklessness all their own. And as one after another died, leaving Joey Bishop as the Rat Pack's last surviving member, the world realized that an important part of cultural history died with them.

Trends, and more specifically, trendsetters, are a dime a dozen. The world is a fickle place, and we are always on the lookout for the next great fad.  The world is consistently bombarded with images of what and who is hot and what and who is not, and we adjust accordingly, depending on our tastes. But history often repeats itself, and the greats always make a comeback beyond the grave. In recent years, we witnessed the return of the hippie 1960s and the retro 1970s. It's been seven years since Sinatra died, and it's safe to say that now, in his great Martini Lounge in the Sky, the chairman of the board and his fellow Rat Packers are laughing about the everlasting impressions they have made, as we've seen a full-force revival of that "make me a Martini and put on a Sinatra record" era of the Rat Pack years. The Pack is back baby!  Martini bars started cropping up in droves all around the country a few years ago. The modern touch to this drink is that now it's offered in a variety of blends: you can actually even order a  "chocolate" martini these days. Depending on the city, martini bars are frequented either by well-groomed, successful, conservative-looking professionals who simply have acquired a taste for the drink, or more interestingly, by the Rat Pack and Swing aficionados who are eager to revive the music and lifestyle of those yesteryears. And there are thousands of these slick-looking, wanna-be Rat Packers who trail to Swing clubs and prefer to groove to Big Bad Voodoo Daddy and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. In the daylight hours you'll find them rummaging through used CD shops for rare Sinatra and Martin records. Browse through the weekend section of any paper, and I guarantee that you'll be surprised by the number of swing dance clubs and "lounges" that are advertised. For example, in New York (Long Island) where I live, there is a fancy hotel that has a lounge that has "chairman of the board" thursdays with a crooner doing a reputable job of singing some of Frank's best. The Rat Pack comeback is in part thanks to Doug Liman's 1996 movie, Swingers, which immortalized the group for a new generation and has become a cult classic. Detailing the lives of a few hip-talking, swank-dressing 20-somethings in Los Angeles, Swingers deftly portrays the popularity of these modern Rat Packers who pay homage to their late, great heroes, and are cooler than cool.  They sip martinis, smoke, frequent exclusive clubs, and speak their own slang  — all this, intermingled with a soundtrack peppered with Dean Martin tracks. For a Rat Pack Memories review of Swingers click here. . In 2001 Hollywood attempted to cash in on the Rat Pack allure with a remake of Ocean's Eleven. The movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt failed to capture the essence of Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford and Bishop.  HBO also produced the tremendously popular Rat Pack starring Ray Liotta as Sinatra, which brilliantly captured the rise and fall of the "Summit".     But try as they may, no one has equaled the original Rat Pack in talent, ingenuity, charisma, and power. Their love lives were front-page news: Sinatra's messy divorce from Nancy Barbato, and tumultuous marriage and on-again/off-again relationship with actress Ava Gardner, and African-American entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.'s ground-breaking marriage to white actress May Britt, were national gossip. Actor Peter Lawford married into the Kennedy clan, which resulted in the questionable association of the Kennedy campaign with Sinatra and his crime boss pals, particularly Momo Giancanna, who almost certainly played a shady role in Kennedy's successful presidential election. Sinatra and Lawford also introduced Marilyn Monroe to both JFK and brother Robert, leading to affairs between the actress and both brothers that put the Kennedys in hot water when Monroe took her life a few years later. Cavorting with politicians seems to be a popular pastime among Hollywood celebrities these days, but the Rat Pack were the real movers and shakers of their time. Barbara Streisand can hobnob with the Clintons, and Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins can plead the case for saving the spotted owl, but Sinatra and his pals were instrumental in putting Kennedy into office. That's power. Sinatra played a crucial role in helping Sammy Davis, Jr. get his start, and it's an established fact that Davis' success broke barriers for a slew of other African-African entertainers. Drinking like fish, gambling, and scandalous affairs and consistent cheating is now part and parcel of an entertainer's lifestyle, but, again, no one did this as brazenly and boldly as those long-gone perennial bad boys who shocked a nation with their wayward ways. Yet they managed to be forgiven quickly by an adoring nation that, no matter what they did, always admired their astonishing talents. Somehow, at the end of the day, they always came across as perfect gentlemen. And speaking of talent, have you met anyone, no matter what their age, who hasn't heard of Sinatra or Dean Martin or Sammy Davis, Jr.? The entertainment industry has failed to offer as alluring and intriguing a group since the Rat Pack; no one has even come close. They were the originators of the "we do as we please" attitude which so many have since attempted to emulate. There is a great scene in the film The Rat Pack in which Dean Martin turns to Joey Bishop after their show at the Sands hotel and says: “The world is drunk, and we're just the cocktail of the moment, pally.  One of these days, everybody's going to wake up with a heck of a hangover, down two aspirin with a glass of tomato juice, and wonder what the hell all the fuss was about." Martin, the perpetual cynic, thought that perhaps the Rat Pack was only a fleeting trend.   He was wrong.  The Rat Pack lives on in their movies, music, and style, and their legacy only continues to grow as new generations of fans become hip to them.  And somewhere up in the big casino in the sky, they’re pouring a drink, lighting up a cigarette, and smiling down.