‘Rat’ Is a Look Back They Could Have Done Without

“It’s the program of the moment,” said the personal assistant of one of the Sinatras, referring to HBO’s “The Rat Pack.” This was not an exclamation of celebration but of media-savvy resignation.

The unauthorized biography has received an avalanche of press from the moment it started production last spring, reaching a crescendo last week as the Saturday premiere approached--for reasons to do with the resurgence of Rat Pack mania and ‘50s cool, the death of Sinatra in May and the iconic-though-wart-laden portrayals of packers Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and leader Frank. (Joey Bishop’s role in the clan--he started first with Sinatra in 1952 and inaugurated the onstage kibitzing--has been minimized.)

That even a comment as tame as that given by an assistant could not be attributed is reflective of the hot potato the show is for all the relatives, friends, managers and agents who were not contacted as the script was crafted--and were gritting their teeth as the show went before the public.

“I don’t want to go to work Monday and have people go, ‘Boy, your father . . . ,” Tracey Davis, daughter of Sammy Davis Jr., said late last week. She stopped in midsentence. “I don’t even know what to say. I’m sitting here with a knot in my stomach. It’s, like, ‘Please don’t turn my father into some kind of joke.’ ”

Davis actually fares better than some of the other legendary entertainers who translated their irreverent camaraderie onstage in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. Sinatra’s crime ties are flying high, and Martin’s reputed callousness is full-on. But the stunner is Lawford, who is reduced to a no-talent hanger-on and gofer between Sinatra and the White House.

“That wasn’t my father onscreen,” says actor-producer Christopher Lawford, who watched the film a few weeks ago with his mother, Patricia Lawford, sister of John F. Kennedy. Their reaction, he told The Times, was less anger than astonishment. “The role that they attributed to him, that wasn’t who he was. That wasn’t his relationship with Kennedy or Sinatra. My mother knows who President Kennedy was, and who my father was, and she couldn’t stop laughing. It was like bad soap opera.”

The pull-no-punches characterizations have challenged the survivors, whose reactions ranged from fury to the attempt to ignore it--like a pesky gnat that will eventually go away on its own--to a knife-in-the-back sense of betrayal that eats away at them.

“Nancy doesn’t want to get into a pissing match,” is how Nancy Sinatra’s spokesman, Bill Moynihan, characterized the singer’s restrained approach during production. Though she had made it known that she was clearly unhappy with how her father had been portrayed in the script, she remained tight-lipped last week.

Moynihan, speaking for Nancy and her sister, Tina, offered a monotone staccato statement: “They have no comment, no opinion, they will not be watching, there is no interest.” (Frank Sinatra Jr. could not be reached for comment.)

“Rat Pack” writer Kario Salem understands that the families feel victimized. “I know it’s an impossible situation for any family, seeing their private realities and flaws made public. It’s a very touchy subject, and I have a lot of understanding for their sensitivities,” he said.

But Salem doesn’t back down from his purposeful approach of doing extensive research but avoiding direct interviews with family and friends.

“If you don’t interpret and don’t take artistic guesses of why things happen, you might as well be making a documentary,” he said. “Frankly, this is where the arrogance of authorship comes in. It’s a brutally honest film, with these men saying things on the screen that we’ve never quite heard them say before, and in some cases startling and disturbing.”

Tina Sinatra, who produced a television miniseries about her father in 1992 and spoke out against “The Rat Pack” early on, couldn’t resist trying to get the last laugh. She sent a copy of Tuesday’s largely negative review from the trade paper Daily Variety to Warner Bros. Chairman Bob Daly (Time Warner owns HBO) with a note: “There is a God!”

A day later, her only comment to The Times was an obviously triumphant reference to the Variety slam: “Dad’s fans should be reading the reviews.”

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There were some positive notices. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film an effusive two thumbs up, calling it “compulsively watchable.” Entertainment Weekly heralded the screenwriting, notably a dream sequence in which Sammy Davis Jr. encounters anti-black prejudice--a technique Salem used previously in a Don King biography for HBO that won a Peabody Award.

But even though Davis fares best of the Rat Packers in the film--reminding audiences of the obstacles he faced as a black performer and the slights he had to endure to rise in the business--the movie also perpetuates his reputation as somewhat Uncle Tom-ish in the presence of Sinatra and gang. And daughter Tracey is infuriated.

“I saw this quote by Don Cheadle [who plays Davis], and he said something like, ‘Sammy was always on, and he’s a caricature,’ and when I saw his clips, that’s exactly what he reduced my dad to. And I’ve got to tell you--I was so angry. Here’s a man who’s playing a legend, and he probably did as much research as could sit on the head of a pin. He didn’t talk to me, he certainly didn’t talk to my dad’s closest friends. He reduced a man who was a legend to a caricature. And it hurts me, because if my dad didn’t do what he did, then Don couldn’t do what he did.”

The younger Davis is also enraged that the relationship between Davis and Sinatra has been trivialized to boss and sycophant. “Everyone kind of thinks that the relationship was really superficial. But Frank Sinatra put his ass on the line for my father. They were best friends their entire lives. When he saw my dad dying and he came out of the house, he was just walking the circular driveway in tears.”

Actress May Britt, who was married to Davis during the period when the film is set--and was also not consulted on the script--agrees with her daughter about the depth of the Davis-Sinatra relationship.

“They were very close friends,” she said. “Both Peter Lawford and Frank Sinatra stood up with us when we got married. That would be a great sign of friendship. I don’t think Frank would have done that if he and Sammy weren’t close. He never did anything phony.”

And of the shadow around Davis’ reputation--that he agreeably took the slurs from fellow Rat Packers--she counters: “I was sitting in the audience, and yes, he did have to swallow stuff. But he took it with a grain of salt.”

Still, Britt, who left show business and turned to painting in recent years--and was preparing to leave for a one-woman show in Sweden--was gleeful at the newfound celebration of the Rat Pack. “I think it’s wonderful that they’re doing something about the guys, and rightly so. They should be part of history,” she said, though she admitted she hadn’t seen a script.

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The portrayal of Martin, like that of Davis, is also a mixed bag. Though he’s shown as having an inner strength and detachment that made him always somewhat independent of Sinatra--and less fawning than the others--Martin is also portrayed as somewhat coarse and callous. His longtime agent, ICM’s Mort Viner, is neither outraged nor thrilled--it’s more like business as usual for the industry veteran, who had read the “Rat Pack” script.

“Everybody talks about what happened, about what went on. I was there. Did it sound like Dean? Sometimes it did, and sometimes it sounded more like a caricature,” he said. “Mostly minor inaccuracies, minor liberties taken with dialogue. But I don’t think there was anything in there that was so far off that it was ludicrous.”

Less sanguine was Martin’s daughter, Dina, who spoke out, along with Tina and Nancy, on a recent “Entertainment Tonight” broadcast. But as the air date of “The Rat Pack” approached, she became increasingly self-conscious about speaking publicly when she had read the script but not seen the final film.

Speaking to The Times by phone on Friday, husband John Griffith spoke on her behalf, while consulting with her in the background. “She wishes in reading the script that they would have gotten the facts correct, or right. There were some lines of dialogue that were inaccurate, when Dean didn’t speak that way,” he said. “There was more love and respect--and a lot of more class--than the way they were portrayed.”

Martin was emphatic in praising Joe Montegna, the actor who portrays her father.

“She wants to make it a point to say that Joe is an excellent actor, and a very good friend, and she knows his heart is in the right place in his part of the movie,” Griffith said. “He called several times when making the movie to speak to her. And he offered to set up a private screening after the movie was complete.”

The younger Martin is more confident that her father will be interpreted accurately in the film biography Martin Scorsese is preparing for Warner Bros., especially since she is consulting with screenwriter Nick Pileggi on the script and will play an active role in the film production. “They are a class act, Nick and Martin,” said Dina, through Griffith, “and she believes it’s going to be a quality, first-class portrayal of her father.”

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Peter Lawford, meanwhile, is decimated in “Rat Pack.” Son Christopher calls it a work of pure fiction. “They got the names right. I’ll put it that way,” he quips. He then adds, seriously: “My father had an incredible relationship with all these people that was completely missed. I know his relationship with my uncle, President Kennedy. There was mutual respect and understanding. The same with Sinatra.

“Frank is the godfather to my sister, and he always spoke fondly of my father. Yes, they had a falling out, but they had a mutual respect.”

Lawford biographer James Spada says that men like Kennedy and Sinatra would have had nothing to do with the actor if he were as vapid as portrayed.

“You can’t be a total cipher and be friends with these people,” an indignant Spada said by phone from Boston, where he lives. “He was one of the most charming men, very intelligent, very witty. He had qualities that these people wanted in their lives.”

Christopher Lawford says he expected more sensitivity from HBO: “Here you have the premiere cable company in our country, and they make a film about a period in our country that is amazingly energetic, creative and inspiring, and choose to focus on an aspect of it that is so minor and so dark and so petty, and quite frankly, so inaccurate. To me, why make that movie?”

Viner, who still works actively to keep alive the flame of his longtime client and friend Dean Martin, put his own spin on HBO’s “Rat Pack”: “I think it’s a terrific trailer for the Warner Bros. movie, ‘Dino.’ ”