Last Surviving Rat Packer Shares Memories of a Friend

Joey Bishop, the last living Rat Packer, was holding court before reporters Friday at his bay-front home, delivering his trademark one-liners amid touching memories of his old friend Frank.

The aging comic sat in his upstairs trophy room, surrounded by photographs of Dino, Sammy and the rest of the hip clique of the 1950s and ‘60s who have come to represent dry martinis and good times. A TV reporter asked Bishop to sit on his couch, then inquired if he was comfortable.

A shrug. Two beats. “I make a good living,” Bishop cracked. Ba-da-bump.

But there was tenderness, too, as Bishop, 80, remembered the first time he heard Frank Sinatra sing.

“I was working in Pittsburgh and it was, ‘I’ll Never Smile Again.’ Do you know that song? . . . It was beautiful. A big song for him.” It remains his favorite Sinatra tune.

“Am I happy he’s dead? No,” Bishop said. “Am I happy he’s not suffering anymore? Yes. . . . You know the man is ill if he’s not performing anymore.”

Bishop, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Sinatra were a gang of performers who acted in films together and performed in Las Vegas at the Sands Hotel. All five starred in the 1961 film “Ocean’s Eleven,” perhaps the definitive Rat Pack movie.

Anecdotes about those times whirled around the room as Bishop greeted drop-in media who had made the pilgrimage to Newport Beach, where he has lived for a generation with his wife, Sylvia.

He offered some little-known stories he wouldn’t speak of prior to Sinatra’s death, saying that “we were sworn to secrecy” about Sinatra’s good deeds: Frank paid for the funeral of actor Bela Lugosi, bought a starving man dinner after the fellow pawed potatoes off his restaurant plate; covered a $30,000 debt Lee Cobb owed a casino so the actor could return to Las Vegas; talked a suicidal fan off a hotel balcony and gave the girl’s parents tickets to the nightclub show and a signed glossy photograph.

Bishop said he had last seen Sinatra about 18 months ago when they dined together in a restaurant. He talked to him by phone, however, whenever Bishop got news that Sinatra was ill.

“I called him about a year ago when I heard he was sick, and I said, ‘Frank, if you’re just tired, and you’re not really sick, I will never speak to you again.’ I tried to only call him when I had something I thought would cheer him up. . . . The Rat Pack was all about fun, and illness isn’t fun. . . . I think he’s in heaven now and they’re happy he’s singin’ again.”