Joey Bishop, the nightclub comic best known for being the non-singing member of the Rat Pack who wasn’t Peter Lawford and the Jewish member who wasn’t Sammy Davis,is dead at either 88 or 89. He died the same day as Deborah Kerr— coincidence? You be the judge.
I remember Joey Bishop being on the Dean Martin show a lot when I was a kid. I never thought he was funny.
“Death comes for the Joey Bishop.” Snerk.
The main thing I remember about him from when I was a kid was that his voice sounded just like the anteater from the Pink Panter cartoon (what Bobby Hill would call “that so-Arizona accent”). I don’t know if that was intentional.
In the TV obituaries they’re referring to him as “legendary comedian” and “groundbreaking comic genius” and other hyperboles that are, I think it’s fair to say, quite overstating the case. He seems more like a “decent nightclub comic who got a major lucky break or two” (kind of like Jay Leno- more “knows how to play what he has” than super-talented).
“Jackie, did you know that kids are writing fan letters to Joey Bishop?”
“What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and not flip off Ed Sullivan.”
IIRC, Joey Bishop was a fairly regular guest host on The Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was on vacation/marrying and divorcing his wives.
The Rat Pack also included (originally) Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall (she gave them the name), and, at one time, Shirley MacLaine. The female members are still alive and kicking.
As opposed to those members of the Rat Pack whose talents weren’t grossly overrated? 
the original Rat Pack (formed by Bogart and his pals and derisively named by Bacall) had nothing to do with the later Sinatra Rat Pack, which simply appropriated the name. There was no overlap.
MacClaine was regarded as a “sort-of” member, but I notice she’s conspicuously absent from most photos and listings of the bunch. She was a sort of one-woman Woman’s Auxiliary.
Dean Martin was not grossly overrated.
Once, I dreamed that I was Dean Martin, and I was in bed with Marilyn Monroe. That was the best dream ever. Ever since that night, I have been trying to decide which part of the dream was cooler – that I was in bed with Marilyn Monroe or that I was Dean Martin.
I’m familiar with the Bogart genesis and the broads with visitor privileges (including Liza Minnelli who toured with Frank and Sammy in the 1980s when Dean Martin had to drop out [after flicking a lit cigarette into the audience among other things]), but I count the Rat Pack as The Sands Casino/Oceans 11 group (Sinatra, Martin, Davis, Lawford, Bishop).
In a moving tribute to Bishop, the Las Vegas’s city fathers voted unanimously to blow up the Sands Casino within hours of his death. It came as quite a shock to the guests and employees who hadn’t been evacuated, but their deaths mark the end of an era. Also it interrupted another story about Degeneres’s IggyGate thing.
(Alright, the Sands was being demolished anyway, and it wasn’t the same Sands that the Rat Pack played but a huge replacement with the same name/same place, but still ironic it was demolished a day after the death of the final member of its most iconic act.)
The Aardvark’s voice was done by John Beiner (sp.?) a somewhat 2nd tier impressionist. No coincidence, I think, that he voiced the Ant to sound like Dean Martin.
My favorite wildly politically incorrect Dean Martin memory is of his car-martini bar in the Matt Helm movies. (There was some celebrity with hand tremors that he IRL referred to as “Martini Shaker” and would ask to hold his glass for a moment at parties, but I can’t remember which- I can’t imagine it was Hepburn as she would have bruised way more than gin if he’d done that.)
Thanks for not mentioning Sinatra. Here, come share my olive.
Actually, I’d rather be in bed with Dean Martin. I thought he was kinda hot at the time, and Joey Bishop too. At that age, I didn’t give a damn whether they had any talent.
yeah…we slaughtered [del]Joey Bishop[/del] The Special Olympics [/krusty]
Best thread title all year, I’d say. Well done!
So is it true that Joey Bishop was only allowed to move diagonally?