Peter Lawford.
If you’ve seen the outtakes from Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe is falling apart in some scenes, fluffing her lines and drying up, and Dean is *so *sweet and brotherly and supportive, it’s adorable. And when Fox fired her, Dean said “No Marilyn, no me.”
Great Joey Bishop story: he was performing at one of the big Vegas clubs and in the middle of his set, in walks Marilyn, in evening gown and furs, dripping diamonds. Without a pause, Joey said, “Marilyn, I told you to wait in the truck.”
Got to be Dino. Talented as Sinatra is, he just didn’t have the who-gives-a-flying-fig attitude that Dino had. Dino sings as if he doesn’t care if anyone ever hears it; he’s just having a ball.
In the very entertaining book “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams” by Nick Tosches, their association with the mob is well documented. The author makes the point that Frank was a major mobster wannabe. The gangsters? They all wanted to be Dean. Dino for me.
Abso-fucking-lutly! Bar none.
Roland
True, I worked for him late in his career, and he was very cool.
Frank was the Chairman of the Board and was the man in the pack.
Norman Fell is second.
He had the best homophobic leer in the biz.
I’d probably have voted for Dean except he makes me think of Jerry Lewis and I hate Jerry Lewis with a passion. Speaking of: I’ve heard two versions of the post Lewis:Martin Reunion- that they didn’t speak again until shortly before Dean’s death and (Lewis’s version) that they became dear buds again. From all I’ve read by non Team Jerry accounts, Dean never saw Jerry as a friend or a brother or whatever- just as a business partner.
I gotta go with Frank. Let’s be honest, the rest were entourage and side kicks. There wouldn’t have been a Rat Pack without Frank.
Actually if there were a gun to your head you’d vote for the guy most likely to be holding it - Sinatra.
Wow, I’m so jealous.
I’ve never been a girl who likes bad boys. Not even a little. Never got the appeal at all. But when I hear Dean Martin sing “The Sneaky Little Side of Me”, I want him to be singing it to me. I think that’d be the most amazing thing in the world. I turn all 13 and squirmy inside.
By the way, does anyone know who dubbed them The Rat Pack in the first place?
It was
Lauren Bacall
It was just a security gig, I worked my way thru college as a security guard. I only met Dino a couple of times. But he was cool, and very nice to us.
Put me down for Dean too. It’s impossible to dislike him.
Darn, I was gonna scoop everyone with a Norman Fell reference, but it’s already been done.
As I’ve related ad nauseum, I worked for Dean’s daughter Claudia when she and her BF ran a print shop in Reno. They hired me because Claudia was simply too nice to fire the scatterbrained young woman who’d been hired previously. So I minded the walk-ins, BF managed the major accounts, Claudia kept the books, and “Chatty Kathy,” as Claudia called her, ran her mouth all day.
I don’t think CK knew about Claudia’s dad. I did through the grapevine, so I thought it best manners to let Claudia bring it up. I didn’t take it further when she mentioned that he and I shared the same birthday, except to add that Prince and Beau Brummell did as well. When Chatty Kathy chose the Manson Family Murders as the topic for the day’s office discussion, I squelched the impulse to ask Claudia her take on the theory that it had been a botched hit on her old boyfriend Terry Melcher.
I won’t claim that it was all due to my observing good manners. Shortly before I’d been hired, Claudia had gotten herself into some money trouble. I later read in a bio how, years earlier when Claudia’s bid to be another Nancy Sinatra had failed, the same family event had occured that later would be repeated at the print shop: a tall, famous, very business/like presence (a vibe that said "shake his hand hello? He’ll,
don’t even look at him if you want to live another day) strode into a back office with Claudia, and after a few minutes departed as he had arrived; after a few minutes more Claudia emerged, as if she’d had the life shaken out of her.
Most of us have had dads who could be pretty tough like that, but now that I’ve been one myself I don’t think it’s always the right way to play it.
Dean’s daughter Deana also had a show biz bid that never panned out. She was a dancer in a couple of The Monkees videos and for some of her dad’s Vegas friends (though I’m guessing more miniskirt than g-string as he seems to have been a strict dad) but dropped out of the game after her early 20s or so.
Something consistent in bios of Dean Martin is that he was one of the most private people on Earth. He drove Jerry Lewis nuts (not that this was a long drive) by basically showing up 30 seconds before a show or filming or whatever they were working on began, leaving 30 seconds after it was over, and on the rare occasions they socialized he treated him pretty much the way he treated guests he’d never met before (i.e. warmly, hospitably, and distantly). He rarely shared his feelings on any topic even with people he’d known for decades or with his wives.
It would be easy to say “He was just really shallow”, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. He was by all accounts a voracious reader (read several newspapers each day and not just the trades or the show-biz sections) but didn’t discuss politics (did support JFK for Frank but not enthusiastically and wouldn’t discuss politics in interviews [an admirable quality for an entertainer imo]). He did feel deeply; he cheated on his first two wives (the ones he had children with) with some frequency but both loved him long after the divorce and he was uncomplainingly very generous/never late in alimony/child support; his second wife took care of him in his final illness long after they were divorced. (The third wife seems to have been basically a short fad.) By all accounts he was absolutely devastated and never-the-same-after his son Dean Paul was killed in a plane crash in the late '80s.
He was also an incredible businessman. After having a bad experience with an embezzling manager while he was with Lewis he took an iron fisted hold on his own business affairs and did a great job. His deal for The Dean Martin Show made him one of the richest men in show business and one of the single largest stock holders in RCA. Unlike Davis he died solvent and flush with a huge fortune.
Sinatra was one of the most generous men in show biz: he paid bills for umpteen old entertainers who were down on their luck over the years (Bela Lugosi, Abbott and Costello, Edie Adams [whose husband Ernie Kovacs left her broke and deeply in debt to the IRS and to bookies], etc.) and usually on the quiet. When high living and bad investments and alcoholism left Ava Gardner in a financial bind he supported her in comfort til the end of her days.
His relationship with Davis was an interesting one as well. He would make jokes on stage that were racist even by 1960s standards, yet was one of the prime movers in getting Vegas to end its segregation and proudly served as Davis’s best man when he married May Britt and was getting death threats, giving out a very “You gotta problem with Sammy and May then fuck yourself, don’t say anything about it to me or to them if you don’t want some serious trouble!” attitude. When Davis died with a famous IRS problem Sinatra paid for the funeral and gave Davis’s widow Altovise a huge stash of cash (reportedly $1 million) to tide her over off-the-grid while the estate’s dust settled. (Contrary to reports Davis didn’t exactly die broke, just cash poor; his estate was huge but much indebted and after a few years of settlements and the like it found its way back into the black and Altovise died a multimillionaire, though she fought with the IRS and California tax authorities til the day she died.)
Unfortunately Sinatra was also one of the thinnest skinned people in show biz who could decide on the flimsiest of excuses he hated you. He famously turned his back on Peter Lawford when Lawford was destitute and wouldn’t even allow him into a casino in which he was working, and he stopped speaking to Davis for years when Davis was doing pot and cocaine. (It wasn’t that coke was causing major problems for Davis- he wasn’t a Jim Morrison/Amy Winehouse but an occasional user- but Frank just hated it and saw it as a different critter than booze and cigarettes.) He stopped speaking to Joey Bishop after Bishop told some jokes about room service at the Cal Neva (a hotel/casino Frank owned an interest in during the JFK era), and had Jackie Mason beaten up for telling jokes about Frank’s marriage to Mia (something like “at night he takes out his teeth and she puts in her retainer”), and stories of him chewing out and even attacking people are numerous and legendary whether it was a waitress who messed up a drink order or one of the richest producers in Hollywood. Just basically a crazy s.o.b., but one with many layers.
Bollywood moves years before hardly anybody in the US had seen an Indian movie? New respect for Fosse!
Went with Dino, though. I mean, he’s Dean-Freakin’-Martin! Never missed his show and have been tempted by the DVDs.