More often than not, The Rat Pack connotes the celebrity group headed by Frank Sinatra that included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They made movies together, performed onstage in Las Vegas together, partied together, and even campaigned for a president together.
With few exceptions, Sinatra's Rat Pack was an old-boys club, portrayed as hedonistic boozers and womanizers. However, Sinatra and his Vegas-loving cronies were preceded by a group of Hollywood pals that centered around one of filmdom's most celebrated couples—movie star Humphrey Bogart ("Bogie") and his wife, Lauren Bacall. Bogie and Bacall and their close-knit group of friends served as a model for Sinatra (who was a member of Bogie's earlier circle), and Bacall connected the two groups through her relationships with Bogart and Sinatra.
Bacall was born Betty Perske and was raised in New York City by her mother and grandmother. She was discovered by director Howard Hawks' wife, Slim, after she did some modeling in Harper's Bazaar. Soon after, she moved to California and became Hawks' protégé. After months of screen tests and training, Hawks gave Bacall her first on-screen role in To Have and Have Not (1944).
Directed by Hawks, with a screenplay by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman from the story by Ernest Hemingway, and starring Humphrey Bogart, nineteen-year-old Bacall stood to be an instant success, and she was. In addition to her sultry, low voice (a product of Hawks' tutoring) and cool demeanor, audiences responded to the undeniable chemistry between Bogie and Bacall.
Indeed, the couple fell in love while shooting the film, which is now treasured as a visual record of their romance—one can literally watch the two fall in love. After Bogart's divorce from Mayo Methot, the two were married in 1945 and led a near fairy-tale life together until Bogie's death in 1957.
Bogie and Bacall often eschewed Hollywood parties for weekends on his boat, quiet evenings at home, or small gatherings with close friends such as Judy Garland and her husband Sid Luft, literary agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar, Mike and Gloria Romanoff (owner's of Romanoff's restaurant), songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen, humorist Nathaniel Benchley, Frank Sinatra, and Spencer Tracy ("only an honorary rat, because he lived a secluded li[f]e, but his heart was in the right place").1
Though Bogart loved acting, he was skeptical of Hollywood types and emphasized honesty and good character—qualities that he felt many of them lacked. He was outspoken with his opinions, and did not care if they made him unpopular. This philosophy was at the center of Bogart's Rat Pack, and carried over into Sinatra's group several years later.
Bogie and Bacall's home became the Rat Pack's clubhouse. The couple often entertained at their home, and Sinatra was one of their most frequent visitors. Bacall notes that the summer of 1953 was the beginning of "our close friendship with Sinatra", who began to visit almost nightly.2
The Bogarts had a code for would-be guests: "If the light over the front door was on, we were home and awake a chosen very few could ring the bell; if not, we were not receiving."3 Other Rat Pack excursions might be a night out at Romanoff's or a trip to Las Vegas to see a show, but—especially when Bogie became ill with lung cancer—evenings centered around their home in Holmby Hills.
Accounts of the "Holmby Hills Rat Pack" emphasize the members' individuality and their desire to thumb their noses at Hollywood. Rat Pack biographer Richard Gehman characterizes the group as a response to Hollywood "social stratification," noting the existence of "A," "B," and "C" social groups based on money and prestige.
"With the coming of the Rat Pack, Bogart's group became a kind of separate ‘A' group . . ."4 In an interview with Hollywood columnist Joe Hyams, Bogart noted that the group's purpose was "‘the relief of boredom and the perpetuation of independence. We admire ourselves and don't care for anyone else.'"5 In her autobiography, Bacall recalls the Rat Pack membership requirements:
"One had to be addicted to nonconformity, staying up late, drinking, laughing, and not caring what anyone thought or said about us. . . . We held a dinner in a private room at Romanoff's to elect officials and draw up rules . . . I was voted Den Mother, Bogie was in charge of public relations. No one could join without unanimous approval of the charter members. . . . What fun we had with it all!"6
Newspaper articles about the group started appearing in early 1956. Elyria, Ohio's Chronicle-Telegram picked up a short piece from the United Press entitled "'Rat Pack' Is Newest Group In Hollywood" and noted that the "celebrated group [was] devoted to poking a little fun into this sometimes lifeless community" and went on to quote Bacall that the whole thing was "'sort of a gag.'"7
Later in the year, Zanesville, Ohio's Sunday Times Signal ran an article that called the Rat Pack "the one social group that stresses a capacity for sour mash bourbon over social background."8 Unlike "serious" social clubs, bloodlines or breeding were not criteria for membership, but rather a certain irreverence for such criteria, and an affinity for late-night drinking. (Though alcohol was a major presence in Bogart's Rat Pack, Bacall rarely drank to excess herself, perhaps to ensure that she could stay on her feet when Bogie had one too many.)
While Bogie and Bacall's "Rat Pack" was certainly not a serious club or organization, it was a regular gathering of friends who saw themselves as "outsiders" of Hollywood for one reason or another, and who "usually just sat around and talked."9 Their embrace of "nonconformity" and "outsider" status would be carried over into Sinatra's Rat Pack, and was certainly one of the traits that Sinatra admired in Bogart.
Biographers view the progression from Bogart's to Sinatra's Rat Pack as a natural one. Gehman claims that "Bogart seemed to have designated [Sinatra] Heir Apparent from the first day he set foot in the house."10 Bogart died in 1957 and, as Lawrence Quirk and William Schoell dramatically put it, "It was the end of an era, and the beginning of a new one for Frank Sinatra."11
There is a sense of prophecy in these accounts, of Sinatra stepping in to fill Bogart's shoes in a Hollywood inheritance. One of the reasons for such proclamations was the ill-fated romance that occurred between Bacall and Sinatra after Bogart passed away. At that time, she recalls, "Frank was the only unattached man I knew, and I was glad that he was around. I suppose that, without realizing it, I was starting to depend on his phone calls."12
The two began spending more time together, but as Bacall remembers, Sinatra was inconsistent in his attention to her, "adoring one day, remote the next." During one of his good moods, he proposed and she accepted. Not long after the proposal, Bacall and Swifty Lazar ran into gossip columnist Louella Parsons, to whom Lazar spilled the beans.
The next day, it was in the papers, and Sinatra "dropped the curtain" (Bacall coined perhaps the best phrase to describe how Sinatra simply cut people out of his life) on her, exiling her to the ranks of those who no longer existed in his world.13 Soon, Sinatra would be in Las Vegas filming Ocean's 11 (1960) and performing "The Summit" with his new Rat Pack buddies.
The two Rat Packs, bridged by "Den Mother" Lauren Bacall, ultimately had quite different natures. While there were small pieces about Bogart and Bacall's Rat Pack in newspapers and magazines from time to time, it was primarily a private social group. Sinatra's Rat Pack went public, becoming more a performance group than a simple coterie of friends; as much about the narcissistic spectacle of themselves as about true camaraderie.
1. Lauren Bacall, By Myself, (New York: Knopf, 1978), 244-245. Bacall recently released an updated version of her autobiography, entitled By Myself and Then Some and published by HarperEntertainment.
2. Lauren Bacall, By Myself, (New York: Knopf, 1978), 241.
3. Bacall, By Myself, 241.
4. Richard Gehman, Sinatra and his Rat Pack, (New York: Belmont Books, 1961), 50.
5. qtd. in Shawn Levy, Rat Pack Confidential, (New York: Anchor Books, 1998),30.
6. Bacall, By Myself, 244-245.
7. Aline Mosby, “‘Rat Pack Is Newest Group In Hollywood,” Chronicle-Telegram, 11 January 1956, 30.
8. “Rat Pack Exclusive Social Club,” Sunday Times Signal, 23 October 1956, 1:9
9. Gehman, Sinatra and his Rat Pack, 50.
10. Gehman, Sinatra and his Rat Pack, 54.
11. Quirk and Schoell, The Rat Pack, 70.
12. Bacall, By Myself, 303.
13. Bacall, By Myself, 312.
| Check out the other articles in the Portrait of a Rat Packer series... |
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Shirley MacLaine—Women were scarce in the Rat Pack. Renowned as a "boys' club", the Rat Pack had a specific role for womensexual companion. One woman, however, broke through to be regarded as an equal. Joey Bishop—The comedic force behind the Rat Pack stage shows of the early 1960s, the only member who is still alive, Joey Bishopis the least remembered and celebrated of the five original members. Lauren Bacall—Sinatra and his Vegas-loving cronies were preceded by a group of Hollywood pals that centered around one of filmdom's most celebrated couples, movie star Humphrey Bogart and his wife, Lauren Bacall. |
