How Did the Rat Pack Meet?

Gabrielle Moss September 6, 3:30 pm

Jan Murray (L) sits alongside Rat Pack members Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra as the group unwinds backstage at Carnegie Hall after entertaining at a benefit performance in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — Bettmann/Getty

The words “the Rat Pack” instantly summon some vibrant images to mind: tuxedos, cocktails and the streets of swinging 1960s Las Vegas. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. stealing the show during each other’s gigs at the Sands Casino’s Copa Room, while Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford popped up, too. The whole gang in Ocean’s 11, plotting a series of near-impossible casino heists as a frustrated Angie Dickinson stands by. Humphrey Bogart, striking a moody pose with his classic fedora and cigarette.

OK, “The Rat Pack” probably didn’t summon that last image to mind for most of you. But it should. Because while today the name is synonymous with early ’60s cool and classic Vegas casino culture, the original Rat Pack was based in Los Angeles, not Vegas, and involved a larger cross-section of 1950s Hollywood royalty, including David Niven and Judy Garland — and was overseen not by Sinatra, but by Bogart.

How the Rat Pack Came Together

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Frank Sinatra seated together at table during Hollywood event circa 1956.

Screen Archives/Getty Images

Sinatra and Martin first met in the early 1940s, when Martin was beginning to get his singing career off the ground. Sinatra and Davis met in 1941, when a 15-year-old Davis appeared as a dancer in a show that also featured Sinatra, performing as part of Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra. But only Sinatra was a key member in the original Rat Pack, which first came together in Bogart and Lauren Bacall‘s house in Los Angeles’ Holmby Hills neighborhood. The Bogart-Bacalls loved to entertain at home, and often invited over a steady group of friends that included Niven, Garland, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, super-agent Swifty Lazar and Sinatra. Others, including Elizabeth Taylor, Mickey Rooney, Ava Gardner, Tony Curtis, and occasionally Martin and Davis also made appearances. The group got their name from Bacall, who, looking at the group at the end of a long night of carousing, pronounced “You look like a pack of rats.” (In some versions of the tale, the group is told that they look like a “goddamn rat pack” instead.) The group had stationary made, with the inscription “Never rat on a rat” printed across the top.

The Las Vegas Years

Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Danny Thomas, Lucille Ball, Frank Sinatra stand around a cake for the eleventh anniversary of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. On the extreme left is Sands President Jack Entratter (Bettmann/Getty)

Bogart’s 1957 death dissolved the original Rat Pack. But soon after, Sinatra’s brief engagement to Bacall, and Sinatra, Martin, and Shirley MacLaine‘s appearances in the 1958 film Some Came Running, gave birth to a new Rat Pack. This Pack — which was also known as the Summit and the Clan — found its home in Vegas, where Sinatra, Martin and Davis symbolized the town’s transformation from isolated Western resort town to a center of world-class sophistication.

The new Rat Pack was also a public entity. While the original group existed solely to socialize (often within the confines of Bogart and Bacall’s home), the Sinatra Rat Pack was a performing collective as much as it was a social group. Showing up for any Rat Pack member’s show in Vegas meant it was highly likely that other members would show up, pop on stage, and engage in the spirited and charismatic collaboration that turned the group into a household name.

Despite the role the Rat Pack played in his own status as a pop culture legend, Sinatra never loved any of the names used to describe his group of friends. “There is no such thing as a clan or pack,” Sinatra supposedly said. “It’s just a bunch of millionaires with common interests who get together to have a little fun.”