Joey Bishop, the last surviving member of the Rat Pack, died today at age 89:
Joey Bishop, the long-faced comedian and last surviving member of the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra’s celebrated retinue of the 1960s, died Wednesday night at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 89.
There were multiple causes, said his longtime publicist, Warren Cowan.
Mr. Bishop was the least flamboyant of the Rat Pack and no match for the others — Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra himself — in their dedication to hell raising.
But he shared in their phenomenal success in the early 1960s, when they headlined music and comedy shows at the Sands in Las Vegas and made movies like “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Sergeants 3.” When John F. Kennedy, a friend of Sinatra’s and a brother-in-law of Lawford’s, was elected president in 1960, Mr. Bishop was master of ceremonies at the inaugural ball.
Mr. Bishop, a regular guest on television as a stand-up comedian, eventually had his own TV shows: a sitcom in which he played a talk-show host and later his own actual talk show, appearing on ABC in a short-lived challenge to Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” His sidekick was a young Regis Philbin, now a host of his own syndicated morning talk show, “Live With Regis and Kelly.”
In his vigorous years, when he was known as “the Frown Prince” and his income and fame were substantial, Mr. Bishop indulged himself with a Rolls-Royce and a speedboat. But he seemed happiest when he was playing golf with his fellow comedians Buddy Hackett, Phil Foster and Dick Shawn. And unlike the others in the Pack, he remained married to the same woman, the former Sylvia Ruzga, for 58 years, until her death in 1999.
They had a son, Larry, who became a comic actor and is now a director and producer. Mr. Bishop is also survived by two grandchildren and his companion, Nora Garabotti.
Mr. Bishop suggested at times that although he was grateful for all that Sinatra had done for his career, including seeing to it that he got roles in Rat Pack movies, he felt he was more the mascot of the Pack than a full-fledged member. A 2002 biography of him by Michael Seth Starr was titled “Mouse in the Rat Pack.”
“But even the mascot gets to carry the ball, too,” Mr. Bishop said, and many sources credit him with writing bright material for the rest of the Pack.
They aren’t gonna make guys like them anymore, that’s for sure.
