The Rat Pack Truth According to Joey Bishop |
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Joey Bishop is not at all sentimental about the Rat Pack's renewed cultural currency. Nor is he pleased. The problem, as he sees it, is that the Rat Pack's story has been corrupted by "so many lies" and a fetishistic — his own word - tendency to make too big a deal out of trivia such as Rat Pack slang and haberdashery. "I don't understand this
searching for things that weren't there," he says. "It's like a hunger." "Everything you're hearing now is hearsay," he starts out. "Let me give you an example. We remembered as being drunks and chasing broads. I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag! And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away!" Joey says the real stories are better than the made up ones. One time when they were at the Fountainbleu Hotel a young lady was standing on my balcony. These are her exact words: 'I paid the bellhop to let me in. If I don't meet Frank Sinatra tonight, I'm going to jump.' Joey said, 'Honey, just give me a chance.' He ran over to his suite. Joe DiMaggio was playing cards in the same hotel. At the time, Frank was going with Juliet Prowse, and they were already in bed so Joey said to DiMaggio, 'I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but there's a broad who's going to jump off my balcony if she doesn't meet Sinatra.' They didn't want to wake him up, but Frank had overheard Joey. Sinatra got out of bed, went over to Bishop's suite with an autographed picture and some flowers, and invited the girl and her parents to be his guests at the next night's show. "Now who's going to believe that?" Bishop says. "But I give you some bulls*** story about a fight, and you'll believe that in a minute." |