The Rat Pack Legend
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The last species of early 20th century American Man, they claimed their territory like gods. They were swingers and renaissance men all at once, living large while giving the audience what they wanted, night in and night out. At the height of their reign in the Sixties, the Pack represented the finest flowering (or the last gasp) of postwar ideas of testosterone, celebrity, and performance, seemingly unfazed by the counterculture simmering under the country's surface. Along with John F. Kennedy, the Rat Pack were the symbols, image and spirit of that care free time, defining the swinging 60s.

Drinking like fish, gambling, scandalous affairs and consistent cheating is now part and parcel of an entertainer's lifestyle, but, again, no one did this as brazenly and boldly as those long-gone perennial bad boys who shocked a nation with their wayward ways and dalliances. Yet they managed to be forgiven quickly by an adoring nation that, no matter what they did, always admired their astonishing talents. Somehow, at the end of the day, they always came across as perfect gentlemen.

They managed to make the world see them as nothing but class with cigarettes in their mouths and obnoxious jokes that would today be stomped on immediately as politically incorrect. Still, the men wanted to be them and the women wanted to be with them.

The Rat Pack era is renowned not only for bolstering Kennedys election but for binding American politics to the entertainment industry, and laying out a mythology about the supposedly sophisticated American male that was about to undergo enormous changes. Even if you believe their shows weren’t much entertainment wise, the act was never the main point. To anyone the real legacy is that they were the guys who gave old time show biz its last defiant hurrah before rock’n’roll and TV took over.

In the Rat Pack movie Dean, when Joey approaches him about the success of that nights show, he is quoted as saying, “The whole world is drunk and we are the cocktail of the moment. One day these people are going to wake up with a hangover, down 2 asprin with a glass of tomato juice and wonder what the hell all the fuss was about.” What was all the fuss about? We should ask ourselves, as we, the public, are the ones that gave these 5 mortal men immorality. Why do they remain such untouchable icons, these mythical super entertainers? In a nut shell, you can’t manufacture that kind of cool. It’s less than a once in a lifetime happening when you get entertainment geniuses together as is what happened with the Rat Pack. Martin, the perpetual cynic, foresaw that his merry gang was perhaps only a fleeting trend, but he was wrong. Dean, Frank, and the rest of our favourite bad boys can rest assured that the Rat Pack may be gone, but not forgotten.