“The Rat Pack is Back!” in Las Vegas

The smooth voice of “Frank Sinatra” and the strength of my martini carried me back in time.

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It had been an especially fabulous day in Las Vegas, Nevada.  I’d spent much of it getting gussied up at the spa and salon at the Encore.

Then my travel companion and I enjoyed quick drinks before the high point not just of the day but really of our week-long, fun-filled trip to the Neon City:  “The Rat Pack is Back!” tribute show.

History of the Rat Pack

The Rat Pack is likely the best remembered group of entertainers in the history of Las Vegas.  Sinatra was its leader.  Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., were key members.  Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford were also part of the gang.

In early 1960, the group came to Las Vegas to film parts of Ocean’s 11 at the Flamingo, Desert Inn, Riviera, Sands, and Sahara hotels.

Over a three-week period at the same time, they performed in the Copa Room of the Sands.  They called their show the “Summit at the Sands” — an unsubtle allusion to an upcoming meeting in Paris among U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S.S.R. Premier Nikita Khrushchev, U.K. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and French President Charles de Gaulle.  The name was cheeky and cocky, but it was also determinedly optimistic:  America wasn’t going to let the Soviet threat stop us from having fun.

The political summit was intended to ease Cold War tensions.  But it did the reverse.

A couple of weeks before the summit, the Soviet Union shot down an American spy plane over Sverdlovsk (again Yekaterinburg), Russia, and captured its pilot, Gary Powers.  Powers would be interrogated by the KGB, convicted of espionage, and sentenced to three years in prison and seven more at hard labor.  He and an American student would eventually be exchanged for a Soviet spy in a deal approved by Sinatra’s friend and Lawford’s brother-in-law President John F. Kennedy.

But at the summit in Paris, Khrushchev angrily demanded that Eisenhower apologize and end anti-Soviet espionage.  Eisenhower refused.  Khrushchev stormed out of the summit before it began.  A year later, the Soviets built the Berlin Wall.

The Summit at the Sands was more successful than its political namesake.  It became hugely popular, led to more record and movie deals, and went on the road to Miami, Atlantic City, and Palm Springs.  And it marked the (re)birth of the Rat Pack.

The original Rat Pack was a group of Hollywood friends, including Sinatra, who often gathered at the home of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, the group’s original leader.  Not surprisingly, the origins of the name are uncertain.  But legend has Bacall one night telling the drunken Bogart, Sinatra, and others:

“You look like a G-d-d–n rat pack.”

Bogart died in 1957.  In short order, Sinatra proposed to Bacall, ghosted her, and put together a new group of friends.  They became the second Rat Pack, and took off with the Summit at the Sands.

History of the Sands

The iconic Sands had a remarkable history, thanks mainly to the mercurial Sinatra, who hosted Jack Kennedy there several times, insisted that Nat King Cole be allowed to dine in the still-segregated restaurant, but could be appallingly rude to the staff.

Howard Hughes bought the property in the mid-1960s and began an effort to drive out Sinatra, whom he resented because he’d been in love with the star’s second wife Ava Gardner.

Hughes won out after after Sinatra sparked a weekend-long incident, investigated by the FBI, which began when his third wife Mia Farrow lost $20,000 in the Casino and ended with the singer reportedly driving a golf cart through the window of a coffee shop and screaming obscenities at the Casino manager who was seated there.

After that, Sinatra began performing at Caesars Palace.

Caesars remains the quintessential Vegas resort.  But over the years, the Sands lost its allure; it was demolished in 1996.

The Venetian now stands in its place.  It opened in 1999 with a Sands Showroom at the site of the original Copa Room.  The resort has since changed the venue’s name to the Summit Showroom.

“The Rat Pack is Back!”

Like the Sands, the Rat Pack are all gone now.  The last to pass away was Joey Bishop in 2007.

But Sinatra, Martin, and Davis impersonators channel the cool charisma of the originals at the Copa Room in the Tuscany Suites and Casino, an off-Strip property with large guest rooms, two pools, and four restaurants, popular with locals.

 

And they sound just like their legendary counterparts as they croon classic tunes like “Luck Be a Lady”, “That’s Amore”, and “What Kind of Fool Am I?”  The music is wonderful.  The comedy is 1960s racy, neither witty nor hilarious, but just edgy enough to heighten the mood of the show.  And the chemistry among the elegant players and even their back-and-forth with the audience is warmly jovial.  Together these elements bring not just the Rat Pack back to life, but with them the deliberately hopeful fun in the time of the Cold War and the gritty glamour of old Vegas itself.

Sitting in the old-school Vegas showroom, I felt carried back to a time before I was born.