From left to right: Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin.

The Rat Pack is the nickname given to a group of popular entertainers most active between the
mid-1950s and mid-1960s. Its most famous line-up featured Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,
Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop, who appeared together in films and on stage in
the early-1960s. Despite its reputation as a masculine group, the Rat Pack did have female
participants, including movie icons Shirley MacLaine, Lauren Bacall, and Judy Garland.

Sinatra and friends had no idea this band of five would make entertainment history. The group
was remarkable for its upbeat entertainment style and smooth musical and comedy routines, many
of which were ad-libbed. Davis said when Sinatra called the initial gathering of the Rat Pack,
U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, French President Charles de Gaulle, and Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev were planning a Paris Summit Conference. Not to be outdone, Sinatra observed,
"We'll have our own little Summit meeting." The Vegas Summit did not draw diplomats, but it did
draw high rollers, VIPs, celebrities, and entertainment buffs, who responded by the thousands.

Often, when one of the members was scheduled to give a performance, the rest of the Pack would
show up for an impromptu show, causing much excitement amongst audiences resulting in return
visits. They sold out almost all of their appearances, and people would come pouring into Las
Vegas, sometimes sleeping in cars and hotel lobbies when they could not find rooms, just to be
part of the Rat Pack's entertainment experience. The marquees of the hotels at which they were
performing as individuals might read "DEAN MARTIN - MAYBE FRANK - MAYBE SAMMY."

Although the Rat Pack members remained close (with the exception of Peter Lawford), the Rat Pack
began to fade in popularity with the rise of the 1960s counterculture, which sent their form of
sophisticated "Establishment" entertainment into decline. While its individual members remained
hugely popular with the public, the Rat Pack, as such, had ceased to exist by the end of the
1960s.

Martin and Davis appeared together in the movie Cannonball Run, and later were joined by Sinatra
in the movie Cannonball Run II. This would be the last time that the three would appear in a
movie together.

Peter Lawford died on December 24, 1984 of cardiac arrest complicated by kidney and liver
failure, at the age of 61. Sammy Davis, Jr. died at the age of 64 on May 16, 1990, of
complications from throat cancer. Dean Martin died at home on Christmas morning 1995, aged 78.
Frank Sinatra died on on May 14, 1998, at the age of 82. Joey Bishop, the last surviving and
longest-lived (89) Rat Pack member, died on October 17, 2007.