Sands Casino Rat Pack
Meanwhile, Sands casino publicist Al Freeman was looking to take Vegas beyond its status as a cow town with some diversions. Despite the Rat Pack’s brief shelf life, the legend of their ring.
Using the Sands, one of the best known of theclassic properties, home of the Rat Pack (not Frank Sinatra's favorite name -read the book and you will learn why), and a great exemplar of the rise andfall of automobile-oriented casino design, Schwartz provides an accessibleaccount of the growth of classic casinos and their changes, from a. The Copa Room at The Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was home base for the Rat Pack that included: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop (left to right). It was an instant hit, said Lertzman: “The Sands had 2,800 rooms and 35,000 requests for reservations in February.” Picking up on a term coined by Lauren Bacall to describe husband Humphrey Bogart and his Hollywood retinue (including Sinatra), the press called the guys the “Rat Pack.” Sinatra despised the name.
The “Rat Pack” will forever be associated with Las Vegas.
We decided to learn more about this merry band of miscreants, and quickly realized there’s a lot we didn’t know. Some of these Rat Pack facts might surprise you, too.
1. Originally, the Rat Pack was a group of friends centered around the group’s leader, Humphrey Bogart. The original members included Errol Flynn, Nat King Cole, Mickey Rooney, Jerry Lewis and Cesar Romero.
In “Casablanca,” Humphrey Bogart wore platform shoes so he wouldn’t have to look up to Ingrid Bergman.
2. Nobody’s sure where the “Rat Pack” name came from, but most attribute it to Lauren Bacall. Bogart and Bacall lived in a neighborhood called Holmby Hills, so their house and the original group were sometimes called the Holmby Hills Rat Pack.
3. The original rat pack had a coat of arms, a rat gnawing on a human hand. The group’s motto was “Never rat on a rat.”
4. Later, the name was used for a variation of the group with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. The group didn’t call itself the Rat Pack, though. They used “The Summit” or “The Clan.”
Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop are the ones you don’t recognize.
5. The Rat Pack had several “associate” members, called “Rat Pack Mascots,” including Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Shirley MacLaine, Lauren Bacall, Juliet Prowse and Judy Garland.
6. The Copa Room at the Sands was considered the “home” of the Rat Pack. The Sands was opened in 1952 and was imploded in 1996. The Venetian now stands on the former site of the Sands.
7. In Las Vegas, when a member of the Rat Pack would be scheduled for a performance, the rest of the Rat Pack would turn up for an impromptu show. The multi-talented performers sold out almost all of their appearances, and visitors would stream into Las Vegas, often sleeping in their cars if they couldn’t find rooms. Hotel-casino marquees were known to tease the Rat Pack’s appearances. For example, the Sands marquee read: “Dean Martin, Maybe Frank, Maybe Sammy.”
8. Peter Lawford was John F. Kennedy’s brother-in-law. Kennedy would sometimes hang out with the Rat Pack in Vegas, and when they did, they referred to themselves as the “Jack Pack.” A falling out between Sinatra and the Kennedys about Sinatra’s links to the mob got Peter Lawford booted from the group.
9. Frank Sinatra once ordered 300 Bloody Marys from room service for a Rat Pack party.
10. Dean Martin’s son, Dean Paul Martin, died in a plane crash in 1987 on the San Gorgonio Mountain in California. Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, was killed in a plane crash 10 years earlier on the exact same mountain.
Dean Martin’s real name was Dino Paul Crocetti. He changed it to Dino Martini, then to Dean Martin. Martin only read one book in his lifetime, “Black Beauty.”
11. Among the Rat Pack, Sammy Davis Jr.’s nickname was “Smokey.” While not commonly known, he was an accomplished quick-draw artist. When Davis was denied entry into the Copacabana, Sinatra used his clout to ensure he got in the next time. When Davis wasn’t allowed to stay in the Las Vegas hotel where he was performing, Sinatra helped Davis sidestep the racist practices so prevalent in Las Vegas at the time.
12. Rat Pack member Dean Martin would often deal blackjack at Las Vegas casinos.
13. The first movie all five Rat Pack members appeared in together was “Ocean’s Eleven.” It was released in 1960. Frank Sinatra played Danny Ocean.
That’s right, they “blew all the lights in Las Vegas.” We’ll wait.
Sands Casino Rat Package
14. The Rat Pack recorded five live albums together, including “The Rat Pack Live at the Sands” in 1960.
15. The last time Sinatra, Martin and Davis would appear in a movie together was “Cannonball Run II.”
Now you know! Have any fun Rat Pack trivia? We’d love to hear it.
by David G. Schwartz
227 pp., Winchester Books, 2020
$19.95
There are several good authors currently working the casino/gaming genre, but in my view, David Schwartz is at the top of the list. He came to my attention almost 15 years ago upon publication of his Roll the Bones in 2006. It was, and is, a definitive history of gaming, beginning in Pompeii and ending at the opening of Wynn Las Vegas in late 2005. Schwartz is an academic with a Ph.D. in History from UCLA and was serving at the time as the director of the Center for Gaming Studies at UNLV. I have to confess that I initially bought that book to have it sit on my shelf and, ideally, impress my bosses. I hoped they would think that I had read this two-inch thick tome. I was pretty confident that they’d never read it themselves, nor did I have any intention of doing so either, at least not initially. Funny thing was, once I perused the first few pages, I was hooked. That book is probably now required reading in some college courses, since in true textbook fashion, it’s full of seemingly endless notations, along with 19 pages of index. But surprisingly – or maybe not so surprisingly, considering what an engaging writer Dr. Schwartz has proven to be – it’s also a great read. I knocked off all 500 pages in a few days. Ironically, over the years, I’ve used countless factoids gleaned from this book to – you guessed it – impress my bosses. Since that time, I’ve never missed any of Schwartz’s 11 other books, including the updated Casino Edition of Roll The Bones, which was published in 2013 and covers roughly five more years than the original did.
It’s an overworked reviewers’ compliment, but so be it: I honestly couldn’t put down his latest work, At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas. Brought the Rat Pack Together and Went Out with a Bang.
Like his other works, this book is meticulously researched. There are literally 30 pages of notes gleaned from dozens and dozens of sources, the most impressive being the extensive oral histories Schwartz surveyed.
Perhaps that’s why reading the book makes it seem like Schwartz was in the room with a tape recorder when notorious characters like “Doc” Stacher and Meyer Lansky were carving up Las Vegas. Schwartz has a way of crafting single paragraphs that function as mini-treaties on the very culture of gaming operations in the 1950s: “…a hotel guest betting a dollar on roulette or his wife putting a nickel in a slot machine was not, in their minds, a gambler; they were mere tourists, to be tolerated and even humored, but never truly respected.”
And if the names of brilliant early operators at the Sands like Al Freedman, Jack Entratter and Carl Cohen don’t ring a bell with you, how about Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.? They are as tightly linked to the Sands legacy as any of the casino managers, and this book has some insights on them that are fascinating. Schwartz debunks the myths and rumors surrounding what really happened the night that Mr. Sinatra’s front teeth encountered the fist of a Sands manager – and what Frank did or didn’t do about it.
Sands Casino Rat Packages
You might also find it interesting that the Sands casino began as the French-themed LaRue (you could probably win a few bar bets with that bit of trivia, once the bars open again.) The property was also instrumental in helping guide the Las Vegas paths of both Howard Hughes and Kirk Kerkorian. And of course, Sheldon Adelson would eventually join them as one of the richest men in the world, after he blew up the place. Along the way, he built the most impressive convention center in town and completely changed how Las Vegas made its money. The details on that, too, are all in this book.
There are lots of good reasons to read this book, but it’s particularly interesting to consider its subject matter in light of the recent and incredibly timely rumblings on the Strip that Adelson may be putting a For Sale sign on the Sands once again (for non-locals, it’s known as the Venetian, Palazzo and Sands Convention Center these days).
Dr. Schwartz has now been promoted to UNLV’s Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, whatever that may be. But, even without any such lofty title, he’s one of the top gaming historians working today, with a knack for making that history readable, entertaining, and over much too quickly.
At the Sands is timely, relevant to today’s news, a great read, a thorough and thoroughly entertaining slice of Las Vegas history, and with a little luck, the stories you’ll learn will enable you, too, to impress your bosses. Trust me.
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