Joey Bishop, last of the Rat Pack, dies

Posted by fanshawe

October 18, 2007

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Joey Bishop, the Bronx-born comedian best known for his performances alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford (the “Rat Pack”) in the 1960s, passed away at the age of 89 in his home in Newport Beach on Wednesday.

Bishop was born as Joseph Abraham Gottlieb in Bronx in 1918. He made his sitcom debut playing a talk show host on NBC’s The Joey Bishop Show in 1960 and, seven years later, he started his own show with Regis Philbin as co-host. His best known big screen roles were alongside Sinatra and the Rat Pack in Ocean’s Eleven (1960) and Sergeants 3 (1962) and he also wrote much of the dialogue for the group’s performances in Las Vegas. His other notable roles were in films Onionhead, The Naked and the Dead (1958), Who’s Minding the Mint, Valley of the Dolls (1967), The Delta Force (1986) and Mad Dog Time (1996), directed by his son Larry Bishop.

The last surviving member of the Rat Pack spent his last years in Newport Bay. In 2004, Comedy Central included him on the list of the 100 greatest standups of all times.