The Pack is back

MOSES LAKE — They were four guys: two Italian, one Jewish, one black. They sang, danced, acted and kept America entertained on stage, screen and the front pages of newspapers. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop and Sammy Davis Jr. called themselves “The Clan” or “The Summit,” but the rest of the world knew them as The Rat Pack. And during the years between Sputnik and Woodstock, they were the yardstick for measuring cool.

The performance Saturday night of Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show brought that cool back in spades. Hackett is the son of late comedian Buddy Hackett, who was a close friend of the Rat Pack performers during their years in Las Vegas. Hackett is married to Linda Dawn Miller, the daughter of songwriter Ron Miller, whose songs were staples on Frank Sinatra’s playlists. Together the pair put together a tribute show that brings all the debonair glitz of 1960s Las Vegas to locations around the country. A crowd of 400 to 500 people turned out to see the show at the Wallenstien Theater at Big Bend Community College.

The Rat Pack Show was brought to Moses Lake by Columbia Basin Allied Arts. Ciara Shuttleworth, CBAA executive director, was enthusiastic about the show. “It’s just an amazing show,” she said. “They replicated the originals beautifully. The rapport is similar to the real Rat Pack, even to incorporating the town into the jokes. It’s as authentic as we’re going to get.”

The show opened with the voice of God (archive recordings of Buddy Hackett, who died in 2003) griping about the quality of entertainment in recent decades and calling the foursome to return to Earth for one last performance, to show the planet’s inhabitants how show business should be done. As the lights went up, the singers launched into “Hello Again,” a reworking of “Hello Detroit,” which Davis performed often, and segued into four-part harmony on “My Kind of Town.” For the remainder of the two-plus-hour show, the four actors alternated solos with duets and group interplay.

Dean Martin, played by Tom Wallek, was the first to be on display. Martin was the perpetual second banana, usually appearing onstage with a drink in his hand and apparently a few more under his belt. (The “drink” was apple juice, according to his longtime partner Jerry Lewis. Martin pretended to be tipsy to mask his stage fright in the early years of his career and found the persona appealed to audiences.) Martin was the only member of the Rat Pack who wasn’t from New York, and Wallek’s recreation of his soft Midwestern drawl contrasted with the other players’ more urban tones. Wallek sang Martin’s standards “Drink to Me Only,” “That’s Amore,” – with help from the audience – and “Volare.”

Wallek was followed by Kenny Jones, playing Sammy Davis Jr. with loads of physical energy. Davis was a dancer as much as a singer, and Jones portrayed that side of his character vigorously. He performed “That Old Black Magic,” What Kind of Fool Am I” and a duet with Wallek called “Sam’s Song,” in which the two dispute whose song they were really singing, before finishing up with “Will I Still Be Me” and a small snippet of “Mr. Bojangles” that showcased his liquid-smooth footwork. The closest he came to his best-known song, “The Candyman,” was his entrance, in which he sang “Who can take a rainbow, cover it with dew/I started out a black man and finished up a Jew...” (Davis famously converted to Judaism in 1954.)

In between the musical acts were stand-up by Joey Bishop, played by Sandy Hackett himself. Hackett had been close to Bishop as a boy, close enough that he called him “Uncle Joey,” and Bishop had reputedly said that he wanted Hackett to portray him in HBO’s 1998 biopic of the Rat Pack. That part went to someone else, but Hackett took his mentor’s words to heart. He also spewed his mentor’s words on stage in a staccato Bronx-flavored rapid fire. Hackett alternated between slightly racy two- and three-liners and berating the audience. As the show went on he incorporated local landmarks into the material as well. He scoffed at the idea that Moses Lake could have an international airport, saying, “That means a plane from Canada landed here once. And not because they wanted to, just that they had engine trouble and had to land somewhere.” He also consistently raked the left side of the auditorium for failing to get his jokes. Nevertheless, the audience laughed loudly from the entire theater.

Of course, in any account of the Rat Pack, Frank Sinatra stands front and center. Called the chairman of the board by his co-performers, Sinatra was the undisputed leader of the Rat Pack. Angelo Babbaro, who played Sinatra, played his character hearty but aloof. Babbaro dominated the second act, with a medley of Sinatra’s standards including “Come Fly with Me,” “That’s All,” “The Best is Yet to Come,” Fly Me to the Moon,” “You Make Me Feel So Young” and “I Got You Under My Skin.” He followed that with “For Once in my Life” and a duet with Linda Miller blending “The Things I Should Have Said” and “Wasn’t I A Good Time,” both songs written by Miller’s father. Before the show ended Babbaro would also sing Sinatra’s signature song, “My Way.”

The show stayed authentic to its 1960s roots for the most part. The jokes were PG-13 by today’s standards, but raunchy for their own time. In contrast, a couple of the comic interludes would have seemed tame to audiences a generation or two ago but would raise eyebrows today, like Wallek dressing up in Native American garb that would fit in a black-and-white Western film and Hackett appearing on stage as a Chinese housemaid with broken sing-song English mixed with a Yiddish accent.

The show was accompanied by a live drummer, bass and piano player; the rest of the instrumentals were pre-recorded.

For audience reactions to “Sandy Hackett’s Rat Pack Show,” check out Basin Banter on page A5.