Sands Casino Rat Pack
Using the Sands, one of the best known of the classic 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 and fall of automobile-oriented casino design, Schwartz provides an accessible account of the growth of classic casinos and their changes, from a.
- Discover releases, reviews, track listings, recommendations, and more about Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin & Sammy Davis Jr. The Rat Pack Live At The Sands at Discogs. Complete your Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin & Sammy Davis Jr.
- Frank Floor Talk: Book Review: At The SANDS: The Casino that Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Bang. Buddy Frank, CDC Gaming Reports November 20, 2020 at 12:45 pm.
- The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands, a CD released in 2001, features Martin, Sinatra and Davis in a live performance at the hotel recorded in September 1963. Live at the Sands is an album featuring Mary Wilson, formerly of The Supremes.
- The Rat Pack was an informal group of entertainers, the second iteration of which ultimately made movies and appeared together in Las Vegas casino venues. They originated as a group of A-list show business friends who met casually at the Los Angeles home of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
David G. Schwartz. At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Bang. Las Vegas: Winchester Books, 2020.
The lights are coming down. Frank, Dean, and Sammy are about to take the stage. This is the moment we remember, when Las Vegas became classic. And it was at the Sands. Built in 1952 over the ashes of Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson’s last chance in Las Vegas, the Sands was a collective effort. Underworld figures like Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher, and Frank Costello provided the cash. Beloved Texas gambler Jake Freedman was the public face. Manhattan nightclub king Jack Entratter kept the Copa Room filled and made the party happen, every night. Carl Cohen, esteemed as the greatest casino manager in the history of the business, made the team complete.
No matter how well your casino is run, you need a good hook to get the gamblers through the door. Casino owners were learning that entertainment was a pretty fair hook. Entratter, who broke into the entertainment business as a bouncer at the Stork Club, had risen to become manager of the Copacabana, one of Manhattan’s hottest hot spots, before heading to Las Vegas. At the Sands, “Mr. Entertainment” brought many of the brightest stars of the day to the casino’s showroom, named the Copa Room. The Copa was the hottest ticket in America and, for performers, one of the most coveted stages in the nation. Headlining at the Sands–or even opening there–meant that you had made it.
For gamblers, the Sands was paradise. For tourists, it was a chance to see some sophistication—and maybe run into a famous singer or actor. The resort itself became a celebrity. Early on, the Sands hosted numerous radio and television broadcasts, bringing the casino into American households coast to coast when gambling was still not entirely reputable. Las Vegas is a city built on public relations, and the Sands’ Al Freeman was one of its early masters.
The Sands did more than showcase stars: it made them shine brighter. In 1960, while filming Ocean’s 11, the Rat Pack (though they were never called that in those days) came together onstage at the Sands, creating a cultural icon that would define the era. Behind the scenes, Davis and Sinatra resisted the prevailing segregationist mindset of Las Vegas and helped to overturn Jim Crow on the Strip. With Sinatra as its star, the Sands reached its highest point, hosting everyone from John F. Kennedy to Texas oilmen to Miami bookmakers.
Yet the Sands wasn’t all comps and curtain calls. Behind the scenes, the casino’s connection with reputed mobsters made it a target. For years, the FBI tried to penetrate the casino, including a disastrous wiretapping operation that turned into a public embarrassment for the Bureau. And Frank Sinatra–at one point a 10 percent owner of the Sands–would divest his interests after a highly-publicized feud with Nevada gaming regulators over his friendship with alleged Chicago mob kingpin Sam Giancana.
After Howard Hughes bought the Sands in 1967 (with Frank Sinatra explosively departing soon after) the Sands lost some of its allure, but the casino soldiered on under Hughes and other owners before being sold to Sheldon Adelson, who closed the property in 1996 to make way for the Venetian mega-resort, along the way doing for conventions what Jack Entratter had done for entertainment in Las Vegas four decades earlier.
In the end, the Sands went out with a bang–an implosion that brought down its hotel tower. It had a wild 44 year run. Along the way, a host of characters, including the Rat Pack (and their many friends) in all their glory, author Mario Puzo, Apollo astronauts, wealthy arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and President Ronald Reagan passed through the Sands’ doors.
At the Sands tells the story of how one of the most fondly remembered classic Las Vegas casinos beat the odds to become a success, staged some of the Strip’s most memorable spectaculars, and paved the way for the next generation of Las Vegas resorts. The Sands may be gone, but it did not fade away.
By Michael Kaplan
Sands Casino Rat Package
December 13, 2020
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop and JFK (inset).Everett Collection
Sands Casino Rat Packages
In February 1960, crooner Frank Sinatra had an Oscar for “From Here to Eternity” and hit records under his belt. But he feared cultural irrelevancy. Elvis Presley was everywhere. Cool kids danced to “The Twist,” and The Beatles had just formed in Liverpool.
“Frank 100 percent knew that his window was closing. He needed something big,” Richard A. Lertzman, co-author of the new book “Deconstructing the Rat Pack” (Prestige Press), told The Post.
Sinatra’s next move would create the legend of the Rat Pack — and cement the Las Vegas Strip as an international party destination. “Before the Rat Pack’s arrival, Vegas was all Jimmy Durante and Cyd Charisse — old hat,” said Lertzman.
Sinatra was bopping through town in ’59, mulling a big payday while his elite status still held. Meanwhile, Sands casino publicist Al Freeman was looking to take Vegas beyond its status as a cow town with some diversions.
“Al wanted a mega-act to put Vegas on the map,” Lertzman said. “Frank loved the idea and started assembling a group. He had done the movie ‘Some Came Running’ with Dean Martin and thought it would be good to work with him again. Sammy Davis Jr. had just lost an eye in a car accident and Frank wanted to back him. Then he needed a journeyman comic who would not suck air out of the room: In came Joey Bishop. Peter Lawford was married to Patricia Kennedy, and Sinatra was drawn to the Kennedy family’s power.”null
So Lawford — characterized by Lertzman as “a little gossip who told Ava Gardner about [her husband] Frank f–king around” -— was improbably in as well. Lawford also came with a gift: a script for a heist movie called “Ocean’s 11” that had been slipped to him by George Clayton Johnson, a Malibu gas-station attendant and aspiring writer.
Sinatra swung a deal where they would shoot “Ocean’s 11” in the casino by day and do two shows a night for February, an event called “The Summit.” 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.
Brimming with seemingly improvised gags about liquor and womanizing, The Summit was actually tightly scripted by TV writer Don Sherman (whose daughter Amy Sherman-Palladino would go on to create “Gilmore Girls” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”).nullFrank Sinatra (far left) curated the Rat Pack and put Las Vegas on the map. ©Warner Bros
“This was strictly business. Dean [who had a boozy reputation] drank apple juice on stage, and every show was identical. These were middle-aged men, working hard,” said Lertzman. “Frank made $3- to $4-million. The other guys made six figures.”
And it wasn’t even like they were truly pals: “Joey was being used, and Sinatra hated Lawford’s f–king guts.” But he loved proximity to Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy, who showed up — as did Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland — at a few performances.
Sands Casino Rat Pack
Kennedy had recently announced his presidential run, and associating with the Rat Pack made him appear cool. It also helped to fund JFK’s campaign.null
“Joe Kennedy [JFK’s father] promised the mob guys who ran Vegas that John would protect them in exchange for a $1 million contribution,” said Lertzman. “A satchel with $1 million was left in the suite of Carl Cohen [a mobster who was president of the Sands] for John to pick up and hand off to Joe. JFK was the bag man! Lawford brought Sammy to see [the bag]. Sammy started telling everybody.”
Over the next year, the Rat Pack played Miami, supported Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention and were to headline his inauguration party. Bishop hosted and Sinatra sang, but Davis was barred because Joe Kennedy feared racist blowback from Davis’ engagement to Swedish actress May Britt. Martin bailed, which created bad blood between him and Sinatra.Joe KennedyGetty Images
Bishop was frozen out after he was asked to fill in for Sinatra at a gig and tried strong-arming Sinatra for $50,000. Then, Joe Kennedy put the kibosh on his son visiting Sinatra at the singer’s Palm Springs home — where a heliport had been built especially for the president — due to Sinatra’s increasingly public mob associations. Lawford was forced to break the bad news, which pretty much killed off the already hobbled Rat Pack.
“JFK flew, instead, to Bing Crosby’s place in Palm Springs,” said Lertzman. Sinatra was furious. “He grabbed a mallet and started wrecking things in his house. He cut Lawford from [his film] ‘Robin and the Seven Hoods’ and tried to blackball him in Hollywood.”
Despite the Rat Pack’s brief shelf life, the legend of their ring-a-ding Vegas good times persists. Marveled Lertzman: “People just love the world that those guys represented.”
Happy 105th Birthday Frank!
Rick Lertzman poses with his gift from Bulova from the Frank Sinatra Watch Collection
While the book is sold out & back ordered at Amazon now, you can buy the book for Xmas at
https://store.bookbaby.com/book/deconstructing-the-rat-pack
The kindle & nook is at Amazon & B&N