Joey Bishop: The American actor and comedian Joey Bishop, who has died aged 89, was both lucky and unfortunate to know Frank Sinatra.
The so-called "chairman of the board" put him in the Rat Pack and he made a fortune. When Sinatra retired, however, and then died, there was little left for Bishop to do.
Sinatra had created the Rat Pack on the basis of the gang headed by Humphrey Bogart - the requirements, Bogart's widow Lauren Bacall said, were to "stay up late and get drunk and all our members were against the PTA". The main commandment though was to create as much anarchy on stage as they could get away with - while still singing songs, telling jokes and offering the customers a few memorable lines.
The regular members of the set were Sinatra himself, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis jnr, Peter Lawford and Bishop, whose ability to say the funniest lines without cracking a smile became his trademark. He wrote many of the scripts, such as they were, but always allowed himself a few words that had the others in stitches. He seemed to be the only one who could insult Sinatra and get away with it. Admittedly, this was mainly because the insults were the kind that showed Sinatra to be the man as he saw himself. As Bishop once said: "Frank regularly calls Dial-A-Prayer to pick up his messages."
Another time he quipped: "I don't know why Frank doesn't do what everyone expects - and walk on water." Sinatra liked that and made sure that Bishop had an ever increasing role in the Rat Pack shows and his films.
Bishop was born in the Bronx, New York, as Joseph Abraham Gottlieb. Both there and in south Philadelphia, where he spent his youth, he was surrounded by Jewish music and humour. On leaving school, he joined two friends to form a comic singing group, the Bishop Brothers Trio. He debuted in showbusiness as a nightclub entertainer, with modest success. He served in the US army during the second World War and was seen in the early 1950s by Sinatra, who got him work in films: the best of which was The Naked and the Dead(1958).
When Sinatra thought of extending the private activities of the Rat Pack into a stage act, Bishop was one of the first to be invited.
When the public heard the Rat Pack name they thought of Sinatra, Martin and Davis. Bishop picked up on the fact and skilfully built a routine around it. He never referred to Martin or Sinatra - they were "the Italian mafia" or the "Italian bookends". Davis was never left out of the racial jokes, although Bishop steered clear of them himself. Martin would stare at Bishop and ask: "Did you ever see a Jew jujitsu?" "Watch out," Bishop would reply, "I've got my own group, the Matzia" - matzia being Yiddish for bargain.
When Sinatra organised President John Kennedy's inauguration celebrations in 1961, he gave Bishop the job of master of ceremonies. That led to numerous other compering jobs and to his own TV comedy show. Another of Bishop's patrons was Jack Paar, who hosted the Tonightshow; when he gave way to Johnny Carson, Bishop became the guest host for 177 performances.
That led to Bishop's own talk show and to regular appearances on the Dean Martin "roast" shows, the idea of which was to bring on a leading show business personality, then insult him. He was also a regular on the American Liar's Clubshow, a transatlantic version of Call My Bluff. Among his films were Ocean's Eleven(1960), Sergeants Three(1963), Texas Across the River(1966), The Delta Force(1986) and Betsy's Wedding(1990).
He worked for inter-faith co-operation for years. In the 1960s, Pope John XXIII gave him an award for Boys Towns in Italy. He made few public appearances in later years, but when, in 2002, a show based on the Rat Pack began a British tour, he came along to wish them well. He was predeceased by his wife, Sylvia, whom he married in 1941; they had one son, actor Larry Bishop.
Joey Bishop: born February 3rd, 1918; died October 17th, 2007.