The Rat Pack was named after the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, a drinking group that once flocked around Humphrey Bogart, in days of Hollywood yore. "Old blue eyes," Frank Sinatra, was the self-ordained leader of the pack. His followers, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop were all destined for fame, although Lawford and Bishop did not hold the talent or the audiences as did the "Chairman," Martin and Davis and eventually left the pack straying into virtual obscurity.

Francis Albert Sinatra, whose folks dreamed of him becoming a civil engineer, hated mathematics, loved prizefighting and always hated cops. Frank would rather be home reading a best seller than out on the town partying.

He won the part of Maggio in "From Here to Eternity," was paid $8,000 for his role instead of his usual $150,000 and won an academy award for his performance. As a young man, Frank heard Billie Holiday, who did it "her way," at the 52nd Street clubs and followed her lead into a musical career. He credits her with having the single most influence on his lifetime musical journey. Frank Sinatra had a Missouri connection when he married Barbara Marx, former wife of Zeppo Marx. Barbara was from Missouri, moved to Kansas during WWII and at the end of the war, moved on to California, where in 1976 she became Barbara Sinatra.

Frank was the 1930s and 1940s Elvis of his day. Women swooned, screamed and fainted at his concerts. He developed a white-blues style of singing that allowed him complete freedom of expression in song. Frank went on to sell over 100 million records and in doing so, earned ten Grammies.

One thing that was for certain about Frank Sinatra, you either loved him, or you disliked him, there was no middle ground. Politicians dropped him from their social register and women picked him up. Frank Sinatra was a social phenomenon unlike probably anyone before or since. The man who loved to get next to the mob and reputed any authority, claimed the only reason people thought he had ties to the family was that his name ended with a vowel.

Frank Sinatra, much like his co-horts, Martin and Davis, needed an escape valve and it seemed the Rat Pack was it. This was where the boys got together in their clubhouse, hid out, raised hell and entertained for huge sums of money. Frank did it "his way" and the followers came.

Dino Paul Crocetti, spoke only Italian until he was five. Because of the ridicule he endured, with his broken English, he quit school at the age of 16 and started working the steel mills. He also fought in a handful of amateur welterweight bouts as "Kid" Crochet and after that short career, delivered bootleg liquor. In later years, he would say of his boxing career, that he won all but 11 of 12 bouts.

Eventually, after re-naming himself Dean Martini, he set out to become a crooner, modeling himself after Bing Crosby. Eventually he dropped the second "i" from his stage name and became the Dean Martin that we have all known, loved and admired.

Dean used few props in his performances. Notably he would use a cigarette, a piano and a glass of apple juice. He sang a laid-back pop-blues style that never went out of vogue. At the time when the Beatles were hot, in 1964, Dean recorded "Everybody Loves Somebody" and knocked the Liverpool Fab Four out of their number one position on the pop charts. In doing so, he reinvented himself for an even greater career than before.

Dean had a fear of elevators and a love of comic books, which he read throughout his lifetime. Dean Martin conquered stage, movies, television and music, all at the same time. No other performer has ever done that. In spite of his fame, or perhaps because of it, Martin shunned the public spotlight, being elusive, much beyond mere mortal understanding, to the point of exasperation for his fellow Rat Packers.

We will always have a place in our hearts for the smooth, laid-back, suave and debonair but always seemingly inebriated Dean Martin. He was ours. He was our own lovable Italian lush. He taught us to love one another, Italian style.

Dean met Frank in 1943 at the Riobamba Room in New York.

And then there were three, with the addition of Sammy Davis Jr. Sammy, diminutive at only 5'3", described himself as a black, handicapped Jew and felt very small in a world of powerful waspish whites. Sammy tried his entire show business career to prove himself in a white dominated world by striving for acceptance. Sammy found acceptance in applause. He went home seldom, because a day at home was a day without applause. His daughter remembers having breakfast with him only once during his entire lifetime. What a sad commentary it is to say a man needed his audience more than his family.

Sammy was to audiences in the latter part of the 20th century, what Al Jolson was to pre-Davis entertainment. Sammy would make you love him by the sheer force of his performance. Where the normal performer would entertain for 60, 75 or even 90 minutes, Davis would just be hitting his stride at the two-hour mark. He would wear his audiences into submission and finally his long sought after acceptance.

Davis was recognized through the lion's share of his career as being the entertainer's entertainer. He was remarkably versatile and was adept at singing, dancing, acting, and impersonations. To this day he remains an icon, much like James Dean, of cool.

Sammy Davis Jr., in a show business career that spanned nearly 60 years, was not known as a family man, but rather was known as a "Renaissance Man" of show business.

Sammy met Frank, at Detroit's Michigan Theater, in 1941.

Davis, Sinatra and Martin all breathed the same rarified air as they romped, played, sang, boozed and danced their way through cinema and Vegas. The sudden and brutal ending of the age of Camelot, with the assassination of John Kennedy, also signaled the end of the "Rat Pack." The boys could no longer be known as the elite of the cool-bashing, brawling and boozing. The good life without rules or consequences was over. Our nation was sobering up and so too were the boys of summer. The Rat Pack and the top-drawer hipsterdom it represented, dissolved into history and much touted folklore. The aristocrats of the Rat Pack have been heralded as super-star legends and far beyond, to a status, reserved for few, myth.

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., have all passed on to their ultimate reward. I think if you would look at the sky on a clear summer night, you would probably spot three stars that stand out above the rest. They were three men who went beyond the scope of the ordinary to give us great performances that will haunt our collective memories forever. The Rat Pack will always be with us, because we always wanted to be a part of it. It was cool.