Deconstructing The Rat Pack: Joey, The Mob, and The Summit

As Brokaw told the author: “It was a time when many comics were making the crossover to films, and we thought the timing was right for Joey. The problem was that filmmaking took extended periods of time, which took the comics out of the clubs where the income was far more lucrative than the pay they received for appearing in Las Vegas and the other venues.”

The first of those films—the one that marked Joey’s cinematic debut—was The Deep Six. Shot in the summer of 1957, its opening was held in January of 1958. Rudolph Maté was the director. The story depicts the conflicts of a naval officer with his shipmates and the values instilled in him by his Quaker upbringing. The impressive cast boasted Alan Ladd, William Bendix, James Whitmore, Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and, as the token Jew, Ski Kronkowski, that up-and-coming comic Joey Bishop.

His next film role was in Onionhead, a military comedy starring Andy Griffith. Joey plays Sidney Gutsell, a fellow Coast Guard cook. Shot in October and November in 1957 on location in Long Beach, California, with interiors at Warner Bros. in Burbank, Joey was allowed to work weekends at the Sands. The film was helmed by veteran director Norman Taurog. This attempt to capitalize on Griffith’s success in No Time for Sergeants was a huge flop and became the main reason Griffith turned to television. The New York Times review, while harsh, had this to say: “Joey Bishop as a dame-chasing gob … adds a few realistic bits to the proceedings.”

Next up was an ambitious attempt to bring one of controversial novelist Norman Mailer’s works to the cinema. The Naked and the Dead, directed by Hollywood veteran Raoul Walsh, is a gripping drama set during World War II at a remote island in the Pacific Rim, where a small platoon of American soldiers is stationed. Most of the plot centers on the infighting and growing tension among the enlisted men and their officers, something that could destroy them. Joey plays Private Roth, the token Jew (what else?) of a platoon led by a psychotic, Jew-baiting sergeant, played by Aldo Ray. Private Roth’s untimely demise comes when he sprains his ankle and is climbing a hill in a hail of gunfire.

The New York Times review noted that, with the exception of Ray’s character, the “other members of the detail are competent, but also appear to have been chosen solely to represent the types that comprised our citizen army. There are, to name a few, Joey Bishop, as the wry, comic Jew …”

It’s not Mailer, but it’s close. Actually, except for that cloyingly “upbeat” ending, where Cliff Robertson gives us a sermon on the nobility of man, it’s pretty faithful to Mailer’s dark, curdled war novel (for my dough, his best book). Raoul Walsh’s direction is properly somber and menacing, as is Bernard Herrmann’s score. And the acting is first rate. With the exception of L.Q. Jones and James Best, who overdo the Southern schtick, all cast members are good. Hell, even Joey Bishop is good! I particularly liked Aldo Ray’s evil, misogynistic, racist sergeant; Raymond Massey’s evil, Fascistic general (as bad as the enemy he’s fighting); and Robert Gist’s atheistic, eternally complaining foot soldier. And many of the scenes, like a soldier surviving battle only to die at the fangs of a little green snake, and the battle within the war between Massey’s power crazed general and Robertson’s humanistic lieutenant, manage to stay with you long after the film is over. Let’s give it a B-plus instead of an A-minus for flubbing that ending. (Hollywood had to wait until after ‘Nam and the advent of “Apocalypse” and “Platoon” to really plumb the depths of anti-war sentiment.)

Joey told a columnist for the New York Post that “once you’ve acted in a picture, people accept you as an actor and you’re that as well as a comic.” But Joey was already burned out by the movies. As he told Earl Wilson, “TV is the only medium. There is nothing else. If you are a hit in a picture, it doesn’t mean anything today. And only a few nightclubs matter. It doesn’t mean anything anymore to be a hit in Pittsburgh or Des Moines. Those people can see you on TV.”

As for Joey, he summed up his big-screen career thusly: “I really did not enjoy spending time on location, doing films. I missed my family and my home. And the money you make for a film is nothing like you make in saloons. You get instant response and you are gratified when you get a great response. In films, by the time you finish, you even forgot you were in it. Or your best scenes can be edited out.”

Nevertheless, Joey continued to say yes when a film role was offered. In early 1966, he took a supporting part in Texas Across the River, starring Dean Martin. The film’s director, Michael Gordon, got a wake-up call when he attempted to do three or four takes of a given scene. As Dean Martin told him, “Joey and I aren’t actors; we are performers.” Still, Joey acquitted himself well as Kronk, a rather low-key Indian. A reviewer on the Classic Film Freak website had this to say about his performance:

Joey Bishop plays the foil to Martin during most of the picture, babbling incoherently in his own mishmash language. Every so often, he will lapse into broken English for a punchline. Though he uses the same gag consistently throughout the film, it strangely never grows tiresome. With lines like, “How come your dad isn’t a Comanche?” how could it fail? The answer, of course, according to Kronk, is, “Mom run too fast.” High art it definitely isn’t.

Along with numerous other celebrities, Joey had a cameo in the “adult” comedy A Guide for the Married Man (1967), directed by Gene Kelly and starring Walter Matthau and Robert Morse. Joey’s two-minute segment, called “Deny, Deny, Deny,” shows him in bed with a young woman. Just then, his wife (played by Ann Morgan Gilbert, who had been Millie on The Dick Van Dyke Show) walks into the bedroom. She is shocked by this display of infidelity. Joey and the girl, however, never even make eye contact with her. The girl, in fact, wordlessly dresses and leaves the premises. Meanwhile, Joey, who is wearing only white boxer shorts, slips on his shirt and zips up his pants. He phlegmatically asks his hysterical wife, “What girl?” while she goes on accusingly. After efficiently making the bed, Joey settles into his living room easy chair, takes out the paper and lights up his pipe. The poor wife, now doubting her senses, begins to think, maybe it never happened. The scene is well paced and is an ideal premise for Joey’s deadpan expression, voice, and overall comic attitude.

Joey also guest starred in various character parts in episodic television. One such role was in Valentine’s Day, a 1964 detective series starring Tony Franciosa. He had a walk-on, as a security guard, on an episode of the Don Adams sitcom Get Smart in 1967 (“Viva Smart”). In the camp classic Valley of the Dolls (1967), based on Jacqueline Susann’s torrid novel, Joey Bishop played … Joey Bishop, emceeing a telethon. One of the film’s leading characters, Neely O’Hara (Patty Duke), is a singer and, at least according to the script, a good one. So good, in fact, that following her performance, Joey says enthusiastically, “Tell Frank, Dean, and Sammy to wait. Neely’s going to sing again!”

Another cameo-laden picture featuring Joey is Who’s Minding the Mint? produced by comic-book artist Norman Maurer, directed by Howard Morris, and starring Jim Hutton, Walter Brennan, Milton Berle, Bob Denver, and Dorothy Provine. Joey plays Ralph Randazzo, a small-time hood. Howard Morris, who had been one of Sid Caesar’s sidekicks on Your Show of Shows and had portrayed the lunatic Ernest T. Bass on The Andy Griffith Show, became a sought-after comedy director. Speaking to the author about Who’s Minding the Mint?, Morris said, “Norm [Maurer] had wonderfully sketched out on storyboards the film, which made the setups easy. The performers were all professionals. We tried to tone done Miltie [Berle] a bit. Joey was wonderfully understated as a hood, and we had Jamie Farr do a bit as his cousin who spoke no English. It was quite funny.”

Following a long dry spell, Joey once again began popping up unexpectedly in theatrical features, TV movies, and the occasional series. In 1976, for instance, producer James Komack invited him to appear as Charlie on Chico and the Man, a popular NBC sitcom starring Jack Albertson and Freddie Prinze. The episode was called, “Too Many Crooks.”

On Trapper John, M.D., a CBS series set in a San Francisco hospital and based, at least nominally, on a major character from the 1970 film MASH, portrayed in this current incarnation by Pernell Roberts. On one episode from 1981 (“The Pagoda Cure”), Joey finally fulfilled his parents’ dream by becoming a doctor.

It would be another four years before he made not one but two appearances on TV series. The first was on the episode “What’s So Funny?” of Brian Keith’s ABC series Hardcastle and McCormick, in 1985. He was also one of the long-unseen guest stars on the senior-friendly CBS series Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury.

The Delta Force, a 1986 action-thriller starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, had Joey as Harry Goldman. This was followed by Glory Years, a 1987 made-for-TV movie set in Las Vegas. In that, he was cast as the equally Jewish-sounding Sidney Rosen.

Joey was next seen in Betsy’s Wedding, a 1990 romantic comedy written by, directed by, and starring Alan Alda. The eponymous Betsy (Molly Ringwald) is engaged to Long Island construction worker Eddie Hopper, Alda’s character. Joey plays his father.

In his son Larry’s picture Mad Dog Time, Joey again played himself—or at least a character with his own real name, Mr. Gottlieb, the owner of Gottlieb’s Mortuary. Joey had but one word of dialogue (“Hello”) in an eerie scene with a faded Richard Pryor as a gravedigger. Even with such noted actors as Ellen Barkin, Gabriel Byrne, Richard Dreyfuss, Jeff Goldblum, and Diane Lane, the film was summarily slammed as an incoherent mess. Chicago critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert both considered Mad Dog Time to be the worst film of 1996. Ebert even wrote of the film: “Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have ever seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time.”