The title of this chapter is the one used by Bruce Handy in his excellent article in Time magazine, dated June 6, 1998.

Joey Bishop, 80 years old now, is not at all sentimental about the Rat Pack’s renewed cultural currency. Nor is he pleased. On the phone from Newport Beach, Calif., where he lives with his wife of 57 years, Sylvia, he says he doesn’t much like giving interviews (while graciously agreeing to this one). So, I ask, to what does he attribute the ongoing obsession with his early ‘60s apotheosis, the nights in Vegas clowning around on stage and off with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford? “Could it be anything else but money?” he snaps, resenting all.

“I don’t understand this searching for things that aren’t there. It’s like hunger…. Everything you are hearing now is hearsay. Let me give you an example. Are we being remembered as being drunks and chasing broads? I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during those performances. That was only a gag! And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase ’em away…. I have been married for fifty-seven years. I never had a drink of liquor in my life except wine at Passover services, I never saw Frank drunk, I never saw Dean drunk, I never saw Sammy drunk!”

During the author’s visits with Joey at his home, covering a total of twelve years, it became a part of the ritual—Joey’s warning that he didn’t want to talk about anything having to do with the Rat Pack. He was painfully aware that he was the last man standing from the Summit. Still, it was obviously important to him to cement his place in that history.

“All I’m doing is either defending the Rat Pack or puncturing lies,” he told writer Ed Bark. “You know what I mean? It’s terrible! Would you like for me to name you—I won’t, but I could—name you male singers—you hear?— who had more broads than Frank and Dean and Sammy put together! I could throw in Tom Jones there. Nat King Cole. You understand? I don’t hear anything about them! You mean they didn’t drink either? They didn’t have broads? Who were their best friends? Nuns?”

Joey was actually hitting upon some truths that are asserted in this book. The Rat Pack was a myth. The camaraderie and cavorting were part of the PR plan, the imaging. The five entertainers were businessmen with a commodity to sell. They carefully cultivated images that were cemented in the public’s consciousness. And it followed the Liberty Valance dictum “Print the legend.” And the legend is—Frank was the fearless leader. Dean was the happy-go-lucky drunk. Sammy was the carefree underdog. Peter was the suave playboy. And Joey was the Frown Prince.

Meanwhile, real life continued to pound down on Joey.

On July 22, 1998, Corbett Monica passed away at the age of sixty-eight. Monica, who had been a longtime friend and neighbor in Englewood and a co-star on The Joey Bishop Show, had stayed close.

“Corbett was a dear friend,” Joey said softly. “He never forgot that I set him up with Frank as his opening act. He was set for life after that. I never forgot my friends, and they knew it.”

And the bad news kept on coming. Joey was crushed in 1998 when Sylvia was diagnosed with lung cancer. He doted on his wife throughout her sad decline; she passed away on September 20, 1999, at the age of eighty. Per her wishes, Joey and Larry scattered her ashes in the Pacific Ocean. After that, they waited nearly two months before announcing Sylvia’s death.

As the author continued his discussions with Joey after Sylvia’s death, he noticed that the aging comedian seemed even slower in his responses and often repeated stories in the same conversation. Still, he hung on. A newspaper reporter, in an attempt to be nice to the eighty-one-year-old Joey, asked if laughter was the thing that kept him young.

“NO!” Joey, ever the contrarian, said emphatically. “Not laughter—a sense of humor! If laughter kept you young, do you know how old hyenas would be?”