Hey There (You with the Gun in Your Hand)

Las Vegas, Nevada
February 10, 2002

D
EAN STARED OUT
at the crowd from the stage and asked, “How did all these people get in my room?”

Frank said, “Keep smilin’, Sam, so they can see you.”

Joey said to Frank and Dean, “Stop singin’ and tell the people all the good work the Mafia’s doin’.”

They moved around the stage like a well-oiled machine. The lines were old, but the crowd loved each and every one of them.

“Hurry up, Sam,” Frank said, “the watermelon’s gettin’ warm.”

Frank was the Leader, but Joey was the director. Not many people knew at the time that Joey wrote a lot of the jokes the Rat Packers did on stage.

Like Dean and Sammy saying in tandem, “If all the women in Texas were as ugly as yo’ momma, the Lone Ranger gon’ be alone for a loooong time.”

Or Dean picking Sammy up in his arms and saying, “I’d like to thank the NAACP for this award.”

Later I found out that the line was supposed to be, “I’d like to thank the B’nai B’rith …” but Dean couldn’t remember the line, so he kept saying “NAACP” and they finally left it in.

And my favorite was when Sammy put his arm around Dean, and Dino said, “I’ll sing with ya, I’ll dance with ya, I’ll pick cotton with ya, I’ll even go to a Bar Mitzvah with ya, but don’t touch me.”

A modern crowd might have taken offense at this and many of the other lines, but the first time they were performed it wasn’t to a modern crowd. It was 1960.

That was then, and this was now …

Okay, so it wasn’t the real Rat Pack up there on stage. All of them but Joey—about my age now, eighty-three or-four—were gone. Frank was the last one to go in ’98. I had attended all their funerals, because over the years they became my buddies.

This particular tribute show was at the Greek Isles Casino. Buddy Hackett’s son, Sandy—Buddy went in ’03, damn it—was the driving force behind it and also played Joey Bishop. He had been smart enough to get his father to record an opening. Buddy played God and did a small monologue, which was meant to set up the show.

For a while in ’60 and ’61 I kinda thought the guys might’ve just been using me to get themselves out of jams because they knew I had the town wired. But later, when I started getting invitations to shows and events, even Christmas cards, I decided we were friends—especially Dino and Frank.

Peter Lawford and I never got along, but then he fell out with Frank, too.

But Joey and me, we got along from the get-go. I had a lot of respect for Joey because he wrote a lot of the material the Rat Pack did on stage, and he wasn’t bothered by the fact that Frank, Dino and Sammy got most of the accolades. Joey Bishop knew he was brilliant, and didn’t need anybody else’s opinion to prove it. Not for nothing did Frank call him “the Hub of the Big Wheel,” giving him credit for writing most of their shtick.

It took a little longer for me and Sammy to get to know each other. The first two times I had to help the guys—during the filming of
Ocean’s 11
and then at the Vegas premier of the movie six months later—I dealt mostly with Dino and Frank. But the third time, that was all Sammy’s mess….

The show was still a few minutes from starting when Sandy Hackett came over to my front row seat.

“You comfortable, Eddie?” he asked, shaking my hand. “I’m sorry I couldn’t greet you at the door. I just wanted to make sure they got you to your seat.”

“I’m fine, Sandy, just fine,” I said.

“Can you see okay?”

“I’m old, Sandy,” I said, “but I’m not blind … yet.”

Sandy laughed.

“I want you to tell me what you think when it’s over, Eddie,” he said, “and I want you to be honest. It’s important to me what Eddie G thinks. After all, you were buds with them. All of them.”

“You knew them, too, Sandy.”

“I knew ’em through my dad,” he said, “and I didn’t know ’em back then, like you did. I mean, I wasn’t there at the Sands, Eddie. You were.”

“I know I was, Sandy,” I said.

“Well, I gotta get backstage,” he said. “Enjoy the show, Eddie.”

He shook hands with me again.

“I’m sure I will,” I said. “You’re a good kid, Sandy.” I looked down at the program. “Puttin’ your dad in the show was brilliant.”

“Wait ’til you hear him as God, Eddie. It’s only at the beginning of the show, but you’ll bust a gut. God speaking with Buddy Hackett’s accent talking to the guys, who are supposedly up in Heaven with him, telling them about this show that was being done on earth in their honor. It’s great, great.”

“I’m lookin’ forward to it.”

It had been a long time since I’d busted a gut—in a good way. Those times are few and far between, when I’ve got diabetes and high blood pressure. When I either have shooting pains in or can’t feel my feet. When I can’t eat what I want to eat.

No wonder I spend so much time remembering the past.

Las Vegas
March 1961

—Sammy Davis Jr.

B
UDDY HACKETT WAS A RIOT
.

When Joey Bishop asked me if I wanted to go and see Buddy at the Riv I jumped at the chance. Joey—a pretty funny guy himself—told me he thought Buddy Hackett was the funniest man he’d ever seen. I agreed, and since Joey had two tickets I happily went along.

Buddy was hilarious, as usual, and after he was done the three of us went to dinner at the Sahara in their Congo Room. We sat in the “Sinatra Booth,” which Frank occupied whenever he was in town.

Joey was in town taking a break. He chose Vegas because Dean would be appearing at the Sands at the end of the week.

“Frank’s at his house at the Cal Neva in Tahoe,” Joey told me, when I asked about the other guys, “and Sammy’s starting a gig in Tahoe at Harrah’s.”

I knew Frank had been in Washington with the Kennedys for the inaugural balls in January, but he had apparently been staying at home since then.

With Joey and Buddy in the same room I spent most of the night in stitches. They kept swapping stories—good ones, bad ones, but all funny ones. Then they started talking about the future.

“I’m talkin’ to Danny Thomas about guesting on his show in the spring,” Joey said. “Might be a chance for me to do my own show for his production company.”

“Like he did for Andy Griffith?” Buddy said. “Dat’s great, Joey.”

“I liked the old name of his show,” I said,
“Make Room for Daddy
. Before he switched networks and changed it to
The Danny Thomas Show.”

“If I get my own show,” Joe said, “I’m just gonna call it
The Joey Bishop Show.”

“I don’t blame ya,” Buddy said. “I’d do the same but what would I do with a program called
The Joey Bishop Show?”

That cracked us all up, and then Buddy started telling us some new bits he was thinking of putting in his act.

“Tell me what ya think. I walk out on stage naked.” He looked at both of us eagerly.

“Totally naked?” Joey asked.

“Completely butt naked,” Buddy said, “and I just stare at the audience, like this.”

He screwed his face up as only Buddy could and I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing.

“See?” Buddy said. “It’ll work.”

“Better you than me,” Joey said. “I mean, I’ve been on stage and felt naked, but to really be naked?”

“Socks,” I said.

“Huh?” Buddy looked at me.

“Shoes and socks,” I said. “If you came out naked, but wearing … black shoes and socks, I think that’d be funnier.”

Buddy thought it over, looked at Joey, and then the two of them started laughing, Buddy slapping me on the back.

By the time Joey and I left Buddy and headed back to the Sands, my sides were aching.

“How about a nightcap?” Joey asked.

Joey rarely drank, so I agreed and we went into the Silver Queen Lounge. It was late, the last set had been played by the lounge act, and we were able to sit at the bar and talk quietly.