LOS ANGELES TIMES
 A 'TRIBUTE' IN PRAISE OF HIS NAME
By Norine Dworkin
Los Angeles Times
It started with a call from Uncle Joey. Uncle Joey being Joey Bishop, the "Frown Prince of Comedy," former Rat Packer and longtime family friend of the Hacketts as in Buddy Hackett and his son, Sandy, the Las Vegas comedian.
As recalled by the younger Hackett, Bishop phoned one day because he wanted Sandy to portray him in an upcoming HBO movie about the Rat Pack.
"I'd be honored!" Hackett told him. "Who do I call?"
"I don't know," Bishop replied. "Nobody talked to me."
As luck would have it, when Hackett followed up with HBO, he discovered that the 1998 film, "The Rat Pack," had already been cast.
But the idea of playing Bishop in a Rat Pack production stuck. So together with co-producer Dick Feeney and director Billy Karl, Hackett developed his own.
The result is "A Tribute to Frank, Sammy, Joey and Dean," playing nightly (except Fridays) at the Greek Isle Casino, which is catty-corner from the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Now in its second year, 'Tribute" captures the Rat Pack gestalt, rolling back the years to the early '60s when Frank and the boys were filming "Ocean's 11" by day and serenading audiences at the Sands by night. The premise here is that God (channeled via hilarious voice-over by the late, elder Hackett) sends the Pack back to Vegas for one fabulous performance. But the rest is vintage Rat Pack - Sinatra holding court with his pallies with plenty of boozing, silly song parodies, bawdy banter, merciless razzing and a swinging nine-piece band.
Rat Pack shows are as much a Vegas staple as dice and cards, but Hackett, who knew the players through his father, believed he could stage this fabled showbiz moment better - especially since his biggest beef with past revues is that they usually ignored Bishop or treated him like a warm-up act.
"He wasn't filler," Hackett said. "The fact is, Joey wrote a lot of what the Rat Pack did; he wrote a lot of the great lines and then gave them to Dean, Frank and Sammy."
Alas, Bishop handed out so many bon mots to others that posterity has found his own cupboard a bit bare.
"Frank, Dean and Sammy all have music that survives them; Joey doesn't," Hackett said with a sigh. "He doesn't have a 'Who's On First' routine, and when you hear his monologues now, they're dated."
Undaunted, Hackett fleshed out the role by cherry-picking bits from conversations with Bishop and other comedians who knew him. Then he added new Bishop-esque material that he wrote himself, drawing on hours of archival footage from the Sands and "The Joey Bishop Show" for inspiration.
Kicking back in his living room, watching a clip from the Sands on a giant TV, Hackett pointed to a moment when Bishop and Peter Lawford inexplicably strolled across stage - in their boxer shorts. That, he said, became the inspiration for his Jacques Custodian routine, in which Hackett plays a prissy French janitor decked out in boxer shorts, striped knee socks and a bowler hat. He fast-forwarded to another moment where Bishop hopped into the crowd and pretended to be a waiter - a bit that's resurfaced in "Tribute" with Hackett as a waiter heckling Sinatra from the audience.
To cast the rest of the Pack, Hackett and his pals called on some of the city's top impersonators. Henry Prego is a natural as the group's erstwhile ringleader. Once he slicks his hair and slips into his tux, he's a dead ringer for "Ol' Blue Eyes," right down to, well, his blue eyes.
"I don't think I look like him," Prego said. "But I do what I have to to give that impression."
When he launches into "Fly Me to the Moon," some would swear they've stepped into a time machine.
For Sammy Davis Jr., Hackett and company turned to Louis Velez who was so tuned into the "Candyman's" sound that HBO tapped him to sing Davis' songs in the movie.
Pete Willcox plays a charmingly befuddled Martin, tottering onstage with cocktail and cigarette.
To spice things up a bit, Hackett brought in Marilyn Monroe - or rather Stacey Nicole, who morphs into Monroe's doppelganger when she's dolled up in her platinum wig and one of the dresses copied from "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend" and "Gentleman Prefer Blondes."
Each night, Nicole sings a breathy, ditzy "Happy Birthday" to some lucky fellow in the audience. Reminiscent of Monroe's birthday serenade to President John F. Kennedy, the act has become one of the funniest bits of the show as Nicole vamps in her low-cut red sequined gown and Prego and Hackett genially bust on the perplexed gent from the stage.
But what really gives "Tribute" its snap is its wholly unpredictable nature, it's the feeling that, as at the Sands, anything can happen - and usually does. One rainy night, the boys made creative use of a roof leak that sent a steady stream of water onto the stage. Willcox just staggered out and filled up his martini glass.
"It was a riot," Hackett said. "Pete's looking up at it like it's vodka from God."
And what of the music? Ah, there are enough signature pieces here to send audiences skipping down memory lane.
There's Dino's "That's Amore" and "Everybody Loves Somebody," Davis' "What Kind Of Fool Am I?" and Sinatra's "You Make Me Feel So Young" and "One For My Baby." The whole cast joins in on other standards such as "Pennies From Heaven," "Birth Of The Blues" and "The Lady Is A Tramp."
Of course, diehard Sinatra-philes may miss a few favorites.
"People always ask us why we don't do 'My Way' or 'New York, New York,' " Hackett said. "But those weren't the period pieces of the Rat Pack. We're trying to put these four people onstage at a certain time. |
