Joey Bishop

Members of the famed 'Rat Pack' in an undated publicity photo. Shown (L-R) are Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop. (HO/File/Reuters)

From the New York Daily News:

Joey Bishop, the Bronx-born talk show host and droll humorist who became the main comic force behind Frank Sinatra's Rat Pack, died Wednesday night in Newport Beach, Calif., after a long illness. He was 89.

Bishop was best known for his association with the loose and often rowdy Rat Pack when it was swaggering its way through Las Vegas nightclubs in the early 1960s.

He had the lowest profile in the quintet, which also included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford. But Sinatra called Bishop "the hub of the wheel," because he wrote most of the group's on-stage jokes and kept the show moving as its "traffic cop."

Amid all those loud and oversized personalities, Bishop also maintained his deadpan, self-deprecating comic style, telling jokes like "Last night the crowd was so quiet we held hands and tried to contact the living," or "I was in 'The Naked and the Dead.' I played both parts."

A self-described "hardhead," he was one of the few Sinatra associates who could get away with joking about the boss. "He spoke to me backstage," Bishop would tell audiences. "He told me, 'Get out of the way.' "

From the Associated Press:

..."People would go see Frank and Dean and Sammy and everybody would think these guys were going to chew him up on stage but that was never the case," fellow comedian Sandy Hackett said Thursday from Las Vegas, where he was to portray Bishop that night in the long-running stage revue "The Rat Pack is Back."

The Rat Packers were a show business sensation by the early 1960s, when they appeared together at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas in shows that combined music and comedy in a seemingly chaotic manner.

"In reality, he wrote almost all the jokes they all did," Hackett said. "He'd come up with something funny and they'd go, `That was great, Joey,' and then the next night one of them would use it and he'd have to come up with another joke."

..."They were the ultimate in cool," said film historian Leonard Maltin. "I think guys admired and envied them, women wanted to be with them, and I think Joey Bishop's deadpan style of comedy suited that group well. He was a combination straight man and comedian."

..."Are we remembered as being drunk and chasing broads?" he asked. "I never saw Frank, Dean, Sammy or Peter drunk during performances. That was only a gag. And do you believe these guys had to chase broads? They had to chase 'em away."