Joey Bishop, last of the Rat Pack, dies at 89

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Joey Bishop, the deadpan comedian, TV host and last of the super-hip team of performers known as the Rat Pack, led by Frank Sinatra, has died at age 89, his publicist said on Thursday.

Bishop, born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb on February 3, 1918, in the Bronx, died on Wednesday night at his home in Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles, following an illness of several months, publicist Warren Cowan said.

The self-styled "mouse" of the Rat Pack, Bishop was part of an iconic group of entertainers, including Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford, who came to epitomize the freewheeling cool of the late 1950s and early '60s.

With Sinatra's death in 1998, Bishop was the last surviving member of that group, which performed together as a legendary Las Vegas nightclub act and in such films as "Some Came Running," "Ocean's Eleven" and "Sergeant's 3."

Fellow comic Don Rickles remembered his glum-faced contemporary's distinct "attitude" and said he was "a great innovator when it came to comedy."

Raised in Philadelphia, Bishop started out in vaudeville and performed with a comic trio called the Bishop Brothers, a name he ultimately kept for himself, before serving in the Army during World War II.

His big break came when he met Sinatra in 1952. The two teamed up for a series of gigs at the famed Copacabana nightclub in New York City and remained friends for life.

Referred to by Sinatra as the "Hub of the Big Wheel" and "Speaker of the House" for his role as the Rat Pack's emcee, Bishop was one of the few who could get away with zinging the "Chairman of the Board" in public, even joking about Sinatra's long-rumored ties to organized crime.