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List Price: $23.95 | | Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Salesrank: 1100839
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| Our Price: $20.00 |
| Used Price: $2.99 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
The Rat Pack -- Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop -- had talent, money, and power to burn. They also had something else even more important.
They had fun.
Description of The Rat Pack: The Hey-Hey Days of Frank and the Boys:
Quirk and Schoell's rehashing of the biographical details of Frank Sinatra and the rest of his crew is only intermittently able to disguise its contempt for their personal and professional lives. If there's an opportunity for a pot shot, rest assured this book will take it, from the admittedly deserved (Cannonball Run II, anyone?) to the probably uncalled for (a charity performance for a halfway house for ex-convicts is dismissed with snide comments about Sinatra the wannabe gangster). Much of the source material is drawn from Quirk's footwork as an entertainment reporter in the 1960s; interviews that he conducted with Peter Lawford over the years also provide some juicy tales of sex and drugs, as well as the inside scoop on his ouster from "the Clan" after brother-in-law President Kennedy backed out of his planned Palm Springs vacation at Frank Sinatra's home. (The same stories, with much less venom and some more pizazz, can be found in Shawn Levy's Rat Pack Confidential.)
The Rat Pack: The Hey-Hey Days of Frank and the Boys Reviews:
Stay away 
2009-01-13 - I bought this book because the cover talked about about the "fun" the Rat Pack had throughout the roller coaster ride of their careers. There is no fun in this book. Instead it's a step by step walk through of all the movies any of them did. More importantly, if I had not seen all of these movies myself, I might have believed the authors assertions that all these films were absolutely horrible. It's readily apparent that these authors are no fans of the Rat Pack. I can understand being a "serious" author or journalist, and not whitewashing the history, but it's obvious that not only are these authors not fans, they're also not anything near impartial. This book was not fun and I'm sorry for having purchased such an overtly biased and negative book.
Horrible
2008-03-23 - I concur with pretty much all of the opinions here. I don't think it's any secret that the "Rat Pack" were not the most honorable of fellows but I think it is more of an insult that these two hacks thought they had the ability to write any sort of decent bio about them. What is worse, as one reviewer pointed out, was their feeble-minded review of their fimology (like anybody cares what they think?). Horrible book, waste of time.
Out-ratting the Rats
2007-07-15 - The back cover suggests that the main reason for the Rat Pack's appeal was the fun they seemed to be having. The contents, however, seem to be intended to deconstruct this premise. One by one, in numbing detail, the five men (and "mascot" Shirley Maclaine) are subjected to jaundiced, gossipy biographies that portray them as pathetic characters. Very little of the information is original - many of the anecdotes related here are familiar and seem selectively drawn from more in-depth biographies. The tone is consistently vulgar and deprecating. There are also tedious reviews of all the films of every Pack member, including critiques of seemingly every cast member's performance, prolonging an already unpleasant read. It is as if the authors wished to undermine the undeniable talent and charm these performers had, and which remains their legacy. This cheap anthology simply exploits that legacy.
fuhgettaboutit
2006-12-14 - I'm going to throw away my copy, too. Perhaps the most annoying aspect, for a film buff, is how the authors add insult to injury with their "film reviews." It's bad enough that they get facts wrong -- most of the score to ON THE TOWN was NOT written by Leonard Bernstein, for example -- but then these ignoramuses presume to pass negative judgment on classics like ON THE TOWN and FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, a right they clearly haven't earned with their "research."
Save your dough
2004-01-27 - The only reason I give this book one star is because zero stars wasn't an option. It took two guys to write this tripe? One monkey could have done a better job. This book is lazy and poorly written and I am ticked off that I wasted my money on it. The definitive book on the Rat Pack has got to be Shawn Levy's. After reading the first two pages of Levy's book I was hooked. The difference between a real writer and a couple of hacks.
