Joey Bishop, Final Rat Packer has Passed Away

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.”

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