Joey Bishop

In 1956, Marilyn Monroe converted to Judaism to, quote unquote, get close to her then-husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

A few years later, pro-Israel mobsters Meyer Lansky and Mickey Cohen, who previously funded Zionist militias, used Rat Pack comic Joey Bishop to introduce Monroe to JFK in 1960, setting her up as an alleged honeypot to record blackmail on the president.

Now, during his presidency, JFK tried to pressure Israel on numerous occasions to open its Dimona nuclear facility for inspections, but was rebuked by the Israelis.

Cohen then met with future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, agreeing to use mob blackmail on JFK to protect Israeli interests and force the sale of U.S. arms.

1959 film, Porgy and Bess.

Many of us know Sammy as one of the legendary Rat Pack, alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop.

Although the original Rat Pack dated back to Humphrey Bogart's Hollywood circle in the 50s, the famous Frank Sinatra-led group really came together around 1959 and their 1960 film, Ocean's Eleven, which featured our friend of the podcast, Angie Dickinson, B.T. Tubbs.

cemented their place in entertainment history.

Um, I did a book years ago.

I did a biography of Joey Bishop.

And when I was writing that, I had that feeling like, why am I writing this book? You know, if I, when I started looking back at his career, it was very condensed and I didn't have that feeling with Bob because He was sort of like a hero of mine, and he was such an icon, and there was so much to write about, even though he didn't have a controversial personal life.

Just his working life, there was so much to write about that.

We've got to do that.

So that's when he put together, he called on Lawford, Joey Bishop, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin, and they all appeared together on stage at one time.

That was the Rat Pack.

That was the birth of the Rat Pack.

Yeah, The Fugitive.

I remember David Jansen was on, I think, Johnny Carson or Joey Bishop.

He was on Joey Bishop because it was an ABC show.

And the show hadn't aired yet, so he didn't want to talk about it.

Or they taped at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, so you didn't want to reveal too much about it.

So it was going to die in a vault there, but...

some promo guys went to Joey Bishop and said, we have a couple of new artists.

We'd really like you to have them on.

And he said, well, okay, I'll have one of them on.

if you put that record out, I'll

do it.

And so she forced that by the circumstances, and she went on and did it on the Joey Bishop show.

And as they say, the lights lit up on the phones and so on and so forth.