David G. Schwartz. At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Bang. Las Vegas: Winchester Books, 2020.

Turn Music On/Off. The RAT PACK Tribute show information, CLICK HERE. 2 days ago Despite the Rat Pack’s brief shelf life, the legend of their ring-a-ding Vegas good times persists. Marveled Lertzman: “People just love the world that those guys represented.” Posted in Stories From The Life and Times of Hollywood. The Copa Room at The Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas was home base for the Rat Pack that included: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop (left to right). Rat Pack Casino Sometime back in the ’90s or early aughts Las Vegas Review-Journal film and culture writer Carol Cling floated the idea of an old-fashioned Rat Pack casino on the Strip — a time-trip experience that would deliver the ’50s design, atmosphere and attitude of the Sands, which was located at 3355 Las Vegas Blvd (where the. This is the Hollywood “Brat Pack.” It is to the 1980s what the Rat Pack was to the 1960s—a roving band of famous young stars on the prowl for parties, women, and a good time.

The lights are coming down. Frank, Dean, and Sammy are about to take the stage. This is the moment we remember, when Las Vegas became classic. And it was at the Sands. Built in 1952 over the ashes of Hollywood Reporter publisher Billy Wilkerson’s last chance in Las Vegas, the Sands was a collective effort. Underworld figures like Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher, and Frank Costello provided the cash. Beloved Texas gambler Jake Freedman was the public face. Manhattan nightclub king Jack Entratter kept the Copa Room filled and made the party happen, every night. Carl Cohen, esteemed as the greatest casino manager in the history of the business, made the team complete.

No matter how well your casino is run, you need a good hook to get the gamblers through the door. Casino owners were learning that entertainment was a pretty fair hook. Entratter, who broke into the entertainment business as a bouncer at the Stork Club, had risen to become manager of the Copacabana, one of Manhattan’s hottest hot spots, before heading to Las Vegas. At the Sands, “Mr. Entertainment” brought many of the brightest stars of the day to the casino’s showroom, named the Copa Room. The Copa was the hottest ticket in America and, for performers, one of the most coveted stages in the nation. Headlining at the Sands–or even opening there–meant that you had made it.

For gamblers, the Sands was paradise. For tourists, it was a chance to see some sophistication—and maybe run into a famous singer or actor. The resort itself became a celebrity. Early on, the Sands hosted numerous radio and television broadcasts, bringing the casino into American households coast to coast when gambling was still not entirely reputable. Las Vegas is a city built on public relations, and the Sands’ Al Freeman was one of its early masters.

The Sands did more than showcase stars: it made them shine brighter. In 1960, while filming Ocean’s 11, the Rat Pack (though they were never called that in those days) came together onstage at the Sands, creating a cultural icon that would define the era. Behind the scenes, Davis and Sinatra resisted the prevailing segregationist mindset of Las Vegas and helped to overturn Jim Crow on the Strip. With Sinatra as its star, the Sands reached its highest point, hosting everyone from John F. Kennedy to Texas oilmen to Miami bookmakers.

Yet the Sands wasn’t all comps and curtain calls. Behind the scenes, the casino’s connection with reputed mobsters made it a target. For years, the FBI tried to penetrate the casino, including a disastrous wiretapping operation that turned into a public embarrassment for the Bureau. And Frank Sinatra–at one point a 10 percent owner of the Sands–would divest his interests after a highly-publicized feud with Nevada gaming regulators over his friendship with alleged Chicago mob kingpin Sam Giancana.

After Howard Hughes bought the Sands in 1967 (with Frank Sinatra explosively departing soon after) the Sands lost some of its allure, but the casino soldiered on under Hughes and other owners before being sold to Sheldon Adelson, who closed the property in 1996 to make way for the Venetian mega-resort, along the way doing for conventions what Jack Entratter had done for entertainment in Las Vegas four decades earlier.

In the end, the Sands went out with a bang–an implosion that brought down its hotel tower. It had a wild 44 year run. Along the way, a host of characters, including the Rat Pack (and their many friends) in all their glory, author Mario Puzo, Apollo astronauts, wealthy arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, and President Ronald Reagan passed through the Sands’ doors.

At the Sands tells the story of how one of the most fondly remembered classic Las Vegas casinos beat the odds to become a success, staged some of the Strip’s most memorable spectaculars, and paved the way for the next generation of Las Vegas resorts. The Sands may be gone, but it did not fade away.

The Rat Pack

The connection between Frank Sinatra and the mob can hardly be classified as late-breaking news. But he was not the only celebrity in the mob's barn. As the acknowledged leader of the Rat Pack, Sinatra was one among other members, including such Hollywood stars and showbiz people as Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Shirley MacLaine, Jimmy Van Heusen and others.
Rat Pack members performed regularly in Las Vegas, and their circle attracted many admirers and hangers-on, including mobsters like Johnny Roselli, the Hollywood–Las Vegas honcho for Chicago's Sam Giancana. Much has been made of Sinatra's closeness to mob figures and his alleged desire to 'run' with gangsters, but the idea that he sometimes cooperated out of fear—as did many of the Rat Packers— should not be dismissed.
It was said that Sinatra talked to Giancana about the value of the Chicago Outfit aiding the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. Giancana, as his biographer, William Brashler, has stated, 'made no commitment without expecting something in exchange.'

Hollywood Casino Rat Packages

Hollywood Casino Rat Pack Rat

Clearly, what Giancana expected—and informed his mob associates he expected—were connections in the White House through Sinatra to get the federal government off his back. (Giancana had also tried to achieve that goal by cooperating with the CIA in the ill-fated plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.)
It turned out Giancana expected too much from Sinatra, whose influence on John Kennedy was less than generally believed and virtually nil with Bobby Kennedy, attorney general. (Bobby Kennedy forced J. Edgar Hoover, that less-than-zealous Mafia fighter, to have the FBI get tougher with the mob.) Giancana was furious—with Bobby Kennedy, Sinatra and the whole Rat Pack. It turned out the only Kennedy whom Sinatra had any 'in' with was old Joseph, and by that time the elder Kennedy's influence on his sons was itself rather limited.
The boys from Chicago grew more angry as under the Kennedys the heat intensified, as we can hear in a famed conversation between Giancana and a tough outfit hoodlum named Johnny Formosa, recorded for posterity. Formosa told his boss: 'Let's show 'em. Let's show those fuckin' Hollywood fruitcakes that they can't get away with it as if nothing's happened.' Formosa's solution on Sinatra: 'Let's hit him.' And of the Rat Packers: 'I could whack out a couple of those guys. Lawford, that Martin prick, and I could take the nigger and put his other eye out.'
The offer was undoubtedly attractive to Giancana's psychopathic heart-of-hearts, but even Giancana could temper his natural inclinations when money was concerned. 'No,' he said. 'I've got other plans for them.'

Brat Pack

Thus it was that a short time later Sinatra and a number of the Rat Packers were appearing at the Villa Venice, a former sleazy clip joint turned plush nightclub outside Wheeling, Illinois. Whoever the owners of record, there was firm knowledge that Giancana and the mob were the real operators. Among those performing before big-spending crowds were Sinatra, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Outside, a bus shuttled customers to a plushly furnished quonset casino a mere two blocks away.
The FBI descended on the Rat Packers and learned that all of them were performing gratis as a personal favor to Sinatra. Fisher rambled in his talks with the FBI but said very little. Davis was more outgoing, informing agents he had cut short some lucrative Las Vegas dates to work the Villa Venice gratis 'for my man Francis.'
The FBI wanted to know if he was also doing it for friends of Sinatra. 'By all means,' Davis said. Sam Giancana? 'By all means.' Davis added only one other thought: 'Baby, let me say this. I got one eye, and that one eye sees a lot of things that my brain tells me I shouldn't talk about. Because my brain says that, if I do, my one eye might not be seeing anything after a while.'

Hollywood Casino Rat Pack Box

The Chicago Daily News reported, 'During the past 20 days since singer Eddie Fisher started off the new star policy at the Villa, a heavy toll has been levied at the hut on the [Villa] patrons. Individual losses of as much as $25,000 have been reported.'
Basing an estimate on overheard conversations, the FBI determined that the one-month operation of the Villa Venice and its shuttle service had brought Giancana and the boys a cool $3 million.
Giancana's 'other plans' for the Rat Pack had been taken care of. The mob leader was still unhappy about the Kennedy problem, but consoled himself counting the net. And the Rat Pack was alive and well.