About

Frankly, Frank

An Intimate Tribute to Sinatra The Man and the Music

While Frank Sinatra performed his first gig at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in September 1951, it was at the Sands Hotel and Casino where Sinatra and his infamous Rat Pack would become true headliners. Sinatra and Las Vegas are forever connected, and because of that bond, Las Vegas has continued to evolve as the world’s entertainment capital.  Since Frank died in 1998 and even before, there have been many tributes and impersonators to both the Rat Pack and Frank who played the music, but to truly understand the music, you need to know the heart and soul of the man behind the music.

Frankly Frank is an intimate Frank Sinatra tribute to both the music and the man, featuring many of Frank’s top hits with some lesser-known tracks.  You will find yourself transported back to an era when entertainment was king in Las Vegas,

when people wore tuxedos to gamble, everything was hip and cool. Here are just some of the hits that are featured in the show:

• LUCK BE A LADY
• SUMMER WIND
• FLY ME TO THE MOON
• STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT
• COME FLY WITH ME
• THAT’S LIFE
• MY WAY

Frank Sinatra & The Rat Pack

The Pack were singers and actors Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), Dean Martin (1917-1995), Sammy Davis Jr. (1925-1990), British actor and brother-in-law to President John F. Kennedy, Peter Lawford (1923-1984), and comedian Joey Bishop (1918-2007). At the level of their allure in the principal half of the 1960s, 34,000 individuals descended upon the Sands Inn and Gambling club in Las Vegas through their four-week season to take in their strut, jokes and brotherhood.

The Rat Pack, themselves, preferred to be called ‘the Clan’ or ‘the Summit’.

How the “Rat Pack” name came into existence is part of the myth. In Rat Pack Confidential, author Shawn Levy writes that the group was christened when Lauren Bacall said they looked “like a goddamn rat pack.” The first version of the group often met at Humphrey Bogart’s residence. It included, along with the hosts and Sinatra, the Hollywood elite such as Judy Garland, David Niven, Ava Gardner,  Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Katharine Hepburn, and Spencer Tracy.

In any case, it was the Copa Room at the Sands that turned into their base and where they should have been visible at their swinging best. In the mid-1960s, when one individual from the gathering – normally Sinatra, Martin, or Davis Jr. – was featured, there was a high likelihood that some or all of the others would appear unannounced and participate in the presentation, adding to the fervor and drawing enormous groups, including hot shot card sharks whose misfortunes assisted the club with paying the performers.