Frank Sinatra’s legendary clique defined life in the fast lane throughout the late fifties and early sixties, dominating American culture and epitomising a life of cocktails, love affairs and Hollywood glamour.A select group of photographers, including Sid Avery and Bob Willoughby, captured the Rat Pack in their heyday. Many of the images they produced have been largely stored away, many even undeveloped. For the first time, access to these shots has been made possible to produce one deluxe, collector’s edition.
"There's a couple of pictures of Sinatra and Dean Martin - I think in the end I always like pictures of Dean Martin the best because he just seems so chummy. Sinatra's so intense; Dean's so relaxing. There's a wonderful picture near the front of the book of the two of them backstage at a TV special, I believe it was Judy Garland: they were real friends and fans and any time she had one of her myriad comebacks they supported her however they could. They're in their tuxedos and there's just a cloud of cigarette smoke between them. It's a beautiful photo. It's the sort of thing Caravaggio would have painted. In a lot of these pictures, the cigarette smoke is amazing."
It's funny. If you told people in 1960 that Frank Sinatra was running around with John Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and the head of the Chicago mafia, they would say, 'Cool! I wish I was doing that.' Today it would be a front-page scandal on every paper in the world. The time has changed. There really was a time when awful and brazen behaviour was celebrated and envied. We're much more moralistic now, ironically."
"There were images from Peter Lawford's beach house from 1960 with Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, Peter Lawford, Patricia Kennedy Lawford and May Britt, Sammy Davis Jr's wife. They're all sitting around in beachwear, someone's got a Polaroid camera and they're all playing with it. Lawford's beach house is part of Rat Pack lore because that's where the Kennedys and the Rat Pack partied. But to see Marilyn Monroe among them in a picture at that time is just shocking."
$650.00
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