Rat Pack joker dies

There was little last-surviving Rat Pack member and longtime Newport Beach resident Joey Bishop loved more than a good joke and visiting with friends and neighbors at his home on Lido Isle.

Bishop would always touch the mezuza that hung near his front door and bless his guests as they left his home.

“He would say, ‘I just thank God for all I have been given.’ He never forgot his humble beginnings” recalls close friend Rabbi Reuven Mintz of Chabad Jewish Center in Newport Beach. “Joey was a wonderful man. His life was solely to bring a smile of happiness and a laugh to people.”

The mezuza, a piece of parchment containing Hebrew verses from the Torah that hangs at the entrance of many Jewish homes, was picked up in Israel while Bishop was there filming the 1986 action movie “The Delta Force.”

Known for a long television career and his film appearances alongside other Rat Pack legends such as Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford, Bishop died Wednesday evening of natural causes at his Newport Beach home. He was 89.

Bishop would often call Mintz to chat in Yiddish, which the entertainer spoke fluently, Mintz recalled.

“He would call and say, ‘Rabbi, If you don’t get over here in the next few hours, I’m going to forget all my Yiddish,” Mintz said. “He was a very lovely man.”

Until the final year or so of his life, Bishop exercised by walking each day up and down his street on Lido Island.

Bishop was a father figure to many, and a role model for people in the community and other celebrities, said longtime Lido Island resident Bill Warmington, who lives just up the street from Bishop’s home.

Bishop encouraged Warmington when he was determined to learn to walk again after a degenerative hip disease left him in a wheelchair.

The two neighbors would often visit over coffee at Richard Market on Lido Island.

“He had a unique philosophy on life that was unique from any other celebrities I have known,” Warmington said. “The other Rat Pack members had a respect for him. The things they wouldn’t do around their mothers, they wouldn’t do around Joey.”

Bishop supported numerous charities, notably ones that benefited children, Mintz said.

In the 1960s, Joey received a citation from Pope John XXIII, for raising millions of dollars to fund Boys’ Towns of Italy, an American charity that funds child care in Italy.

“‘People look up to me,’ he would say. He was a major influence on people’s lives,” Mintz said. “‘I live to lead by example,’ he’d say.”

One of Bishop’s last public appearances was to light a giant chocolate menorah erected by Chabad for Hanukkah at Fashion Island in 2003.

“He said, ‘How often do you get a rabbi and a Bishop on the same stage?’” Mintz said. “He had a great interest in his community.”

Bishop also was a member and former governor of the Balboa Bay Club.

“He was a member, a governor and in-house comedian,” said Balboa Bay Club President Henry Schielein. “Along with John Wayne, he was one of the pillars of the Balboa Bay Club. He was a very funny guy and he’s going to be greatly missed.”

The entertainer never missed the opportunity to tell a joke.

“I would always see him at Via Lido Drug Store,” said Lido Island resident Gay Wassall-Kelly. “He’d come up to people and ask them things like ‘Oh, how old are you?’ He’d have us all cracking up, and he’d say he loved the drug store because the drugs kept him alive legally.”

Debbie McGuire, wildlife director of the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center, said Bishop loved nature and the view he had of the water from his Lido Island home.

A caretaker for Bishop who worked with the care center would often bring Bishop photographs of local wetland wildlife when he was ill at home, McGuire said. Bishop donated numerous signed photographs of the Rat Pack to be sold at the group’s next charity auction, she said.

McGuire remembers Bishop coming into the now-closed local piano bar El Pescador’s to entertain customers with his quick wit.

“He loved people and loved company,” McGuire said. “He was truly a people person.”

Survivors include son Larry Bishop, grandchildren Scott and Kirk Bishop and longtime companion Nora Garibotti.

Services will be private.

Memorial contributions can be made at wwccoc.org or 21900 Pacific Coast Hwy., Huntington Beach, CA 92646.

E-mail [email protected] or call (714) 321-7516 for more information.

QUITE A CAREER

Joey Bishop emceed President Kennedy’s inaugural ball and made more guest host appearances on the Johnny Carson Show more than anyone else from 1971 to 1988.

He also was the permanent guest host on “The Jack Paar Tonight Show,” which ran from 1957 to 1962 on NBC.

Bishop performed or campaigned for numerous presidents including Dwight Eisenhower, Hubert Humphrey, Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.

He also worked with the USO to entertain American troops in Vietnam.

As part of the Rat Pack, Bishop worked with comedic and musical legends such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.

Sinatra dubbed Bishop the “Hub of the Big Wheel” and gave him credit for orchestrating the group’s comic material and anchoring its stage presence at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas.

 MOVIES

The Deep Six (1957)

The Naked and the Dead (1958)

Onionhead (1958)

Oceans 11 (1960)

Pepe (1960-Cameo)

Sergeant’s 3 (1962)

Johnny Cool (1963)

Texas Across the River (1966)

A Guide for the Married Man (1967)

The Valley of the Dolls (1967)

Who’s Minding the Mint (1967)

The Delta Force (1986)

Betsy’s Wedding (1990)

Mad Dog Time (1996-Cameo)

SPEAKING OUT

“It was the thrill of my life to be chosen by Joey as the announcer for his talk show on ABC back in the ’60s. It was my introduction to the highly competitive late-night-show world. It was also an introduction to a show business I had never known: the Rat Pack era, the amazing talents of those performers who I probably never would have befriended without Joey.

We walked every day before the show up Vine Street to Hollywood Boulevard and back to our studio for nearly three years. I learned a lot about the business of making people laugh. He was a master comedian and a great teacher, and I will never forget those days or him.”

Regis Philbin

host of “Live with Regis and Kelly” and “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”

“I brought him out from New York and put him together with Danny Thomas where he did the weekly Joey Bishop Show, and oversaw all of his various show business activities. I thought he was a gifted talent who was able to work not only in motion pictures and television but theater as well. And Joey really loved his Rat Pack group. He will be missed.”

Norman Brokaw

Chairman of William Morris Agency chairman, who represented Joey Bishop for more than 50 years

“Joey Bishop was a true original, with his unmistakable dry wit and perfect comic timing. I became his fan when I saw his first appearance onstage of the New York Paramount theater in 1956 when he opened for Frank Sinatra. He blew me away then, and he never stopped entertaining me and his millions of other fans.”

Warren Cowan

longtime publicist for many of the Rat Pack members

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].