Joey Bishop

Joey Bishop, born Joseph Abraham Gottlieb on February 3, 1918, in the Bronx, New York City, was an American entertainer who built a career spanning nightclubs, television, film, and Broadway. The youngest of five children of Polish-Jewish immigrants Anna and Jacob Gottlieb, a bicycle repairman, Bishop grew up in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is ranked 96th on Comedy Central's list of 100 greatest stand-up comedians.

Bishop launched his performing career in the 1930s, leaving high school before completing his final semester to form a comedy trio with Morris "Rummy" Spector and Sammy Reisman, who was later replaced by Mel Farber. The group performed in nightclubs and burlesque houses across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the East Coast, borrowing the surname of their driver, Glenn Bishop, and billing themselves as the Bishop Brothers. Each member adopted Bishop as his individual stage name. The act dissolved when Rummy was drafted during World War II. Bishop himself was drafted in 1942, serving in the U.S. Army's Special Services and rising to the rank of sergeant at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

Following his discharge in August 1945, Bishop resumed performing as a solo act, working at the Casablanca Roadhouse in New Jersey before becoming an opening act at the Greenwich Village Inn in New York City. He secured a regular engagement at New York's Latin Quarter nightclub at $1,000 per week, which led to broader television and film opportunities. He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 28, 1950. In 1952, Frank Sinatra caught Bishop's act at the Latin Quarter and invited him to serve as his opening act at Bill Miller's Riviera in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the Copacabana in New York, and other venues, earning Bishop the informal designation of "Sinatra's comic."

Bishop's television career began as early as 1948. He appeared on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show on April 19, 1957, and guest-hosted The Tonight Show for both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson, accumulating more than 175 guest-hosting appearances on Carson's version of the program during the 1960s and continuing that role from 1971 to 1976, a record at the time. On September 20, 1961, he starred in the situation comedy The Joey Bishop Show, which ran for 123 episodes over four seasons on NBC and later CBS. He played Joey Barnes, a character who began as a publicity agent and later became a talk show host, with Abby Dalton joining the cast in 1962 as his wife. On April 17, 1967, ABC launched a 90-minute late-night talk show also titled The Joey Bishop Show, positioning it as competition to Carson's Tonight Show. The program ran until December 26, 1969, and featured then-newcomer Regis Philbin as Bishop's sidekick.

Bishop was a member of the group of entertainers publicly known as the Rat Pack, alongside Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford, though the five did not publicly embrace that label themselves. The group co-starred in the 1960 film Ocean's 11, centered on military veterans conspiring to rob five Las Vegas casinos on New Year's Eve. During production, the five performed together onstage at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, with Bishop contributing primarily as a joke teller and the principal writer of the act's material. He subsequently appeared with the group in Sergeants 3 (1962), a loose remake of Gunga Din, and with Martin in the Western comedy Texas Across the River (1966), in which he played an American Indian. Bishop's association with the Rat Pack ended in 1964 after a dispute with Sinatra over a request to fill in at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe; Bishop's demand for $50,000 and private jet travel prompted Sinatra to hang up and sever the relationship.

Bishop appeared on Broadway in 1979 in Sugar Babies. He was the only Rat Pack member to work alongside actors associated with the so-called Brat Pack, appearing as a ghost in Betsy's Wedding (1990) with Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy. His final film role was a non-speaking part in Mad Dog Time (1996), written and directed by his son, Larry Bishop; his character was named Gottlieb, his actual surname. In 1998, actor Bobby Slayton portrayed Bishop in the HBO film The Rat Pack.

Bishop married Sylvia Ruzga in 1941, and the couple remained married for 58 years until her death from lung cancer in 1999. They had one son, Larry Bishop, a film director and actor. Bishop later had a longtime companion, Nora Garibotti. He died on October 17, 2007, at age 89 from multiple organ failure at his home on Lido Isle in Newport Beach, California, the last surviving member of the Rat Pack. His remains were cremated and scattered in the Pacific Ocean near his home, in accordance with his wishes. The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia inducted Bishop posthumously into their Hall of Fame in 2009.