50 free Rat Pack trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Rat Pack started as Humphrey Bogart's drinking friends in Holmby Hills and ended up as the most famous nightclub act in history: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop trading songs and insults in the Copa Room of the Sands while filming Ocean's 11 by day. Along the way they campaigned for John F. Kennedy, tangled with the mob, got Lawford exiled, and reunited for one last tour in 1988. This quiz covers the whole story: how Lauren Bacall named the group, the original Bogart-era membership, the Vegas summit and the films that came out of it, each member's own career (Dean's Beatles-topping hit, Sammy's only number one, Joey's talk show, Peter's Kennedy marriage), the Cal Neva and Sam Giancana, the HBO biopic and the reunion tour. Some questions are easy for anyone who has seen Ocean's 11; the ones about the 1950s and the reunion will test real devotees. Every answer is checked against a reference source and each question links to where the fact was confirmed.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who reportedly coined 'Rat Pack' after seeing her husband and friends return from Las Vegas?
Lauren Bacall
'You look like a goddamn rat pack,' she reportedly said. The name may also be short for the 'Holmby Hills Rat Pack,' after her home with Humphrey Bogart.
Q 02Whose Holmby Hills home was the hangout of the original 1950s Rat Pack?
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's
Visitors included Errol Flynn, Nat King Cole, Elizabeth Taylor and Cesar Romero; Bogart was 'rat in charge of public relations.'
Q 03In the original Holmby Hills group, which office did Frank Sinatra hold?
Pack master
Judy Garland was first vice-president, Sid Luft cage master, Swifty Lazar recording secretary and treasurer, and Nathaniel Benchley historian.
Q 04In what year did Humphrey Bogart die, after which Sinatra took over leadership of the group?
1957
Sinatra and Bacall briefly got engaged after Bogart's death from esophageal cancer; the Rat Pack then evolved into a Vegas-based mutual support machine.
Q 05Which name did the 1960s group drop because it sounded too much like the Ku Klux Klan?
The Clan
When JFK hung around, they were sometimes 'the Jack Pack'; Sinatra himself later called 'Rat Pack' 'that stupid phrase.'
Q 06Which member fell out with Sinatra in 1962 and was expelled from the group?
Peter Lawford
Sinatra blamed him when President Kennedy cancelled a stay at Sinatra's Palm Springs house — where a helipad had been built for the visit — and stayed with a rival crooner instead.
Q 07Which crooner took over the expelled member's intended role in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)?
Bing Crosby
The exiled member was also written out of 4 for Texas. Crosby was, pointedly, the man Kennedy had stayed with instead of Sinatra.
Q 08Which president's sister, Patricia, married a Rat Pack member in 1954?
John F. Kennedy
Sinatra nicknamed the actor 'Brother-in-Lawford,' and the group campaigned for the president in 1960.
Q 09Which attorney general advised the president to cut ties with Sinatra because of his mob associations?
Robert F. Kennedy
The attorney general cited Sinatra's friendship with Chicago boss Sam Giancana; the cancelled 1962 Palm Springs visit followed.
Q 10Which Sinatra song was rewritten as the theme for the 1960 Democratic presidential campaign?
High Hopes
Van Heusen and Cahn's 1959 hit with a children's chorus got new lyrics for the campaign; the Rat Pack also appeared at that year's Democratic convention in Los Angeles.
Q 11In which Las Vegas hotel's Copa Room did the Rat Pack famously perform while filming Ocean's 11?
The Sands
Sinatra made his Sands debut in 1953 and later bought a share; the hotel was imploded in 1996 to make way for the Venetian.
Q 12Which billionaire bought the Sands in 1967, the first of his several Las Vegas hotel purchases?
Howard Hughes
Sinatra's relationship with the Sands soured under Hughes; the hotel was demolished on November 26, 1996.
Q 13Which former Copacabana boss ran the Sands and booked its Copa Room?
Jack Entratter
Entratter's hand-picked 'Copa Girls' wore $12,000 in costumes on opening night, more than headliner Danny Thomas was paid.
Q 21Which actress from Ocean's 11 and Some Came Running was one of the Rat Pack's 'mascots'?
Shirley MacLaine
Marilyn Monroe, Juliet Prowse and Buddy Greco were among the others; MacLaine also shared the screen with the trio in their 1984 farewell.
Q 22Which future Police Woman star played Danny Ocean's wife in the 1960 film?
Angie Dickinson
Dickinson was friends with Sinatra and Martin; she went on to win a Golden Globe for Police Woman in the 1970s.
Q 23What was Dean Martin's birth name?
Dino Paul Crocetti
Born in Steubenville, Ohio, he sang early on as 'Dino Martini' after the opera tenor Nino Martini before settling on Dean Martin.
Q 14Who directed the original Ocean's 11 (1960)?
Lewis Milestone
Milestone had won Oscars for All Quiet on the Western Front decades earlier; here he wrangled a cast that spent its nights performing at the Sands.
Q 15How many Las Vegas casinos do Danny Ocean's crew rob simultaneously in the 1960 film?
Five
The Sahara, Riviera, Desert Inn, Sands and Flamingo — the crew are all veterans of the 82nd Airborne, and the film was shot on location at all five.
Q 16How is the stolen money lost at the end of the 1960 Ocean's 11?
It is cremated in a dead accomplice's coffin
The gang hides the loot in Bergdorf's coffin to dodge mobster Duke Santos, and his widow has him cremated with the cash inside.
Q 17Which member of the group bought the rights to the casino-heist story that became Ocean's 11?
The one later expelled, Peter Lawford
The story circulated among entertainers in 1958; Lawford grabbed it, Sinatra got interested, and shooting began in January 1960.
Q 18The 1962 Rat Pack Western Sergeants 3 was a remake of which 1939 adventure film?
Gunga Din
John Sturges moved the story from India to the American West; Sinatra rented a ghost town near Kanab, Utah, and tried to seal off a 20-mile radius.
Q 19Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) reset the Robin Hood legend in what milieu?
1920s–30s Chicago gangland
Sinatra plays Robbo, and the film introduced a song about Chicago that earned an Oscar nomination for Van Heusen and Cahn.
Q 20Which Oscar-nominated song did Robin and the 7 Hoods introduce?
My Kind of Town
It outlived the film to become a Sinatra standard about Chicago.
Q 24With which comedian did Dean Martin form his career-making double act in 1946?
Jerry Lewis
Martin and Lewis met at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York in 1944 and became the biggest comedy team of the era before splitting in 1956.
Q 25Which Beatles single did 'Everybody Loves Somebody' knock off No. 1 in August 1964?
A Hard Day's Night
Martin had told his Beatles-mad 12-year-old son Dean Paul, 'I'm gonna knock your pallies off the charts' — and did.
Q 26From 1974 to 1984, Dean Martin presided over which NBC series?
A celebrity roast
The roasts drew comedians, celebrities and politicians and spun off from his earlier NBC variety show.
Q 27How did Sammy Davis Jr. lose his left eye in 1954?
A car accident
He was 29. Six years later he made a religious conversion that drew parallels between the oppression of Black and Jewish Americans.
Q 28In what act did Sammy Davis Jr. perform as a child alongside his father?
The Will Mastin Trio
He was billed as 'Little Sammy' from about age seven; the trio's 1951 stand at Ciro's in Hollywood was his breakthrough.
Q 29What was Sammy Davis Jr.'s only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100?
The Candy Man
Written for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, it spent three weeks at No. 1 in June 1972.
Q 30To which religion did Sammy Davis Jr. convert in 1960?
Judaism
The conversion, along with his 1960 marriage to Swedish actress May Britt, made him a lightning rod for controversy.