Rat Pack Trivia
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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' at the sight of her husband and his friends after a Las Vegas binge?
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall's reported verdict was 'You look like a goddamn rat pack.' The name stuck: the friends turned themselves into a mock club with titled officers and made her its den mother.
Q 02Which actor took Frank Sinatra's role as Danny Ocean in the 2001 remake of Ocean's 11?
George Clooney
George Clooney led the 2001 remake, with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon in his crew. Its success turned a one-off Rat Pack caper into a series, with sequels in 2004 and 2007.
Q 03In the original Holmby Hills group, which office did Frank Sinatra hold?
Pack master
Pack master was Sinatra's title in a mock club whose members handed out offices, with Judy Garland as first vice-president. Its stated purpose was drinking, laughing and staying up late.
Q 04Who led the original Rat Pack until his death in 1957, when Frank Sinatra took over?
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart was the ringleader, hosting the circle at his Los Angeles home. After cancer killed him the original members drifted apart, until Sinatra rebuilt the group around his Las Vegas friends.
Q 05Which nickname for Frank Sinatra's 1960s circle fell from favor because of what it sounded like?
The Clan
The Clan sounded too much like the Ku Klux Klan for Sammy Davis Jr., and Sinatra came to dislike it as well. He pushed 'the Summit' instead, but the press's 'Rat Pack' is what stuck.
Q 06Which Rat Pack member did Frank Sinatra cut off for good after a falling-out in 1962?
Peter Lawford
Peter Lawford took the blame when President Kennedy cancelled a 1962 stay at Sinatra's Palm Springs home, where a helipad had been built for the visit. Sinatra dropped him from the group's next films.
Q 07Which crooner took over the expelled member's intended role in Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby had already stung Sinatra once: when President Kennedy cancelled a 1962 stay at Sinatra's Palm Springs home, he slept at Crosby's estate instead.
Q 08Which Republican president did Sammy Davis Jr. hug on stage at a campaign rally?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon got the hug in 1972, after Davis endorsed his re-election. Embracing Nixon cost Davis support among many Black Americans and liberals.
Q 09Which actress, 29 years his junior, did Frank Sinatra marry in 1966?
Mia Farrow
Mia Farrow was 21 to his 50. The marriage lasted two years: he had divorce papers served on her while she was filming Rosemary's Baby, the film that made her a star.
Q 10Which Sinatra song was rewritten as the theme for the 1960 Democratic presidential campaign?
High Hopes
High Hopes, Sinatra's Oscar-winning hit from the film A Hole in the Head, got new campaign words from its own lyricist, Sammy Cahn, including a line that spells out the candidate's surname.
Q 11In which Las Vegas hotel's Copa Room did the Rat Pack famously perform while filming Ocean's 11?
The Sands
The Sands had made Sinatra a part-owner, and during the shoot the five took its stage each night once filming stopped. The hotel was imploded in 1996 to make way for the Venetian.
Q 12Which billionaire bought the Rat Pack's Las Vegas home base in 1967, the year Sinatra quit it in a fury?
Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes's hotel cut off Sinatra's casino credit that September. A casino executive punched the raging singer, who took his act down the Strip to Caesars Palace.
Q 13Which record label did Frank Sinatra found in 1960, soon signing Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.?
Reprise Records
Q 21Which actress, Sinatra and Martin's co-star in Some Came Running (1958), did the Rat Pack treat as its 'mascot'?
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine wrote that the men saw her as a mascot, a pal and 'maybe even one of the boys'. Her tipsy walk-on in Ocean's 11 was unbilled, done at her own request.
Q 22Who played Beatrice, Danny Ocean's wife, in Ocean's 11 (1960)?
Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson had been a friend of Sinatra's since 1953. She later became a household name as Sergeant Pepper Anderson in Police Woman, a hit credited with a surge of women applying to join the police.
Q 23Dean Martin was born in Steubenville, Ohio, with which surname?
Crocetti
Reprise Records grew out of Sinatra's fight with Capitol over creative control and ownership of his master tapes. He tried to buy the jazz label Verve, then started his own and promised its artists that freedom.
Q 14On which sitcom did Sammy Davis Jr., playing himself, kiss the lead character on the cheek in 1972?
All in the Family
All in the Family built an episode around him: he leaves a briefcase in Archie Bunker's cab, calls at the house to collect it, and plants the kiss just as a photo is taken. Davis had asked to be on the show.
Q 15On which night does Danny Ocean's crew rob five casinos in Ocean's 11 (1960)?
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve gives the crew its moment: at midnight a rigged power tower blows, the Strip goes dark, and they hold up the cashiers' cages before the lights come back.
Q 16How is the stolen money lost at the end of the 1960 Ocean's 11?
It is cremated in a coffin
It is cremated in a coffin. To dodge a mobster demanding half, the gang hides the cash with a dead accomplice's body, and the funeral home burns both before they can get it back.
Q 17Which Dean Martin standard was written for him to sing in Ocean's 11 (1960)?
Ain't That a Kick in the Head
Ain't That a Kick in the Head flopped as a single in 1960 and missed the charts. Reissues and film soundtracks revived it decades later, and it was certified platinum in 2024.
Q 18The 1962 Rat Pack Western Sergeants 3 was a remake of which 1939 adventure film?
Gunga Din
Gunga Din moved from British India to the American West, with Sammy Davis Jr. in the title character's place. The remake follows it closely with one change: this time the man who sounds the warning lives.
Q 19Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964) moved the Robin Hood legend to the gangland of which Prohibition-era city?
Chicago
Chicago's gang wars stand in for Sherwood Forest. Sinatra's bootlegger Robbo becomes a folk hero by accident, when money he won't keep is passed to an orphanage and the papers cheer.
Q 20Which Oscar-nominated song did Robin and the 7 Hoods introduce?
My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town lost the Oscar to 'Chim Chim Cher-ee' from Mary Poppins, yet it outlasted the film it was written for: Sinatra kept singing it on stage, and it turns up on his live albums of 1966 and 1974.
Crocetti: Dino Crocetti had worked in steel mills, boxed and held a casino job before a Cleveland bandleader hired him as a singer. He took the name Dean Martin in 1940.
Q 24With which comedian did Dean Martin form his career-making double act in 1946?
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis and Martin lasted ten years as a team before splitting in 1956. Their public reunion came twenty years on, when Frank Sinatra walked Martin onto Lewis's telethon unannounced.
Q 25Which Beatles single did 'Everybody Loves Somebody' knock off No. 1 in August 1964?
A Hard Day's Night
A Hard Day's Night gave way on August 15, 1964, to a 47-year-old crooner singing a tune from 1947. It became the theme of Martin's NBC variety show, which ran for eight years.
Q 26From 1974 to 1984, Dean Martin presided over which NBC series?
A celebrity roast
A celebrity roast began as a feature of his variety show's final season and outlived it: the roasts ran on as NBC specials for another ten years.
Q 27How did Sammy Davis Jr. lose his left eye in 1954?
A car accident
A car accident in the California desert nearly killed him at 28, on the drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Rather than end his career, the publicity around his return gave it a lift.
Q 28In what act did Sammy Davis Jr. perform as a child alongside his father?
The Will Mastin Trio
The Will Mastin Trio took him on the road at three, after his parents split up, dancing beside his father and the man he called his uncle. Touring that young meant he never had any formal schooling.
Q 29What was Sammy Davis Jr.'s only No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100?
The Candy Man
The Candy Man was a song Davis loathed: he called it 'horrible', cut his vocal in two takes and predicted it would sink his career. It gave him three weeks at No. 1 instead.
Q 30To which religion did Sammy Davis Jr. convert as an adult?
Judaism
Judaism came to him through his friend Eddie Cantor and long talks while he was recovering in hospital, where he was struck by the parallels between Jewish and Black history.