Many times they got their laughs from the audience by teasing Sammy mercilessly: “Keep smiling, Smokey, so the spot light can find you!” Or, “Why don’t you be yourself and eat some ribs!”. That was their line of crude joking, their way of lampooning colour barriers during racially fractious times. They called attention to the idiocy of it all by behaving like idiots, as men will, in order to show the foolishness of it all. They were equals in black tie. But none of that bore weight upon the love one felt for another.

When Sammy married the Swedish actress May Britt, an interracial tempest, Frank was his best man. As a wedding gift, Frank picked out an antique loveseat, then had Dean get it reupholstered. Dean’s chose zebra skin. Frank asked, “Why the hell did you do that?” Dean replied, “Well, when they sit on it, they won’t clash.”

In every show the audience saw a trio made of two wops (Dean and Frank) and a black Jew get racial without consequence. Dean would sing, "Have you ever seen a Jew jitsu? Well I did." Sammy would counter with, "Have you ever seen a wopsicle? Well I did." Asked by Frank to explain "wopsicle," Sammy would reply, "That's a pizza on a stick." So Frank goes to the food cart for a little mulignon on toast, explaining, "That's eggplant, for all you rednecks from outta town." Eggplant is what wops call black people. Leave it to the two races with the biggest noses to start cutting each other down. Later, Frank and Sammy sing "Me and My Shadow."

Dean brought the lighthearted comedy to the group. He was a family man, with a wife and two kids. He shot straight and was always the funniest. His talent was making the audience his friend. Dean took the edge off Frank's egoism. Joey Bishop was the architect of all Pack stagecraft, author of their trustiest “ad-libs.” He hovered over the act, a needling moderator, concerned with pacing and flow. Frank called him the Speaker of the House. Peter Lawford mostly danced with Sam, flaunted his suave British charm, and complied with Frank.

The Rat Packshows never exactly the same, although they were carefully prepared, a good deal of material was thought up at the last minute by Bishop or improvised by the others on stage. Always, there were booze jokes and booze; as a typical show at the Sands would begin with Dino and Sam wheeling out a bar full of drinks while Bishop announced, “Here are Haig and Vague.” In the middle of a routine Sam might turn to the audience and say, “You can get wacked just watching this show,” making fun of Frank’s mafia connections. There was a lot of mutual ribbing between the boys on stage, which the audience lapped up. An evening with Frank Sinatra and Co. wasn’t just a concert but a not to be missed event filled with fabulous singing, impressions, saucy politically incorrect jibes. The three might engage in a bawdy medley that starts with Frank singing "brassieres... I dig a broad with no brassiere." Dean follows up with "nothing could be finer than to shack up with a minor" but he explains he means a "John L. Lewis miner, with the gloves and the light on his hat."

As accomplished as each one was individually, when they were together, they took their cues from Sinatra, whilst relying on Bishop for the scripts. They treated the stage as if it were their own living room, goofing on themselves, but most of all on the audience who had paid to see them goof. They clowned around, smoked, drank and mixed cocktails onstage, more concerned with amusing each other with juvenile humour than amusing the audience, with spontaneity the key to their fun.