Why were the “Rat Pack” called that?
The term “Rat Pack” was supposedly assigned to the original Bogart group by “Den Mother” Lauren Bacall, after seeing them return from a night in Las Vegas. (The term rat is presumably meant in the sense of a dubious person or scoundrel.) According to another explanation, the term, “Rat Pack” was not Bacall’s idea at all. It had started with Humphrey Bogart, Bacall’s husband and frequent film co-star and a pal of Sinatra’s, who named a group of his drinking buddies the Holmby Hills Rat Pack, after the location of one of Judy Garland and her husband Sid Luft’s houses (a frequent hangout).
