My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden, loud bang. The train gave a lurch before grinding to a halt, almost throwing me from my seat. Rolling up the shade, I could see men running around in the dark. Somewhere, a woman was screaming. After what seemed like an age, the door to my compartment flew open and several people backed in, carrying three injured men. In faltering English, a gendarme told me that the train had hit a car on the track. The survivors, bloodied and bruised, were laid on the three spare bunks. The gendarme took off his hat, gave me a shrug, and slid my door shut. The train lurched again and set off, leaving me alone with the groaning victims, none of whom spoke any English. No doctor came, so for the next hour or so I did what I could to comfort them. Mercifully, two stops later they were removed by paramedics and taken to a local hospital.
Needless to say, by the time I arrived in Nice I was exhausted and shaken. Nancy Ittleson, fresh and chipper, was waiting to greet me, but my suitcases were not. They’d been mislaid. “Don’t worry,” she said gaily, trying to cheer me up. “We’re the same size. You can have the run of my wardrobe.” She drove me the twenty miles toward Monte Carlo and then up to their French villa, named Rien ne va Plus, meaning “no more bets,” on a bluff at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin overlooking the Mediterranean. Leading me down some steps in the garden, she showed me my pretty guest cottage, with the most breathtaking views I’d ever seen. I finally began to relax.
“Frank called,” she said casually as I tested the bed. “The strike means he’s stuck in London. They won’t even let private planes take off.”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” I replied lightly, before allowing her to lead me back up to the villa to choose an outfit for the party she was throwing that night.
My first evening in the hills above Monaco was so unbelievably glamorous that I found myself wishing Bobby was there to enjoy it with me. Among the crowd of twenty sophisticated Europeans dining under the stars was Prince Rainier of Monaco, who insisted I stop calling him Your Highness. His wife, the former actress Grace Kelly, was on a shopping trip to Paris.
At a long table laden with glassware, silver, and flickering candles, everyone sat and chatted animatedly, switching from French to English to Italian as easily as breathing. At one point during the evening, I stood back to observe the scene, with its beautiful people who seemed to take little notice of the glittering coastline below. In a borrowed designer dress and with a glass of champagne in my hand, I couldn’t help but reflect that Barbara Ann Blakeley had traveled a very long way from Bosworth, Missouri. I felt bubbly with happiness.
When I eventually retired to my guest cottage, at around three in the morning, I found three dozen white roses waiting on my bedside table. The card attached to them read, “I’ll be there. Francis Albert.”
The morning brought more good news. Bobby telephoned to say he’d changed his mind and would arrive the next day, without Sylvia. Even more surprisingly, he assured me he’d cut his hair. As I replaced the receiver, the phone rang again, so I picked it up in case Bobby had forgotten something.
“Barbara? It’s Frank,” the voice said down a crackly line. “I’m still in London, but I’m on my way. Tell Nancy I’ll make it for dinner. You be there too.”
The conversation was short but sweet, and I was only able to say, “We’re looking forward to seeing you,” before the line went dead.
Later that morning in the pool, Nancy asked me if I liked my flowers. “Frank’s so gallant,” she said wistfully. “He sent me roses too.” Just as I was wondering if I’d read too much into my bouquet and Frank’s subsequent phone call, Nancy’s maid arrived to tell me my suitcases had been delivered from the station. At least I’d be able to wear the purple Oscar de la Renta dress I’d chosen especially for the occasion.
Frank arrived just as the cocktail party was starting. When he walked into the Ittlesons’ drawing room, he brought with him his usual palpable air of excitement. He kissed all the women on both cheeks, Continental-style, and introduced us to his companions, who included Fritz Loewe, the composer who cowrote the scores for My Fair Lady, Gigi, and Paint Your Wagon. Then, whiskey in hand, Frank regaled us with the tale of how he’d defied the strike once he made it as far as Orly airport. Warned that there would be a further four-hour delay, he ordered his pilot to take off anyway. His G2 Gulfstream must have been about the only aircraft in the clouds all the way across France. “I didn’t want to miss a minute more of this,” he told the crowd, but his eyes were fixed firmly on me.
Rainier arrived, and he and Frank greeted each other like the old friends they were. Someone asked Rainier where they’d first met. The ruler of Monaco told us that, when he was courting Grace during the filming of High Society, he’d visited the film set. Everyone was terribly polite in the presence of European royalty and offered him endless cups of tea. Sensing his disappointment, Frank finally told him, “Come to my trailer for a Jack Daniel’s.”
“Oh, brother!” cried the prince. “Where have you been all this time?” They’d been pals ever since. The two of them launched into fond recollections of the woman Frank called Gracie (referred to as Her Serene Highness everywhere else in Monaco). Frank said he was most indignant when Grace was presented with a platinum record for a song before he received one. “It was for ‘True Love,’ of all things,” he added.
“Worse still, she sang it with Crosby!” Rainier teased.
Just before dinner, Frank managed to get me on my own in a corner. “You look beautiful tonight, Barbara,” he told me. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
My face felt warm, and it wasn’t just the champagne. “It’s the same with me,” was all I managed to say before Nancy arrived to announce that dinner was served. We ate ham and beans, mashed potatoes, and coleslaw on Sevres porcelain. It was delicious, but I could barely eat and pushed the food around my plate. As the evening came to a close, Frank drew me to one side and said quietly, “I’m going to take you to dinner tomorrow night with Nancy, Henry, and a few of the others. Let’s see each other afterwards.” Reddening, I nodded.
The following day I borrowed Henry’s red Mercedes and drove to Nice to meet Bobby at the station. When my six-foot-four-inch son stepped off the train with his wavy chestnut hair and square-jawed grin, he looked the spitting image of the man who’d fallen for the Queen of Belmont Shore all those years earlier. He was equally lovelorn. “I’m really going to miss Sylvia,” Bobby complained with a sigh as I drove him back to the Ittlesons’ villa.
“She’ll wait,” I told him gently. Nothing could burst my bubble.
Le Beach Club of the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo had several tiers of striped canvas cabanas or small beach huts that faced the sea. The Ittlesons had taken one in the second tier, and Frank had three in the tier below ours, positioned to avoid the prying lenses of the paparazzi. Fritz was in his group, along with Jilly, an older American couple, and two attractive women in swimsuits. Frank assured me that these last were beards so that the press wouldn’t suspect who he was really with.
I introduced my son to Frank that afternoon with some trepidation. Even though Bobby was an adult, he’d been hurt or rejected by every man I’d brought into his life, and being overprotective, I was worried how Frank would react to my son. With three children from his first marriage, Frank had left their mother when they were very small. I needn’t have been worried as far as Bobby was concerned, though. When I strolled down with him to meet everyone, Frank jumped up and gave him a welcoming hug. The two of them hit it off immediately and wandered off together to talk batting averages and touchdowns. Frank also introduced Bobby to Rainier and Grace’s children, the princesses Caroline and Stephanie, and Prince Albert, known to us as Alby. The four of them also hit it off instantly, and Alby and Bobby in particular forged a close friendship that has endured to this day.
The pace Frank set once he arrived was exhausting. This was clearly someone who liked to be entertained. The man who’d almost died at birth was determined to live every minute of the se
cond chance life had thrown him. He wouldn’t let anyone slow him down. We were out every day and expected to party every night. One day I told him, “I really can’t go out tonight, Frank. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel like it. I’m too tired.”
His eyes took on a glint. “You’re going, Barbara. You’re going tonight, and you’re going every night,” he told me. As I was soon to learn, there was no arguing with Frank. That night he hosted dinner for twelve at Le Pirate, an outdoor restaurant renowned for its eccentricities. Our crowd included Pat Henry, the producer Sam Spiegel, and the actor Vince Edwards and his wife. Robert Viale, the crazy owner, greeted us with fireworks and gunfire while a gypsy band played frantic fiddle music and dancing girls whirled around us playing tambourines. We were shown to long benches at trestle tables while acrobats dressed as pirates swung between the branches of the trees. Mr. Viale produced a Nebuchadnezzar of champagne and sliced off the neck with a sword. The house donkey wandered between tables eating food from plates, showing a preference for lobster. There was a huge fireplace, and every now and then waiters would hurl chairs or tables into the roaring flames. When we’d finished eating, we were encouraged to do the same with our plates. Anyone who wanted to go up to the first-floor bar had to climb a large tree in the center of the courtyard to reach it, but if they did they were pelted with food by fellow guests. It was insane.
Bobby’s eyes were popping right out of his head. He leaned toward me and shouted, “We’re in a nuthouse!” Frank, sitting at the head of the table, loved the craziness of it all and kept ordering more champagne, more food, and more music. This man of the world, who must have seen just about everything there was to see, took childish delight in the pranks happening all around us. But then I shouldn’t have been surprised. Swifty Lazar, one of the smartest-dressed people I knew, had warned me what a practical joker Frank was. He told me how he’d returned home one day to find his immaculate wardrobe bricked up and plastered over. Frank would also have the food and drink moved to his house half an hour before Swifty was to throw a party.
Frank and Dean Martin used to puncture tiny pinholes into the filters of friend’s cigarettes so they wouldn’t draw, or snip into their bow ties so that when they went to put them on the ties would fall apart in their hands. Cherry bombs were another favorite; those red-colored party explosives were thrown into yards, used to blow up mailboxes, tossed as ammunition against journalists, or set off at the end of someone’s bed. Frank and Dean had a brown terry-cloth robe made for Sammy Davis, Jr., at the Vegas steam room where they wore white robes, the same place where they shoved a naked Don Rickles out of the steam room door into the crowded pool area. Frank, a man who never slept on planes, regularly stuffed candy into the slipped-off shoes of those foolish enough to nod off.
After dinner at Le Pirate, Frank took us to the casino and bonded further with Bobby over a blackjack game. He liked to play only blackjack and craps, and was happy to teach my son a few tricks. Then he took me to the card tables and taught me the game of chemin de fer. It was so romantic sitting next to him at the card table as he leaned over to see what hand I’d been dealt and advised me which card to play. Henry Ittleson wandered off discreetly to play his usual baccarat. The casino saved a chair for him every night, and he didn’t like anyone to watch him while he played with his big square chips. When he caught me spying on him through a crowd that had gathered because he was winning so much money, he was very upset, especially when I asked, “Do you ever lose that kind of money too?”
“Of course I do!” he snapped. “Look, other men have women, horses, or cars. My only hobby is gambling, and I put aside a million dollars a year for it, so that’s that.” When Henry eventually died, the casino put his chair down on the table and didn’t use it for a year.
After the casino that night in Monaco, we went to Regine’s nightclub New Jimmy’z. Frank’s friendship with Bobby was sealed the minute he spotted my son ogling the girls. “Okay, kid,” he said, laughing. “We’re going to have a good time.” At around two in the morning, Frank turned to Bobby and said, “All right, buster, time to go and get some sleep. I’m going to take your mother back to the hotel to have a drink with friends. We’ll take you home.”
I patted Bobby’s hand and asked, “Is that all right, darling?”
“Sure, Mom,” Bobby replied. “It’s been a long day.” His expression betrayed no hint of what he might be thinking. I hoped mine didn’t either.
When Regine saw that we were preparing to leave, she whispered something to Frank, who shrugged and smiled. “Paparazzi,” he explained. Rising to our feet, we were led out through the kitchen past stacks of dirty pots and pans to a rear door. It was an arrival and exit route that I was coming to accept as the norm. Outside, Frank’s Packard sedan waited incongruously amid the garbage cans, his Monaco driver, Bruno Viola, at the wheel. A few camera flashes popped as we drove out onto the street, but Bruno stepped on the gas and sped us away.
As I waved good night to Bobby at the Ittlesons’ gate twenty minutes later, I spotted a familiar item half-hidden in the passenger well of the car. It was my canvas beach bag, which must somehow have been sneaked out of my guest cottage at Rien ne va Plus while we were out. Folded neatly inside were a swimsuit and an outfit for the beach in the morning. I looked across at Frank in astonishment, but he didn’t even return my stare. So, no more bets, please …
Frank’s two-bedroom suite at the Hôtel de Paris, with its penthouse view of the harbor on three sides, was the finest I’d ever been in. Large French doors opened out onto a terrace. Classical music drifted up from below. Exquisite silks adorned the windows; the beds and sofas were comfortingly overstuffed. The whole place looked like a movie set. As Frank opened the bottle of champagne that was waiting on ice, I wandered out to the balcony of that big white wedding cake of a building, and the view almost stopped my heart. Car lights traced a line along the coastal highway all the way to Cap Ferrat. Stars twinkled high above. If my first night at the Ittlesons’ had seemed like an earth-based dream, then surely this was heaven.
Lucky girl, Barbara Blakeley, I thought to myself. Remember this moment.
Frank handed me a champagne flute, and we toasted each other. Setting our glasses down, we moved closer, and then he enfolded me in the gentlest embrace.
A few hours later, we watched as the dawn crept through the windows and clung to each other ever tighter. The warm Mediterranean light heralded the end of our idyll; it was a new day and a return to our pretense that there was nothing between us. Only now it would be that much harder to pretend.
Rising reluctantly and dressing in the beach clothes that one of his minions had chosen for me, I blew Frank a kiss, left his suite, and headed downstairs. The grand hotel lobby was full of people, so I ducked out of the elevator and headed instead for the arcade of shops, from where I could slip away more easily. If anyone saw me, I hoped they’d think I just came up from the beach. My head down, sunglasses on, I was startled by a familiar voice.
“Barbara! It is you!” It was Greg Bautzer, Zeppo’s attorney. “What are you doing here?”
I turned to a rack of postcards and quickly picked a couple out. “Oh, hi, Greg,” I replied as casually as I could. “I’m staying at the Ittlesons’. I just stopped in to buy these on my way to the beach.”
“Uh-huh,” Greg said, smiling. A notorious womanizer, this was the man who’d represented Lana Turner, Ginger Rogers, Howard Hughes, and Ingrid Bergman in everything from multimillion-dollar Vegas property deals to high-profile divorces. “Postcards, eh?” he added, and wandered off chuckling to himself.
I didn’t fool Bobby either. He was sunning himself at the beach club and gave me a knowing look when I arrived. “Morning, Mom,” he cried. “Glorious day!” To my relief, he was refreshingly matter-of-fact and never once made comment or passed judgment. That was his hallmark. In the years to come, Bobby would become one of my closest confidants in the unfolding drama of me and the man we sometimes called FS.
Bobby was having the time of his life, and so was I. Not only did Frank make sure to include my son in everything but he seemed to really like him; it was heaven to see. I’d never experienced anything like this with my previous men, who’d always made comments like “Do you have to bring the kid?” This was like a miracle.
Frank had booked us in the Hilton Hotel, overlooking the Acropolis, and as we left the nightclub and headed back to our rooms, the paparazzi pressed in and took some shots of us sitting in the back of his car. SINATRA IN GREECE WITH BLONDE the headlines ran the next day (not that I knew until later). If Zeppo spotted them back in Palm Springs, he never said so, and as I left Frank’s hotel room in the early hours of the following morning, Zeppo Marx was the last person on my mind.
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