Frank and I floated on air for the next few days that beautiful summer. I prayed that no one would find out about our affair and spoil everything. We had to be especially careful around the Ittlesons because they were old friends of Zeppo’s. Nancy knew, I’m certain, but she was a good enough girlfriend not to let on.
What I thought might just be a one-time experience and something to remember in years to come turned into night after glorious night of romance in some of the most glamorous venues in Europe. Frank was tender and kind, generous and funny. He’d walk past my chair humming “I’ve Got a Crush on You” or brush his fingers against my shoulder as if by accident. He was probably the most gentlemanly person I’d ever met—opening doors, helping with my coat, jumping up to freshen my glass.
He was without fail polite, warm, gracious, and giving. Everywhere he went he’d stop to buy extravagant gifts for friends and family, shipping parcels home or having surprise packages and flowers delivered to our rooms. He remembered everything from friends’ favorite colors to what kinds of cologne they wore. He addressed store and hotel staff by their first names, recalling them from previous visits. He led Nancy and me into a jewelry shop and almost bought the place out. He chose me some beautiful earrings and a ring and then later went back on his own to buy me something else, telling me, “You’d look maaarvelous in this!” (using an intonation he’d picked up from his friend Noël Coward).
During lazy afternoons down on the beach, Frank was never happier than with his nose buried in a book. I was surprised to discover that the man whose mother never read and whose father barely spoke English devoured literature voraciously, anything from bestselling fiction to history, politics, the arts, and biography. Passionate about reading and with an endless curiosity despite having quit high school, he’d recommend books to friends, buy them copies, and then swap notes. He was especially interested in the history of our country and of other nations, and could remember entire tracts of things he’d read, often quoting them verbatim. He also completed crosswords—the hard ones—quickly and in ink.
Between chapters and clues, we’d talk while others swam or sunbathed. Frank quizzed me closely about my years with Zeppo, and I admitted how sterile things had become between us. In return, he opened up in a way that surprised and pleased me. He spoke of the emptiness he felt a year after retiring and how difficult he was finding it to adjust to a life of leisure. He’d had more than thirty thousand letters from fans the world over urging him to return to the stage. He even received one from the man whose voice had first inspired him to sing and with whom he’d starred in High Society with Grace Kelly. Bing Crosby wrote, “I can’t believe you’re going to remain supine for long. You’re at the peak of your form and you still have so much to give.” When Frank quoted me letters like that, I wondered if he was reconsidering his decision or privately dreading a future without performing.
As for my future, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Often in the days leading up to the end of our time together in that hopelessly idyllic setting, I wanted to ask, “Is this it, Frank? What happens after Monaco?” but I didn’t dare. I was too afraid of the answer. This was Frank Sinatra, after all. Women the world over fell at his feet. He had the pick of them all, young and old, so why would he choose the wife of an old friend living in the same small town? I had to be realistic. This was a summer romance, and when the vacation ended, it would almost certainly end too. It wasn’t as if I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him anyway. There was way too much baggage with FS—his fame, his previous women, his hell-raising reputation, not to mention his mercurial nature. There were too many strange characters around him all the time, and I didn’t like that either. Zeppo may have been night to Frank’s day in terms of excitement, but at least he understood the importance of time spent alone.
When Monaco ended, Frank would undoubtedly move on to the next town, the next party, the next country, the next girl. That was all he knew. He already had plans to fly to Portugal to visit Spiro Agnew and his wife. There was an American presidential campaign going on, and Frank would offer every support to his friend, even though they didn’t share the same political stance. There would almost certainly be a woman or two in Agnew’s party who, I was sure, would receive the same sort of flattery and attention I’d been getting. I accepted that and, strangely, didn’t feel jealous. Everything would go back to just as it had always been, for Frank and for me.
By the time he squeezed my arm and kissed my cheek as he made his long round of farewells at the beach club, I’d resigned myself to the fact that our Mediterranean love affair was just that—a fleeting, wonderful thing. “Take care of yourself, Barbara,” he told me with a smile, and I assured him I would, happy that I’d at least have my memories to feed on.
SEVEN
Frank with an armful of roses he gathered from
the stage for me.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
Where the Air Is Rarefied
Picking up the threads of my Palm Springs life after Europe was far harder than I’d imagined. Whereas previously I’d been complacent about my marriage and resolved never to divorce Zeppo however difficult things became, I now found myself beset by secret yearning. In my determination to remain Mrs. Barbara Marx, I hadn’t counted on one Francis Albert.
Then Frank flew back into town and, within days, made it clear that he wanted us to pick up where we’d left off, which really set the cat among the pigeons. I was flattered but refused to meet him secretly. Palm Springs was too small, and everybody knew everybody else’s business. What if Zeppo found out? And how long was my fling with Frank likely to last? I couldn’t risk everything for what might turn out to be just another of his fleeting romances. If Zeppo threw me out, the only place I could go was the house I’d bought for my parents. I could have done it (and gone back to work if I’d needed to), but after years of not earning a living, it would have been that much harder. Bobby had gone to the Sorbonne as he’d hoped, and it would cost money to keep him in Paris. He’d spent some time in Monaco and a summer with his father in Rome. He’d even helped Bob make a movie called Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, in which Bobby, his grandmother, and his father all had minor roles. The film bombed, of course, which meant that Bob would never be able to help with his son’s education, or anything else for that matter.
The idea of living with my parents held little appeal. My father wasn’t in the best of health, and my mother was still complaining about him even though they remained locked in their love-hate relationship to the exclusion of everyone else. When she found out that my marriage to Zeppo was in trouble, she was furious and warned me not to succumb to the Sinatra charm. That was until one day when Frank telephoned her house to speak to me. She picked up the phone, and Frank, mistaking her for me, said something romantic and sexy. I was standing right next to her and watched as she melted. “Oh, my God! That voice alone could send a girl!” she said as she handed me the receiver in a daze.
Frank never stopped pursuing me, and whenever we saw each other, he’d try to get me on my own. He’d walk away from me singing “If It Takes Forever I Will Wait for You” or some other tune that I knew was intended for me. He was a great actor and a great singer, so he knew exactly how to tug at the heartstrings. He was so romantic, but I still held him at arm’s length and carried on my unmerry way. One night Pat DiCicco, a friend of Frank’s, cornered me. “How does it feel to have three men in love with you at the same party?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
He reeled off the names—Zeppo, someone else I can’t recall, and Frank. I shook my head and laughed, but what he’d said about Frank struck a chord.
Zeppo and I were still living in the same house, although not the same bedroom. We put up a good front and went out together as husband and wife, visiting our usual haunts. In spite of the fact that Frank and I weren’t seeing each other (or perhaps because we weren’t), there was still a constant frisson between us. Even sitting next to hi
m made me jittery. When Zeppo began to pick up on that sexual tension, he became irrationally jealous even though he was far from faithful. I suppose the fact that he thought I might be falling for Frank Sinatra was finally something to be jealous about.
Whenever Zeppo flipped out about Frank, I neither denied nor confirmed anything. After all, I hadn’t done anything wrong since Monaco. Eventually, Zeppo drove himself crazy and announced abruptly, “I can’t take this anymore, Barbara! I think we should separate.”
“I think that’s a wise decision,” I replied cautiously. “How do you want to do this?”
“Damn it, I’ll give you a divorce,” he said as if that was what I’d been asking for all along.
Ironically, having never paid much attention to Bobby when he was a kid, Zeppo began to take him to Tamarisk for lunch whenever he was home from school. In his stepson’s company, he’d get loaded and start acting out. I’d hear it from other people in the club, never from my loyal son. It was an increasingly uncomfortable situation for us all, and I knew that, as soon as our divorce was negotiated, I’d have to move out. I just didn’t know where I should go.
Eden Marx, Groucho’s third wife, owned a small house right near the golf course off Tamarisk that she wanted to sell. It would be perfect for me, but unsure what I’d be able to afford, I hesitated in making an offer. To my surprise, Frank stepped in and bought it. “It’s a good investment,” he told me with a shrug. Even though the house was his, Mr. Generous put it in my name and had his lawyer hand me the deed. By then everyone knew that Zeppo and I were divorcing, so I accepted Frank’s offer, packed my bags, and moved out of my marital home. My friend Bee Korshak helped me move in, and as we sat eating baloney sandwiches, surrounded by boxes and dirt, a delivery arrived from Frank. It was a case of Château Lafite. We washed down our everyday fare with wine worth hundreds of dollars a bottle.
Although I’d loved Zeppo in the beginning and had truly wanted our marriage to work, I didn’t feel sad about leaving him at that point, because I knew that it was his behavior, not mine, that was to blame. If he hadn’t been so unfaithful, if he’d been the stepfather Bobby deserved, if he’d been less tight with money and more generous with his attentions, then we might have remained married until the day he died.
From the moment I left Zeppo, Frank and I officially became a couple and I his constant companion. A few weeks later he took me as his guest to the party of the year in Palm Springs—the prestigious New Year’s Eve affair at the home of his friend Walter Annenberg, American ambassador to the United Kingdom. Walter, who was also a media magnate and philanthropist, told me I was the “best thing in the world for Frank.” He added, “If that idiot ever sees sense and asks you to marry him, you must have your wedding here at Sunnylands.” That was some offer—Sunnylands was the premiere estate in Palm Springs, a vast acreage of palm oasis and a beautiful house filled with the most incredible art. Even with the support of such high-profile friends as the Annenbergs, eyebrows were raised at first about Frank dating me, but people soon grew accustomed to seeing us together and the scandal began to settle down. There were naysayers, of course, but our real friends knew we were great for each other.
There was only one person who dared to express his disapproval publicly—Groucho Marx. He came up to us at a charity event one day and said to Frank, “Why don’t you let Barbara go? You don’t want her. Let her go back to Zeppo.” Everyone knew Frank had a trigger temper, but Groucho was a fearless octogenarian. Fortunately, Frank chose not to respond and I didn’t say a word either, so dear old Groucho repeated his statement before going off with that funny little walk of his. I was both astonished at his nerve and touched that he was still so protective of his little brother Zep. It was one of the last times I ever saw Groucho alive.
Not surprisingly, I was a little uncomfortable staying on in Palm Springs while the divorce was being finalized. People take sides when a marriage breaks up, and some of the friends I’d made through Zeppo fell away for a while out of loyalty to him. Danny Kaye was probably the one who showed his feelings most obviously. His enmity was understandable, but it still hurt me.
Since his retirement, Frank had kept himself busy with painting, golf, reading, and crosswords. He still traveled a lot, picking up awards here and there as well as visiting friends, but he needed more to occupy his mind. A model railway enthusiast, he’d had a special train room built at the Compound for his two hundred or so trains, replicating the layout of the famous Lionel showroom in New York. His museum-quality setting featured yards of tracks on two levels amid scenery of mountains, factories, houses, and bridges as well as a miniature replica of Hoboken. It also had an old Western town, a billboard announcing one of his sellout concerts, and a New Orleans riverboat. From the ceiling hung replicas of all the planes he’d ever owned. In the wood-paneled room built as an extension of an old railroad caboose, he played with his favorite locomotive—the high-speed Japanese one he’d traveled on several times. On the wall were hung all sorts of station signs and slogans, including his favorite, which said: HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS.
Once he was in that room, Frank was a child again, the same little boy who’d pressed his nose against the glass of the Lionel model train store. His mother, Dolly, had pawned her fox fur to buy him his first set, a sacrifice he never forgot. In his special room that took him back to those days, he wore a bright red engineer’s hat with a visor and blew a whistle while the sounds of trains and engines played. He loved it, and so did his friends, who would happily don hats and blow whistles too. Many of them bought him new or unusual trains as gifts, happy to find something to give the man who had everything. He had a solid gold one with his initials set in diamonds and rubies, which was a present from one of the Vegas hotels; a locomotive that was a gift from the Vatican; and a crystal version of the train that inspired Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Whenever his electrician came by to help Frank fix any problems with the track, the two of them would spend hours together “testing” the entire system. I’d pop my head around the door sometimes just to watch Frank, happy to see him so playful and animated, a glass of Daniel’s in his hand.
Model trains were going to hold Frank Sinatra’s attention for only so long, however, and his restlessness soon kicked in again. Turning his attention to politics, and with the encouragement of his friend the California governor Ronald Reagan, he made the surprise decision after years registered as a Democrat to change his wavering allegiance. He publicly backed the Republican Richard Nixon instead of Senator George McGovern for president. As he said at the time, it was about the man, not the party anymore. No one could believe it at first; the news was that shocking. Frank Sinatra—Jack Kennedy’s most famous supporter—a Republican? I couldn’t believe it either; even though Spiro Agnew was such a good friend of Frank’s and Frank had already endorsed Reagan for governor, this seemed such a major shift. But the Kennedys were long gone, and Frank was in the mood for change. He also had a secret ambition to become U.S. ambassador to Italy and was promised that he might be considered for the position, although it never worked out. In spite of that, his Sicilian-bred loyalty to Nixon and to his friend Spiro was to prove lifelong. Even when they both eventually fell from grace, he never deserted them like so many of their friends did. As Frank said, “Everyone makes mistakes—even presidents.”
When Frank was invited to Washington in January 1973 to help organize Nixon’s inaugural gala, he asked me if I’d like to accompany him. I jumped at the chance, happy to leave Palm Springs and the controversy about my private life. Zeppo had hired some top-flight lawyers (including Greg Bautzer) to fight me over our divorce settlement, and as a stalwart of the Jewish and golfing communities, he had a lot of people on his side. What I didn’t know was that as I flew east from one tricky situation, I was flying straight into another.
Frank’s dislike of journalists stemmed from, I think, the forties, when he and his first wife, Nancy, were having problems and he felt that the g
ossip columnists unduly hounded him. His mistrust was further inflamed by what some reporters said about him when he was rallying support for Kennedy, and the allegations they never stopped making about his involvement with the Mob. From the moment we arrived in Washington, Frank and I were closely followed by the press and photographed at every opportunity. Just as we were leaving a political party at the Jockey Club in the Fairfax Hotel, a female reporter stepped forward to ask me about my marital status. I tried to brush off the woman I learned later was Maxine Cheshire, the society columnist for the Washington Post, but she wouldn’t give up. Frank politely asked her to leave us alone. Finally, she said, “You are still married to Zeppo, aren’t you, Mrs. Marx?” Embarrassed, I didn’t know how to respond.
I could tell from Frank’s expression that the night would end badly. He grabbed the arm of my coat and said, “Let’s go, baby.” But being Frank, he couldn’t just let it go, so he let rip, calling Ms. Cheshire a “two-dollar broad” and something worse. Then, for good measure, he added that she wasn’t worth as much as two dollars and stuffed a single dollar bill into her glass. As he walked me out, I thought, Oh, my God! but I have to admit there was also something exciting about what Frank had done. I’d never felt quite so defended in my life. The incident reminded me of a similar event years earlier in Ciro’s restaurant on the Strip when Frank walked in with Judy Garland. When he heard someone ask, “Who’s the broad?” Frank was so indignant on Judy’s behalf that he pushed the man into the restaurant phone booth, punched him, and slid the door shut. Then, as an afterthought, he opened the door and said, “The lady’s name is Garland. Spelled G-A-R-L-A-N-D.” That was so typical of Frank. To hit the guy was one thing, but to give the event a comic punch line turned it into a scene from a movie. As I was fast coming to appreciate, Frank’s life was like a series of little movies.
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