One of the nicest consequences of the children’s center experience for Frank was that it got him interested in painting again after several years of not lifting a brush. After he’d attended the art auction and seen what his friends were up to in their studios, he went home, put on some opera, and picked up his palette. I never thought I’d relish the smell of turpentine again.
From that day, he was on a roll. He invited over a friend who ran an art gallery in Palm Springs, and the two of them painted together every day for two months. He completed several large canvases and donated them to the children’s center. He had some of his oil paintings of New York scenes copied onto silk ties to be sold in the menswear department of Bloomingdale’s as the Frank Sinatra Neckwear Collection, which raised even more money. Each time one of our parties ended and everyone had gone home or to bed, Frank would wander to his studio at two or three in the morning and paint. He was fascinated by it.
As with his singing, Frank never had any proper art training; he just picked up a few tips along the way. There were no artists in his family; his was a natural talent. My theory is that if you’re talented in one area of the arts, then you can do almost anything. Great singers can act. They can often paint and dance; they are naturally artistic. Frank even co-wrote a few songs in the fifties, and he wrote poetry, mostly private things to me, but some of it was really rather good.
His art was mostly abstract in style and often Cubist, with precise blocks of bright colors, carefully delineated. After visiting Japan, he began to copy some of the flowing Oriental styles, daubing black onto red to depict flowers, birds, or symbols. He was, of course, Charlie Neat when it came to his painting; there was rarely any mess. He only ever had one “Jackson Pollock moment” that I knew of. I walked into his studio one day and found him reaching into pots of paint with his fingers and hurling it at the canvas. I don’t think he even knew I was there. Watching him lost in a world of his own creativity, I knew that art was another kind of therapy for him.
Frank was also very particular about which artists he liked. One Brooklyn-born artist he admired, Walt Kuhn, specialized in painting circus and vaudeville entertainers. Frank painted clowns too—he called them self-portraits because I think he identified with the masks they wear—but his clowns were never sad or evil looking. He bought two paintings of Kuhn’s clowns, but I didn’t share his enthusiasm for them because their eyes seemed to follow me around the room. I finally told him, “You know, Frank, I don’t like mean art. In fact, I don’t like mean anything, and I really don’t care to live with those clowns anymore, particularly the one in the television room, which takes up the whole wall.” He didn’t say anything, but within a day or two they were gone. I saw them for sale in an art catalog a few weeks later. Two gentle landscapes appeared instead, hung in their place.
Frank loved the Impressionists and would sometimes take me to visit their homes or museums when we were in Europe. He also liked artists like Salvador Dalí, who came backstage one night to give us a sketch he’d secretly done of us dining by ourselves. Irving Berlin called Jimmy Van Heusen one day to ask for a picture of me. I sent a photograph, and Irving drew a rather sweet penguin holding a microphone in which the eye of the penguin was cut out and my photo was inserted. It was very interesting. Apparently, Irving loved penguins and drew them all the time. I also have a sketch of us that LeRoy Neiman did, and another by Tony Bennett.
A lot of people painted Frank, but the only portrait he ever commissioned was by an artist he admired named Paul Lewis Clemens, who came from Wisconsin. Paul did a crayon sketch of Frank first. He was sitting on a couch at home, reading a newspaper, completely relaxed. Then Paul completed it in oil, substituting a film script for the newspaper. It captures Frank perfectly in a contemplative mood and is my favorite painting of him, bar none. Frank then asked Paul to paint me, but I was never as crazy about the finished product.
Frank sometimes commissioned paintings of others he cared for and gifted them to the subjects afterward, although he did keep a few for himself. Not long after we were married, I decided to do something about a painting of Mia Farrow that hung in the master bedroom. Digging through my old photographs, I came across a large black and white poster of Zeppo, had it framed, and placed it prominently on my nightstand. “What the hell’s that?” Frank asked when he saw it.
“Oh,” I replied innocently, “I thought this was a nostalgia room.” Frank said nothing, but Mia’s portrait vanished the following day. And so, of course, did Zeppo’s.
Art was a bond Frank had with many people, even the most surprising. When Bono came to our Palm Springs home, I worried that the forty-five-year age difference between him and Frank, as well as their different styles and musical tastes, might not make for a perfect match. We’d first met the lead singer of U2 when Frank was doing a show in Dublin a year or so before. Everyone at the theater was very excited when they discovered that the members of U2 were in the audience, and the promoters asked Frank to meet them backstage. Frank wasn’t pleased and asked, “Well, who the hell are they?” But when the band came to meet him, they completely won him over. They were charming, and I especially liked the Edge, who had a great sense of humor. An hour into Frank’s set, he told the audience, “Now I’d like to introduce someone everyone’s been talking about.” He looked down at Bono and added, “I’m told that you’re very important and you make a lot of money, so will you please stand up and take a bow?” Bono stood up, and there was applause, but just as he was about to sit down, Frank added, “You know, since you’re so important and you make so much money, why don’t you invest some in your wardrobe?”
I needn’t have been concerned about their second encounter, at the Compound. Bono came to Palm Springs to appear in a cameo role in the video of Frank’s song “L.A. Is My Lady.” To Frank’s delight, he discovered that Bono was a fellow artist. Thus began a special friendship. Those two singers sat side by side at our bar talking animatedly about the virtues of oil over acrylic, the interpretation of abstract art, and the use of color. It was a joy to watch. Later, Frank took Bono to his studio and showed him a painting he’d just finished, a vivid yellow swirl of concentric circles. Bono loved it and asked if it had a name. “It’s entitled Jazz and it’s yours,” Frank said, taking it off the easel and handing it to him. Bono was thrilled. Later during his stay, in a Mexican restaurant where we all drank margaritas, Bono performed a ballad he’d written for Frank called “Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad.” Part of the lyrics went:
I’m just a singer, some say a sinner
Rolling the dice, not always a winner
You say I’ve been lucky, well hell I’ve made my own.
Frank thought that was just great.
The following year, when Frank was nominated for a Grammy Legend Award (one of the highest honors the recording industry offers any artist), the organizers asked Bono to present it to him. Flying to New York from Dublin, Frank’s new best friend penned his speech, which still, to my mind, sums up my husband the best. Bono stood almost shyly on the stage of Radio City Music Hall and told the audience, “Frank never did like rock ’n’ roll. And he’s not crazy about guys wearing earrings either. But he doesn’t hold it against me in any way.” He went on,
Rock ’n’ roll people love Frank Sinatra because Frank Sinatra has got what we want—swagger and attitude. He’s big on attitude; serious attitude; bad attitude … Rock ’n’ roll plays at being tough, but this guy, he’s the boss; the boss of bosses, the man, the big bang of pop.
Who’s this guy that every city in America wants to claim as their own? This painter who lives in the desert; this first-rate, first-take actor; this singer who makes other men poets; boxing clever with every word, talking like America—fast, straight up, in headlines, coming through with the big shtick, the aside, the quiet compliment. Good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. You know his story because it’s your story … His voice [is] as tight as a fist, opening at the end of a bar, not on the beat, over it,
playing with it … where he reveals himself. His songs are his home, and he lets you in. To sing like that you’ve gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance, you’ve gotta have had your heart broken. People say Frank hardly talks to the press. They wanna know how he is and what’s on his mind—but he is telling his story through his songs … private thoughts on a public address system. Generous.
This is the conundrum of Frank Sinatra—left and right brain hardly talking, boxer and painter, actor and singer, lover and father, bandman and loner, troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be putty in Barbara’s hands, but I’m not going to mess with him. Are you?
With a final flourish, Bono announced, “Welcome the king of New York City and the living proof that God is a Catholic.”
As Frank took rather shakily to the stage that night, I could tell he was deeply moved by what had been said and by the roar of the crowd. He was overwhelmed by the award itself and the kindness of a young man who also found solace in working a canvas. He spoke of his love for me and for New York and told the audience of his sadness at not being asked to perform. Pulling himself together and soaking up the adulation, Frank returned to form, quipping, “This is more applause than Dean had his whole life.”
FIFTEEN
Out celebrating with Frank.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
That’s Life
By the time Frank cracked that joke, dear Dean Martin was in the last year of his life and Sammy Davis, Jr., had already left us. Ava Gardner had died along with many of our closest friends. As Frank once said rather bitterly, “You like people and then they die on you.” The eighties and nineties were especially hard on the man who felt like the only one left standing at the bar.
It was while he was standing at Sydney Chaplin’s bar on Frank Sinatra Drive in the late 1980s that something bittersweet happened to Frank in the early hours of one particular morning. He was with Tom Dreesen, the young comedian who’d been opening for him for many years. The bar was closing, the bartender was washing glasses, and Frank had his back to the door. Tom looked over his shoulder and saw a station wagon with two women pull up outside. One ran in and asked the barman, “Excuse me, do you have a jukebox in here?” The barman shook his head.
Frank turned around and looked the young woman right in the face. He told her, “I’ll sing for you.”
“No thanks,” she said.
As Frank watched her go, Tom saw his expression and said, “She obviously didn’t recognize you.”
Frank turned back to the bar and took a swig from his drink. “Maybe she did,” he replied.
The final years in the lives of Dean and Sammy weren’t easy to witness. Ever since Frank had seen the legendary Billie Holiday throw her talent and ultimately her life away, he was totally antidrugs and bawled out anyone stupid enough to take them. If his memories of Billie’s decline weren’t enough, the research he did to play an addict in The Man with the Golden Arm turned him off drugs for life. He said kids going cold turkey was one of the most frightening things he’d ever seen. “Jack Daniel’s does it for me,” he claimed. “That’s all I need.”
He and Dean had always enjoyed a drink together, although neither of them drank onstage in those days—that was just an act. Even the drinks trolley they wheeled on during their Rat Pack shows was fake; the vodka bottles were filled with water and the whiskey bottles with apple juice. The real stuff came out only after the show, and although Frank joked, “I spill more than Dean drinks,” I sometimes saw the two of them in a stupor. Dean was such a sweet guy and so handsome. He worked all the time so he wasn’t the greatest father, but then I think Frank wasn’t either, although both would have killed for their kids. They carried a lot of Catholic guilt about being absent parents, especially Dean, who had so many kids to feel guilty about. One night he invited Frank home to dinner after a show, but when they got there his wife, Jeanne, was sitting at the table with four children from Dean’s first marriage and three from his second, so every chair was taken. Dean turned to Frank and said, “Well, I guess I fucked myself out of a seat.”
As Dean got older and wasn’t feeling well much of the time, he began to drink more, sitting home alone watching Jeopardy! and old Westerns on TV. He had a bad back from years of playing golf and terrible problems with his teeth from all the sugar he consumed—which was a lot. To ease both conditions, he began to rely on pain pills coupled with booze, and the combination took its toll. Around that time, he also started to get sensitive about his age. I was sitting next to Perry Como one night at a birthday dinner for Dean in Washington, D.C., when Perry asked the birthday boy how old he was. Dean said a number and Perry looked surprised. Leaning over, he said to me in a stage whisper, “I can remember when we were all the same age.”
Then when Dean’s son Dino was killed, in March 1987, he went into a terminal decline. Dino, a thirty-five-year-old military pilot, died when his Phantom fighter jet crashed into Mount San Gorgonio during a blizzard. Frank had mentored a teenage Dino during a successful spell as a pop musician, and we’d both been guests at his wedding to the ice skater Dorothy Hamill, so it felt personal to us too. Just as when Dolly had disappeared in the same area, there were several days when no one knew what had happened and no wreckage could be found. Then came the news—the shocking realization that a loved one had died, and in a horrible way. Dean sank into the deepest despair. At the age of seventy, he closed in on himself; some would say he never recovered. Frank called Dean frequently to ask if there was anything he could do, but he couldn’t reach his friend.
With Sammy on the rails because of spiraling debts, Frank finally decided to do something that could help his two pals and proposed a reunion of the three of them doing what they did best. Frank hoped that the twenty-nine-date Together Again Tour, launched at Chasen’s restaurant in December of that year, would pay off Sammy’s crippling tax bills, distract Dean from his grief, and give Frank a chance to have some fun again with the two men he considered brothers. From the start, though, there were problems. Interrupting Frank at the press announcement, Dean asked, “Why don’t we find a good bar instead?”
After lackluster gigs in Oakland, Vancouver, and Seattle, Frank accused Dean of not “stepping up.” It was the only time I ever saw Frank being unkind to his “pallie,” although I think it was tough love. What he was really upset about was that it was no longer like the good old days. By the time they got to Chicago, Frank told Dean, “You’re just not holding up your part of the show, Dag!” He then complained to Dean’s manager, Mort Viner.
“Screw this!” Dean said, and went to his room. Late that night he called Kirk Kerkorian and asked him to send a plane. Then he packed up and walked off the tour. We woke in the morning to find him gone. Claiming a flare-up from an established kidney problem, he flew home and admitted himself to a hospital. Before too long, though, Dean went back to what he knew and liked—performing solo in Vegas, where he told his audience, “Frank sent me a kidney. I don’t know whose it was.”
Frank was deeply disappointed in Dean but determined that the show should go on. He sat down with Sammy and their manager, Eliot Weisman, to discuss who they might get in to replace Dean. One of them said, “You know who would be great for this?” Someone else said, “I’m sure she’s too busy.” Nobody spoke her name, but they all knew who they were talking about—Liza Minnelli. Sammy told Frank, “Boy, with her between us onstage, that would be an event!”
“No, Sammy,” Frank said, “that would be the ultimate event.”
Fortunately, Liza jumped at the chance to fill in on what was launched at the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel as the Ultimate Event. Their sizzling show went on to tour twelve countries and play to over a million people in twenty-nine cities. In one month alone they went to Rotterdam, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Helsinki, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Vienna, Dublin, Milan, and Oslo. They broke box office records across the United States,
Japan, Australia, and Europe. The energy of Sammy and Liza was extraordinary. As Frank stood like a rock in the middle of the stage, singing and cracking jokes, the two of them danced and whirled all around him, performing their hearts out. Their onstage banter was a joy to witness, along with the individual versions of their signature tunes like “Cabaret,” “My Way,” and “The Candy Man.” Sammy did a terrific take on the Phantom of the Opera hit “The Music of the Night” by Andrew Lloyd Webber and a very funny Michael Jackson impersonation. Liza sang an extraordinarily moving love song that featured sign language, as well as a great number by Charles Aznavour, who came backstage once to meet everyone. Frank scratched himself all over as he sang “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” but then stopped joking for a heart-stopping rendition of “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” Their three-way rendition of “New York, New York” was surely the showstopper to end all. When Frank, Sammy, and Liza performed their entire routine for me at a benefit in aid of the children’s center, I knew nothing would ever top it.
Fortunately, George Schlatter recorded two Ultimate Event shows at the newly restored Fox Theatre in Detroit and his video became a bestseller. Not that George didn’t have his problems with the filming.
He had the whole thing set up perfectly. He knew what Frank would be doing and when, and he knew where Liza and Sammy would be. He made sure he knew exactly where I was sitting alongside Jolene, so that he could pan into the audience and get a shot of the two of us. On the first night, Henry Ford, Jr., showed up, and without thinking I told him, “You sit here.” I got up to give him my seat. George started filming and was looking all over for me. “Where the hell is she?” he cried, going berserk because I’d given my seat away. The next night he told us, “Wear exactly the same clothes, don’t move from those seats, and I’ll get the shot.” But when he looked through the lens, he knew the shot would never make the final cut. Sitting right behind us was the Mafia boss John Gotti, known as the Teflon Don, and George couldn’t get him out of the shot.
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