Lady Blue Eyes

by Barbara Sinatra

  Swifty, who was such a feisty little guy, pulled himself up to his full four feet whatever and said, “Yeah? Well, come on then, I’ll take you on, Francis. Let’s go outside!”

  That was all Frank needed—something to make him laugh. He slapped Swifty on the back and said, “Swifty, you’re probably the only one I could still beat.” Everyone cracked up.

  In Palm Springs, we usually dined at the Tamarisk Country Club, Dominick’s, or Ruby’s Dunes. For my parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary we threw a huge party at Tamarisk. It was amazing to me that they had stayed together so long, especially when they’d had such different dreams. My father could never have imagined when he was chopping meat at the butcher’s counter in Blakeley’s that he’d end up being toasted by Frank Sinatra at a Palm Springs country club one day. My mother, who never lost her Rochelle Hudson looks, was far better suited to the life she’d made for them in the desert.

  Sadly, toward the end my father had prostate cancer and other problems, but I hired staff to take care of him. Frank and I were in New York in 1989 when I got the call that his ninety-four years on this earth had come to an end. “I’ll be right there,” I told my mother, long distance. Replacing the receiver, I told Frank, “My father died. You stay and work and I’ll fly home on my own.”

  To my surprise, he said, “No way, sweetheart! I’ll cancel. I’m coming back with you,” and he did. I was amazed and touched that he did that, but then he’d always gotten along extremely well with Willis Blakeley and was sad that he’d gone. The funeral was small and private, and Bobby stood up and said a few nice words about his grandfather, which I truly appreciated. As I watched my father buried in the same cemetery as Frank’s parents, I felt surprisingly little. My father had never been a very demonstrative man, and he didn’t like too much fuss. I loved him, but I’d been closer to Pa Hillis than I had ever been to him. I knew that I’d helped give him and my mother a good, long, and happy life. They had a comfortable home, all that they could possibly need, and the kind of life they might never otherwise have had. Although they never said, I think they must have appreciated that.

  My mother, who was twelve years younger than my father, handled his death very well. His last few years had been rough on her, giving her almost no life at all. I’d take her to lunch at the Racquet Club, but despite always complaining that she wanted to get out more, she never liked to leave him for too long. After he died, I told her, “Mother, I have a wonderful life ahead planned for you. You’re going to have a lot of fun.” I sent her on a cruise with a girlfriend, but by the time she got back she was exhausted. It was too late for her, and she didn’t last long after that. She had emphysema and congestive heart failure, but she never stopped smoking and we had the worst fights about it. Then she started to get sick, and I told her, “Mother, you can’t get sick because you still have so many more places to go.”

  Frank and I were abroad when I got the word that she was in the hospital, so we flew home and went to see her, but she could barely breathe. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen. A couple of days later she was gone. As we buried her in a favorite red dress, true to her code, I reflected on how much of an influence she had been on my life. The woman for whom living in Bosworth, Missouri, was never going to be enough not only got herself out, but got me out too. If she hadn’t, I’ve often thought, how different my life could have been. Without a doubt, Irene Blakeley shaped my destiny.

  With people dropping like flies all around us and Frank in his mid-seventies, he showed no signs of taking it easy. In the early 1990s he performed almost every week. Whenever he felt the urge, the singer his band and crew affectionately referred to as the Old Man would pack up, take off, and hit the road.

  In July 1990, we celebrated our fourteenth wedding anniversary in London, marking the longest time either of us had been married and the start of a new and even more challenging phase in our lives. Then we flew up to Scandinavia before Frank returned to the States to honor demanding new contracts he’d signed to play at casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City. He continued to do political benefits and fund-raisers, this time for George H. W. Bush (his fourteenth president), when he wasn’t promoting his new line of pasta sauces. Frank had done commercials for everything from cars to booze, and as long as he didn’t have to hang around on the set too long, he enjoyed the experience. Commercials certainly beat the weeks it took to make a movie and were often equally well paid. George Schlatter was usually the poor guy who got roped into making Frank’s commercials—not least because everyone knew that he was one of the few who could handle Frank. But even George had his moments.

  When Frank was hired to do a commercial for the Sands Hotel in Atlantic City, he asked George to go with him to make sure everything ran smoothly. The day before the shoot, Horhay asked the hotel what the commercial would be. They replied, “You tell us. We were told you’d come up with something.” George almost passed out. It’s bad enough if you’re prepared with Frank, but if you’re not, you’re in trouble, because he looks at you with those two eyes that go right through you, and then he walks away.

  George came up to our suite on the morning of the shoot and was clearly agitated, even more so when I told him that Frank had woken in a combative mood. George went away but came back twenty minutes later wearing a hard hat and tool belt and carrying a megaphone. He strode into the bathroom where Frank was shaving and yelled through the loudspeaker: “Now hear this! Would all singers be ready for the shoot in thirty minutes?”

  Frank almost had a heart attack. “Jeez, George! What in the hell?” he demanded. Once he’d calmed down, he asked, “So what are we doing?”

  George replied, “You don’t need to know. Just put on your tux, get down to reception, and get in the limo.” Frank was still in a bad mood as they reached the hotel. When he saw the cameras rolling, he didn’t know what was expected of him, and he was uncomfortable. The car stopped and the doorman opened the door on the wrong side, so Frank had to slide across to get out. “What’s the matter with you?” he growled. There’d be no tip that day. Then the other doorman went to the hotel’s front door, opened it, but walked in ahead of Frank, who turned to George and frowned. “What kind of place is this?”

  George assured him everything would be all right. Just then, two little old ladies approached Frank and asked for a photograph. Mellowing, he smiled and replied, “Sure,” whereupon they handed him their camera and posed, together. Frank wondered what on earth was going on. Before he had time to figure it out, a chorus girl ran up and asked, “Mr. Sinatra, one autograph please?” He shrugged and said okay, so she signed her name on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Standing there staring down at her autograph, he finally got it. This was the commercial. He was already in it, and his reaction was what would make it great. Winking at George, he proceeded on into the hotel and maintained the ruse as the croupier at the craps table handed the dice to the person next to him. Frank tried not to laugh when he was left waiting at the dining room door while others were seated first. Once he realized it was funny, he was completely on board.

  George didn’t always get such compliance, though. One time in L.A., when he and Frank were doing a commercial for All Nippon Airways, there was trouble before the shooting even began. When George went to meet the men in charge, who claimed not to speak any English, he was told through an interpreter that the shooting would take three days. “Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head. “You’ll get forty-five minutes.”

  Those men learned to speak English real fast. “Forty-five minutes!” they cried. “Do you know how much we’re paying him?” George assured them that, by using a stand-in, he’d have everything set up so that Frank could just walk on the set and do his part. George arranged everything perfectly, right down to Frank and me being escorted onto the set by some geisha girls. The minute Frank walked in, though, he asked, “Can I go home now?” He changed into his tuxedo and then he said, “Are we almost finished?”

  George had some
stills taken and then began shooting the commercial as Frank moved closer and closer to the exit. For several minutes, Frank and I had to sit side by side in two airline seats and look as if we were enjoying ourselves with a drink and a laugh. Finally my husband announced, “Okay, that’s it.”

  George told him, “I just need one more shot.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Frank, without this shot, there is no commercial.”

  “Do you have a problem with your hearing? You’re not going to get it.”

  George squared up to Frank and said, “Francis, don’t make me hurt you.”

  Frank had to laugh. “What?”

  George repeated his threat, so Frank asked, “Would you hurt me, George?”

  “If I don’t get this shot, yes.”

  “Okay, let’s do it.” He did the shot, and then he walked off the set. George looked at his watch; the whole thing had taken precisely forty-five minutes. The commercial was a huge success and won awards, so they offered Frank a small fortune to make another one. He thought about it for a few days, and then he told George, “Well, okay, but this time I don’t want to hang around.”

  Frank grew a full beard for a while, and I didn’t like it at first, but we had Little Joe, known as the Hairdresser to the Stars, come in and trim it into shape. For his next commercial, Frank was going to have to shave it off, but he woke up the morning of the shoot and decided he didn’t want to. I called George and told him, “We have a problem. Frank doesn’t want to shave.”

  “But he has to!”

  “I’m sorry, George. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  Within half an hour there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find Little Joe, a towel over his arm, holding a cup of lather and a straight razor. “Mr. Schlatter sent me,” he said. I directed him to Frank’s bathroom, where he told my husband, “Mr. Sinatra, Mr. Schlatter says I have to either shave you or cut you.”

  Frank laughed and replied, “That’s pretty funny. Come on in.” But when Frank emerged a few minutes later, he’d had Little Joe shave only one half of his face.

  SIXTEEN

  Taking a breather between tennis matches.

  COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

  Stormy Weather

  On December 12, 1990, Frank celebrated his seventy-fifth birthday by performing at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. After the show, I threw a party for him at the Waldorf hotel for a hundred people and we brought people in from all over. It was quite the affair.

  Rising to my feet, I quelled my nerves about giving speeches and made a toast. Picking up my glass of champagne, I said, “Frank, darling, to the world you’ve given your music, but to me you have given the world.” I meant every word, and he knew it. Our love for each other was really heartfelt, never more so than as we approached old age together.

  To help celebrate his birthday and for what was dubbed his Diamond Jubilee Tour, Frank went back on the road supported by the husband-and-wife duo Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence. Liza joined us too on part of that tour. We had so many laughs with Steve and Eydie, who were not only great performers but good friends. Frank called Eydie “Loudie,” because she was so loud, but she and I became instant friends. Onstage, she and Steve became Frank’s support act in the true sense of the word. With his sight in both eyes affected by cataracts and his memory suffering the pitfalls of any man his age, he wasn’t able to remember every word of every song, nor could he always read from the teleprompters placed strategically around the stage. Whenever he missed a refrain, Eydie or Steve would gently prompt him or sing the words to remind him, and so the show would go on. Frank would often make a joke of his slipup, telling his audience, “You know the words. You sing it!” and they would.

  Some of the critics made mileage out of his occasional mistakes, but I doubt Frank’s fans noticed. They were just thrilled to be in his company and to hear him still able to hit those long notes effortlessly with a voice that only sounded richer than ever before. The fact that the man whose music they’d grown up with was growing old with them was just another reason to love him even more, especially because he was always so heartfelt when he told them, “Thank you for letting me sing for you.”

  The positive feedback Frank got from his fans counterbalanced a lot of the negativity about him. Mellowing in later life, he finally came to accept that some people would always say unkind things about him and he couldn’t do anything about it. His days of frenetic letter writing and heated meetings with lawyers to threaten legal action were over. He appreciated that most stars get unwanted attention, although he always said he probably attracted more than most because his name ended in a vowel. The Italian connection would dog him long after he’d cleared his name and reputation in congressional hearings and the unremarkable FBI files on him had been published. When he successfully applied for a gambling license (which he never used), because he knew doing so would finally give him a chance to clear his name, Frank was offered a character reference from Ronald Reagan, who called him “an honorable person, completely loyal and honest.” I thought it was both brave and loyal for Ron to do that. Kirk Douglas said something similar, and Greg Peck endorsed it with “Frank is one of the finest men and most trustworthy, truthful, and reliable men I have known.” None of that cut any ice with those who’d pigeonholed him as guilty by association with the Mob and refused to let it rest.

  Frank never denied knowing some wise guys, but he never actively sought them out. He’d grown up with a lot of them in the early days in New York, and a few were still hanging around, especially when I first came on the scene. I always felt that Jilly had much more of a connection with those guys anyway, and that Frank sometimes accepted them being around for Jilly’s sake. Nothing in my background had prepared me for people like that, but I took as I found and they were always very nice to me. That all stopped for a while when Jilly and Frank fell out. I have no idea what Jilly did to tick Frank off, but Frank refused to speak to his best friend for over a year, forcing Jilly to live and work elsewhere. I was sad for them both. Jilly had always been such a true friend to Frank, and he was very supportive of me. I knew it hurt both of them not to see each other, so I got them back together, which made them both a lot happier.

  Maybe I was naïve, but it always came as a surprise to me to know that some Mob figure or other had been trying to get closer to Frank, usually because they wanted him to play one of their clubs. I almost fainted when Sidney Korshak told me once, “Did you know that Sam Giancana was planning to move in with you for a while?”

  “What?”

  Sam Giancana was the boss of the so-called Chicago Outfit. I’d heard his name mentioned all around me, but I’d never met him. Some people said he was nice and some said he was not so nice. “Why on earth would he want to move in with us?” I asked.

  Sidney explained that Giancana had some legal problem and was due in court, but he hoped to lie low in Palm Springs instead.

  “Why with us, though? We’d never dream of inviting him!”

  “That wouldn’t make any difference,” Sidney replied. “People like Sam Giancana don’t wait around for an invite.”

  “Over my dead body!” I replied (and it may well have been). Fortunately for us both, Mr. Giancana’s plans changed.

  I’d had my first brush with the Mob shortly after Frank and I were married, and I didn’t relish the next. We were in New York and due to have dinner with the former mayor Bob Wagner and several notable New Yorkers when Eliot Weisman and Jilly told me that Frank had been asked if he could stop in somewhere on the way to introduce me to “the Harvard boys.” I told them curtly, “No, thank you.”

  Eliot’s face fell. “Well, won’t you just go by and shake hands with them?” he asked. “They only want to meet you and pay their respects to Frank’s new wife, that’s all.”

  “I don’t want to.” As far as I was concerned, that was the end of that.

  We went for the dinner as planned and had a lovel
y evening. As we were leaving the restaurant, we walked past the bar, and there was Jilly waiting with a group of men all huddled together waiting to pay their respects. Because I wouldn’t go to them, they’d come to me, it seemed. Frank gave me a look and nudged me toward the bar. Jilly flashed me his puppy-dog eyes. The expressions on their faces were like those of hopeful children. I have no idea to this day who those men were, but Frank explained that they controlled venues that he (and many others) had played. They wanted proximity to Frank; they longed to be identified with him. “If I’m working some joint they own and they want their picture taken with me, I let them take it, but that doesn’t mean they own me too,” he said. With all eyes on me, I finally relented and allowed Frank to introduce me. I really couldn’t get out of it with them standing right there, so I shook their hands and said hello, and they were all very respectful and courteous. As we left the bar, I told Eliot and Jilly never to do that to me again, and to their credit, they never did.

  Far more irritating than the men in ill-fitting suits were the paparazzi. We’d been chased by them since our first summer in Monaco, and their hunger for us never seemed to be sated. In Europe, especially, the photographers were overly zealous. Eydie Gorme and I were in Rome once, and the minute we left our hotel the photographers followed us closely, snapping away. Goodness alone knows who’d want to see a photo of me buying a new purse.

  Being tall, I walk very fast, and Eydie tried to keep up with me, but she’s much shorter than I am and her little legs couldn’t carry her. Finally, she cried, “Barbara! I can’t go any farther!” and she stopped at a café to sit down. Waving good-bye, I made my way back to the hotel. When she eventually joined me, panting, I took pity on her and fixed her one of my famous Bloody Marys, which I make with tequila (not vodka), horseradish, Lea & Perrins sauce, Tabasco, lemon, and lime. Eydie drank a couple and then flopped on the couch.