In New York, one particularly unfortunate scene unfolded, which Jilly later recounted to Tina. Apparently Frank and Barbara were in a restaurant with friends, Jilly included, and they were talking politics. Barbara said something that was—at least based on everyone’s reaction—misguided. Frank, who had a few cocktails in him, laid into her. “What the hell are you talking about?” he hollered at her. “You don’t got no opinion here. You just sit there. If I want to know what you think, I’ll ask you. Until then, you just sit there and keep your mouth shut.” Barbara did what she was told. When Jilly later told Tina this story, she couldn’t believe it. Yes, of course, she knew that her father could be combustible. What she couldn’t fathom was why a formidable woman like Barbara would put up with it. It made no sense to her. Rather than ingratiate her to Barbara, though, it actually made Tina a little more suspicious of her. In her mind, something just wasn’t right about it. What she didn’t realize was that Barbara was already learning to pick and choose her battles.
Laura Cruz, a former maid at the Sinatra home, recalled that Barbara also had a difficult time winning over Sinatra’s cooks, butlers, groundskeepers, laundresses, and others who worked at the estate. “She still had the condo, but since she stayed with Mr. Sinatra for the most part, she was unofficially the lady of the manor,” said Cruz. “She wanted fresh flowers every day; she wanted special foods; she wanted things to be nice for herself but also for Mr. Sinatra.
“For instance, Mr. Sinatra was satisfied with Italian food every night,” said Cruz. “Mrs. Marx was concerned about his health and sometimes wanted foods for him that were less fatty.”
One day, in the kitchen, Barbara had a discussion with the chef about his habit of putting ground beef into the spaghetti sauce. “I think Mr. Sinatra gets enough red meat in other areas of his diet, don’t you?” she asked. “Why does he have to have it in his spaghetti sauce too?”
“Because he likes it that way, madam,” said the cook, his tone surly. “With meat in it.”
“Well, I don’t know what to make of that,” Barbara remarked.
“Well, Mrs. Marx, it’s called Bolognese,” the chef declared. “Bo-log-nese.”
Barbara was insulted. “I may be new around here,” she said, her eyes flashing, “but if you think I’m a pushover, you are very wrong.” Taking the pot of spaghetti sauce off the range, she poured it into the sink. “I hope I have made myself clear,” she concluded. She then flicked on the garbage disposal to make certain all of the sauce was gone. In the process, much of it splashed on the kitchen counter. “Now, I have what I think is a very good idea,” Barbara said as she grabbed a towel from a rack and threw it at the chef. “Clean this mess up!”
After that incident, Barbara had a meeting with the staff in the living room. According to Laura Cruz, she hosted a tea with biscuits and scones for the chef, maids, gardeners, laundresses, and others who had never before enjoyed the luxury of actually being able to sit and socialize in the Sinatra living room. “All I expect from each of you,” Barbara said to the group of about twelve, “is simple respect. I promise that you will get the same treatment from me that I get from you, good or bad. Do we have an agreement?”
Everyone nodded.
“Now, please, have another cup,” she said as she went around the room, pouring tea for the servants.
“After that, she had everyone’s allegiance,” Laura Cruz said. “I thought, ‘This is a wonderful, smart woman.’ Our boss, Vine Joubert, was an instant fan.
“Mrs. Marx really took over the house and Mr. Sinatra’s life in many good ways,” continued Cruz. “She made sure he got his rest, for instance. One day, Mr. Rizzo came over early in the morning and Barbara kicked him out, telling him that Mr. Sinatra needed to sleep. When Mr. Sinatra woke up at about three, he was upset and they had a row. I heard every word. I couldn’t help it. They fought right in front of me in the living room.”
“Listen, you crazy broad,” Frank hollered at Barbara. “You don’t tell me who to see and who not to see.”
“I’m not trying to do that, Frank,” she said in her defense. “I’m just trying to say that you need your rest, and you’ll never get it with all these people hanging around here all the time. This place is like a bus station.”
“These are my friends,” Frank argued. “If I have to choose between you and them, I choose them!”
Barbara ran from the room, upset. “I’m only trying to help,” she said as she departed in tears. Frank turned to Laura Cruz and said, “Sorry you had to see that.” Then he poured himself a glass of Jack Daniel’s and said of Barbara, “If she puts up with me, she’s crazier than I am.”
A couple hours later, Barbara found a note stuck to the refrigerator door: “To My Girl—I have reconsidered. I CHOOSE YOU.” Frank signed it with a smiley face wearing a bow tie. Twenty minutes later, the two were lying out on the patio, drinking cocktails. As the sun set on the San Jacinto Mountains, they spoke softly and laughed together as if nothing had happened.
End of an Era
On the afternoon of June 20, 1975, Frank Sinatra awakened in his suite at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. As usual, his opening-night performance had been a great success. That afternoon, over his usual omelet with basil-flavored tomato sauce, he heard the news: Sam Giancana had been murdered in Chicago.
Staff members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had just arrived in the Windy City to question Giancana about his possible connection to the CIA’s Castro assassination plot. It was thought that some in the Chicago underworld feared what Giancana might say. Whatever the case, sixty-seven-year-old Giancana was found dead in his basement, shot with what appeared to be a silenced .22 caliber automatic once in the back of the head, once in the mouth, and five times under the chin.
“I guess, you live by the sword, you die by the sword,” Frank said of Sam’s death. He was sad; they had once been pals. However, they’d had little to do with each other since the Cal-Neva incident.
“Then, after Sam died, Johnny Roselli got it,” recalled Thomas DiBella. “He was butchered in Miami. They found him chopped up and crammed into an oil drum floating in a bay near Miami. Then poor Skinny D’Amato went, I believe, of a heart attack. I know Frank was broken up by Jimmy’s death; he was a pallbearer at the funeral. All these guys connected to the underworld, they were dropping like flies by the end of the seventies.”
“It’s the end of an era, I guess,” Frank said privately. “Some of these guys caused me nothing but trouble. But they were good guys. If you knew them, they were good guys.”
Jackie? Or Barbara?
By the fall of 1975, Barbara and Frank found themselves in a bit of a gray area in their relationship. They had been with each other around the clock for some time, and lately there was some tension between them. Barbara was interested in marriage, but she could tell Frank was ambivalent. She had begun to wonder what kind of future she would actually have with him. It was exciting when they were on the road together, but she knew that those were temporary highs that had to eventually subside. When they were home, off the road, what was there for them? If he wasn’t ready to commit to her, she decided, then maybe she should just chalk up her time on tour with him as another wonderful memory and then walk away. She actually wasn’t sure how to proceed, and neither was he. Therefore, they decided to take a break, much to the elation of Frank’s mother and daughters, who still hadn’t come around.
During this time, Frank had a well-publicized date with Jackie Kennedy Onassis in New York when he took her to dinner after one of his shows at the Uris Theatre in September 1975. She was working as an editor at Viking publishing company and had wanted him to write his memoir for her. He begged off, but still wanted to see her. Back in the 1960s they had been ambivalent about one another, with Jackie unsure about the influence Sinatra had on her husband, but after JFK died they stayed in touch. Talking to one another always seemed to bring forth strong feelings of bittersweet nostalgia for the Camelot years.
Later, Frank and Jackie supposedly ended up in Frank’s suite at the Waldorf Towers, where they spent the night together—or at least that’s what Frank suggested to his buddies.
“I was at a party at Steve Lawrence’s and we were all pretty loaded,” recalled Jim Whiting. “It was late and we were shooting the shit, you know? Jilly asked Frank who the biggest conquests were in his life. Sinatra said that on top of the list was Ava. Then Jackie, Lana [Turner], and Marilyn [Monroe]. Everyone said, ‘Wait a second! Jackie? What are you kidding me? What was that like?’ Sinatra got real quiet and said, ‘I ain’t talkin’ ’bout that.’ “
“The relationship with Jackie was one of his relationships that, when it came to explaining the depth of it, Frank was very tight-lipped about, even with me,” said Tony Oppedisano. “He just made it clear that there were feelings there.”
While Frank was in New York without Barbara, she became a little concerned. “She saw the photos of Frank and Jackie in the press and thought twice after that,” said Dinah Shore. “She didn’t want to lose him. By this time, she really loved him. And by the way,” Dinah added, rolling her eyes, “I don’t believe for a single second that Frank and Jackie Onassis were ever intimate.”
When Barbara telephoned Frank in New York, they talked for many hours trying to get back on track. He was lonely and tired of feeling that way, he said. He said he knew he only had himself to blame for his loneliness, always on the lookout for the next big conquest and not focusing on creating a real bond with any one woman.
Frank agreed that Barbara should fly to New York to be with him for the rest of the Uris engagement. He was ready to clear the decks and start taking Barbara seriously, and part of that process was ending other romances that had been lingering for years without much progress, including those with the younger, blonde actresses Peggy Lipton and Carol Lynley. He ended both romances easily. However, there was still one more loose end that needed to be tied up, and it had to do with Ava. Of course.
Or Maybe Ava?
Though it had been almost twenty years since his divorce from Ava Gardner, Frank still couldn’t help but wonder about her. It seems odd that he would view her as the one that got away. Some in his life thought of her as the one that wouldn’t go away. Yet at a time when he was lamenting his lost youth, something about an old love called out to him.
Frank had seen Ava in May 1975, when he was appearing at Royal Albert Hall in London. When she came backstage to say hello, he introduced her to Barbara. “She was very polite,” Barbara said, “and we got along fine, but I noticed there was even more drinking going on.” Someone even asked Barbara, after Ava departed, what she thought of her. Barbara paid Ava a compliment about her beauty but then said, “It could never have worked between her and Frank.” Overhearing the conversation, Frank was taken aback. “Why do you say that?” he asked. “Too much hurt,” Barbara explained. “That hit him hard,” she later recalled, “but after thinking about what I’d said, he admitted I was right.”
The fact that he and Ava had “too much hurt” between them wasn’t exactly news to Frank. It had never stopped him from thinking about her and wondering, what if? Eight months later, she was still on his mind, especially as he began to contemplate a real future without her. He began to fixate on the memory of the heart-racing passion they had together, and, as often happens with matters of the heart, he began to romanticize their relationship. Soon he was calling Ava in Rome, where she was living at the time. He was in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, appearing at the Latin Casino.
Of course, it was easy for Frank and Ava on the telephone; in person was where it always fell apart between them. Soon they were swept away by nostalgia and actually talking about marriage again. In fact, Ava, who was now fifty-four, was convinced that she was going to go through with it. She told her maid, Rene Jordan, “You know as well as I do that if I’m ever going to marry again, it will be Frank. If I don’t marry Frank, I’ll be alone for the rest of my life, because no one interests me.” Rene asked her if matrimony was what Frank wanted as well, and Ava assured her that it was. “He has been on the phone for weeks saying he loves me,” she told her, according to Rene’s memory, “and asking why don’t I go back and we start all over again? We’re older and wiser now.” Rene recalled, “I didn’t think they were wiser, but it was not my business to make smart remarks. ‘By starting over, you mean getting married?’ I asked her. ‘Yes, getting married,’ she answered.”
Rene well knew—as did most people by this time—that Frank was dating Barbara. She asked Ava how that situation might be handled. Ava said that Frank told her that if she came back to the States to marry him, Barbara would no longer be a factor.
In the next few days, Ava made up her mind. She was going to marry Frank again. “And you and I are going to Fontana to get them to make me a trousseau,” she told Rene. The two departed for Francavilla Fontana, a municipality in Puglia, southern Italy, where they purchased a wide array of daytime and nighttime dresses and negligees for Ava. Rene would say that she had an uneasy feeling about all of it, especially when Ava told her that Frank said that if she came to America he would marry her—but if not, he would just marry Barbara in her absence. “He was giving Miss G. not so much an ultimatum, but an option,” she would recall.
A few days after the excitement of purchasing the new wardrobe wore off, Ava finally came to her senses. After hanging up with Frank, she told Rene that it was over; she’d suggested to him that he go ahead and marry Barbara, that it was for the best. “From Miss G., there were no tears, recalled Rene Jordan. “There was just a depression that lifted quickly.”
Perhaps one couldn’t blame Frank for at least trying. After all, Ava represented something to him that apparently he didn’t have with Barbara—sheer, unadulterated passion. But in fact, all he and Ava ever had was passion, and little else upon which to build a solid relationship. Of course, he’d realized long ago that the romance with her had been deadly for both of them. But at sixty, he couldn’t resist one last chance at the woman who most characterized his reckless youth. Without her as his safety net, it now felt a little like he was jumping off a cliff.
“I guess I’m stuck with Barbara,” Frank told Jilly Rizzo and Jim Whiting over drinks at the house.
“Well, you could just live together, you know?” Jilly suggested. “Yous don’t gotta get married.”
No, Frank told him. He said he might as well just see it through and make it legal with Barbara. “It’s not the future I wanted,” he added with a sigh. “But maybe it’s the one I deserve.” He didn’t seem so much like a man in love as a man resigned to his fate.
Though Barbara Marx had acquitted herself well over the years and had proven herself in many ways, true to Frank Sinatra’s restless nature, he wasn’t quite satisfied. In fact, he was, as always, looking for something better.
Frank and Barbara Get Engaged
Frank may have continued to be ambivalent for some time where Barbara was concerned, had she not decided to apply pressure. By March 1976, she’d been with him for four years; she was tired of living in suspense. Either he was going to take the relationship to the next stage or she was going to have to end it. Frank, of course, didn’t appreciate ultimatums. Therefore, Barbara left him—and thus began another “break” in their romance.
This time, Barbara was fairly sure it was over. She loved him and missed him, but she was a survivor and knew she would just have to get over it. Meanwhile, Frank defaulted to his deeply depressed state of mind and stayed close to his family, which of course delighted his daughters. Tina and Nancy wanted him to be happy; both felt sure that Barbara wasn’t the woman for him, otherwise he wouldn’t have such trepidation about her. They were more than happy to see him walk away from that relationship. It wasn’t a break that would last, though.
In May, Frank called Barbara in Las Vegas where she’d been vacationing. He told her he wanted to resume where they’d left off. She’d heard about his calls to Ava, she said, and she
was hurt. “But my heart isn’t with her anymore, darling,” he told her. “It was always with you.” Once again swept away by him, Barbara decided to join him in Chicago. Was this to be more of the same waffling from him, though? No. When Barbara got to Chicago, Frank presented her with the biggest pear-shaped diamond—twenty-two carats—she’d ever seen. There was another gem as well, a green emerald. Frank said she could have them set any way she liked. She ran to him, embraced him, and kissed him. It still wasn’t a proposal, but it was as close as she’d been to one with him.
Barbara decided to send the stones to a jeweler in Chicago and have them set in an engagement ring, hoping that this kind of commitment was really what Frank had in mind. Then, rather than pick up the ring herself—final cost: $360,000—she had it sent to Frank. She was going to make him put a ring on her finger if it was the last thing she did.
Later that week, over dinner in a Chicago restaurant, Barbara noticed something gleaming in her flute of bubbly champagne. “Is that for me?” she asked, excited. Of course, it was the ring. She fished it out, and, rather than put it on her own finger, she dabbed it on a napkin and then handed it to Frank. She held out both hands. “Just put it on whichever finger you want to put it on,” she told Frank. He laughed and put the ring on her engagement finger. Still no proposal—but at least she felt they were in some sort of accord regarding their future together.
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