In the end, Nancy’s year with Frank on the road would be memorable in many ways; anyone who had an opportunity to see the two Sinatras perform in 1982 was fortunate. Hank Grant of the Hollywood Reporter noted of Nancy’s set, “What struck me where the heart is, and still lingers, is Nancy Sinatra . . . the biggest thrill of the night. Nancy, friends, has arrived on her own.”
By the end of the tour, Nancy realized that she didn’t really want to be on the road after all, and that maybe a restarting of her career wasn’t the best thing for her. She enjoyed being a wife and mother, and she decided she loved it more than living out of a suitcase. In fact, she couldn’t imagine how Frank had done it for so many years. It was grueling. Twenty-one years would pass before she would play Las Vegas again, at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay in July 2003.
The opportunity to have opened for her father was one Nancy would always treasure. Father and daughter would usually perform their number one hit, “Somethin’ Stupid,” right after Frank’s rendering of “All or Nothing at All.” The popular duet was sure to generate a standing ovation from the sold-out crowd.
“My girl, she ain’t half bad, right?” Frank asked during his set at the new Universal Amphitheatre on July 30, 1982. “You people don’t know it,” he told the sold-out audience of six thousand, “but when she’s onstage as she was earlier this evening, I’m standing in the wings studying her. And you’d be surprised what I learn,” he said with a wink. “An old man can always learn something from his kids,” he added. “You folks might want to remember that.”
As If She Had a Choice
Meanwhile, as the engagement at Caesars Palace continued, Barbara Sinatra flew up from Los Angeles to be with her husband. By this time, early 1982, there was an ongoing dispute between the Sinatras related to his drinking. Frank was used to drinking a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every day. That had been his custom for many years. Once, when he told a doctor about his habit, the doctor was astonished and said, “My God, Frank! How do you feel in the morning?” Frank answered, “Hell if I know, doc. I don’t get up till the afternoon.”
When Frank and his friends were drinking, there was no telling what kind of trouble they might get into. During one Fourth of July celebration in Monaco, Frank, Jilly, Bobby Marx, and some others had a little too much of the bubbly and started blowing up cherry bombs on the pier adjacent to New Jimmy’s open-air nightclub in Monte Carlo. As they did so, many of the patrons ran for cover. However, Barbara sat still at her table, nursing her martini and praying for the moment to quickly pass. After all of these years, she was accustomed to these sorts of hijinks and knew that if she waited it out, it would soon be over, everyone would disperse, and she’d be able to go to bed and try to forget it had ever happened.
One of the socialites present that festive evening happened to be Hélène Rochas, the former CEO of the fashion house Rochas, which she’d turned into a multimillion-dollar fragrance business. When one of the cherry bombs rolled under her chair and exploded, poor Ms. Rochas became nearly apoplectic. Upset, her boyfriend, a French aristocrat named Kim d’Estainville, picked up a half-empty bottle of vodka and chucked it at Frank’s party outside. Unfortunately, on the way out, it hit Barbara on the side of her head. She was cut and bleeding, but it wasn’t that bad. Still, Bobby Marx confronted d’Estainville. The two were about to come to blows when who should swoop in but Jilly Rizzo, fists at the ready. The resulting melee saw Jilly, Frank, and anyone else who cared to join in, punching, kicking, and throwing tables and chairs all over the place. The next morning, the police came to the Sinatra suite to interrogate Jilly. “He ain’t even here no more,” Frank said. “I think he went back to the States, the big dope.” Meanwhile, Jilly was standing behind the heavy curtains in the parlor, his size twelves peeking out from beneath it.
Another time Frank’s drinking became an issue was when he and Barbara were on tour in the Far East. There was a mix-up at the hotel and they couldn’t get the suite Frank had requested. Apparently the previous tenants had actually had livestock in the room, so it needed to be cleaned. The hotel put the Sinatras in another suite, which was acceptable, even if not preferable. However, Frank needed to be next to the room where his assistant, Dorothy Uhlemann, was staying, or he wouldn’t be comfortable. He and Jilly had been up all night drinking, so Frank just wanted it sorted out, no questions asked. Jilly went to the room in which Frank had wanted Dorothy installed and politely asked the guest there to please move, at the Sinatras’ expense, of course. The guest refused and slammed the door in Jilly’s face. “But you can’t stay in dere,” Jilly shouted, pounding on the door. Finally, Frank told Jilly to “get a crowbar and do what you gotta do.” Ten minutes later, Jilly, with crowbar in hand, began trying to pry the door open, all the while slamming his fist up against it and saying, “This ain’t right. Whatsa matta you?” The guest, now irate, summoned the hotel manager, who called the Sinatra suite to tell Frank that he needed to accept his accommodations or check out. Frank became angry and picked up the telephone and threw it at the window. However, since the thick-paned glass wouldn’t shatter, the phone ended up ricocheting back, slamming Frank right in the face. “What the hell kind of hotel is this place?” he raged to Barbara. “You can’t even throw a phone through a window here?”
Of course, these events were typical of the kind of foolhardiness Barbara would find herself involved in as Frank’s wife. For the most part, these capers were great fodder for cocktail-party chitchat. To say that Barbara found them offensive would be to overstate her reaction. She wouldn’t have been able to exist for five seconds in Frank’s world if she was that thin-skinned a woman. However, with the passing of the years, it’s safe to say that frequent outbursts of this nature did tend to have a bit of a wearing effect on her.
Before this Vegas run with Nancy, Barbara had a talk with Frank and asked him to cut down on his drinking, if only for his health. He didn’t take to the suggestion. When working in Vegas where there were casinos everywhere, he liked to stay up all night long, drinking and gambling. Even at his age, he didn’t want to settle down; he wanted to act like a younger man. Barbara felt he was not only damaging his health, but his voice as well. Plus, the scenes of chaos that sometimes followed his heavy drinking had become, as she put it, “old hat.” She had a conversation with her friend Eileen Faith, who joined her in Vegas, about it.
“The children actually think he has cut down on his drinking,” Barbara said as she and Eileen watched Frank at the tables with some of his friends, Jilly Rizzo included. She said that she wasn’t sure why they would believe such a thing, but added that she supposed it was easier to do so “when you’re not with him twenty-four hours a day. I feel like I’m coming in during the ninth inning and trying to change the whole ball game,” she added. “And it’s impossible.” She said that Frank’s habits were set in stone. “He’s Sinatra, for Christ’s sake,” she exclaimed. “Of course he’s going to drink.”
“Yes, but you’re his wife,” Eileen told her. “You have to put your foot down, Barbara.”
Barbara said she had long ago learned to pick and choose her fights with Frank. Especially during this engagement, when Nancy was on the bill, the last thing she wanted to do was antagonize Frank and then have Nancy view them as being unhappy in their marriage. “She’s just waiting to catch the smallest hint of something so she can pounce,” Barbara said with a knowing smile. “Oh, she’s tough, that one. She thinks I’m tough? She’s ten times worse than me,” Barbara added. Barbara said that perhaps she and Nancy were too much alike, and that maybe this similarity was really at the root of their problems. “She’s a carbon copy of me,” Barbara opined. “In fact, if I were the daughter and she were the new wife? The way she acts? That is exactly the way I would act,” she said. Eileen suggested that perhaps Barbara should reach out to Nancy while they were both in Las Vegas, but Barbara didn’t think it was a good idea. She felt that if it went poorly between them and Nancy then had any trouble at all with her p
erformance, Frank would blame her for it. She felt that the best course of action was to stay as far away from Nancy Sinatra as possible. “An occasional meal is fine, and maybe we can nod at each other from time to time in a hallway,” she said, “but that should be the extent of it, at least while she is working for Frank. I’m sure she would agree.”
At this point, Jilly Rizzo joined the two women. He put his arm around Barbara; she smiled at him. “Frank’s had a little too much to drink,” Jilly said. Barbara looked over at her husband and asked if there was anything Jilly wanted her to do. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “maybe go over and see if you can get him to go up to the suite. Might not be a bad idea, Barbara.” Then Jilly squeezed her hand and walked back toward Frank.
“It’s not always easy,” Barbara said as she gathered her things and steeled herself to face Frank Sinatra. “When he’s drinking, I usually duck for cover,” she said. “Especially if the gin comes out. Then I just go into my room and close the door.”
The two women laughed. “Well, I supposed there are worse problems than being married to Sinatra,” Eileen Faith ventured.
Barbara chuckled. “To paraphrase the song, I love him just the way he is . . .”
Barbara tried her best, but stubborn Frank refused to leave the blackjack table. “Leave me alone, Barbara,” he said. Losing at the tables made him grouchy, and the liquor probably didn’t help. Barbara tried to convince him that if they went to bed now, they could rise early and perhaps have breakfast with Nancy. Frank didn’t want to hear it. He just wanted to gamble. “If I start winning, I’ll quit,” he told her. Meanwhile, he suggested, she should just go to bed. “Okay, I did my best,” Barbara told Jilly. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed. Good luck with him.” With that, she went up to her room.
About four hours later, the phone rang in her suite. It was Jilly. He told her that Frank was in a restaurant downstairs and about to get into a fight with a photographer. Even he and the rest of Frank’s Dago Secret Service didn’t want to intervene; it was late and everyone was just too exhausted. Jilly just wanted to go to bed, not throw punches. “I need you down here, Barbara,” he pleaded. “Please?”
Barbara dressed quickly and went downstairs. Before she even walked into the restaurant, she could hear Frank’s voice debating with the photographer, telling him that photos were not allowed in the casino or surrounding areas, and that he was going to have the man barred from the premises forevermore. When she walked in, Sinatra glared at her. “Now what?” he demanded to know.
“It’s time for us to go upstairs,” she said.
“I’m not done with this guy yet,” Frank said. “If he gives me his camera, maybe then I’ll leave.” The photographer backed up a few steps and mumbled something about not giving up his equipment. Jilly approached the photographer and said, “In about thirty seconds, I’m gonna shove that camera right up your ass. Then we can all go to bed.”
“Nobody is shoving anything anywhere,” Barbara said.
“Stay out of this,” Frank ordered.
“I would appreciate it very much, Frank,” she said in a very even tone, “if you would now just come to bed with me.”
He tossed back the last of his drink. “Okay, fine,” he said. “You want to get to bed, we’ll go to bed.” He then threw some money onto the bar, gave the photographer one last menacing look, and dutifully followed her.
Jilly was waiting at the elevator by the time the Sinatras got there. He pushed the button and the doors opened. Barbara and Frank got into the elevator and, just as the doors closed, Jilly gave Barbara a big thumbs-up.
Part Thirteen
THAT’S LIFE
The Kitty Kelley Matter
For Frank Sinatra, 1983 would be consumed by sold-out performances in clubs and concert halls around the world, benefit shows for charities, award presentations for humanitarian efforts, and, of course, recordings. The year ended with Frank celebrating his sixty-eighth birthday, but not before being honored in December with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement. The Sinatra family attended a dinner hosted by Secretary of State George Shultz and a White House reception hosted by President and Mrs. Reagan before the awards ceremony at the Kennedy Center. The other honorees that year were Katherine Dunham, Elia Kazan, Virgil Thomson, and Jimmy Stewart. “There’s not the remotest possibility,” said Gene Kelly during the taping of the presentation for a television special, “that he will have a successor.”
It was during events like the Kennedy Center Honors that Frank most missed his mother. It had been six years since Dolly’s sudden passing. Dolly’s somewhat shady but colorful past in Hoboken had been kept secret by the Sinatra family for years out of respect not only for her but also her son. In fact, family members rarely discussed among themselves that she’d ever terminated pregnancies, preferring to forget about it and remember Dolly in a happier and more uplifting light.
It’s not that the Sinatras were so opposed to abortion. Of course, Frank’s first wife, Nancy, terminated a pregnancy after bearing two of Frank’s children; she later went on to have a third, Tina. Also, when Nancy Jr. became pregnant at the age of nineteen, Nancy Sr. took her to have the pregnancy terminated. However, these were private matters not discussed freely over coffee and biscotti. Many of the more distant Sinatra relatives weren’t even aware that Dolly had ever been arrested, which was perhaps just as it should have been.
By the summer of 1983, it appeared that all of that was about to change. It was then that Frank realized he was about to have a big problem with one of the few women in his life he would not be able to control: perky and petite but ever so dauntless and determined biographer Kitty Kelley. Kelley, who had written controversial and successful biographies about Jacqueline Onassis and Elizabeth Taylor, was in the process of researching a book about Frank. At first he didn’t care. Other books had been written about him in the past. “How bad could this one be?” he asked. “They all say the same damn boring things anyway.”
However, when Frank began receiving telephone calls from friends in Hoboken telling him that Kelley had been asking certain townsfolk about Dolly’s illegal activities, he became concerned. He called a meeting with Mickey Rudin and some other business associates at his home in Palm Springs. He flew in his friend Joey D’Orazio from Hoboken, since Joey seemed to have knowledge of Kelley’s investigation. The contingent retired to Sinatra’s den and began their meeting.
“Look, this can’t happen,” Frank began, according to D’Orazio’s memory. “What can we do?”
“Not much, Frank,” said Mickey. “Not until it comes out, anyway.” At that time, he said, maybe they could sue for libel or defamation of character.
Frank’s spirits fell. “This kind of thing hurts me; it hurts my kids, my grandkids, not to mention my mother’s memory,” he said. “Maybe she won’t write about Ma,” he said, trying to be hopeful. “Maybe she’ll do the decent thing.”
No one at the meeting held out much hope in regard to Kitty Kelley’s sense of propriety where Dolly Sinatra was concerned. Frank then reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick wad of what appeared to be one-hundred-dollar bills, wrapped with a rubber band. He tossed it onto the coffee table. “Throw some money at her,” he told Mickey. “We’ll get Joey here to do it so it’s not coming directly from us.”
Joey D’Orazio recalled being stunned for a second, but then jumping to attention. “Sure, I can do that,” he said. “I’ll track her down and I’ll give her some money in an envelope. I’ll tell her she’d better back off if she knows what’s good for her. I’ll make it clear that Frank’s got friends and that if she continues with this thing, it’s not gonna end well for her.”
“Not gonna work,” Mickey Rudin said. “First of all, it’s illegal. Secondly, she’ll go to the press with a threat like that to promote her book. Not only that,” he said, motioning to the wad of cash on the table, “my gut tells me it’s going to take a whole lot more than that to shut her up
.”
That particular meeting was adjourned without much progress being made. “I flew back to Hoboken after promising that I would keep my eye on things back there,” said D’Orazio. “I knew all the same people Frank knew, these were childhood friends. And every couple of days I would get a call from some person saying, ‘This writer called me, asking questions about Dolly.’ It was upsetting.”
A number of meetings were held at Sinatra’s home during the next few months with Rudin and other lawyers as well as with D’Orazio, their scout from Hoboken, to determine how to proceed in what became known as “the matter of Kitty Kelley.”
“How much you think she’s getting paid to write this shit?” Frank asked during one meeting.
“Couple hundred thou, I heard,” said Mickey.
Frank mulled it over. “You know, JFK once said, ‘What makes a biography interesting is the struggle to answer one question: “What’s he like?” ’ [Sinatra was paraphrasing a quote from Benjamin Bradlee’s book Conversations with Kennedy.] I guess I can understand people wanting to know about me, but my mother? That’s crossing the line. That’s got nothing to do with me.”
“Plus, it’s really bad public relations,” Joey D’Orazio piped up.
Frank glared at Joey. “You know what? I oughta punch you right in the face for saying that.” He leaned in and glowered at Joey. “To bring it down to that? Public relations? What’s the matter with you? You think this is about me and my image? Don’t even go dere.”
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