Lady Blue Eyes Read online

  In spite of his famously short fuse, Frank had such strong feelings about manners and class, punctuality and style. He dressed in only the finest footwear, made especially for him and polished so hard you could see your reflection in the leather. He had an intense dislike for brown shoes and would use the moniker Mr. Brown Shoes for anyone he didn’t take to. His tailored English and Italian suits had to be hung, stored, and pressed just so. He wore the best Cartier watches and a gold pinkie ring inscribed with the Sinatra family crest. He described himself as “symmetrical, almost to a fault,” and once admitted, “I live my life certain ways that I could never change for a woman.”

  As well as looking immaculate, he spoke impeccably well and always tried to behave in a gentlemanly way. He expected others to do the same, and when they didn’t, he’d lash out in frustration and disappointment. Several journalists were resented because they showed what he considered to be a lack of fairness from the safety of their newspaper columns or in the pages of lazily written books that merely pasted together a bunch of untruths. Despite the letters of complaint Frank wrote about the lies repeated ad nauseam, he rarely felt vindicated. There were only a few reporters he liked, one of them Larry King, whom he’d met in Miami when they were both starting out. Another was the Brooklyn-born New York Post columnist and author Pete Hamill, a fellow boozehound who wrote the only book I ever liked about Frank (until this one) called Why Sinatra Matters. He also liked Jim Bacon from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a few sports columnists, and an editor in Hawaii whose heart bypass he once funded, but that was about it.

  The fallout from Frank’s very public confrontation with Maxine Cheshire at the Fairfax lasted for several weeks. If I’d hoped to escape the glare of publicity by getting away from Palm Springs, I was wrong. Not everyone was indignant on Ms. Cheshire’s behalf, however. Far from it. Some expressed their admiration for what Frank had done after she’d been so rude to me, and his friend Henry Kissinger called him up the next day to say he’d overpaid her. Unfazed by the controversy, Frank went on to perform at a White House dinner where President Nixon asked him, “What are you retired for? You really should sing.”

  After giving it some thought, Frank made another surprise announcement, one that was almost as shocking as his political volte-face. His two-year retirement—or “vacation” as he called it—was over. He said that he’d had “the most wonderful time of my life” for two years but he was ready to cut a new record and go back on tour, and by that he meant the world. His fans were delighted. Apart from a few private charitable or political engagements, he’d kept his word about staying off the stage. Only I knew the real reason behind Frank’s decision to go back to work again that year. Although he’d undoubtedly missed the applause and wanted to reconnect with his fans, his timing was yet another way of protecting me. If I went on tour with him for a year or so, it would keep me out of Palm Springs and away from Zeppo and his friends. Frank would almost certainly have made a comeback sooner or later, but quietly and thoughtfully, my romantic lover had come up with a plan to whisk us away even earlier.

  He went back into the studio with his old friends the producer Gordon Jenkins and the arranger Don Costa and recorded his bestselling album Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, featuring some interesting and new material he’d never sung before. The song he chose as the opening track was “You Will Be My Music,” written by his friend Joe Raposo, which I watched him record in New York. That was such a romantic moment in a lifetime of romantic moments—Frank looking directly at me as he sang that song with all the tenderness in his heart:

  Wanting you is everything

  You will be my music

  Yes, you will be my song.

  The words were so lovely, and he told me afterward, “This is our story, baby.” It was a difficult song to sing and a little too rangy for him, but he liked the words so much he sang it time and again, always dedicating it to me as “the love of my life.” Another number he’d often sing to me was called “You’re So Right (for What’s Wrong in My Life),” which had the lines, “You just fill every void in my life” and “Through the darkness of night, you’re my one shining light.” I couldn’t have agreed more.

  To launch Ol’ Blue Eyes Is Back, Frank performed in a TV special of the same name, for which Gene Kelly came out of retirement. Frank and Gene performed a fun song-and-dance routine together to a song called “We Can’t Do That Anymore.” Frank opened and closed the show with “You Will Be My Music” and told his audience that he missed making music. He also joked that he had to come out of retirement because after two years his golf handicap was still seventeen. He said that he’d been away from the business for so long he had to spell his name to telephone operators, and spoke self-effacingly about some of the “underwhelming” movies he’d made in his career, including The Kissing Bandit in 1948. His was a warm and intimate performance by a man who clearly loved being back in the spotlight. Just about everyone we knew came along for the ride and to welcome him back. It was the most incredible night, and when he said the words “Good night and sleep warm,” the entire audience rose as one.

  Jack Benny went crazy when he heard the title of Frank’s new album. “How come you’re calling yourself Blue Eyes?” he asked Frank indignantly. “Don’t you know that’s my nickname?” It might have been once, but from the day Frank’s album was released, no one but Frank Sinatra would ever be recognized by that nickname again. Poor Jack tried to bill himself the Original Old Blue Eyes after that, but it never really worked.

  I thought Frank Sinatra was invincible in those early days and impervious to any normal anxieties and concerns. But I was surprised to discover that he was nervous about the quality of his voice and feared it might have lost something in his absence from the microphone. He told Larry King during one interview, “For the first four or five seconds onstage, I tremble. I worry, Will it be there?” Strangely, he’d never been unduly concerned about what smoking or drinking might do to his voice and admitted to his doctor in all honesty that he often drank a bottle of Jack Daniel’s a day. When the doctor realized he was serious, he said to him, “My God! How do you feel in the morning?”

  Frank smiled and told him, “I don’t know. I never get up till the afternoon.”

  Partly on the advice of his friend the opera singer Robert Merrill, Frank believed that as long as he warmed up by practicing his scales for an hour or so every day, his voice could take anything. I’d hear him singing “Come talk a waaaaalk with me” or “Let us wander by the bay” as he shaved or dressed. He was never one of those singers who wore a scarf or avoided winds. “I catch colds from people, not drafts,” he’d complain. Twice in his career he lost his voice completely and was instructed not to speak for several days. He had to write on a chalkboard instead. That frightened him, but not as much as the surgery he had to remove some polyps from his throat. Fortunately, there were no adverse effects.

  Having had only a few music lessons in his life, he worked out his own routine, which included swimming in the pool as part of his vocal training. Using a trick he’d learned years earlier so that he could hold key phrases for twenty-five seconds or more, he’d remain underwater for several minutes at a time to maintain his remarkable breath control. Not that I ever benefited from his breath control at home, because The Voice had never been one to sing around the house and hated to perform for friends at parties. He complained that was like “singing for his supper.” Now he worried that his “reed was rusty” because it was out of practice, but he needn’t have. The public and critical acclaim for Frank’s new album only endorsed his decision to go back on the road. One review in the New York Daily News summed it up when it said, “We thought we were through writing love letters to Frank Sinatra, but here we go again …”

  In January 1974, Frank began what would turn into a massive comeback tour of the United States, Europe, the Far East, and Australia. His first concert was at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, where the marquee read, HAIL SINATRA. THE NOBLEST ROM
AN HAS RETURNED. As usual, Frank walked onstage without any fanfare or introduction. “If they don’t know who I am by now,” he’d say, “then they shouldn’t be here.” In what developed later that year into a series of sellout concerts that would include shows with Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie in Vegas and then on Broadway, Frank was truly back where he belonged.

  His show at Caesars Palace was another milestone event, and a lot of our friends flew in just to be in the audience. Although I’d been back to Vegas a few times with Zeppo, it still felt strange for me to be in Sin City again almost two decades after my stint at the Riviera. I realized how far I’d come from the days when I’d wandered through the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel modeling pantsuits and cocktail dresses. This time, the models homed in on me as I sat having lunch or chatting with a friend. And as Vegas came alive at night, the showgirl Barbara Blakeley found herself with the highest roller of them all, strolling through casinos and nightclubs on the arm of Frank Sinatra. I couldn’t help but notice the latter-day Marshas, Idas, and Pennys ogling our every step across the pit. At the few shows I went to with Frank, I watched the chorus girls dancing their poor feet off, remembering those days so well. I applauded extra hard for the showgirls doing their balancing act with ever more elaborate headdresses.

  Later that summer, we flew to Australia for the next leg of Frank’s tour. Our trip coincided with the threatened impeachment of President Nixon over the Watergate scandal, and Frank was deeply concerned for his friend. We were hardly in Australia a day or two when we had a run-in with the press. Frank didn’t like their constant demands for interviews or the tone of some of the things they wrote about us (although he kept anything like that from me). After getting trapped in the middle of a pack of pushy reporters all asking him questions and then hearing of a female journalist masquerading as me to try to get him alone, he was in fighting spirit. On one of his first appearances onstage, he laid into the press, calling them “bums, parasites, fags, and buck-and-a-half hookers.” I sat in the audience that night and thought, Oh, boy! Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Australian Journalists Association not only objected to what he’d said but claimed Frank had “insulted the nation.” One of the headlines read, OL BIG MOUTH IS BACK, and the press enlisted the support of the transportation, waiters’, and stagehands’ unions so that the next leg of Frank’s tour had to be canceled. Unable to perform, Frank made his way to Melbourne Airport and found the city’s press waiting on the tarmac for an apology. Well, good luck with that, I thought. Needless to say, we left them flapping in our exhaust fumes.

  By the time we arrived in Sydney, the strike action had gone national. People protested outside the hotel with placards, although a lot of them were on Frank’s side. The unions refused to refuel Frank’s plane and said he would get home only if he could “walk on water.” They wouldn’t even provide room service at our five-star hotel unless Frank issued an apology. Jilly, of course, made sure we had everything we needed. What the press didn’t realize was that Frank Sinatra never apologized to anybody. Ever. Period. Not even to me. One time years later when I was packing to leave him after a fight we’d had about something stupid, I told him I’d only stay if he said sorry. Under duress, he finally admitted, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” It was a half-assed apology, but it was the only one I ever got. He always said, “There are two things I never do—yawn in front of the woman I love, and apologize.” The latter was not in his psyche, for to apologize would be to admit that he might have been wrong.

  Frank’s lawyer Mickey Rudin spent several days trying to negotiate a way out of the deadlock. Mickey’s adversary was Bob Hawke, the future Australian prime minister, who was working his way up politically in a labor union. Frank agreed to film a one-time television special as part of the deal, but the apology became the sticking point. While we stayed under siege in our hotel suite waiting for a solution, the international press picked up on the story, and news soon reached America. Henry Kissinger sent Frank a telegram asking, DO YOU NEED ME TO SEND THE NAVY?

  One afternoon, Mickey came hurrying into our suite and said, “Pack up, everyone, quick! We’re leaving.” He and Mr. Hawke had finally come up with wording that seemed to satisfy everyone, although it was not a direct apology. Mickey told us the building was virtually surrounded and there was no way the press would let us through. So, clutching my jewelry case, I was bundled out of a fire exit with Frank and the rest of our crew, across a roof, down a fire escape, and into an alley. The media were waiting at the front of the hotel with TV cameras and lights, expecting Frank to emerge any minute to read his statement, but he never did. Poor Mickey went down in his place and took hell from them. When they demanded to speak to Frank, he told them, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Sinatra has left the building.” They almost lynched him. We sped to the airport with furious reporters in hot pursuit, and when we got to the plane, Frank instructed his pilot to taxi down the runway and take off despite all the control tower’s instructions to “abort! Abort!”

  The story of us being “under siege” in Australia ran and ran. As in Chinese whispers, the details were enlarged upon and exaggerated until few knew the real truth. Even comedians made mileage out of it. Bob Hope said on TV that the Australians finally let Frank out of the country right after the boss of the union woke up to find a kangaroo head on the next pillow. Frank swore he’d never set foot on Australian soil again, but we did go back years later for a hugely successful tour when the dramas of 1974 had been long forgotten. Thirty years later, someone made a movie about our experience called The Night We Called It a Day, in which Melanie Griffith played me and Dennis Hopper played Frank. I was amazed that what had seemed to be such a minor episode in our lives was deemed worthy of the Hollywood treatment.

  After a brief respite in Palm Springs to rest, Frank and I set off again. During that first year we crisscrossed America, completed a five-nation tour of Europe, and traveled to the Far East. I loved every minute of it. Each day was a new adventure, yet another experience to be logged in the memory banks.

  I woke up with Frank in places like Paris, London, Vienna, Tokyo, or Munich and had to pinch myself each time I looked across to see his tousled head on the pillow next to mine. Throwing open the window of whichever suite in whichever town we happened to be in, I’d marvel at the amazing views from each new rooftop. From the moment he woke up to the minute he closed his eyes, Frank liked to be busy and surrounded by people. Depending on where we were and who was around, we’d dine with friends of Frank’s like Ingrid Bergman or Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall or Sophia Loren. It wasn’t all Hollywood glitz, though; I might equally find myself eating linguine with some obscure musician or comic Frank had worked with years before but never lost contact with.

  We were having the time of our lives, and Frank was clearly as happy as I was, especially once he was onstage. His shows were sellouts, and I knew he was relieved to be back in the spotlight soaking up the applause. Although I’d seen him perform before, I think on that comeback tour he really came into his own, commanding the stage with a maturity and presence I’d never known anyone else to possess. It had always astounded me that when he walked into a room he’d create a kind of shock wave, like a surge of electricity around him that demanded absolute silence. He sparked the same reaction in a theater. Sitting in the front row of a concert, I could feel people’s hearts pounding all around me. He’d receive a standing ovation just for walking out onstage. There was a palpable, physical sensation before Frank even sang a note. Seeing him up there was an almost religious experience for his fans. I don’t think there’s anybody alive who could still get a reaction like that.

  Frank not only wanted me to be at every concert but insisted that I sit up front so that he could see me and sing to me. He’d almost always dedicate at least one number to me, often “My Funny Valentine,” and would point me out to the audience. “Take a bow, sweetheart,” he’d instruct. Then when I stood up, he’d say something like “Ladies and gentlemen, this is my roommate.” Wit
h Frank, a compliment was half a put-down and half-flattering but always said with love.

  He handpicked all his songs and worked closely with his musical director, arranger, and the orchestra. As an avid reader, writer, and admirer of novelists and poets, he favored tunes with the best lyrics, which he felt held the attention of both him and his fans. He especially liked a song called “Something,” which George Harrison had written a couple of years earlier for the Beatles. Frank would slow it right down and said it was the most beautiful number because it was a love song that never actually said “I love you.” He liked to sing sad or romantic ballads, but he also loved jazz and working with people like Louis Armstrong, who was great fun to be with but who I thought was a little too “on” all the time. Frank especially loved anything by Cole Porter or Irving Berlin, and a favorite was “Here’s That Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen. Sammy Cahn and Jimmy wrote a lot of Frank’s music, and they worked really well together because they understood how he’d make each song his own. Every time he sang a number anew, Frank would change it in some small way with that perfect enunciation of his. Timing was everything, and his was strictly original. He had a gift for it, along with that unique texture to his voice, which could be a powerhouse or soft and sexy when needed. Either way, that voice was God-given; there is no question about it.

  At the end of each number, Frank would almost always credit the songwriter and those responsible for the orchestration, paying tribute to people like Rodgers and Hart, Don Costa, George Gershwin, or the writers of newer tunes like Joe Raposo and Jim Croce. “Isn’t that a pretty ballad?” he’d ask his audience with almost childlike delight, or “Don’t you think that’s the most maaarvelous love song?” Always happy to share the credit for a song, he’d speak glowingly of Cole Porter being “in his shining hour” or Nelson Riddle “at his peak.”