Lady Blue Eyes Page 16

  Frank’s show the following night was to be held in a huge sports auditorium, and fifty of my friends and relatives were all lined up in chairs right at the front of the old basketball court as Frank stepped out onto that stage. The show was a huge success. Best of all, Barbara Blakeley was officially on the map and no longer just the skinny kid with the hunched-over back.

  A few weeks later Frank and I had another one of our increasingly frequent bust-ups; I can’t even remember over what. I think he said something that hurt my feelings and I refused to go on with the schedule so I started packing (I always seemed to be packing in those days). It was all part of the game of cat and mouse that we played. The story about our latest split made the gossip columns, and my aunt Myrtle wrote to me from Wichita to thank me for the tickets to his show and to send me her condolences. “I think I know why you broke up,” she added wryly. “He met your family!”

  The culmination of Frank’s tour was a live concert billed as the Main Event at Madison Square Garden in New York with him performing in the round on a mock boxing ring without ropes. When he realized I was serious about leaving him this time, he begged me to stay on until that gig, which he was especially nervous about.

  Even though he’d proved himself more than able, he was anxious about his voice. Not only would there be twenty thousand people, including celebrities like Robert Redford and Rex Harrison, in the auditorium but the show was to be broadcast around the world. I sat a couple of rows back from the raised square stage on which world championship boxing matches usually took place. Frank turned up less than an hour before the performance, walked on with hardly any rehearsal, and gave one of his most memorable performances. He needn’t have worried. Even when his voice wavered a little, he was such a great communicator that he tuned in to his audience as he always did and allowed his phenomenal stage presence to overwhelm them. They were deliriously happy just to be breathing the same air. Despite fretting about our impending separation, Frank appeared happy too. He loved performing live, and New York was where it all started for him. Before he sang “The House I Live In,” he spoke of his father, “God rest his soul,” and how Marty had once told Frank that America was “a land of dreams and a dream land.” I knew Frank meant it from the heart when he told that Garden crowd, “I have never felt so much love in one room my whole life.” After announcing, “We’ll now do the national anthem, but you needn’t rise,” he finished with “My Way.”

  The following day, I flew off to Palm Beach, Florida, for a break with some friends. I was still madly, crazily in love with Frank, but I knew I had to give us both a breather. Our separation this time was the longest and the most serious. For several months at the end of 1974 and beginning of 1975, we even dated other people, although I’m sure we each did it just to make the other one jealous. Frank stepped out with Jacqueline Onassis, who’d been a longtime friend from the Kennedy days and was by then working in publishing. He took her to dinner at “21” after a show in New York, which had all the papers speculating wildly, although all she really wanted was to persuade him to write his memoirs. I went out on a few dates with a dashing businessman named Gene Klein. I’m sure word got back to Frank. I flew to Europe with Bobby and Bee Korshak, and we explored Italy, France, and Spain, meeting up with Joan Collins and other friends. Frank, who continued performing in the States and Canada for much of that time, would track me down wherever I was and call me many nights to ask me when I was coming back, and to fly back and join him. I wasn’t ready, so I stayed on in Europe even though I missed him terribly.

  As soon as Frank felt he had suffered enough or was booked to go on tour again and didn’t want to go alone, his ardor intensified. Increasingly unable to say no to FS, I’d pack my bags all over again and board his plane for the next stage of his tour. We flew to Switzerland to begin with and then to England before traveling on to the Middle East. He was still bringing the house down across Europe in scenes that were reminiscent of his frenzied early years in the business. In London he joked that the Royal Albert Hall should be renamed the Francis Albert Hall. Ava Gardner, who’d moved to London by then because she thought the British had “more class,” came to see him perform. I met her again backstage. She was very polite, and we got along fine, but I noticed that there was even more drinking going on this time.

  Frank was as attentive as ever with Ava and had never stopped sending her gifts or paying her medical and other bills. He was similarly generous with his other ex-wives, Nancy and Mia, if ever they needed anything. He had plenty of money, and it was no skin off my nose. In fact, I secretly admired the way he took care of the women in his life even if they were no longer a part of it. Someone once asked me about his relationship with Ava in front of Frank, and I said, “Oh, that could never have worked!”

  Frank looked up and asked, “Why?”

  “Too much hurt,” I said. That hit him hard, but after thinking about what I’d said, he admitted I was right.

  After London we flew to Tehran. The Shah of Iran was still in power then, and his wife, the Empress Farah, had asked Frank to sing at a charity event. As we entered Iranian airspace, a squadron of military jets came to escort us into Tehran’s airport, which felt so exotic. Farah was very beautiful, sweet, and gentle, the mother of four children. She had her own team of security men, who were all dark and handsome, at least six feet, four inches tall, and dressed in crisp white uniforms with gold braid and medals. They looked as if they’d walked off a film set. I was impressed. The Iranian people were delightfully warm and friendly, and we traveled around a little, buying Persian rugs and seeing some of the incredible scenery. When we left, Frank was presented with ten pounds of the finest gray caviar we had ever tasted. He expressed such delight in the quality of the prized sturgeon eggs that every year for years the Iranian foreign minister to the United States, Mr. Zahedi, would come to visit us loaded with cans of caviar. It was heaven.

  Once we left Iranian airspace, the Israeli air force escorted our plane into Jerusalem. Frank was a great supporter of Israel, although he did much for many of the Arab countries too. He’d paid for a school and clinic to be built in Bethlehem and a Hebrew university outside Jerusalem and was eager to see how they were progressing. We also visited the Frank Sinatra Youth Center for Arab and Jewish Children, which he’d set up in Nazareth, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which he had supported. Needless to say, everywhere we went we were treated like royalty. We were invited to so many places, including the Knesset, where Frank spoke, in what turned out to be a fascinating trip.

  On one of our final days in Jerusalem, we were taken to the famous Wailing Wall in the Old City. Standing on the flat, smooth stones that once formed King Solomon’s Temple, I was told to write a prayer for someone I loved on a piece of paper and slip it between the cracks in the centuries-old Wall. Some friends of mine had claimed great success with the Wall in everything from matters of the heart to the sale of houses, so I took a pen and scribbled a private plea asking for continued happiness with Frank: “And please, have him ask me to marry him,” I added plaintively. As I folded my little piece of paper in two and stuffed it between the ancient limestone cracks, I mouthed a silent prayer.

  NINE

  The happiest day of my life, our wedding day in 1976.

  COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR

  Love and Marriage

  By the spring of 1976, Frank and I had been together for four years. We’d been flirting with each other even longer than that, yet he still seemed reluctant to offer me any commitment about our future together.

  Neither of us was getting any younger, and Frank had a long history of losing interest after a few years. What if he met someone else? What would I do? And how would I ever find anyone who matched up to him? I was beginning to have sympathy with his first wife, Nancy, who’d never remarried since their divorce in 1951. When asked why not, she is said to have replied simply, “After Sinatra?”

  Tired of waiting for Frank to “make an honest woman of me” as m
y mother would say, I told him during the middle of a series of concerts in Lake Tahoe that I could no longer live this way. I knew that if I left it up to him, we’d go on dating until one of us got bored or died. Although I was afraid of what he might say, I gave him an ultimatum—marry me or lose me.

  “But I’m your rock!” he replied, clearly shaken.

  I told him, “You’re not a rock, and I can’t go on like this. I need the feeling of belonging, and I need to have someone belong to me.”

  He didn’t respond, so, deeply wounded, I flew home. To keep occupied over the next few weeks, I threw myself into organizing a tennis tournament in aid of the Third World charity World Mercy at the Riviera Hotel in Vegas. Several celebrity friends agreed to take part, and with Bobby by my side for moral support, I decided to make the most of our time on the Strip. I tried my best to put on a cheerful façade—gambling, drinking, and staying out late—but inside my heart was secretly breaking. Was this it? Was my time with Frank finally over? The thought made me sick to my stomach.

  Frank flew to Chicago to drown his sorrows with an old friend, the property developer Jack McHugh. They spent a great deal of time drunkenly swearing that they would never remarry. He’d call me every now and then, but our conversations were usually brief. I knew that I couldn’t reconsider unless he was prepared to commit. As the tennis tournament progressed and the distance between us seemed to grow, I began to think that would never happen.

  One day in May 1976, I was playing blackjack in the Riviera casino immediately after a tennis match when I was paged for a telephone call. “Barbara Marx,” a messenger called, “paging Mrs. Barbara Marx.” Making my way to the pit in my tennis whites, shoes, and pleated skirt, I picked up the phone to hear Frank’s voice asking, “What are you doing?”

  “Answering your telephone call.”

  “Are you in the pit?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you in the pit, so will you please go to your suite? I’ll call you there in five minutes.”

  “All right,” I said, “but I’m just finishing up something here, so you’ll have to give me at least thirty minutes.”

  I did what I had to do, and by the time I reached my suite the telephone was ringing off the hook. “This is ridiculous, Barbara!” Frank cried when I picked it up. I said nothing and waited. There was a pause before he added, “Come to Chicago.”

  I realized that I’d won some sort of victory, but he still wasn’t offering me anything concrete. “All right,” I said cautiously, “I think I can manage that in a day or two, after the tournament.”

  “No!” he snapped. “Come now.”

  “But, Frank,” I protested, “the finals are tomorrow and I’m presenting the trophy.”

  “Have someone else do it. I’ve had your things packed, and there’s a station wagon waiting for you downstairs. I’ve paid off your marker at the casino, and my plane’s waiting on the runway.” Taking the telephone across the room with me, I checked my closet, and sure enough, all my clothes were gone. Just as in the South of France four years earlier, he’d had someone sneak into my room. It looked as if I didn’t have a choice. No more bets, please.

  Excited and a little scared about what awaited me in Chicago, I hurried to Bobby’s room, where I found him taking a nap. Shaking him awake, I said, “I’m flying to Chicago tonight, and I need you to present the trophy for me tomorrow. Can you do that?”

  Yawning and scratching his head, my son replied, “Sure.” Bless him, he didn’t ask a single question. As I went to leave the room, he called out, “Happy Mother’s Day.” In all the excitement, I had completely forgotten the date.

  Still wearing my tennis clothes, I went down to the hotel lobby and found one of Frank’s drivers waiting for me. He took me to the airport, where a private plane flew me to Chicago. I was the sole passenger, and as I sipped a cocktail and watched the sky turn Sinatra orange over the clouds, I wondered what the dawn would bring.

  Frank was staying at the Ambassador East, which was the nicest hotel in Chicago at the time. Feeling chilly and self-conscious in my short pleated skirt and white shirt, I walked through the lobby while a porter followed with my luggage. Aside from being unaccustomed to arriving at a hotel via the main entrance, I felt unduly nervous. I was directed to the best suite, and when the door opened a wall of scent hit me. The huge living room was filled with every kind of flower imaginable. There must have been more than a hundred bouquets in vases and baskets. In the background, soft music was playing. How I’d missed him!

  Frank grinned at me and said, “Wait till you see what’s in the other room.” He led me through to a bedroom filled with even more roses and lilies, orchids and his favorites—gardenias. As I stood in the middle of the room, speechless, Frank casually tossed two enormous gemstones into the middle of the king-size bed. I stared at him and he stared at me, but I still didn’t move a muscle.

  “Well, aren’t you going to look at them?” he asked impatiently. He stood by the window smoking a cigarette and forgetting my rule. I could tell he was nervous, so I didn’t complain. Walking as steadily as I could toward the bed, I focused first on an enormous pear-shaped diamond that I later learned was twenty-two carats. It dazzled me with its perfection. Blinking back tears of happiness, I recalled how I’d told Frank a long time before that, if he ever asked me to marry him, I’d like a pear-shaped diamond just like one I’d seen in a magazine. This was almost identical. With a trembling hand, I picked it up and felt the weight of it. The second stone was even larger—a perfect green emerald. I didn’t know what to say.

  “You can have them set any way you want,” Frank said as my eyes met his.

  In spite of myself, I thought, That’s still not a proposal! Seeing the look of childish expectation on his face, however, I realized that it was probably the closest I was going to get. Relenting finally, I ran to his arms and let him enfold me in his loving embrace. That reunion, of all our reunions, was surely the sweetest. As we lay together for the rest of the day and night telling each other over and over how much we loved each other, I was filled with such happiness that I never wanted to break the spell.

  We did eventually have to get dressed, of course, and then Frank sent me to see a friend of his in the jewelry business. Praying that I was doing the right thing, I asked the friend to set the diamond in an engagement ring setting. Once the enormous solitaire was ready, I had the jeweler return it to Frank, not me, so that he could present it to me whichever way he wanted. The French-born actress Claudette Colbert was a great friend of Frank’s and was in a show in Chicago at the time. She advised him what to do. “Put the ring in Barbara’s soup during dinner,” she suggested.

  “No way, Frenchy!” Frank told her, alarmed. “She might eat it!” So they came up with another plan.

  The next night Frank invited Claudette and her beau for dinner with us in a smart Chicago restaurant. As we were sipping champagne and chatting, I suddenly spotted what I thought at first was a chunk of ice in the fluted stem of my glass. Then I got it. “What’s this?” I cried, feigning surprise.

  As Frank and Claudette exchanged a private smile, he shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

  Reaching in, I fished out my ring. “Is this for me?” I asked, giving him a knowing look.

  “Yes, beautiful,” Frank replied, suddenly coy. “Why don’t you put it on?”

  Those were still not the words I wanted to hear, so I handed the ring to him and said, “Here, Frank, you put it on. Put it anyplace you want.” I held out both my hands.

  Shaking his head, Frank admitted defeat and carefully placed it on my left ring finger. Claudette and her boyfriend applauded that most delicious of moments, and as Frank pulled me laughingly into his arms and kissed me, I was truly the happiest woman on the planet.

  A part from Claudette and her man, no one knew our big secret, and I wondered when Frank would announce it. I told my parents and Bobby, of course, and they were thrilled, but the rest of the wor
ld could wait.

  A week or so after we got back from Chicago, Frank took me to Van Cleef & Arpels in Beverly Hills to have my emerald set into a necklace, and we bumped into a woman we both knew. Thinking that Frank wouldn’t want our engagement public yet, I quickly slipped my left hand behind my back.

  “Hello, what are you doing here?” the woman asked suspiciously.

  “Having a stone set for Barbara,” Frank told her.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s just a gift,” Frank said, showing her the emerald. “Take a look.”

  “Oh. That’s pretty.”

  Frank turned to me, and grinning, he said, “Show her the other one.”

  Uh-oh, I thought, but I did as I was told. “Wow!” the woman exclaimed. “That’s really pretty! Does that mean anything?”

  Frank laughed. “Of course it does, silly!” That was the closest he’d come to saying we were engaged, and I was stupidly delighted and relieved. Now I just had to wait to see what he wanted to do next.

  Two weeks later we were at the Compound, sitting out by the pool. All of a sudden Frank looked up from his crossword and said, “Sweetheart, don’t you think we ought to set the date?”

  I thought to myself, Well, I guess that’s a proposal.

  He was romantic in every other way, but for some reason he just couldn’t bring himself to say the words “Will you marry me?” Maybe it was because he’d said them three times before, and each time the marriage had ended disastrously. Maybe it was because he felt he’d been coerced into it this time. I didn’t care; I loved the romanticism of it all—the flowers, the size of the stones, placing my ring in a glass of champagne. A born performer, that was the only way he knew how to show what was really in his heart.