LAST LADY BLUE EYES
WHEN Barbara Sinatra died on Tuesday at the age of 90, she was hailed as Ol’ Blue Eyes’ longest-lasting wife and some would say the longest-suffering. The icy blonde had transcended her role as the wife of one of the greatest musical artists of the past century to become a prominent socialite and philanthropist. But though she had the mansions, jewels and private planes her 22-year marriage to Frank Sinatra was a battlefield.
The ferociously ambitious former beauty queen endured his infidelities, boozing and bad moods, all the while fighting the resentment and disdain of his family – a feud that was to carry on for many more years after his death.
Sinatra’s mother Dolly loathed Barbara and his children by a previous marriage never seemed to think she was worthy of their legendary father. As the formidable Dolly told her superstar son when his affair with Barbara began in the 1960s: “Aren’t there enough whores around?”
Sinatra’s daughters Nancy and Tina by his childhood sweetheart and first wife Nancy Barbato were always at loggerheads with the woman they viewed as their social-climbing stepmother. After Sinatra died in 1998 at the age of 82 they never spoke to her again except through lawyers.
“Peace will never happen with my stepmother,” said Tina, now 69. “There is no point.” Nancy, 77, was even more blunt, branding Barbara: “A horrible human being.”
They accused Barbara of isolating the star from his family and friends and persuading him to change his will in her favour. Nancy and Tina were horrified when Barbara insisted that Frank give her a jointtenancy ownership of his homes in Beverly Hills, Palm Springs and Malibu so that she would take half in the event of a divorce.
And they never forgave Barbara for waiting until the last minute to tell them that their father was on his deathbed. Nancy, who had a 1966 hit with These Boots Are Made For Walking, raged: “I was not given the chance to say goodbye. I will never forgive her for that. Never. He asked, ‘Where are my children?’ And his children didn’t know. She is evil personified.”
NANCY believes that Barbara kept her and Tina from his deathbed “because then obits could say, ‘He died with his wife by his side.’” Tina lashed out: “This was also a woman who would remove all my father’s clothes from his home months before he died – most widows leave those intact as a shrine.”
Barbara was Sinatra’s fourth wife. Following his marriage to first wife Nancy there had been a relationship with screen siren Ava Gardner and a brief union with actress Mia Farrow. By the time he embarked on an affair with Barbara, a former Las Vegas showgirl, she was already on her second marriage to Zeppo Marx of The Marx Brothers.
Born Barbara Blakeley in Bosworth, Missouri, she had clawed her way out of poverty by trading on her looks, becoming a beauty queen and model and then marrying a little-known singer called Bob Oliver before moving on to Zeppo. Sinatra and Zeppo lived alongside the same golf course in Palm Springs and were friends when the affair began. But marriage to Sinatra turned out to be no bed of roses.
Barbara did not marry a young and charismatic entertainer but instead acquired a glassy-eyed, broken-down womaniser, a man who was fogbound in a haze of sedatives, barbiturates, antidepressants and bourbon.
She “looked the other way” at his many infidelities and begrudgingly accepted that Sinatra never stopped loving Gardner, saying: “You never worry about old flames. You worry about new ones.”
Sinatra could also be a belligerent drunk with a terrible temper and in her 2011 memoir Barbara admitted: “I don’t know that I handled his moods, I lived with them.” Gin “made him mean” she said and if she saw “a gin bottle on the bar I’d turn right around and go back in the room and lock the door”.
Content with their affair Sinatra was reluctant to tie the knot. When Barbara gave him the ultimatum of, “Marry me or I’ll leave” Sinatra shrugged. Barbara stormed off. Belatedly he begged her to return, leaving a cut diamond and emerald on her bed. It was hardly a real proposal but Barbara accepted it.
Yet on her wedding day in 1976 Sinatra had one more gift: a prenuptial agreement limiting how much she could take in a divorce.
Ultimately Barbara outlived Sinatra and was generously looked after in his will yet she fought his children for years, clashing bitterly over royalties and licensing. She had been given 20 per cent of Sinatra’s royalties from his Capitol recordings after 1993, while his children controlled his earlier Reprise recordings as well as his name and likeness.
To the end Barbara insisted that she was the innocent victim of a vendetta. “Well, it obviously wasn’t me,” she said, “so it had to be them, right?”