My friend ‘Lady Blue Eyes’ was more than just Mrs Sinatra
Author Wendy Holden pays tribute to the First Lady of the Rat Pack, and reveals the fascinating woman she came to know
Frank Sinatra is often described as the Singer of the Century and few could argue that Ol’ Blue Eyes had a remarkable life. Few, however, know the equally fascinating story of Barbara – his fourth and final wife – who died at home this week, aged 90. I’d been a fan of Sinatra’s music since my early 20s so it was with considerable curiosity that, in 2009, I accepted the commission to write the memoir of his widow, the woman he affectionately called “Lady Blue Eyes”.
I half expected the book to be an open love letter to Frank and thought my biggest challenge would be to stop it from becoming a hagiography. Whenever I visited her, she’d put me in a guest suite of her penthouse apartment in Los Angeles filled with photos of the two of them in happier days. She’d have her staff create a special cocktail in my honour and, even if she was too unwell to get up, we’d lie together on her bed, toast Frank watching old movies with the mute button on, while she told me one wonderful story after another. But I soon discovered that Barbara’s life before Frank could have merited a book by itself. From our very first encounter, I found her fascinating.
Barbara Ann Blakeley was born soon after the Great Depression in small town Bosworth, Missouri. Like many bobby socks wearing teenagers of the era, Barbara was a Sinatra fanatic and would often be found sneaking off to her local drive-in to listen to Frank’s songs.
At 5ft 8in tall with a stunning figure, she won a local beauty pageant and would later set up a modelling school, launch her own cosmetics line and become a beauty consultant to the first Miss Universe contest.
Wooed by a local singer named Bob Oliver, she married in her 20s and they had a son, Robert. “Having Bobby was the best thing I ever did,” she told me, and by her own admission she became
‘Frank flew me to a restaurant in Europe for dinner. I’d never been so adored’
an adoring mother to her only child.
Her marriage wasn’t to last and by the time it ended a few years later Barbara was working as a showgirl on the Las Vegas strip catching the eye of every man she met from Howard Hughes to Elvis Presley and the then 56-year-old Zeppo Marx, the goodlooking straight-man member of the Marx Brothers who had retired early. They began seeing each other and married in 1959 with Barbara moving to Palm Springs where their next-door neighbour was the elusive Frank Sinatra.
As a so-called “desert rat”, Barbara became close pals with the singer Dinah Shore, and the actress Janet Leigh and her husband Tony Curtis. Kirk and Anne Douglas became good friends, as did Gregory and Veronique Peck. Barbara also met Marilyn Monroe – “the woman with the sad eyes” – John F Kennedy chatted her up and George Burns was “the funniest man I ever met”.
Her contact with Frank only really began when his ex-wife Ava Gardner visited and he had a tennis court built especially for her and asked Barbara to organise a few games. Ava was drunk on Moscow Mules before the match even began and all Frank did was flirt outrageously with Barbara to make Ava jealous.
“She, in turn, flirted with the tennis pro I’d brought along so in the end I left them all to it,” she recalled.
In his 50s and married three times, Frank was planning to retire. He repeatedly invited Barbara and Zeppo to his legendary all-night card and drinking parties, but Zeppo warned Barbara against him, telling her, “He’s trouble.” He was right. Frank finally kissed Barbara at a party held by Eva Gabor a year later.
When he followed her on holiday to Monaco that summer and introduced her to his friend Princess Grace, the former actress Grace Kelly, their fate was sealed. “I fell so hard for him that I didn’t really have a choice,” she told me. Her marriage to Zeppo over, Barbara moved next door and rarely left Frank’s side for the next 26 years. Following a four-year courtship, they were married in fairytale style in 1976, on the famous Annenberg estate in Palm Springs. “It was the hottest day of the year and I was so nervous when I woke up that morning, but Frank rang me in my room and told me he couldn’t wait to make me his wife,” she recalled. Frank was 60 and she 49.
She would tell me later he was the most romantic man she’d ever met. “He left me little notes on the refrigerator, on my desk, on my pillow,” she said, showing me a scrapbook into which she had pasted them all. “He flew me to a restaurant in Europe just for dinner. I had never been so adored.”
In return, she encouraged him to keep going when he was worried that he was losing his looks and his voice. It was also she who persuaded Frank to record New York, New York. “It was Liza Minnelli’s song but I knew it was perfect for Frank,” she said.
She frequently witnessed his famous trigger temper, but she also knew of his extraordinary generosity. “If he heard that a nightclub owner from his early days was in trouble, he’d fly his whole band in and put on a show there and donate all the proceeds.” Frank also helped her set up her eponymous children’s centre for victims of sexual abuse, and auctioned off paintings to raise funds. “Few people know how prolific and talented Frank was as an artist. I think he was happiest painting in his studio,” she recalled.
Barbara and Frank wept as they retook their wedding vows on their 20th anniversary in 1996, and in his final years Barbara nursed him through heart problems, cancer and dementia.
Her beloved Frank died on May 14 1998, after being rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. She told me, “I clasped his hand and urged him to keep fighting but his final words were, ‘I can’t.’ I knew then that I had lost him.”
Barbara’s grief was lifelong and deeply private, she never dated again and lived her life in his blessed memory. As she once told me, “How could anyone ever follow Frank?”
I last saw Barbara in March of this year at her Palm Springs home, soon after her 90th birthday. Frail and in a wheelchair, she was nevertheless still the model and beauty queen. “Hi, sweetheart!” she cried every time she saw me. “Come on in, sit down, and tell me everything.”
Each year, on the anniversary of Frank’s death, Barbara visited the cemetery in Palm Springs where he is buried to lay flowers on his grave. Standing there with her once, I asked her what her epitaph might be. Having thought about it for a moment, she roared with laughter and suggested, “Me too!”