VERY GOOD YEARS
Sinatra’s last wife, Barbara, dies at 90
PHILANTHROPIST and former showgirl Barbara Sinatra, the fourth wife of legendary crooner Frank Sinatra, died on Tuesday. She was 90.
Barbara Sinatra died nearly 20 years after her late husband in her Rancho Mirage, Calif., home after months of declining health, the director of the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center confirmed to the Daily News.
A noted humanitarian who rose from humble roots and once worked as a showgirl on the Las Vegas strip, Barbara Sinatra made herself a staple of the upper echelons of Palm Springs society before becoming the fourth Mrs. Sinatra in 1976.
“At first, I’d almost whisper when booking a restaurant reservation or beauty parlor appointment. Even to say ‘Mrs. Sinatra’ out loud felt like bragging,” she recalled in her 2011 memoir “Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank Sinatra.”
Born Barbara Blakely in Bosworth, Mo., Sinatra moved with her family to Wichita, Kan., when she was 10 and to Long Beach, Calif., at 18.
It was there that she began her modeling career and married her first husband, a struggling singer. The couple had a son before splitting up.
She then married Zeppo Marx, the youngest of the Marx Brothers comedy team, and began raising money for numerous charitable causes.
In the early 1970s, while enduring a loveless marriage with Marx, she began an affair with Sinatra, her neighbor at the time. “I was bored and lonely by the time Mr. Sinatra aimed those eyes in my direction. The spark he ignited inside jerked me from my slumbers,” she later wrote. But it took some convincing to get the notorious womanizer to make her his wife. Frank Sinatra wasn’t quite ready to tie the knot again — he was previously wed to Nancy Barbato (1939-1951), and actresses Ava Gardner (1951-1957) and Mia Farrow (1966-1968). When Barbara threatened to leave the suave serenader, he finally asked for her hand in marriage. He was 60 and she was 49 when they both said, “I do.”
And the relationship endured, lasting until the singer’s death at 82 in 1998.
Barbara Sinatra was known for being a constant presence at the volatile crooner’s side up until his last days, whether it was on tour, at the dais when he received his monumental awards during his careers or at countless social events.
In 1986, she used her husband’s fund-raising powers to build the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirrage, Calif., where she focused on helping victims of child abuse. More than 20,000 children have benefited from therapy at the center, according to a spokesperson.
Barbara Sinatra is survived by her son from her marriage before Sinatra, Robert Oliver Marx, and a granddaughter, Carina Blakely Marx. Zeppo Marx died in 1979.