‘She never stopped loving Ol’ Blue Eyes’ ... Sinatra’s first wife Nancy dies aged 101
FRANK SINATRA’S first wife Nancy – said to have never stopped loving the singer even after he left her for Hollywood sex siren Ava Gardner – has died at the age of 101.
If the star could have turned back the clock, he never would have ended his marriage to his childhood sweetheart, the couple’s eldest daughter, Nancy Sinatra Jr, once claimed.
‘I asked him, if he had to do it all over again, would he leave mum for Ava,’ said Nancy Jr. ‘And he said no.’
Granddaughter A.J. Lambert said: ‘He never stopped loving her. And I know she never stopped loving him.’
Born Nanicia Barbato in 1917 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Nancy was 22 when she married Sinatra, then a little-known jazz singer, in 1939. They had three children – Nancy Jr, Frank Jr and Tina – before the singer – known as Ol’ Blue Eyes – left his wife for Gardner. But Sinatra could not bring himself to get a divorce straight away.
Tina wrote in her 2000 memoir My Father’s Daughter: ‘It would take him two years to ask mom for a divorce and they were two of the toughest, most insecure years of dad’s life. His career was faltering, his bank account dwindling. What money he had went to mum to care for us.’
When Sinatra eventually asked for a divorce, he wed Gardner ten days after the dissolution was finalised. Though he married twice more, Nancy never walked down the aisle again, carrying an eternal flame for the man she had lost.
She died on Friday night, with Nancy Jr writing on Twitter: ‘My mother passed away peacefully tonight at the age of 101.
‘She was a blessing and the light of my life. Godspeed Momma. Thank you for everything.’
In later years, she was known as Nancy Sr, especially after her namesake daughter became a singing star in her own right with hit songs such as These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.
She also remained friendly with her ex-husband.
‘There is no bitterness, only great respect and affection between Sinatra and his first wife,’ the literary journalist Gay Talese wrote in 1966. ‘He has long been welcome in her home.’