Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  At a loss as to how to proceed, a distraught Tina telephoned Frank and laid it on the line. She’d been trying very hard for a very long time, she told him, to navigate the rocky shores of his marriage, but “enough is enough.” The fact that he would turn eighty and that she and her siblings and their mother would not be present to celebrate with him was more than she could bear. “I’ve had it, Dad,” she said angrily. “This is it for me. I’m done. I’m serious. I’m done.” It was as if the last almost twenty years of family turmoil had finally worn her down, and she had nothing left to give to the fight.

  “What do you mean you’re not invited?” Frank asked. He seemed not to have a clue about any of it.

  Tina told him that Barbara had made other plans and that other people had been invited, even their attorney Eliot Weisman and his wife—but not the Sinatra siblings. Frank said he would handle it. However, he sounded so detached, Tina knew from past experience that his efforts would amount to nothing but more disappointment. No, when she said she was done, she meant it. No telephone calls, no visits, nothing.

  This birthday celebration was the catalyst for the reemergence of great sadness; it felt to Tina as if her childhood was playing itself out again with Barbara now cast in the Ava role. It was as if Barbara had finally been successful in taking her father from her, and she had to protect herself. She had to withdraw.

  By the time Tina hung up the telephone, she was in tears, but also, to hear her tell it later, she felt a wave of relief wash over her. If she had learned anything from Frank, it was that no one was going to look out for her the way she must look out for herself. She was tired of being at the mercy of his marriage, and she wanted a ” ‘divorce.” When she told Nancy about her startling decision, she spoke about it with renewed confidence. It was the right choice for her, and she knew it.

  Though she knew Frank would be hurt by Tina’s choice, Barbara wasn’t going to do anything to change her mind. “To be honest with you,” she told one very close friend of hers, “I don’t have the strength to deal with Tina right now. I don’t think she gets it,” Barbara said, exasperated. When asked what she meant, she said, “Being Frank’s rock? It takes everything out of you.” She elaborated by saying she was so bone tired, the last thing she had time to do was to “deal with Frank’s daughters and their hurt feelings about this, that, and every other little thing under the sun.” She said she had to keep her priorities straight. On top of her list was Frank’s health,” she clarified, adding, “Every day, it’s about his different medicines, his doctor’s appointments, his many sadnesses, and my many worries. I’m sorry,” she concluded, “but I don’t have anything left to give to his daughters.” Of course, it could be said that Barbara’s legitimate concerns about Frank’s medical condition don’t seem sufficient grounds for her not inviting his daughters to such an important milestone birthday party. Was she really so blind to the turmoil such decisions would likely cause in the family? Or did she just not care?

  For his part, Frank fairly quickly made peace with Tina’s decision. This wasn’t new terrain, after all. Tina’s and Nancy’s previous boycott of the household had already set the stage for the present turmoil. After they rescinded their boycott, Frank hadn’t allowed himself to fully commit to his relationship with them for fear of something similar happening one day in the future. He understood that Tina felt the need to protect herself, because he too was protecting himself.

  Not surprisingly, Tina’s pronouncement instigated a debate between Frank and Barbara over the dinner party. Barbara held her ground. By this time, she was just fed up with the whole thing. “The kids could have planned something and they didn’t,” she said, according to one of the household employees who witnessed the debate. “So I told George and Jolene that we would go to their house for a nice dinner. The kids can celebrate the next night. And there’s always next year. I just don’t see what the problem is.”

  “No,” Frank bellowed. “If my kids aren’t going to be there, I’m not going. I’m too old and tired for this shit.”

  “Why does everything have to be such a big deal?” Barbara asked, frustrated. “I’m sick of it, Frank,” she said. “I’m old too. I’m tired too. You’re not the only one around here who is old and tired.” Barbara was sixty-eight at this time.

  “What kind of birthday party is it supposed to be without my kids?” he demanded to know.

  “It is not a birthday party,” Barbara sternly reminded him. “It is a dinner party. And I am not the hostess. Therefore, I am not responsible for the guest list. Jolene is. And yes, you are going.”

  And yes, he did go.

  “Goodbye, Dag”

  On Christmas morning 1995, Dean Martin died at the age of seventy-eight. The reported cause of death was acute respiratory failure brought on by emphysema. With many of the key players in his life being toppled one by one—Ava Gardner, Sammy Davis Jr., Jilly Rizzo, and Sammy Cahn—after Dean’s death, Frank fell into another deep depression. “I’m next,” he told friends at Matteo’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. “I’m not scared, either. How can I be? Everybody I ever knew is already over dere.”

  Though the two had drifted apart since that last tour together ended, they had seen each other on the occasion of Dean’s birthday, in June, then once again for dinner just weeks before Dean died.

  Earlier in the year, Frank and Barbara had sold the Palm Springs compound, which Frank had owned since 1954. It sold for $4.9 million. They’d decided that they wanted a “simpler” life and would stay exclusively in their $5.2-million, four-bedroom, six-bathroom Beverly Hills mansion. They also still had their $6 million beachfront Malibu home.

  For Frank, leaving the desert compound after almost fifty years was incredibly difficult, but everyone felt he should be in the Beverly Hills estate exclusively, closer to the doctors and hospitals there. His family had campaigned for the move, also, so that he could be closer to them. It took a lot out of Frank, though, and once he was in the new home, everyone could tell that he was a little less himself.

  Barbara decided that they should also sell many of their prized possessions in an auction at Christie’s rather than try to squeeze everything from the desert estate into the other two homes. Therefore, the 1976 Jaguar XJS Barbara gave to Frank as a wedding present went to a retired real estate developer in Delaware for $79,500. Frank’s black lacquer Bösendorfer grand piano went for $51,750. His glass-and-brass mailbox sold for $13,800. A white-and-blue golf cart—with the driver’s side bearing the inscription “Ol’ Blue Eyes” and the passenger side reading “Lady Blue Eyes,” and featuring a built-in stereo system, went for $20,700. A statue of John Wayne, a gift from the Duke, went for $7,475. It was sad; Nancy and Tina grew more discouraged as much of their father’s life was sold off, piece by piece. Every now and then, Frank would pull Tony Oppedisano aside and squeeze a pair of gold cuff links in his hand and say, “Make sure Tina gets these,” or a lighter and say, “This should go to Frankie.” Tony would just say, “Consider it done, pal.” In all, Frank and Barbara earned $2 million from the auction.

  With his life shrinking more and more with each passing day, Frank was nostalgic for the old days. “He calls me up,” Dean said while sitting at his table at La Famiglia restaurant six months before his death, “and we shoot the shit, you know. Two old guys. Frank wants to talk over old times. Only problem is, I don’t remember the old times. I can’t even remember the new times.”

  Dean’s daughter Deana says Tony Oppedisano made the arrangements for dinner at Da Vinci’s Italian restaurant; it would be Frank, Dean, Tony, and Mort Viner. Frank seemed at least almost partially deaf at this point, wearing a hearing aid. During the evening, he attempted to tell Dean a story about Don Rickles. However, Dean couldn’t hear him because Frank was sitting on his left side and Dean was almost deaf in that ear. Frustrated, Frank pulled his hearing aid out of his ear and handed it to Tony. “Shove this in Dean’s ear so he can hear me,” Frank suggested. Tony did as he was told. Then F
rank repeated his story. “Why are you talking so loudly, pallie?” Dean asked. “I can hear every word you’re saying.” At that, Frank looked at Dean and said, “Huh? What’d you say? Speak up, I can’t hear you.” They were still funny, even when they didn’t intend it.

  Frank would speak to Dean one more time, on Christmas Eve, the day before he died. Tony would say that Frank signed off as he always did with Dean: “Goodbye, Dag.”

  Frank tried to attend Dean’s funeral at Westwood Village Memorial Park, but he broke down while getting dressed. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I want to do this, but I don’t know if I have the strength.” The family felt it would be better for his health if he didn’t attend. “He stayed in bed for two days after the funeral,” Barbara later recalled. Barbara attended the services, as did Nancy—the Sinatra women sat on opposite sides of the chapel. Tina, who had removed herself, was not at the funeral and didn’t speak to her father personally about Dean’s death. Crying—she loved her Uncle Dean as much as everyone else—she listened in on her sister Nancy’s telephone conversation with Frank.

  In a prepared statement, Frank Sinatra said, “Too many times I’ve been asked to say something about friends who are gone. This is one of the hardest. Dean was my brother—not through blood but through choice. Our friendship has traveled down many roads over the years, and there will always be a special place in my heart and soul for Dean. He has been like the air I breathe—always there, always close by.”

  A Fourth Wedding Ceremony

  Six months later, Frank and Barbara renewed their wedding vows on their twentieth anniversary, July 11, 1996, at Our Lady of Malibu Church. Frank was eighty-one, Barbara sixty-nine.

  This event would actually be Frank and Barbara’s fourth wedding ceremony, the first having been in Palm Springs and the second and third, in Palm Beach and then New York, after Frank’s marriage to Nancy was annulled.

  Not only did Frank love Barbara, but he appreciated the way she had taken care of him through recent years of illnesses—the sleepless nights, the tears, the anguish she’d gone through where he was concerned. He’d been touched by all of it. Loyalty was always a paramount consideration in his life, and Barbara had more than proved hers over the last twenty years. But he had to at least wonder, at what cost? Tina wasn’t speaking to him at all. Nancy was very cautious. In fact, she was speaking to her father only occasionally at this point. Frank Jr. was, though slightly more accessible, never going to be completely available to Frank; of course this strained dynamic preceded Barbara by years.

  “Twenty-four years after we’d first started dating, we were still together, still in love,” Barbara would recall. “We had defied all the critics; we’d lost money for those foolish enough to gamble on us not staying together more than a few months. We’d risen above all the attempts of those who tried to break us up. Ours was a deep and lasting love, full of trust and loyalty . . . Was it easy? Not always. Was it calm? Rarely. But was it fun? Oh yes; a thousand times, yes.”

  Tina and Nancy chose not to attend the ceremony. Frank Jr., however, was present, as was Bobby Marx. “I just want to congratulate you, Pop,” Frank Jr., who was now fifty-two, said to his dad as they stood at the bar together with some of the guests. The two men shook hands. “You sure know how to shake up the ol’ henhouse, don’t you?” Frank Jr. said with a smile. Laughing, Frank slapped his son on the back and said, “Yeah, well, I always been pretty good at that, haven’t I?”

  Surrounded by Love

  At the end of 1996, Francis Albert Sinatra was about to turn eighty-one years old.

  Dolly and Marty were gone.

  Sammy, Dean, and Peter, gone.

  The Kennedys—JFK and Bobby and even Jackie—gone.

  Sam Giancana, gone.

  Lana, Ava, Marilyn, gone.

  Jilly, gone.

  And everyone who was left was getting on in years.

  “With each passing, I think my father loses a tiny piece of his spirit,” observed Tina Sinatra.

  “I haven’t spoken to my father much lately, because he has really been withdrawn since Dean died,” admitted Frank Jr. “And then there’s the other thing. The inner, the deeper-set problem that goes beyond poignancy. There’s the actual state of depression; the fact of knowing that we’re just getting old now,” he added. “Emotionally, he’s down. He’s a little bit heartsick. He sees a lot of his friends are getting old and dying, and it hurts him.”

  Like many people when they near the end of their lives, Frank couldn’t help but reflect upon and take stock of his long, eventful personal history. He vacillated between emotions about it. Sometimes he felt that people knew exactly what they were getting into by being in his life, it was a privilege and an honor for them because he was who he was—and too bad for them if they got hurt. Other times, he was regretful. For instance, he deeply regretted the impact his leaving Nancy for Ava had on his children—but he had lamented that for years. He also never seemed to completely reconcile the matter of Peter Lawford. “I shouldn’t have done that to Peter,” he told Joey D’Orazio on the telephone at this time. Joey was calling from Hoboken to congratulate him on the renewal of his vows to Barbara. Joey told him, “We were young and stupid. We can’t kick ourselves about it now.” But Frank said he wished he could “go back,” that he “probably could have been nicer to some people.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have been Frank Sinatra,” Joey observed.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t have been Frank Sinatra.”

  Tina had said back in 1993, “As much as we would like to see Dad not work so hard, we also know that singing is his life force. For him to stop before he’s ready might kill him.” Frank had felt the same way. Now it was as if everyone’s greatest fear was coming to pass. Without his songs, his soul had begun to wither. He seemed to have lost the will to go on; his body began to break down. While he was once a young man trapped in an old man’s body, by the end of 1996 he was simply . . . an old man. Still, he would not give up. When his daughter Nancy asked him what he might want for his upcoming eighty-first birthday on December 12, Frank put it succinctly: “Another birthday.” He was also tired of the family melodrama, he said. Therefore, everyone wondered if maybe they should make a concerted effort to get along. But could such a thing even happen?

  Before the family members had a chance to reevaluate their rapport with one another, something occurred that transformed the family dynamic. In November 1996, Frank had a heart attack. He was rushed to Cedars-Sinai hospital. Once they got him stabilized, they realized he was also suffering pneumonia in the lining of his left lung.

  When Tina got the call, her boycott was instantly over; she had to be with her dad. She rushed to the hospital, and with just a few words that were barely audible, the slate was wiped completely clean and Tina was once again her daddy’s “Pigeon.”

  Doctors said that Frank was lucky to have survived the attack. However, this sobering event shook the entire family to its core. All of the bad blood between them these last twenty years no longer mattered. The fact that Frank seemed to be approaching the end of his days caused his family members to reconsider their priorities. Everyone knew without even having to acknowledge it that they needed to be present for not only him, but for each other.

  Frank stayed in the hospital for eight days. On the afternoon of his release, Barbara called Tina, Nancy, and Frankie out into the hallway. She extended her hands to Tina. Tina took them into her own. “I just want all three of you to know that anytime you want to visit your father, you are more than welcome to come by the house,” Barbara said. She would be seventy next year and, at least on this day, she looked her age, which for her was rare. Usually meticulously put together, she now seemed a little less elegant, slightly more bedraggled. But it had been an awful week. Actually, it had been an awful year.

  In January 1996, Barbara had suffered a terrible accident when she fell down a flight of stairs. She says she broke her T12 thoracic vertebra, as well as almost every
bone in one of her feet. Few people knew about it, though; she says she kept it to herself rather than worry Frank. She was fitted with a cast up to her knee and a steep brace around her torso. Somehow she managed to function that way for three long months wearing housecoats and very loose clothing with high-necked blouses; she says that Frank never suspected a thing, though that somehow seems unlikely.

  “Day or night,” she continued while talking to Frank’s daughters in the hospital. “You are more than welcome.” She seemed sincere.

  “Oh my God, Barbara,” Tina said. “I have waited so long to hear you say that.”

  “We’ve all been on a wrong path,” Barbara told the Sinatra girls. They agreed. Barbara then embraced Tina and Nancy.

  Even though it appeared to most observers that Frank was on his deathbed—magazines and newspapers prepared his obituaries and waited for the sad announcement—he rebounded, was checked out of the hospital, and, as soon as he got home, enjoyed a smoke and a glass of Jack Daniel’s, loving every last sip.

  During his life, it had always been “all or nothing at all” for Frank. Unfortunately, it would seem that particular credo would also characterize the many ailments subsequent to the heart attack. Cancer. Kidney problems. Bladder ailments. “Mini-strokes.” A touch of dementia, even. He would have them all; of course, Frank could never die in any way other than dramatically. He steadfastly refused to allow information about his failing condition to be released to the public. He insisted upon being remembered as he was in his heyday, not as he was at the end. While his life had been unique in many ways, his slow, painful decline wasn’t. “You gotta love livin’,” he’d always said. “Dyin’ is a pain in the ass.” Now, more than ever, he must have believed those words to be true.