His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [257]
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“If I had as many love affairs as you’ve given me credit for, I’d now be speaking to you from a jar in the Harvard Medical School,” said Frank in a speech to Hollywood press agents. Yet this man, described by Playboy as “a bona fide sex idol with the stamp of his epoch on him,” sang pleadingly for “one last caress” before “it’s time to dress for fall,” and women responded generously. Some, including Pamela Churchill Hayward, he would have married, but the British beauty had declined the offer shortly after the death of her husband, producer Leland Hayward, in March 1971. Six months later, she married Averell Harriman.
“Frank is very good to widows,” said Joan Cohn Harvey. “I know, because after Harry died, he made a pass at me, but I wasn’t interested. I didn’t need the rush, and I told him so. Somehow I managed to say no nicely enough because I got roses the next day, and we remained friends.”
Edie Goetz was not so fortunate. After her husband’s death in 1969, Frank had courted her romantically, although she was several years his senior.
“Frank took such good care of me, and was so good for me after Billy died,” she said. “We traveled everywhere together. He took me to Palm Springs and to New York for Arthur and Bubbles Hornblow’s twenty-fifth anniversary party.… And, oh, the presents. … He bought me stereo speakers for the house, and one Christmas he gave me an embroidered bag—you couldn’t see the embroidery under a magnifying glass it was so fine, and inside there was a solid gold box which was engraved: ‘To Edie, With Much Love—Noel. Francis.’ When he married Mia, he gave me a double Fabergé frame with his picture and hers. Later, he told me to take Mia’s picture out and put two of him in, so that’s what I did.… We had such a friendly love affair. … He called me ‘sexy.’ … It was gay and fun. …”
Then one night while they were sitting in the library of Edie’s Holmby Hills mansion, Frank suggested turning their relationship into something more permanent. Edie, the daughter of Louis B. Mayer and one of Hollywood’s most important hostesses, was horrified at the prospect.
“Why, Frank, I couldn’t marry you,” she said bluntly. “Why … why … you’re nothing but a hoodlum. …”
Without saying a word, Frank left the house and never spoke to Edie Goetz again.
Other women, like Hope Lange, Lois Nettleton, and Victoria Principal, might have longed to become the next Mrs. Frank Sinatra, but they were simply pretty interludes along the way for Frank, who had sworn off marriage. “I’ve been married three times and that’s enough,” he said. “I’m not getting married again!”
“It was a happy time, his mellow period, after he’d retired and before he went back into show business,” said Victoria Principal. “We were very discreet. Few people even knew about our relationship. But I will always treasure the memory of those happy months we had together.”
It was during that retirement period that Frank had begun seeing Barbara Marx, who was still married to her second husband, Zeppo, the youngest of the Marx Brothers. She and Zeppo lived near Sinatra on the Tamarisk golf course in Palm Springs. An excellent tennis player, Barbara had been frequently invited to Frank’s house as a doubles partner for Spiro Agnew.
“That’s how the relationship started,” recalled Peter Malatesta. “At first she just came over for tennis, but after a while she was there all the time.”
Shortly before Barbara accompanied Frank to the Nixon-Agnew inaugural in 1973, she sued Zeppo for divorce. She was awarded $1,500 a month alimony for ten years, plus a 1969 Jaguar. Frank immediately replaced it with a brand new one.
Born October 16, 1930, in Glendale, California, Barbara Jane Blakeley had aspired to be a beauty queen and after high school had entered several local contests. She was crowned Belmont Shore Fiesta Queen in Long Beach in 1946. The next year, she was named Miss