His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [258]
After divorcing her husband, she took her young son, Bobby, and moved to Las Vegas, where she became a showgirl at the Riviera Hotel. She also modeled for the California designer, Mr. Blackwell, who became famous for his annual list of the World’s Ten Worst Dressed Women.
“Barbara is not a woman of humor, nor is she very intelligent, but she’s beautiful, she’s sweet, and she’s incredibly patient,” Blackwell said. “I started designing in 1956, and she was my number one model. She was always prepared when she walked down the runway, and in New York she spent her last buck to find the best pair of high heels to make my clothes look better. She knew I liked high heels, and so she wore them. She’s very accommodating that way.
“We were very poor then and had to share a hotel room to save money. We used to spend hours together talking about our dreams for the future, and Barbara said she needed to marry a man of position. She was very ambitious. Not for a career, because she really didn’t want to work, but she said she needed to marry a man of means. She loved jewelry.
“So we both set out to save her from the bar stools of Vegas. You see, during the shows, the dancing girls would sit on the stools and attract customers. They had to get acquainted with the big rollers, so to speak. That’s how she met Zeppo, who was about twenty years older than she was and part of the Marx Brothers comedy team. He was an inveterate card player, but he was the most famous and important man she had met up to that point, and so she set her sights for him. I helped by borrowing jewels and mink coats for her to wear when she went out with him so that she would look good—like she didn’t have to marry for money, you know what I mean? She desperately wanted to marry Zeppo because of the good life he could give her and her young son.
“After three years, Zeppo finally proposed and they were married in 1959. That got her into the Palm Springs Racquet Club and the Tamarisk Country Club, which was very important to her. She became good friends with Dinah Shore. Zeppo brought her into a new world of money and social prominence that she had never known before. He wasn’t the classiest man in the world, I’ll grant you that, but he was the best that Barbara could do for herself at the time … and he was a good launching pad to get Frank later on.… When Zeppo finally asked her to get married, she told me that there wouldn’t be much cash available to her because he lived off a trust fund, but he promised that she could charge everything she wanted and live very comfortably.”
“Barbara’s life hasn’t been a bed of roses,” said Dinah Shore. “Her son, Bobby, has always been the most important thing in her life. It wasn’t easy raising him alone in Vegas. She was determined that life run smoothly for Bobby, and it has. He’s a wonderful young man.”
The Marx marriage lasted thirteen years—until Barbara fell in love with Frank.
“Zeppo told me, ‘She left me with a deck of cards and an old Sinatra album,’ ” said his nephew, Arthur Marx. “My dad [Groucho] was giving Zep one thousand dollars a month to live on before he died in 1979.”
Everyone seemed to like the pretty, blue-eyed blonde who was uninhibited in her devotion to Frank, helping him with his parties, accompanying him on the golf course, traveling with him around the world. She got along as well with Rosalind Russell as she did with Jilly Rizzo.
“She’s just perfect for him,” said Phyllis Cerf Wagner. “If Frank feels like cooking an Italian dinner, that’s what she feels like doing. If Frank feels like going out and going to a nightclub, that’s what she