His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [261]
A few close friends like Dinah Shore and Johnny Carson did not receive invitations because Frank was still fuming about their treatment of Spiro Agnew. Carson had refused to have the former vice-president on The Tonight Show to plug his book, and while Dinah had Agnew on her television show, she asked him a question that Frank found too probing. Because of that question, Frank barred her from the wedding, although Dinah was one of Barbara’s closest friends.
The only invited guest who declined was Frank, Jr., who pleaded a singing engagement on the East Coast. As a wedding present, he sent his father a carton full of paperback sex manuals.
“What the hell is this supposed to mean?” Frank asked him.
“Well, fourth time. There must be something wrong,” said Junior. “I figured maybe you needed some help.”
Sworn to absolute secrecy about the wedding plans, Barbara was put to the test when Zeppo called her on July 10 to ask whether she and Frank were getting married the following day.
“Oh, no, dear,” she said. “Frank and I aren’t getting married until October tenth.”
After Zeppo made another call and found out that the wedding was indeed set for the next day, he shook his head sadly.
“It really hurts me that she felt she had to lie to me,” he told a reporter. “It must have been orders from Sinatra.
“Frank doesn’t seem embarrassed that he stole my wife. We remain very friendly. And I’ve never said anything bad about him. I think Barbara and Frank will be very happy, and I believe she will fit into the Sinatra family. Now she is with someone younger—someone she really wants to be with. But I wouldn’t dream of attending their wedding … not that I’ve been invited.”
The next day at three P.M. armed guards stood outside the gates of the Annenbergs’ estate to ensure that no reporters or photographers were admitted. Pacing up and down in front of the black marble fireplace in the Annenbergs’ drawing room, the sixty-year-old bridegroom waited with Judge James H. Walsworth, while his forty-six-year-old bride changed into her wedding dress, a drifting beige chiffon by Halston. After a few minutes Frank became impatient. “Hurry up, Barbara,” he said. “Everyone thought I would be the one who wouldn’t show up.”
Minutes later the beautiful blonde appeared on the arm of her father, Charles Blakeley, and stood alongside Frank, who was flanked by his best man, Freeman Gosden (Amos of Amos ’n’ Andy), and Bea Korshak, the matron of honor, who was wearing the antique sapphire and diamond necklace that Barbara and Frank had given her the night before. Reading the civil wedding vows, Judge Walsworth asked Barbara: “Do you take this man for richer and for poorer?”
“Richer, richer,” said Frank, causing everyone to burst into laughter.
“All she wants to do is make Frank happy. That’s her goal,” asserted Barbara’s mother, Irene Blakeley. “And he wants her to have the best of everything.”
After the ceremony, a champagne reception was held in the Annenbergs’ marbled atrium decorated with bouquets of bouvardia, garlands of gardenias, and huge sprays of lilies of the valley. The bride cut a four-tiered wedding cake with a knife festooned with stephanotis. As she and Frank paused to make a wish, presidential contender Ronald Reagan piped up: “If you can’t think of anything you want to ask for, I can make a suggestion.” Everyone laughed.
Waiting outside for the guests, who included Spiro Agnew, Jimmy Van Heusen, Gregory Peck, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Leo Durocher, and Sidney Korshak, were air-conditioned buses to transport everyone