Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [0]
Copyright © 2011 by Barbara Sinatra
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Crown Archetype with colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint their material:
Daniel E. Kaplan: “It’s Vine on the Line!” by Daniel E. Kaplan. Reprinted
by permission of the author.
Shannon Moseley: “I’m Free” by Shannon Moseley. Reprinted by permission
of the author.
Principle Management: Excerpt from a speech given by Bono on the occasion
of Frank Sinatra’s Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1994. Reprinted
by permission of Principle Management on behalf of Bono.
Frankie Randall: Lyrics from “Twenty Years Ago Today” by Frankie
Randall. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sinatra, Barbara.
Lady blue eyes : my life with Frank / Barbara Sinatra.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Sinatra, Frank, 1915–1998. 2. Singers—United States—
Biography. 3. Sinatra, Barbara. I. Title.
ML420.S565S59 2011
782.42164092—dc22
[B] 2010031907
eISBN: 978-0-307-44994-8
TITLE PAGE PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BETTMANN/CORBIS
v3.1
Dedicated to the next generation,
and especially my granddaughter,
Carina Blakeley Marx
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Prologue: A Very Good Year
ONE The House I Live In
TWO New York, New York
THREE Luck Be a Lady
FOUR All or Nothing at All
FIVE Fly Me to the Moon
SIX Angel Eyes
SEVEN Where the Air Is Rarefied
EIGHT The Tender Trap
NINE Love and Marriage
TEN You Make Me Feel So Young
Photo Insert
ELEVEN Come Rain or Come Shine
TWELVE I Get a Kick Out of You
THIRTEEN What Now My Love
FOURTEEN Body and Soul
FIFTEEN That’s Life
SIXTEEN Stormy Weather
SEVENTEEN You Will Be My Music
EIGHTEEN Put Your Dreams Away
Epilogue: The Best Is Yet to Come
Preface
I have always been a private person, so the idea of writing a book about my life with Frank didn’t come naturally to me. My husband was also extremely private and never wrote his memoirs, although he did consider it for a while. I think if he had, though, his reminiscences would have been much more about the music than about the life.
The decision to sit down with the writer Wendy Holden and bear witness came about because several of those closest to me persuaded me that I had a unique perspective on what it was like to live with Frank Sinatra, a man who still commands worldwide fascination years after his death. Who else but his widow could speak of him so honestly, writing an open love letter to her husband while revealing him as a fully rounded individual, brilliantly talented yet utterly human, warts and all? What really clinched the idea of a book for me, though, was the fact that Frank spent so much of his time trying to “set the record straight.” He was a prolific writer of letters to editors and publishers, in which he railed against the numerous lies, innuendos, and misrepresentations about him printed in articles and books across the globe. These mistruths tend to take on a life of their own, being repeated and embellished over the years until people believe them to be true.
With Wendy’s gentle coaxing, I have drawn on my memories spanning eight decades to chronicle not only my twenty-six years with Frank but the journey my life took me on before I was even by his side. It has been quite an adventure, and when I look back on it now, I sometimes cannot believe that I managed to fit all this in during just one lifetime. In sharing