Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [109]
Vero is still great fun, although the days are over now when she’d be the first to jump at the chance to play tennis or come horseback riding with me. I’d loved horses ever since I’d ridden Pansy the pony as a kid in Bosworth. I had several great animals, including an Appaloosa, which was a present from my old school friend Winnie Markley and her husband.
One of my best horses came from the singer Wayne Newton. Frank and he were in a show together in Vegas, and after the concert that night Wayne told me that one of his Arabian mares was about to foal at his ranch not far from town. “Do you want to come and watch?” he asked.
“I’d love to!” I replied. When we reached the stables, the vet was already there. Once he told us that the foal was the wrong way around and in distress, I threw my full-length mink onto the straw and forgot about my gown as I jumped in to help. Wayne watched as I assisted the vet in turning the foal, even though he warned me that the contractions could break a man’s arm. First one hoof came out, then another, and finally this perfect foal emerged panting and wet as we laughed and cried and hugged each other. Wayne then delighted me further with the announcement “I’m calling her Barbara Ann,” adding, “and she’s yours.” I was over the moon.
A few years later I met the head of Occidental, Armand Hammer, at a party and told him about Barbara Ann. Knowing what a great breeder Wayne was, he offered to fly her to his stud in Florida and breed her with the top stallion in the country. The chestnut foal that was born was named Sinatra Hammer Newton, Sinny for short.
Several of our guests in the desert enjoyed horseback riding too and were only too willing to try out one of my steeds. One customer who wasn’t quite so willing, though, was George Schlatter. Poor George was a terrible rider, and everyone teased him about it. To save his face, I decided to lend him my Peruvian Paso, named Tsar d’Oro, which absolutely anyone could ride. I took “Horhay” to one side and told him, “You ride Tsar tomorrow, and I guarantee you’ll be the best of them all, even better than Jolene.” He came to the stables a little less reluctantly than usual and let me help him up onto that horse. Sure enough, he was fine. Before long he was prancing all over the desert like a king. Jolene couldn’t believe it. Neither could R. J. Wagner, who’d seen George ride before. All was going great until George rode Tsar back to the stable, lifted the rein over his head, and got off on the wrong side. With an enormous crash, he fell butt-first onto the dirt while the horse panicked and began dancing all around him. George was hollering and trying to get out of the way until we eventually managed to get him up unharmed. After he’d dusted himself off, he turned to all of us and pleaded, “Whatever you do, please don’t tell Frank!”
We drove back to the Compound to find Frank sitting by the pool, his nose in a book. He didn’t even look up. He just said, “Hey, Hopalong, why don’t you buy your own horse?”
The fun and frolics didn’t stop when we went on the road; in fact, in many ways they intensified, because Frank was usually so wound up after shows that he needed to wind down superfast.
We were in Gstaad visiting Roger Moore when Frank got into a late-night argument in a bar with the biggest Arab I’d ever seen. Looking up from where I was chatting with Jolene and George, I suddenly spotted my husband poking his finger in the chest of this man-mountain and thought, Uh-oh.
I nudged Jolene, who nudged George and said, “Your friend’s in trouble. Do something.”
George almost choked on his drink. “Have you seen the size of him?” he asked. “Frank’s not that much of a friend!” We laughed but sent him to rescue Frank anyway. Fortunately