Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [121]
Within a year, though, he came to appreciate the damage his diet and lifestyle could do. By November he was suffering acute abdominal pain and almost had to cancel an engagement at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City. Typically, he went on that night as usual, and none of his fans would have suspected how much he was hurting. The following day he was flown to the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, where he underwent emergency surgery to remove a large part of his (infected) lower colon. To allow time for his body to heal, the doctors performed a temporary colostomy and fitted him with a bag, which was something he loathed and detested. Before the six-week rest period was up, he told the doctors he couldn’t handle the bag anymore, so he made them open him up and try to fix the problem another way. Sadly, that didn’t work at first and they had to perform surgery once more and reverse what he’d made them do. Having joked that if they screwed up he’d have them whacked, one of the first things he asked when he woke up from the anesthesia was, “Are the doctors still alive?”
Frank was never the most patient of patients and he hated getting old, but that colostomy bag really made him feel his age. In defiance of how he was feeling, he went ahead with a television role he’d agreed to months earlier—a part in Tom Selleck’s Magnum, P.I. series, which was filmed in Hawaii in January 1987. Frank loved Magnum and always said if a part came up for him in it, he’d jump at the chance. In the script that was specially written for him, entitled “Laura,” Frank was to play a retired New York cop turned vigilante to find the murderer of his granddaughter. It was an incredibly energetic role for a man of any age, never mind someone in his seventies wearing a colostomy bag. But Frank refused to let that darn bag beat him. In what turned out to be his final major acting role, he did almost all his own stunts, including fight scenes, running up ladders and over roofs, as well as acting his heart out in a tropical shirt. His energy never ceased to amaze me.
Going to Hawaii was always a treat because it was such a fun place. On one of our first holidays there we’d rented two of the singer Willie Nelson’s houses in Maui. I’d gone ahead with Suzy Johnson, Bee Korshak, Anne Downey, and Judy Green to set everything up, and when Frank arrived with George Schlatter, we greeted their plane in grass skirts and leis and hired Hilo Hattie (whose music Frank loathed) to serenade him, Hawaiian-style. Grumpily, he walked straight past as if he didn’t know us, although he did laugh in the end and even said hello to Hilo Hattie.
When we were in Honolulu for the Magnum, P.I. shoot, we met an actor named Larry Manetti. He and Frank got along very well, and as the show was wrapping, Larry told me he wanted to give Frank a farewell gift. He gave us a white German shepherd puppy we named Laura after the show. Then Larry asked, “You wouldn’t like a parrot, would you? I live in an apartment and the darn bird’s driving my neighbors crazy.” I shook my head and told him I didn’t know anything about birds except that they were dirty and that I didn’t want one. “Oh, all right,” he replied, “I’ll have it put down.” Of course I knew we couldn’t allow that, so—like it or not—Frank and I ended up flying home with a two-year-old yellow-naped Amazon parrot named Rocky.
Over twenty years later, Rocky is still part of the Sinatra household. I tried to find him a home, but no one wanted him. He has bitten almost everyone