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who’s ever come near him, including me; I have scars all over my arms and handle him now only with a little ladder. He has no respect for fame or fortune—he’s drawn blood on everyone from Frank to the housekeeper. He bit George Schlatter’s finger down to the knuckle and wouldn’t let go. Frank’s road manager, Tony Oppedisano (known as Tony O), used to open the oven door and call, “Here, Rocky, climb in there!” Bobby’s frightened of Rocky, and so is most of our staff. Even my husband, who loved all creatures, never warmed to our noisy, green-feathered bird, not least because Rocky crawled out of his cage one day and traversed two rooms with enormous determination just to reach up and sink his beak into Frank’s calf. The only people I have ever known Rocky to like (apart from Michael Douglas, Felicia Lemmon, and Dolly Martin) were a chef we once had named Roland and a woman who works for me now named Irena. Rocky especially adored Roland and would ride around in his apron or on his shoulder, but he sank his beak into Roland’s neck one day, whereupon Roland refused even to speak to him again. So far, Irena, Rocky’s latest crush, remains unscathed.

I have come to the conclusion that Rocky is like a four-year-old with attention deficit disorder. He has tantrums when he gets jealous or if he is moved from a place where he’s settled and happy. He makes a racket all day long, he never learned the words to “My Way” despite my patient hours of training, and I can’t get rid of him because no one else would want him, so I guess I’m stuck with him for life. When I die, I’ll leave him to my enemies.

FOURTEEN

Breaking ground for the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center in Palm

Springs on Frank’s seventieth birthday, December 12, 1985.

COURTESY OF MARC GLASSMAN

Body and Soul

The highlight of Frank’s seventy-first year for me was the fruition of a project very dear to my heart that has continued to be a focus of my life. Having always supported at least one major charity a year, from War Orphans to World Mercy, I’d never quite found the one that seemed perfect for me. That was until the 1980s, when Barbara Kaplan, who played tennis with me at the Racquet Club, approached me about a charity she was trying to establish in Palm Springs.

A mother of three married to Danny Kaplan, head of cardiology at the Desert Hospital, Barbara worked for family counseling services and specialized in child sexual abuse. She and her colleagues had no central base and were forced to give therapy sessions to victims wherever they could find a space—in vacant offices, the basements of banks, or the back rooms of churches. The scheme cost around thirty thousand dollars a year to run but couldn’t keep up with demand. When she told me that she hoped to set up a special center where victims and counselors could work in private to break the cycle of abuse, I was impressed but not that interested. I told her, “I’m sorry, but I’m really busy with my other charities, and anyway child abuse doesn’t happen to anyone I know. I don’t have a connection with this at all.”

She refused to give up, though, and kept mentioning it to me each time I saw her. Then one day she told me she was arranging an auction in aid of the charity and asked if I could help persuade some of our celebrity friends to donate art. “Well, I suppose I could do that,” I said. Frank offered several of his paintings, and darling Tony Bennett gave us a couple of his much-coveted works (Frank was the first to say that Tony was a far better artist than he). Tony Curtis gave us one or two, and other friends like Kirk Douglas, Dinah Shore, Claudette Colbert, Anthony Quinn, and James Cagney donated sculptures, paintings, prints, and needlework. I persuaded most of our Palm Springs friends to attend the auction with Frank and me at the Sheraton Plaza, which helped draw in the crowds and the money. Don Rickles came along and sat in front of Frank bidding for a Tony Bennett painting his wife, Barbara, really liked. What Rickles didn’t know was that every time he put up his hand to place a bid, Frank