Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [136]
Sadly, Alto didn’t, and she ended up having a car accident in which she could have killed someone. Frank, Sammy, and I finally took part in an intervention with her therapist and a friend of theirs named Mark. We went to her house, sat in a circle, and took turns speaking. We told Alto that we loved her but that we’d reserved a room for her at the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs. Frank told her his plane was waiting, and Mark and I accompanied her to the desert. Sadly, she didn’t stay there nearly long enough. We were at some affair a month or so later and she asked me, “Please, Barbara, give me one sip of your martini?” I wasn’t aware alcohol was also part of her problem, so I handed her my glass. When she downed it in one gulp, I knew that she was back to her old tricks.
When Sammy started to have problems with his voice and was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1989, Alto couldn’t cope. Sammy was so afraid of losing his ability to sing that he opted for radiation rather than surgery, but then the cancer spread and he lost his voice after all. At a televised sixtieth anniversary tribute for Sammy, when everyone knew he was dying, more than thirty stars, including Whitney Houston, Clint Eastwood, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, and Ella Fitzgerald, performed in an Emmy award–winning production. George Schlatter organized it, and knowing how Frank hated hanging around, George suggested he open the show. The only star to turn up with a single member of his entourage (Jilly) agreed, instantly resolving the petty backstage disputes about who should go on first. George told the others, “Put it this way, Sinatra’s opening and Ella’s closing, so where would you like to be in the lineup?” Frank came out, stood on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium a few feet away from Sammy, and told him, “I want to get my licks in before the rest do.” He called him “My brother … the best friend I ever had.”
Toward the end of his life, Sammy had a lot of people around who were telling him what to do, how big a star he was, and how he didn’t need Frank Sinatra anymore. The two of them were still friends, but they didn’t work together and Sammy went out on his own, doing numbers like his popular “Music of the Night” by Andrew Lloyd Webber. We went to visit Sammy several times in the hospital, but then he went home to Beverly Hills to die, so we flew back to L.A. from a concert in Detroit to say good-bye. Sammy had a trach tube in his throat by then and was clearly having trouble breathing. He couldn’t even speak anymore; it was tragic. Frank was very emotional, so leaning forward, I touched Sammy’s hand and said, “Sam, I thought you’d want to know that Frank’s called Andrew Lloyd Webber. He’s going to sing all his songs from now on.” Sammy thought that was so funny, he almost spat out his trach. A few days later he passed away. Frank canceled four Radio City Music Hall concerts to fly home and grieve in his usual quiet way.
Sammy was buried with a watch Frank had given him. His funeral was presided over by Reverend Jesse Jackson. I sat in the front row with Dean and Frank, and both men wept openly. It was so sad, especially for Frank, who’d lost Chester Babcock just a few months earlier. Altovise was at Sammy’s service, but she didn’t make much sense. She’d been so attractive, fun, and in great shape before drugs took hold of her. It was not a pretty picture, and although Frank was determined to support her as best he could, sadly, Alto died ten years later.
Like Sammy, Jimmy Van Heusen also couldn’t speak