Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [137]
Dear Dean lasted another five years, until respiratory failure claimed him too. That was probably the toughest loss of all for Frank. He said afterward that Dean was “like the air I breathe; always there, always close by.” The friend who he claimed brought more fun into his life than anyone else was gone. Frank couldn’t face that funeral; he couldn’t even talk about it, so I went in his place. Dean’s passing, of all of them, meant that the good old days really were over. Those slick young men I’d first spotted across a smoky bar at the Sahara in 1957 would be forever immortalized in film, on CD and vinyl, and their memory still makes me smile. But when they dimmed the lights in Vegas at the passing of Dean and Sammy, it seemed to both Frank and me that those lights would never be quite as bright again.
Frank refused to let life beat him and eventually pulled himself together. Like me, Frank was a survivor. We’d known some tough times, but we were able to say, “This too shall pass.”
He never lost his passion for life; in fact, losing people he loved only made him more passionate. His curiosity and interest in everything from the personal problems of his friends to the political crises of the world never waned. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 and Saddam Hussein seemed to be courting disaster, Frank felt it was his duty and responsibility to write to both Saddam and George Bush. Mr. Fixit never gave up hope that he could fix everything. Needless to say, only President Bush responded to Frank’s letters, and the Gulf War was, sadly, not avoided.
One of Frank’s ways of getting past sad times was to celebrate, and he never needed an excuse. If there wasn’t a reason to throw a party or buy someone a gift, he’d invent one. He loved Christmas so much, with all its twinkling festive lights and message of goodwill to all men, that he had the lights kept on a tree outside his home all year round. “Everybody could do with a little extra Christmas,” he’d say.
Birthdays and anniversaries were always the biggest deals, though, and the older he got the more they came to mean to him. We had lots of places we liked to go—favorite clubs and restaurants in almost every city in the world. There was “21” or Patsy’s in New York, Café de Paris in London, and Lord Fletcher’s or Dominick’s in Palm Springs. But probably our most frequent party venue away from home was Chasen’s restaurant in Los Angeles, where Dave Chasen, an old vaudevillian, served excellent southern food, including his famous chili, creamed spinach, and “hobo steak.” Chasen’s had significance for so many of us. Zeppo had asked me to marry him there. Jimmy Stewart threw his bachelor party at Chasen’s. Dean Martin, Greg Peck, Kirk Douglas, Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Elizabeth Taylor were all regulars. Ronnie Reagan proposed to Nancy in one of the booths. We had our own booth, and when the restaurant eventually closed someone bought it.
Chasen’s also served wonderful cocktails, including my favorite Flame of Love martini, which the barman Pepe Ruiz created for Dean Martin when Dean told him he was bored with ordinary martinis. Pepe would pour a dash of Tio Pepe into a chilled glass, then tip it out. He’d light a strip of orange peel with a match and smear the hot oil the flame released around the glass. He’d then fill it with ice and vodka before wiping the rim with more flambéed orange peel. Heaven. Frank immortalized the drink in the song “Nothing but the Best” with the line “I like a martini and burn on the glass.”
It was in Chasen’s that Frank sang “True Love