Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [139]
Frank and I were abroad when I got the word that she was in the hospital, so we flew home and went to see her, but she could barely breathe. It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen. A couple of days later she was gone. As we buried her in a favorite red dress, true to her code, I reflected on how much of an influence she had been on my life. The woman for whom living in Bosworth, Missouri, was never going to be enough not only got herself out, but got me out too. If she hadn’t, I’ve often thought, how different my life could have been. Without a doubt, Irene Blakeley shaped my destiny.
With people dropping like flies all around us and Frank in his mid-seventies, he showed no signs of taking it easy. In the early 1990s he performed almost every week. Whenever he felt the urge, the singer his band and crew affectionately referred to as the Old Man would pack up, take off, and hit the road.
In July 1990, we celebrated our fourteenth wedding anniversary in London, marking the longest time either of us had been married and the start of a new and even more challenging phase in our lives. Then we flew up to Scandinavia before Frank returned to the States to honor demanding new contracts he’d signed to play at casinos in Vegas and Atlantic City. He continued to do political benefits and fund-raisers, this time for George H. W. Bush (his fourteenth president), when he wasn’t promoting his new line of pasta sauces. Frank had done commercials for everything from cars to booze, and as long as he didn’t have to hang around on the set too long, he enjoyed the experience. Commercials certainly beat the weeks it took to make a movie and were often equally well paid. George Schlatter was usually the poor guy who got roped into making Frank’s commercials—not least because everyone knew that he was one of the few who could handle Frank. But even George had his moments.
When Frank was hired to do a commercial for the Sands Hotel in Atlantic City, he asked George to go with him to make sure everything ran smoothly. The day before the shoot, Horhay asked the hotel what the commercial would be. They replied, “You tell us. We were told you’d come up with something.” George almost passed out. It’s bad enough if you’re prepared with Frank, but if you’re not, you’re in trouble, because he looks at you with those two eyes that go right through you, and then he walks away.
George came up to our suite on the morning of the shoot and was clearly agitated, even more so when I told him that Frank had woken in a combative mood. George went away but came back twenty minutes later wearing a hard hat and tool belt and carrying a megaphone. He strode into the bathroom where Frank was shaving and yelled through the loudspeaker: “Now hear this! Would all singers be ready for the shoot in thirty minutes?”
Frank almost had a heart attack. “Jeez, George! What in the hell?” he demanded. Once he’d calmed down, he asked, “So what are we doing?”
George replied, “You don’t need to know. Just put on your tux, get down to reception, and get in the limo.” Frank was still in a bad mood as they reached the hotel. When he saw the cameras rolling, he didn’t know what was expected of him, and he was uncomfortable. The car stopped and the doorman opened the door on the wrong side, so Frank had to slide across to get out. “What’s the matter with you?” he growled. There’d be no tip that day. Then the other doorman went to the hotel’s front door, opened it, but walked in ahead of Frank, who turned to George and frowned. “What kind of place is this?”
George assured him everything would be all right. Just then, two little old ladies approached Frank and asked for a photograph. Mellowing, he smiled and replied, “Sure,” whereupon they handed him their camera and posed, together. Frank wondered what on earth was going on. Before he had time to figure it out, a chorus girl ran up and asked, “Mr. Sinatra, one autograph please?” He shrugged and said okay, so she signed her name on a piece