Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [141]
To help celebrate his birthday and for what was dubbed his Diamond Jubilee Tour, Frank went back on the road supported by the husband-and-wife duo Eydie Gorme and Steve Lawrence. Liza joined us too on part of that tour. We had so many laughs with Steve and Eydie, who were not only great performers but good friends. Frank called Eydie “Loudie,” because she was so loud, but she and I became instant friends. Onstage, she and Steve became Frank’s support act in the true sense of the word. With his sight in both eyes affected by cataracts and his memory suffering the pitfalls of any man his age, he wasn’t able to remember every word of every song, nor could he always read from the teleprompters placed strategically around the stage. Whenever he missed a refrain, Eydie or Steve would gently prompt him or sing the words to remind him, and so the show would go on. Frank would often make a joke of his slipup, telling his audience, “You know the words. You sing it!” and they would.
Some of the critics made mileage out of his occasional mistakes, but I doubt Frank’s fans noticed. They were just thrilled to be in his company and to hear him still able to hit those long notes effortlessly with a voice that only sounded richer than ever before. The fact that the man whose music they’d grown up with was growing old with them was just another reason to love him even more, especially because he was always so heartfelt when he told them, “Thank you for letting me sing for you.”
The positive feedback Frank got from his fans counterbalanced a lot of the negativity about him. Mellowing in later life, he finally came to accept that some people would always say unkind things about him and he couldn’t do anything about it. His days of frenetic letter writing and heated meetings with lawyers to threaten legal action were over. He appreciated that most stars get unwanted attention, although he always said he probably attracted more than most because his name ended in a vowel. The Italian connection would dog him long after he’d cleared his name and reputation in congressional hearings and the unremarkable FBI files on him had been published. When he successfully applied for a gambling license (which he never used), because he knew doing so would finally give him a chance to clear his name, Frank was offered a character reference from Ronald Reagan, who called him “an honorable person, completely loyal and honest.” I thought it was both brave and loyal for Ron to do that. Kirk Douglas said something similar, and Greg Peck endorsed it with “Frank is one of the finest men and most trustworthy, truthful, and reliable men I have known.” None of that cut any ice with those who’d pigeonholed him as guilty by association with the Mob and refused to let it rest.
Frank never denied knowing some wise guys, but he never actively sought them out. He’d grown up with a lot of them in the early days in New York, and a few were still hanging around, especially when I first came on the scene. I always felt that Jilly had much more of a connection with those guys anyway, and that Frank sometimes accepted them being around for Jilly’s sake. Nothing in my background had prepared me for people like that, but I took as I found and they were always very nice to me. That all stopped for a while when Jilly and Frank fell out. I have no idea what Jilly did to tick Frank off, but Frank refused to speak to his best friend for over a year, forcing Jilly to live and work elsewhere. I was sad for them both. Jilly had always been such a true friend to Frank, and he was very supportive of me. I knew it hurt both of them not to see each other, so I got them back together, which made them both a lot happier.
Maybe I was naïve, but it always came as a surprise to me to know that some Mob figure or other had been trying to get closer to Frank, usually because they wanted him to play one of their clubs. I almost fainted when Sidney Korshak told me once, “Did you know that