Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [148]
I’d never tried to manage Frank’s business affairs, and he would have never taken my advice, but like many wives, I’d sometimes attempt to guide him gently. If I ever wanted to sell him on an idea, I’d lay out the pros and cons and let him think about it. After a while, he’d usually come around to my idea but claim it as his own. Once that happened with the decision to move, we put the Compound on the market and made plans to buy a beach house at Malibu instead.
We finally sold the Compound to a Canadian entrepreneur by the name of Jim Pattison. He was a big Sinatra fan who wanted not only to buy his home but to meet the man. Sadly, the day he came to view the house, Frank was in bed with a cold, so Jim never got to meet him or even see the whole interior. He bought the place anyway—along with almost all the furniture and Frank’s beloved train set. We auctioned off many of the things we no longer wanted or needed. I sat in a room high above the bidding floor and watched the auction through one-way glass. There was a frenzy for all things Sinatra, it seemed, and I was amazed by how much people paid for the most mundane of objects. Jim Pattison was bidding by phone from abroad, but there were plenty of rival bidders on the floor, raising their paddles for not much more than knickknacks.
Even though Frank knew that the day would inevitably come, leaving the Compound was rough on him. The original moving date came and went, and Frank remained firmly entrenched, so I asked Jim if we could possibly rent the property for a little longer. He declined but allowed us to stay on as his guests. Then, one morning, Frank decided it was time. He got up, showered and changed, had breakfast, and asked for a car to be brought around to the front. With hardly a word, we walked out the door, sat in the back of the car, and told his driver to “step on it.” His twenty or so staff, many of whom had worked for him for decades, lined the driveway as we drove toward the main gate and the exit onto Frank Sinatra Drive. Staring straight ahead, unable to acknowledge their emotional farewell, Frank never once looked back.
SEVENTEEN
Renewing our wedding vows on our twentieth anniversary
at Our Lady of Malibu.
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
You Will Be My Music
My husband didn’t retire so much as walk away. The last performance he gave as a solo artist was on the night of February 25, 1995, for the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center celebrity gala. He hadn’t sung for a while, but he’d always kept his voice warmed up, and that night—the finale of our golf tournament—he was brilliant, and I mean brilliant like the old days.
Without any fanfare as usual, he walked onto the stage at the Marriott Desert Springs hotel after Tom Dreesen’s warm-up, went to the microphone, and launched into “I’ve Got the World on a String.” Bill Miller sat a few feet away, as he had done for so many years, his fingers playing the keys for his friend and boss for the last time. From the moment Frank opened his mouth, he had his audience of twelve hundred guests eating from the palm of his hand. It was almost as if he knew this would be the last time he’d sing in public because he drew on all his experience and strength to give us one of the most memorable performances of his life.
A reviewer in Esquire magazine described Frank that night as “on the money.” He was certainly in sparkling form, cracking jokes between numbers like “Fly Me to the Moon” and “My Kind of