Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [28]
Ava Gardner, another woman who’d featured so prominently in Frank’s life, came to the Springs as well. Knowing Ava was an avid tennis player, Frank built a court for her at the Compound, even though she was staying only a few days. I hardly knew him then. We’d nod a hello each time our carts passed on the golf course, but I don’t think he registered who I was unless he saw me with Zeppo. Then one day, shortly before Ava was due to arrive in town, Frank called me out of the blue.
“Barbara, it’s Frank Sinatra,” he said. I sat up and took notice. This wasn’t someone who called every day. “A friend of mine’s coming into town. I’d like to set up a tennis match for her. You know everybody at the Racquet Club. Can you please organize a doubles match for her, and get someone good in?”
“I’d be happy to,” I told him. I asked the club tennis pro Bill Davis and another friend, Chuck Jandreau, to make up a doubles game. We three walked across the fairway at the appropriate time to find Ava’s maid mixing Moscow mules at the side of the court. I think Ava was half-looped before we started. I declined a cocktail until the end of the game, and we started playing. All of a sudden Frank appeared, and I felt nervous in his company, not least because he tried to make Ava jealous by flirting with me. At one point he even cornered me up against the chain-link fence, but by then I’d figured out his game. “You know, Frank,” I told him, “I’ve had a wonderful day and I enjoyed my drink, but I really have to go home to Zeppo now.”
Chuck, who realized what was going on, said, “I must go too,” and started to head back with me. Frank walked us to the gate and told us to feel free to use his court anytime. Bill, the idiot, stayed to drink with Ava—who, I’m sure, encouraged him. My parting sight of Frank that day was his watching his ex-wife openly flirting with her handsome tennis partner. Frank had the strangest expression in those eyes of his, which swirled with every emotion. I think he held a torch for Ava his whole life.
Bill was a terrible flirt too, but he had a good heart. I was at the Racquet Club dancing with him one night when, to my surprise, Joe Graydon walked in on the arm of my old girlfriend Bobby Lasley. I hadn’t seen Joe since we’d split up in Vegas, but I knew his television career had gone down the tubes and his agent had ended up giving him a job. Joe sat at the bar of the Racquet Club that night and watched me dancing with Bill. I nodded a hello, and it all seemed very civil at first. But then he made some snide remark about aging, so I answered with an equally acid comment about his losing his hair. A few minutes later, he finished his drink and left. That was the last I ever saw of him, although I understand he went on to have a successful career as a big band producer. Whatever happened between us toward the end, we’d had some good years together, for which I will always be grateful.
Palm Springs was probably at its peak during the 1960s. The place was so full of movie stars that I almost began to take them for granted. People like Gregory Peck and his wife, Veronique, became firm friends, as did Kirk and Anne Douglas.
Kirk was a great orator and told the best stories in the most eloquent way, but he was an early man. Like Zeppo, he wanted to get into a party or dinner early and then get out early. If you went to his house, he’d look at his watch after dinner, go to his bedroom, put on his pajamas, then come out and sit on the floor for a while to talk. Then he’d say, “I’m off to the disco now,” and vanish. “Disco” was his euphemism for the bedroom. He didn’t care how long people stayed, he just wanted to go to sleep. Anne would stay up to bid farewell to their guests. The two of them met when she