Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [32]
and me at the Racquet Club in Palm Springs (left to right).
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
Fly Me to the Moon
In the summer of 1961, Frank invited us to the grand reopening of the Cal Neva Lodge and casino in Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border. Having shared in the success of Vegas, he’d applied for a gambling license of his own, bought the lodge with a group of investors, and had it completely refurbished. As almost everyone we knew was going, I persuaded Zeppo that we should too.
A gang of us flew up from Palm Springs, and when we arrived, Frank explained the routine. Cocktails (or “tini-time,” as he called it) were at five o’clock, and then all the ladies would be handed three hundred dollars’ worth of chips to ensure we had a good time. Boy, did we have fun in the place billed as “Heaven in the High Sierra.” Even if people lost, they knew Frank would pick up their markers, just like he always did. Quite apart from the attraction of gambling, which was outlawed in California, the lodge was an elegant place to stay, with the nicest rooms in that beautiful lakeside setting. And, best of all, Frank donned his tux and stepped onto the stage later that night, giving us the kind of first-class performance only he could deliver time and again.
The Cal Neva became controversial in Frank’s life later when some claimed he was too closely involved with the Mob there, but most of his show business friends knew more gangsters than he ever did. Even Zeppo consorted occasionally with those he called “the boys” when he co-owned the El Rancho casino. As Jack Benny once told me, “You have to socialize with those guys to a certain extent when they’re not only your employers but your greatest fans.” Frank Sinatra was the Italian idol—a Sicilian who’d made it to the top—so the wise guys treated him as their own. More important, the bosses owned the clubs where he and everyone else worked. He couldn’t just ignore those he referred to jokingly as “the Harvard Boys,” and with loyalty and friendship so important to Frank, he wasn’t prepared to.
One of the people who’d been unable to come with us to the Cal Neva Lodge that opening weekend was Chico Marx, a fact that upset Zeppo greatly. Chico had been sick with heart problems for a while and knew his time was running out. He used to say to me, “Every morning I wake up, Barbara, I feel like I’m on velvet because I’m still alive.” In October of that year, though, Chico sadly lost his fight. Zeppo was grief-stricken. Chico was his big brother, the eldest of them all, and Zeppo had worshipped him. After the funeral, we went back to Groucho’s house for a wake. Crammed into the living room with scores of mourners, I noticed a strange woman staring at me. Zeppo noticed too and asked someone who she was. It was his first wife, Marion, a former Ziegfield girl he’d divorced seven years earlier, five years before he’d married me. A week later, I was playing tennis with Dinah Shore at the Racquet Club when I spotted Marion watching me in the same eerie way. I asked Dinah to introduce us. Marion was a little strange, but I think she just wanted to check me out. I felt sorry for her. She’d raised their adopted sons alone, and Zeppo showed little or no interest in them or her, it seemed. What really bothered me though was that he hadn’t even recognized the woman he’d been married to for twenty-seven years.
Life and our routines went on, with the usual rounds of games and drinks, charity events, cocktails, parties, and dinners. We might have been in a rut, but boy, what a rut. I wasn’t complaining, and in those early years I was truly happy with Zeppo.
I was certainly grateful for what he did for me and for Bobby; we had a beautiful home and everything we needed for a comfortable life. I never even had to cook, which is just as well because I might have killed somebody with my food. Zeppo seemed happy enough too, and I considered our marriage a success. In many ways, we were a typical couple, each with our own interests and hobbies. One day Zeppo decided