Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [37]
I carried on with my charity work and became head of entertainment for an organization that helped war orphans. The first year I was involved, I asked Dinah Shore to perform at the gala, and the next year I invited Lena Horne. Soon after I announced her name, a woman on the executive committee of the charity came to see me. Without flinching, she told me, “Barbara, I’m sorry, but we can’t have blacks. If we have them perform for us, then they have to sit down and eat with us!” As I stared at her openmouthed, my mind flashed back to the black boy at school in Wichita and the prejudice of my youth. Had nothing changed? That’s when I knew that her organization was not the one for me. I resigned immediately, telling her that bigotry and charity did not belong together. I decided to find another organization to devote my energies to; it took a while before I found the right one.
Zeppo’s next-door neighbor on the other side was Hal Wallis, the producer of movies like Casablanca. His sister Mina, who was possibly the most unattractive woman I’d ever seen, was his head of casting and a major player. Mina had a casting couch on which she was supposed to have bedded all the greats, including Clark Gable. When she moved to Palm Springs, she called me up. “Hello, Barbara,” she said, without introducing herself. “We have to know each other. I’ve just moved here, and you and I have a lot of the same friends.”
“Well, who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Mina Wallis and I’m very important and I understand that you have a lifestyle that I like,” she continued. “You go to the Racquet Club to play tennis and then you like to have lunch and then you like to play gin.”
“That pretty much describes it,” I replied.
“Well, could you pick me up tomorrow morning? I’d like to go with you.”
I had to laugh. “Oh, is that what you’d like to do?”
“Yes,” she replied. “See you at eleven.” Then she hung up.
From that day on, she attached herself to me and wanted to do everything I did. It reminded me of my kid sister when we were small. Worst of all, she cheated at gin, and that’s when I really lost it with her. Eventually, I had to say, “Don’t call me and don’t come around anymore.”
A few days later she invited me to lunch, but I was on my way out. “Please drop by,” she pleaded. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” So I stopped in and found a stranger standing in her living room. “Meet GG,” Mina said. I recognized the profile immediately. It was Greta Garbo in slacks and a blouse, and she held out her hand and said, “Vunderful to meet you, Barbara,” then offered nothing more. Sadly, I had to run, so I missed my chance to get to know the screen legend and find out if she truly was as aloof as she seemed.
Mina and I eventually patched things up, and I have to admit that she was an amazing powerhouse of a woman; she knew everyone, and if you asked her to do something, she would get it accomplished. When she eventually got sick and was dying, all the great stars went to see her, so maybe all her casting-couch stories were true. I guess we’ll never know.
Wanting my parents near me, I made the down payment on a house for them in Palm Springs and they moved there from Long Beach. My father worked as a butcher to pay the mortgage, and my mother did whatever she could. Zeppo could have helped them out much more than he did, but he really didn’t want anyone else around us—least of all my family. Although he’d been generous when we first met (and my parents adored him to the day he died), his tightness began to get to me.
Bobby didn’t always get along with him either, and I think Zeppo tolerated him only because he knew my son and I were joined at the hip. One day, though, Zep flipped about something Bobby had done, and I came home to find his hands around my teenage son’s throat. He looked as if he could kill him. After pulling