Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [54]
Once he was in that room, Frank was a child again, the same little boy who’d pressed his nose against the glass of the Lionel model train store. His mother, Dolly, had pawned her fox fur to buy him his first set, a sacrifice he never forgot. In his special room that took him back to those days, he wore a bright red engineer’s hat with a visor and blew a whistle while the sounds of trains and engines played. He loved it, and so did his friends, who would happily don hats and blow whistles too. Many of them bought him new or unusual trains as gifts, happy to find something to give the man who had everything. He had a solid gold one with his initials set in diamonds and rubies, which was a present from one of the Vegas hotels; a locomotive that was a gift from the Vatican; and a crystal version of the train that inspired Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Whenever his electrician came by to help Frank fix any problems with the track, the two of them would spend hours together “testing” the entire system. I’d pop my head around the door sometimes just to watch Frank, happy to see him so playful and animated, a glass of Daniel’s in his hand.
Model trains were going to hold Frank Sinatra’s attention for only so long, however, and his restlessness soon kicked in again. Turning his attention to politics, and with the encouragement of his friend the California governor Ronald Reagan, he made the surprise decision after years registered as a Democrat to change his wavering allegiance. He publicly backed the Republican Richard Nixon instead of Senator George McGovern for president. As he said at the time, it was about the man, not the party anymore. No one could believe it at first; the news was that shocking. Frank Sinatra—Jack Kennedy’s most famous supporter—a Republican? I couldn’t believe it either; even though Spiro Agnew was such a good friend of Frank’s and Frank had already endorsed Reagan for governor, this seemed such a major shift. But the Kennedys were long gone, and Frank was in the mood for change. He also had a secret ambition to become U.S. ambassador to Italy and was promised that he might be considered for the position, although it never worked out. In spite of that, his Sicilian-bred loyalty to Nixon and to his friend Spiro was to prove lifelong. Even when they both eventually fell from grace, he never deserted them like so many of their friends did. As Frank said, “Everyone makes mistakes—even presidents.”
When Frank was invited to Washington in January 1973 to help organize Nixon’s inaugural gala, he asked me if I’d like to accompany him. I jumped at the chance, happy to leave Palm Springs and the controversy about my private life. Zeppo had hired some top-flight lawyers (including Greg Bautzer) to fight me over our divorce settlement, and as a stalwart of the Jewish and golfing communities, he had a lot of people on his side. What I didn’t know was that as I flew east from one tricky situation, I was flying straight into another.
Frank’s dislike of journalists stemmed from, I think, the forties, when he and his first wife, Nancy, were having problems and he felt that the gossip columnists unduly hounded him. His mistrust was further inflamed by what some reporters said about him when he was rallying support for Kennedy, and the allegations they never stopped making about his involvement with the Mob. From the moment we arrived in Washington, Frank and I were closely followed by the press and photographed at every opportunity. Just as we were leaving a political party at the Jockey Club in the Fairfax Hotel, a female reporter stepped forward to ask me about my marital status. I tried to brush off the woman I learned later was Maxine Cheshire, the society columnist for the Washington Post, but she wouldn’t give up. Frank politely asked her to leave us alone. Finally, she said, “You are still married to Zeppo, aren’t you, Mrs. Marx?” Embarrassed, I didn’t know how to respond.
I could tell from Frank’s expression that the night