Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [58]
By the time we arrived in Sydney, the strike action had gone national. People protested outside the hotel with placards, although a lot of them were on Frank’s side. The unions refused to refuel Frank’s plane and said he would get home only if he could “walk on water.” They wouldn’t even provide room service at our five-star hotel unless Frank issued an apology. Jilly, of course, made sure we had everything we needed. What the press didn’t realize was that Frank Sinatra never apologized to anybody. Ever. Period. Not even to me. One time years later when I was packing to leave him after a fight we’d had about something stupid, I told him I’d only stay if he said sorry. Under duress, he finally admitted, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” It was a half-assed apology, but it was the only one I ever got. He always said, “There are two things I never do—yawn in front of the woman I love, and apologize.” The latter was not in his psyche, for to apologize would be to admit that he might have been wrong.
Frank’s lawyer Mickey Rudin spent several days trying to negotiate a way out of the deadlock. Mickey’s adversary was Bob Hawke, the future Australian prime minister, who was working his way up politically in a labor union. Frank agreed to film a one-time television special as part of the deal, but the apology became the sticking point. While we stayed under siege in our hotel suite waiting for a solution, the international press picked up on the story, and news soon reached America. Henry Kissinger sent Frank a telegram asking, DO YOU NEED ME TO SEND THE NAVY?
One afternoon, Mickey came hurrying into our suite and said, “Pack up, everyone, quick! We’re leaving.” He and Mr. Hawke had finally come up with wording that seemed to satisfy everyone, although it was not a direct apology. Mickey told us the building was virtually surrounded and there was no way the press would let us through. So, clutching my jewelry case, I was bundled out of a fire exit with Frank and the rest of our crew, across a roof, down a fire escape, and into an alley. The media were waiting at the front of the hotel with TV cameras and lights, expecting Frank to emerge any minute to read his statement, but he never did. Poor Mickey went down in his place and took hell from them. When they demanded to speak to Frank, he told them, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Sinatra has left the building.” They almost lynched him. We sped to the airport with furious reporters in hot pursuit, and when we got to the plane, Frank instructed his pilot to taxi down the runway and take off despite all the control tower’s instructions to “abort! Abort!”
The story of us being “under siege” in Australia ran and ran. As in Chinese whispers, the details were enlarged upon and exaggerated until few knew the real truth. Even comedians made mileage out of it. Bob Hope said on TV that the Australians finally let Frank out of the country right after the boss of the union woke up to find a kangaroo head on the next pillow. Frank swore he’d never set foot on Australian soil again, but we did go back years later for a hugely successful tour when the dramas of 1974 had been long forgotten. Thirty years later, someone made a movie about our experience called The Night We Called It a Day, in which Melanie Griffith played me and Dennis Hopper played Frank. I was amazed that what had seemed to be such a minor episode in our lives was deemed worthy of the Hollywood treatment.
After a brief respite in Palm Springs to rest, Frank and I set off again. During that first year we crisscrossed America, completed a five-nation tour of Europe, and traveled to the Far East. I loved every minute of it. Each day was a new adventure, yet another experience to be logged in the memory banks.
I woke up with Frank in places like Paris, London, Vienna, Tokyo, or Munich and had to pinch myself each time I looked across to see his tousled head on the pillow next