Lady Blue Eyes_ My Life With Frank - Barbara Sinatra [8]
At one shop, called the Parisian, the owner’s wife was an enormous and unattractive woman who wore thick glasses. She’d choose a dress and ask me to try it on. “Here, put on my glasses so I can see what I’d look like in it,” she’d say, handing them to me and squinting at my reflection in a mirror at the back of the store. Even though I was her exact opposite in shape and height, and my dress was several sizes smaller than the one she’d need, seeing me in it somehow always persuaded her to take it. I learned a valuable lesson about the power of a model.
Sashaying around in fancy clothes, I knew that modeling was what I’d been put on this earth to do. After all, everything else I’d tried—playing the piano, tap dancing, cooking, or taking exams—had achieved less-than-impressive results. But when Mr. Finney entered me in the Miss Long Beach beauty pageant and I only made it into the top three, I began to fear that modeling wasn’t for me after all. Undaunted, Mr. Finney persuaded me to enter the Belmont Shore Fiesta. Despite the fact that I was wearing a beautiful white strapless Calponi swimsuit, I was convinced that a curvaceous blonde with a sunshine smile named Betty Harris would win. To my great surprise, I was the one presented with the rhinestone crown, bouquet of roses, and set of Samsonite luggage. Photographers rushed forward to get their shots. This was my first-ever moment in the media spotlight, and it had a surreal quality that made me feel as if I was watching myself from afar.
As the 1948 Queen of Belmont Shore, I wandered around the resort in my swimsuit and tiara for a week. By the second or third day, while I was waving at the crowd from the top of a fire engine, I noticed a tall, good-looking young man with wavy chestnut hair driving one of the cars in our parade. “Look, there’s that guy again,” I called to Betty, who’d been crowned my princess. “I think he’s after you.” I was wrong.
His name was Robert “Bob” Harrison Oliver, and he was a twenty-year-old summer student at Long Beach College. A part-time singer and bartender at his parents’ restaurant, the Rose Room on Anaheim Street, he told me he’d wanted to meet me ever since he’d seen my photo in the paper. He seemed nice enough, so when he asked me out for dinner at the most romantic setting in town, a smart supper club on top of Signal Hill, I accepted. Over steaks, Bob told me he came from a large Italian family on his mother’s side called the Spanos. He loved to gamble and flew the family plane to Vegas on weekends to play blackjack, but his real passion was to sing. “People say I sound a bit like Frank Sinatra,” he told me. “We have the same kinda voice.”
“I love Sinatra!” I told him. “I have all his 78s, and I never miss the Lucky Strike Hit Parade on Saturday nights.”
Bob nodded. “A jazz pianist friend of mine named Nat King Cole was on that recently. Have you heard of him?” I loved the King Cole Trio and thought how much more interesting Bob’s life was than mine, but as he lit my cigarette I noticed that his hand was trembling. Just as I was about to exhale, he dropped to one knee. “Barbara, I adore you,” he declared suddenly, taking my hand in his. “Will you marry me?” As everyone stared at us, I laughed smoke in his face. Crestfallen, he said, “You don’t have to give me an answer tonight. I’ll wait. But I must have you. I’m so in love.” Then he sat back down to finish his meal.
The next day, one of the judges of the