Sunday, October 28, 2018

JUDY COLLINGS MEMOIR FRANK ABOUT FAMILIAL ALCOHOLISM and DEPRESSION

SWEET JUDY BLUE EYES
MY LIFE IN MUSIC - Judy Collins

I listened to Judy Collin's e-book because she reads it herself: I love hearing the author read their own words and in this case, as in Carly Simon's e-book, previously reviewed here at Mistress Manifesto when I featured James Taylor's Mistress Evie as Mistress of the Month, also sing some songs. In Judy's book she reveals her relationships with Stephen Stills, who wrote the song Sweet Judy Blue Eyes for her during their relationship.  He was several years younger and eventually that was a problem.  More so, she hated LA and went to live in New York City.  They managed to stay friends for four decades and in 2007 a tape of unreleased music from their 1968 affair was discovered and released as "Just Roll Tape."  She's still confused about why Joni Mitchell rebuffed her friendship but is thankful to her for the international hit she had with Joni's song Both Sides Now. She was the first person in popular music to include the song of whales (1962).  As she says she was considered an "overnight success" after many years of showing up.

Judy Collin's life also intersected with Joan and Mimi Baez, Bob Dylan, Lucy and Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Phil Ochs, Janis Joplin, and Stacey Keach - who she had a long relationship with, and many others in the music business. A youthful pregnancy resulted in a beloved son who followed in the footsteps of his mother and mother's father into alcoholism and depression and suicidal thoughts.  In his case he did suicide.  The marriage didn't last.  Years later after finally coming to terms with her alcoholism, Judy Collins did marry again and that marriage has lasted.  She says she had an attraction for the "dangerous ones" who "slipped in and out of other women's lives.

As she came to adulthood and the folk music scene in the 1960's, and to folk music she has been true though she considers her song choices and writing to be eclectic, and was once a member of a group in favor of open relationships and partner sharing as well as a Yippie (like the Chicago Seven), it should perhaps come as no surprise that Collins was a sexual explorer. She had some one night stands when married and touring and fell in love repeatedly.  Her story of driving 16 hours alone in a borrowed car to have an illegal abortion and then breaking down on a moonlit road reminds us that abortion must remain legal.  Another time she was in the car and began confessing to her husband that she was having an affair with another man after they hit a rabbit on the road.

I found her frankness refreshing.  Though no intimate details are given, Collins was no stranger to the Story of O, group sex, sex with women, and a "sexually hip" lifestyle.  (All of which makes me feel downright conservative these days.)  She was ill at times; TB, hepatitis, and voice endangering alcoholism.

So if you love her voice, are a fan of music memoirs, or are battling some demons yourself, you may find this memoir well worth the read.


Missy

C 2018 All Rights Reserved Book Review

Friday, October 26, 2018

QUESTION FOR YOU MEN: HOW LONG DID YOU DATE BEFORE YOU BOUGHT YOUR WOMAN CLOTHING?

Just to clarify this, I don't mean as a birthday or  or Mother's Day gift, and I don't mean scarves and gloves or a  Christmas sweater or a negligee meant to please you if she wears it.  Just about anyone can gift anyone for a special occasion something to wear.  Women often buy their men things like sports team hats and sweats, sweaters, ties and socks as gifts.  I'm talking WARDROBE.  I'm talking handing her at least a couple hundred to go buy what she wants, or going shopping with her, and purchasing some important clothing, so that she'll look wonderful when you take her to a Black Tie event or a Wedding or an outfit for a Job Interview.  Something she could not afford on her own income maybe.


There used to be certain rules or etiquette against buying clothes for someone you are dating, not until you are married to them.  To buy a WARDROBE for someone seems to mean a more serious intent than "just dating."  It's an investment for them.



Missy.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

FRANK SINATRA OFFICIAL SITE

http://www.sinatra.com/


The recent press around Journalist Ronan Farrow, his mother actress and SuperMom Mia Farrow, the MeToo Movement, the arrest of  movie mogul Harvey Weinstein for sexual harassment and rape is hard to ignore.  I bring it up here because I read that Mia, briefly a much younger wife of Frank Sinatra, has said that she and Frank never really stopped having a thing for each other though they divorced, and this has lead to speculation that Rowan is actually the biological son of Frank Sinatra. Certainly he looks like he could be Sinatra's son, the blue eyes and all but some children take after their mothers.  Reading around this subject on the Internet, it seems that Mia hinted Ronan was Frank's son in 2013 and articles have appeared since that are pro and con.  Trying to stay away from publications that are clearly just rumor mills, the question is, did Frank know?  What about his children, such as singer Nancy Sinatra?


EONLINE: NANCY SINATRA SAYS MIA WAS JOKIING: RONAN ISN'T FRANK'S SON


Seems to me DNA testing would provide the revealing information.  But would all those effected be willing to test? Seems like this rumor may go the way of those about Prince Harry's father being James Gilbey rather than Prince Charles.

Saturday, October 13, 2018

HOW MUCH RISK IS TOO MUCH RISK? OPINION BY MISSY

QUESTION FOR MISSY:


Dear Missy,
I'm a lawyer and I hate it.  I think I'm here because it was what my mother always wanted me to do.  Now I'm 30 and all I have is my career.  Another lawyer at my firm who is retiring young wants me to quit and travel with him.  I like Bruce and find him attractive but I only know him the way he is at work. He wants to travel but live in Costa Rica. He wants us to learn Spanish and start a little business there, something in tourism.  When he told me all this I was truly surprised. I had no idea Bruce, a top earner, had a thing for me. Thinking about it, I don't know.  If I go, am I just escaping? If I quit, not knowing what else I could possibly do to make a living, am I just risking too much?


Alisha
Massachusetts


ANSWER FROM MISSY:


Alisha, the best way to proceed is to lower the risk.

Such as start getting to know Bruce outside of work.

Such as letting Bruce go ahead to Costa Rica and then visiting him there on a vacation.
Once he is retired and no longer at your workplace, you will feel freer to get to know him.
Tell him that you want to take it slowly.

If you find yourself compatible with Bruce and if you like Costa Rica, then maybe this relationship is on.

If it isn't, consider getting some career counseling because lots of people who have a legal background go do something else, even something else that has nothing to do with the law.
You're intelligent and educated and that counts.


Missy



Sunday, October 7, 2018

MRS. FRANK SINATRA - PHILANTHROPIST


This video is from 2016, which would have been Frank Sinatra's 100th birthday. Barbara Sinatra died in 2017.


BARBARA SINATRA CHILDREN'S CENTER - RANCHO MIRAGE CALIFORNIA
EXCERPT:
The mission of the Barbara Sinatra Center for Abused Children is to counsel physically, sexually and emotionally abused children, and to focus on prevention, community education and breaking the cycle of generational abuse. No child is ever turned away due to a family’s inability to pay.
—Barbara & Frank Sinatra Founders
Approximately 90% of our budget comes from the generosity of a caring, worldwide community, fundraising events, and charitable organizations. This heartfelt support ensures that children are counseled regardless of a family's ability to pay.

Friday, October 5, 2018

ZEPPO MARX ; THE BUSINESSMAN OF THE COMEDY TEAM

Image result for public domain zeppo marx



This cover of a special collection put out by Universal shows the Marx Brothers Comedy team, and you probably are familiar with Groucho, the second from the left.  Chico, Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo Mar - the brother who wasn't part of the act, and the first man who kept Barbara Blakeley and then married her.

Tuesday, October 2, 2018

BARBARA BLAKELEY MARX - SINATRA : TWICE A MISTRESS - THRICE A WIFE

Image result for lady blue eyes
Barbara Blakeley Marx Sinatra
1927 – 2017

Who says that being a Mistress will never lead to marriage?

In the case of Barbara Sinatra, born Barbara Blakeley, the small town Missouri girl who was so tall at 5'8 that she hunched over shyly in her youth, two marriages to wealthy men began with mistressing.  And I so wish that she had written a different kind of book to supplement her memoir, because I think this lady really knew men and how to live with them and survive them. She provided companionship to Frank and was patient, kind, loving and giving, but also ultimately got what she wanted and needed.  And she doesn't tell us how she did it.

Barbara was the Mistress of Harpo Marx, one of the Marx Brothers, a comedy group, and Frank Sinatra, the Big Band singer who is now considered to be one of the all time American Classic singers.  But I'm getting ahead of myself here.

In her memoir, Barbara makes no apologies for having had the goal of marriage to a man who could take good care of her and her son by a first husband that she had a brief youthful marriage to. Maybe it took some bad early experiences to start setting that goal. In her era being a housewife and mother, not a career woman, was the most popular goal, but when her family moved to Southern California - Long Beach, the current home of the Queen Mary, the Spruce Goose, and a famous aquarium, she decided that going to a modeling school would be a good idea.  Her husband wanted to make it as a singer and entertainer but the bills needed to be paid.

At the John Robert Power's school of modeling she learned to straighten up and walk like the most beautiful girl in the world.  It seems modeling agencies and men agreed.   After she started making income from modeling, she met another man who couldn't provide, whose bills she paid, and she resented it.  She did well enough to open her own modeling agency and put her models in pageants like the first Miss Universe. 

It may not surprise you that relying on beauty lead her to a 1950's Las Vegas where she was employed as a showgirl balancing a heavy decorative headdress.  She was earning good money - more than the dancers - but Vegas came with risks for her and her son.  Perhaps her memoir, which focuses on her relationship as a mistress (a word she doesn't use) and then wife of Frank Sinatra, doesn't go on and on about what it was like to be a struggling mother paying the bills when a husband was supposed to provide.  Her marriages helped keep the mobsters that ran Vegas away.

Like other women who have been showgirls there were some men who were fascinated or fixated on one certain dream girl.  Harpo Marx had a thing for Barbara.  When events occurred that made her afraid for herself and her son, she decided to quit Vegas that minute, just get in the car and flee.  She ended up in with her parents and broke.  Harpo called and she told him the truth of her circumstances.

In Part 2, Chapter 3 of the e-book she writes that he said, "Come to Palm Springs.  I'll set you and Bobby up in your own place.  You can commute back to LA to model."  She says she had little choice but to accept and perhaps predictably he really didn't want her to work.  He rented her a two bedroom apartment next to the Racket Club and she found work modeling at the pool there. These were the days when stores would hire models to walk about in swim suits to lure customers to their shops. Harpo continued to live in his own house in Rancho Mirage near the Tamarisk Country Club - the Jewish country club - where he was a member and golfed. She did marry him and moved in with him and they were married for years. It was 1958 and she fell in love with life in glamorous Palm Springs but not Harpo; he took longer.  She did come to love him but still didn't want to marry him.  She says he was a womanizer who was not faithful. He also liked to gamble. Their house was across the hedge from Frank Sinatra's place.  Harpo and Frank were old friends and socialized.

Barbara says that her son was pretty much rejected by his father and other men in her life, and Harpo was no exception.  He didn't want the boy around but he did pay the tuition to an expensive military school they sent him to.  Bobby did well and Barbara's hopes for his future were large.

Part 3 begins the saga of Frank Sinatra.  After years of marriage to Zeppo, Barbara accidentally busted him by showing up at his boat to see it was full of girls in party mode, girls who asked her who she was.  She realized that her marriage had long been dead.  Yet she also had pledged to herself that she would not divorce him.  She was in for the duration.

As she considered her affair with Frank she reasoned that  Bobby had been educated in France and was all grown up, living in Europe.  She felt "I didn't have to protect Bobby anymore."

In Monte Carlo, where she went to visit friends who were also mutual friends of Marx and Sinatra, the affair began, with ardor.  "There was no way to avoid that flirtation," she says.  She and Frank were both lost and lonely people then.  She told herself theirs was just a fling, what happens in Monaco stays in Monaco, but "I was happy again for the first time in years."  They snuck around. Their affair, she felt, would not last, but back in Palm Springs, Frank still pursued.

Perhaps as a showgirl who had managed to avoid mobsters as well as her least favorite type of man - a drunk - she had seen a lot and learned a lot about herself in Vegas.  She never expected that other women would not be attracted to Frank.  Unsaid, I felt reading this that she had the confidence to think of herself, once married, as number one, but also that she was savvy to not mention faithfulness or bring other women up to Frank.  Implied is that maybe he had them.

Part 4, chapter 7, Barbara says she knew that divorce from Zeppo would mean having to move out of their house and nowhere to go, except back to the house she had bought for her parents in Palm Springs.  Then, in a generous move that made Barbara feel that Sinatra indeed wanted her and loved her, Frank bought the house that another Marx' brother's ex wife was selling.  He bought it, put her name on the deed and presented the deed to her.  Now that's being taken care of! (I know some of you reading this are saying "Where do I sign up?")

She held Sinatra at arm's length still, however simply romantic he was.  When she married Frank years later, on the day of the wedding, she was presented a prenup that he had not mentioned, by his attorneys, and she signed it.  Barbara had more of a "what the hell attitude" about this prenup, even though it had been sprung on her, and she airs no resentment, going on about how generous Frank Sinatra was, not just to her but to his friends as well as to strangers.

Another reason that Frank won over Zeppo was his attitude towards her son.  Zeppo had not been a good step father to him but now Frank was interested in him, giving him a hug.

Back in Palm Springs, the not yet divorced Barbara and Frank stepped into the public eye on the New Years Eve after Monaco.  Still, this wise woman knew she must have competition. In part 3 chapter 6 she tells the tale of Ava Gabor in Palm Springs, a four times divorced woman "in the Pamela Harriman mode" who had been dating Frank.  Another woman went to a therapist to talk about Frank, wanting to marry him and the therapist told her there were three other women he had as clients who also hoped or believed that Frank would marry them!  Times had changed since 1958 when Barbara had became Zeppo's mistress and then wife.  It was now 1972.  Lots of people were no longer interested in marriage as a way of life.  Frank had been divorced a few times as well.  He didn't need to marry anyone to get his needs met.

As a companion to a man who was world famous and in demand, Barbara waited, not pushing him to marry her until several years had passed.  She was extremely careful that it be his idea.  When he gave her gems to be set in to the settings she preferred she chose an engagement-like ring, but then she had the ring delivered to him so that he could give it to her.  At a dinner when he handed her the completed ring back, she still let him pick which finger he would put it on - whatever finger he wanted she said.  He slid it on the engagement finger. Only after that did she consider Frank's marriage proposal to be real.

Barbara had been raised Protestant and had been Jewish for Zeppo.  Now as a true companion to her man, she converted to Catholicism.  She also became an honorary Italian.

Barbara still avoided drunks - even if it was Frank who had that evening gone over his limits to become one.

She knew what she wanted.  She knew what she had.  She knew Frank was notoriously difficult and demanding and needed lots of people around most of the time.  Often other people depended on her to handle him smoothly. She knew how to amuse and calm him and lead the way.  She dealt with his moods, his depressions, his anger.  Her benefits as a mistress and then a wife included world travel, a life of leisure,  meeting and befriending some of the worlds wealthiest, most influential people, and being able to use their wealth to build an advocacy for molested and abused children through fundraising events.   Younger than Frank, Barbara continued on with philanthropic activities even as he aged enough to want to stay home, stay in bed, be alone, and continued on after his death.

So many people who are in dead marriages remain faithful in them until they meet someone who makes them feel happiness again.  Affairs are sometimes used to spring the trap.


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