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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