He was mesmerised by the young showgirl. He was 57. He went to rehearsals and stayed around after shows. They dated on and off for three years before marrying in 1963. The serious Marx Brother had retired to the Tamarisk Country Club in Palm Springs to a life of golf and desert society. His wife joined in. She became expert a horse-riding, tennis and golf.but admits it became difficult:' At the time I married him he was a young man but the longer we were married the more he wanted to be reclusive.' They were divorced and by the time Zeppo Marx died of lung cancer in 1977 she had become Mrs Barbara Sinatra. In the desert ‘village' she had known Sinatra as a neighbour she passed in her golf cart. When she divorced Zeppo she bought Grouch Marx's home on the golf course. Sinatra, a bachelor for more than ten years, began seeing her and finally they married. What she called the ‘slow, lazy, indulgent' life of the Californian desert did not softened her. She was able to cope with Sinatra's anthem of getting things ‘My Way'. In time, it became Barbara's way. Of course, never more than now. The Sinatra fortune has been wildly speculated at but Nancy Sinatra says:' Dad's rich but not as rich as people think because he's given most of it away over the years. He didn't set up trust funds for my brother, sister and me.He figured we'd handle things on our own and instead gave it to people who were in need of it. He took very good care of my mother always, still does.' What most concerns Barbara Sinatra is not the financial legacy -- she will never want for anything -- but the image Sinatra will leave behind. She is a dedicated charity worker and has a centre which cares for abused children named after her. She always looks ‘classy' -- a hairstylist, manicurist and make-up artist are on a regular home visit rota -- and that's how she wants her husband to be remembered. For respectability. Most of Sinatra's Clan -- Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Junior, Jilly Rizzo -- are also gone but as they went the stories of the past become lurid headlines all over again. But Barbara Sinatra was always grown up; she was not some ingenue on long, shapley legs. She knew what she wanted from being Mrs Francis Albert Sinatra. She advised, she controlled. She talked him out of playing a Mafia Don in ‘Godfather 3'.Her influence has been much more than any of Sinatra's women including the love of his life, the late Ava Gardner, first wife Nancy, trophy third wife Mia Farrow and lovers such as Lauren Bacall and Natalie Wood. He was said to be devasted by the death earlier this year (1996) of his onetime lover Juliet Prowse. But for nearly two decades it was Barbara Sinatra who had been working to sanitise the image. Given her track record she just might be strong enough to rewrite history if not today's obituaries. |
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