Frank Sinatra cast a spell over all four of his wives, and much of the world,
for over fifty years. The question is: which Mrs. Sinatra really stole Old Blue Eyes' heart?
Frank Sinatra and Nancy Barbato were both teenagers – 19 and 17 years old,
respectively – when they met in Long Branch, New Jersey,
in 1934. The couple wed five years later at Our Lady of Sorrows church in Jersey City,
where they lived at the start of their marriage. Frank gave Nancy his mother's engagement ring
because he was too poor to afford one on his own. He was a singing waiter, and his new bride
worked as a secretary at a printing plant. Life was a struggle, at least financially.
In order to save money, Nancy sewed her own clothes and made ties for her husband out of
discarded dresses. They didn't have enough money to have meat sauce with their pasta,
so they often ate vegetarian. While counting their pennies,
Nancy supported Frank's flourishing career. As time went on and he gained a following,
Nancy answered his fan mail and made him bow ties after fans literally tore them off his neck.
While Nancy Sinatra was taking care of the home, Frank was a player.
"He was a very brash, you know, self-confident, frankly, at times, obnoxious young guy."
He cheated on his new bride within a year of their marriage. He kept his mistress'
photo in his wallet and gifted Nancy's jewelry to the other women in his life.
As Frank started to become famous, he had flings with celebrities like Lana Turner.
In 1950, Frank got involved with Ava Gardner, one of Hollywood's biggest stars at the time.
Their relationship made global headlines. His humiliated wife Nancy sat in their
extravagant home while her husband fooled around with Gardner. Finally,
the affair became too difficult to ignore, and Nancy reluctantly agreed to a divorce.
"You really are a rat."
Frank and Gardner tied the knot just weeks after the papers were signed.
Nancy Sinatra got custody of their three children, Nancy Jr., Frank Jr.,
and Christina in the divorce settlement. She also got their home in the prestigious Holmby Hills
neighborhood of Los Angeles, a Cadillac, and a portion of Frank's yearly income. Despite Frank's
public affair with Ava Gardner, Nancy had a tough time letting him go. She told Tony Oppedisano,
who was a member of Frank's management team and author of the memoir Sinatra and Me:
In the Wee Small Hours, that she still loved him very much despite his extramarital affairs.
In claiming selfless reasons for divorcing Frank, Nancy explained,
"The only reason I did eventually decide to grant him a divorce was because back in those days,
if you were a public figure, like he was, and fooling around with someone,
and it was known that you were married and had children, it would really damage your career'"
Nancy never remarried. For her, no other man could hold a candle to Old Blue Eyes.
After his divorce, Frank Sinatra hit hard times. He had to borrow money to pay ex-wife Nancy's
settlement. Still, he somehow managed to give Gardner a six-carat diamond engagement ring. Later
on, Sinatra would purchase gifts for Gardner using the actress's own charge accounts to pay for them.
Sinatra had been one of America's most beloved singers, but by the 50s,
record and concert ticket sales tanked. His fans had grown up and changed their
tastes in music and his image took a hit from the Gardner affair. His film career suffered,
too, when MGM canceled his contract. With nothing to do, Sinatra would hang around Gardner's film
sets. He was struggling so badly that Gardner had a clause put in her contract that included Sinatra
in her film projects. At one point, Gardner pleaded with the producer of From Here to
Eternity to test Frank for a role. It was a good call. Sinatra ended up playing Private
Angelo Maggio, for which he won the 1954 Best Supporting Actor Oscar .
In 1952, Frank Sinatra traveled to Nairobi to be on set with Ava Gardner while she shot
Mogambo. During filming, she got pregnant but didn't tell Sinatra, the father and,
by then, her husband. Gardner and Sinatra's marriage was troubled,
so, even though Gardner wanted to be a mother, she didn't feel like she could
provide a stable environment for a child at that point in her life. She decided to
terminate the pregnancy. When Sinatra learned what happened, he was reportedly very upset.
The couple continued to work on their marriage, and Gardner got pregnant a second time.
Again, she chose to have an abortion. This time, her reason was tied up with the studio.
MGM had "penalty clauses" for actresses who had children. Gardner feared losing her job,
and since Sinatra wasn't earning an income, she felt she had no choice but to have an abortion.
Clearly in agreement, MGM helped Gardner make travel arrangements to have the procedure.
According to biographer Lee Server's book Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing,
Gardner and Frank Sinatra had "legendary" fights. At one point, Sinatra chucked a douche bag filled
with water at Gardner and friend Lana Turner. Gardner and Sinatra's love affair had been wild
from the start. After meeting at a party, the drunken twosome drove from Palm Springs to Indio,
California, where Sinatra fired a gun at streetlights and Gardner shot out
a hardware store window. They were arrested, but Gardner's studio paid for their release.
Sinatra and Gardner argued about politics,
music, and each other's lovers. Gardner said of their arguments:
"He has a temper that bursts into flames, while my temper burns inside for hours."
"She understood his insecurities which made him often very arrogant and difficult."
Sinatra was particularly jealous of Gardner's second ex-husband, Artie Shaw. When he saw the
two of them together in 1950, while Frank was still married to first wife Nancy, he shot two
bullets into his mattress. According to Gardner, they had great chemistry between the sheets, but
"the trouble usually started on the way to the bidet."
Anthony Uzarowski, author of the book Ava Gardner: A Life in Movies,
called their affair toxic and explosive. He noted in the Channel 5 documentary Sinatra:
King of the Crooners that the Sinatras' Palm Springs mansion
"still bears the scars of those fights" after a bottle of champagne dented a sink.
Following his divorce from Nancy and outing of his affair with screen siren Ava Gardner,
Frank Sinatra struggled professionally. At one point, it got so bad that he reportedly turned
on the gas in the oven in his New York City apartment and attempted to take his own life.
His manager discovered the singer lying on the floor, crying. It wasn't the first time. After
Gardner confessed to Sinatra that she'd cheated on him with a Spanish bullfighter, the singer
downed sleeping pills with alcohol. His valet, George Jacobs, found him just in time. All told,
Sinatra tried to kill himself at least three times while involved with Gardner. At one point,
he walked into the bedroom with a gun held to his head. Gardner tried to get
the gun away from the singer, and it went off. Fortunately, nobody was hit.
According to Sinatra: Behind the Legend author J. Randy Taraborrelli,
"Frank loved her, but as his career faltered he believed she didn't love him."
Taraborrelli claims that Sinatra was bipolar,
moody, and a heavy drinker, and that he described himself as
"...an 18-carat manic depressive."
Even with all the drama, Sinatra and Gardner's relationship lasted six years.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please dial or text 988 to speak with
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also seek help by visiting 988lifeline.org.
Actress Mia Farrow was just 19 years old when she starred on the soap opera Peyton Place,
playing a 16-year-old named Alison. She was introduced to Frank Sinatra,
who used his private plane to pick her up and take her to Palm Springs. She brought along her cat.
The pair dated for a short time before tying the knot in 1966. Farrow was 21 and Sinatra was 50.
"He was 50, but he was great-looking."
Sinatra's daughter, Nancy, who was five years older than Mia, remembered,
"Daddy said, 'I'm not sure it's gonna last very long. A couple of years maybe."
During a 1989 interview, Farrow admitted that she was immature for her age,
and that she may have been looking for a father figure in Sinatra.
She recalled,
"Poor Frank, saddled with such a child. I would be falling asleep at the table at Las Vegas,
trying to talk to people about their cats. He was very patient with me."
One year after meeting Frank Sinatra, Mia Farrow left Peyton Place and married him.
The marriage didn't last two years. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times,
Sinatra's mother said of the match,
"It won't last long, so I guess it's a good thing they weren't married in the church."
Unfortunately, Sinatra did not approve of Farrow's career,
and told her she shouldn't be making films. Farrow told Vanity Fair,
"In terms of what Frank would say, I shouldn't have done any movies. He's on the record saying,
'I'm a pretty good provider. I can't see why a woman would want to do anything else.'"
She added that she felt guilty about working and doing something for herself.
"What did we have, doctor? A game of let's pretend."
Farrow believes Sinatra would have been much happier had she
stopped acting and just traveled with him.
When Farrow took the lead role in Rosemary's Baby instead of starring
alongside Sinatra in his film The Detective, the relationship hit a
breaking point. Sinatra wound up serving her with divorce papers while she was filming.
Farrow lost a bit of her confidence after making
Rosemary's Baby and didn't think she'd ever work again. However,
when asked by Vanity Fair in 2013 if Sinatra was the great love of her life, she answered "Yes."
Barbara Blakely Oliver first met Frank Sinatra in 1957 in Las Vegas,
at the peak of his career. At the time, she avoided the star because
he was drunk. She went on to marry Zeppo Marx of the Marx Brothers,
her second husband. She and Marx eventually became friendly with Sinatra in the early 1970s,
following his divorce from Mia Farrow. That is, they started as friends, but it soon turned into
more. Barbara and Sinatra had chemistry. She later said Sinatra was a flirt through and through:
"And there's no way to avoid that flirtation. No way."
Barbara divorced Marx in 1973, but by then she and Sinatra had already cemented their
relationship. She spent time with him on tour and helped him relax after performances. Sinatra
put an engagement ring in a glass of champagne, and the couple tied the knot in 1976. Barbara
signed a prenup, which was a good idea on Frank's part after three failed marriages.
"Put a light on her please. There she is. She's beautiful."
They were married for 22 years, until Sinatra's death in 1998, at the age of 82.
Barbara Blakely Oliver Marx Sinatra added to her name several times throughout her life,
but the final iteration was hard for her to get used to. In her memoir,
Lady Blue Eyes: My Life with Frank, Barbara admitted she was embarrassed
to use "Mrs. Sinatra" when making reservations and appointments.
It had taken five years before she finally agreed to marry Frank, and she said:
"It probably took another year before I grew accustomed to the idea that I now
carried his iconic name. At first, I'd almost whisper when booking a restaurant reservation
or beauty parlor appointment. Even to say 'Mrs. Sinatra' out loud felt like bragging."
While Frank Sinatra's longest marriage was to his fourth and last wife, Barbara, the singer carried
a permanent torch for his first love, Nancy. According to his friend, Tony Oppedisano, Sinatra
thought about going back to Nancy toward the end of his life. The pair had a lifelong friendship
and a connection that endured throughout all of Frank's relationships over the years.
Even after Frank and Nancy split up, the former couple remained in contact
with one another. In addition to visiting their children,
he and Nancy spent many nights on the phone and spent holidays and birthdays
together. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Sinatra's granddaughter A.J. Lambert recalled,
"I can remember times when [Nancy] would be on the phone with [Frank],
and the next thing I knew some eggplant was coming out of the
freezer to thaw so that she could make him some sandwiches when he showed up."
But Frank remained loyal to his last wife, Barbara,
because "too many people would have gotten hurt" if he left her for Nancy, Oppedisano claimed.