Lady Blue Eyes

January 10, 2011
The widow of Frank Sinatra delivers the goods in this intimate memoir of their years together, filled with parties, recordings, career hurdles, concerts, travels, and triumphs. Barbara Blakeley was "just a farm girl from Missouri," who became a model, a Vegas showgirl, and the wife of Zeppo Marx, and mingled with celebrities in L.A., Vegas, and Palm Springs. At a Sinatra dinner party for the first time, she felt "there was definitely a frisson between us." With her own marriage crumbling, she made plans to meet Sinatra in Monaco: "Was I about to be seduced by one of the world's greatest romantics?" That idyllic summer "turned into night after glorious night of romance in some of the most glamorous venues in Europe." After "five years of flirting and courting," Barbara and Frank Sinatra married in 1976, and it was the longest of his four marriages. They stayed together for 22 years, until his death in 1998. Probing Sinatra's personality, she contrasts his polite manners and loyalty to friends with his feuds and booze-induced rants. Yet in the end, as she sees it, "Frank was, without doubt, the most romantic man I had ever met," and that feeling permeates the pages throughout.

November 1, 2010

Glamorous days and nights in a privileged bubble with the Chairman of the Board.

Sinatra's memoir begins engagingly, as the former Barbara Ann Blakeley recalls her hardscrabble Midwestern childhood, her early modeling career in California and her showgirl days in Vegas, where she first encountered Frank and his Rat Pack. The author details her bumpy marriage to Zeppo Marx, who introduced her to the leisurely life in Palm Springs, where Frank was a neighbor. Flirtation with the singer, then in the midst of a brief early-'70s "retirement," turned into an affair after an assignation in Monaco, depicted here with admirable honesty. Unfortunately, after recounting Frank's ardent courtship, her divorce from Marx and a protracted march to the altar (finally triggered by Barbara's ultimatum) in 1976, the book turns breathless and the prose gets mauve. The author drops big names by the dozen, recalling an endless whirl of globetrotting concert appearances, charity events, lavish dinners and late-night hijinks. She also catalogs every glittering Cartier bauble the singer ever purchased for her. Though she considers Frank's hot temper, pugnacity and oft-boorish behavior, the author dutifully soft-pedals his worst transgressions and sidesteps the sensational elements. Sinatra's dealings with mobsters are foisted off on his late pal Jilly Rizzo, while the shadowy connections of fixer Sidney Korshak are left unmentioned. However, the author is unable to resist a dig at former First Lady Nancy Reagan, whose relationship with Sinatra was much whispered about. After a couple hundred pages of rapturous encomia, the book gains some force in the late going as Sinatra's increasing infirmity and death in 1998 are poignantly delineated. Ultimately, readers learn little about the complex inner workings of the driven, very private entertainer.

A sometimes diverting and funny yet unsatisfying book about what it was like to be, in the writer's words, "the luckiest girl alive."

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 15, 2010

Barbara Sinatra, the fourth and final wife of Frank Sinatra, offers a heartfelt and moving memoir. She starts with her small-town Missouri youth; modeling career; stint as a Vegas showgirl; first marriage to a wealthy gambler, Zeppo Marx; and growing infatuation with her neighbor Frank Sinatra, whom she married in 1976 and lived with until his death in 1998. Relating her interactions at countless dinner parties, tennis matches, and golf outings, the author captures the personalities of such insiders as Gregory Peck, Spiro Agnew, Dean Martin, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan. She casts Frank as a loving, volatile, generous, and obsessive creative genius who surrounded himself with a coterie of understanding and compliant friends to shield him from the constant pressures of his iconic status. VERDICT Though shedding little new light on Frank Sinatra musically, this memoir ably captures the character of the singer and provides an enjoyable romp through pop culture of the 1950s-80s. It complements the autobiographies of Sinatra's daughters, Nancy (Frank Sinatra, My Father, o.p.) and Tina (My Father's Daughter).--Dave Szatmary. Univ. of Washington, Seattle

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2010
In this detailed autobiography, Frank Sinatras widow traces her journey from a hardscrabble, Depression-era childhood to jet-setting wife of one of the most popular and successful entertainers of all time. Thanks to her strong-willed mother, Barbaras family pulled up stakes in Missouri while she was a teenager and headed to California. Barbara was soon modeling for local department stores and shortly thereafter married aspiring big-band singer Bob Oliver. After the birth of a son, the marriage fell apart; another marriage and a career as a Vegas showgirl followed. Then she took up with the much older and wealthier Zeppo Marx, and Barbara quickly fell into her new glamorous life.She eventually tired of Zeppo and began an affair with her neighbor, Frank Sinatra, hoping he would marry her, which he eventually did. Sinatra spins an interesting tale of a life lived amongst celebrity and provides an insider glimpse into a bygone era. Readers will either enjoy or be annoyed by the incessant name-dropping.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)