Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1944)

■ Sinatra, en route to Hollywood and more fame “On boxes,” he said. “What else?” So we sat on storage boxes beside the roaring fire and ate the spaghetti and drank the cold milk. Frank told me about the day in town and I brought him up to date on the goings-on at home: How our daughter Nancy and her best friend Mary Ann from next door had “helped” the packing men so efficiently that our bill would be four dollars more; how Frank Jr. had slept through his carriage ride in the park and missed the first spring robins; how my father had telephoned to report that he had gone carefully over the plans of our new house in California and was convinced Frank had made a good buy. (Daddy is a builder and is always afraid Frank and I will buy a house without checking things like insulation, foundations and roofing. He doesn’t know Frank as well as I do.) Frank untied his shoes and stretched his stockinged feet to the fire. “Boy,” he said, “it’s good to be home.” It’s at moments like that when I’m happiest, being Mrs. Frank Sinatra. We’ve never had enough time together— from the day we were married. At first it was because Frank worked at night and I in the daytime — an awkward arrangement which we put up with because it netted two $25 checks a week instead of one and balanced the budget. Then, when Frank went with Harry James’ orchestra he was frequently on the road and even when I went with him on those crosscountry jaunts it was more like being smuggled into a fraternity house than having a home and a normal life like other young married couples. \A/ OMEN whose husbands go to work in the morning and come home in time for dinner, and can be counted on to be on hand in case of emergency, don’t know how lucky they are. It has been gratifying to me to see Frank succeed at his career, because it means so terribly much to him. I would have been as disappointed as he if his persistent ambition and daily striving to improve himself and his work had had any other result. But, if he had been less successful — or if he had been a successful lawyer instead of a singer — he would have been at the hospital when my babies came, pacing up and down in the waiting room like a normal father, instead of checking anxiously by telephone from a broadcasting station, the last time from a broadcasting station three thousand miles away. Does that sound petulant? I don’t mean to be. I’m proud of my famous husband and content to share him with the Schedule. But I don’t pretend that being the wife of the current sensation is all roses and I am triumphant when we can outwit the Schedule for an hour and sit in front of the fire and talk together, even if we do have to use storage boxes for chairs and warmed-over spaghetti for supper as we did that night last April. We make a game of Outwitting The Schedule. One evening not long ago I was dining in town with some of my girl friends. I didn’t know where Frank was, except that his afternoon appointment with his business manager would probably go right on through the dinner hour. When my friends and I emerged from the restaurant we saw a cluster of young girls staring in the windows of another cafe across the street. They had autograph books and they wore bobby socks. p “That can mean only one thing,” m I said. “My husband!” Then I had M an idea. “I think I’d like some more coffee and dessert.” I winked. My