Who was Nancy Barbato? 'Threesomes' apart Frank Sinatra's first wife was his true love
A new tell-all book by Frank Sinatra's manager and longtime close friend, Tony Oppedisano is out. He reveals that the late singer faced issues with impulse control, which led to four marriages and hundreds of affairs during his lifetime. In the book titled 'Sinatra and Me: In the Wee Small Hours', Oppedisano wrote that Sinatra always regretted leaving his first wife Nancy Barbato and his three children with her - Nancy Sinatra Jr, Tina Sinatra, and Frank Sinatra Jr.
The book also highlights Frank Sinatra's failed marriages with actresses Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, and socialite Barbara Marx. Oppedisano says that his marriage with Gardner collapsed because of her peaking success, which made him feel 'overshadowed' and 'emasculated', since his own career was on the skids.
With Mia Farrow, who was 30 years younger than him, the 'Luck Be A Lady Tonight' singer was married for just two years. He told Oppedisano that he married her because he loved a "boy with a c***" - a jibe at Farrow's famous pixie hairstyle. His fourth marriage with Barbara Marx in 1976 got off to a bad start after a horrific accident.
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Who was Nancy Barbato?
Nancy Barbato aka Nancy Sinatra Sr, was Frank Sinatra's childhood sweetheart and first wife. He married her in 1939 at the age of 24 years. Much like Sinatra himself, Nancy Barbato was brought up in a working-class family with an Italian-American heritage in New Jersey.
As he was struggling to launch a career in music, she supported him financially by working as a secretary, while also doing chores like sewing his iconic six bow ties or cooking the Italian dishes he loved. In fact, according to her obituary on Washington Post, she even skipped meat in her own sauce to save money.
As Sinatra gained popularity and a sea of women admirers during the Second World War, Nancy Barbato stayed away from the limelight and raised their kids. "She did everything she could to hold him — cooked him spaghetti just the way he liked it, baked him lemon-meringue pies. He loved her meals, and he loved her, but he was elusive," James Kaplan wrote in Sinatra's biography 'Frank: The Voice'.
As Sinatra stayed away from home on musical tours, he had secret flings with Hollywood starlets and many of his female fans. "Covering up the evidence was rarely his first priority," wrote Kaplan.
In Oppedisano's book, he writes that Sinatra's "sexual morals were pretty loose," adding that he loved threesomes with two women at a time. Often, if he was feeling tired during the sexual acts, he would tell them, "You start and I'll catch with you."
Oppedisano described Nancy as the 'quintessential Italian mama' without any personal ambitions but fantastic cooking skills. She was 'out of place' in the Hollywood lifestyle that Sinatra cultivated; a lifestyle for which he found Ava Gardner's company more suitable. Eventually, the couple separated briefly in 1946, before finalizing their divorce in 1951, much to her unwillingness.
Talking about her failed marriage at the time, Nancy Barbato Sinatra said, "Unfortunately, my married life with Frank has become most unhappy and almost unbearable." However, later she confided to Oppedisano, "He always came back to me so I knew where his heart was. Other pieces of his anatomy are a different story altogether." She also referred to him as the 'best father he knew how to be."
In this new book, Sinatra's lifelong confidante Oppedisano mentioned how the singer felt regretful in his later life for leaving Nancy and his three kids. "Decades later he was still tortured about the decision to leave Nancy and the kids," he writes, adding that the singer often confessed his "guilt", playing back the mistakes in his head.
Barbato continued to maintain a low profile after the divorce and raised her children single-handedly in the family home of Holmby Hills in Los Angeles. She passed away in 2018 at the age of 101.