Roger Moore in 1968
(AP Photo)
When Moore ran with Ol’ Blue Eyes
Roger Moore still misses Frank Sinatra. “I first met Frank in the 1950s at a Hollywood nightclub,” the British actor tells the London Times. “He greeted me warmly and said, ‘Hi, I’m Frank Sinatra.’ As if I didn’t know who he was.” In the 1960s, Moore ran into Sinatra again, in London; Sinatra and his wife, Mia Farrow, turned out to be fans of Moore’s series The Saint. “‘We watch it in bed, in our hotel room—it’s the best thing on TV,’ Frank said. It was there that Frank started calling me ‘Kid,’ a nickname that stuck.” Before long, the two were hanging out in Palm Springs, Calif. “They were great days. We’d run movies, eat, drink, swim in the pool. On Easter Sunday Frank would clear us out of the kitchen and cook his favorite dish of spicy meatballs and pasta. No one else was allowed to cook.” When they wanted some excitement, Moore and Sinatra decamped to Las Vegas. “One of our favorite pastimes, aside from drinking copious amounts of Jack Daniel’s, was gambling. Frank was very much a night person. But I couldn’t always keep up with him, especially if I needed a clear head the next morning.” Shortly before Sinatra died in 1998, he finally began to slow down, as age, cancer, and heart disease took their toll. “Frank said, ‘You gotta love livin’, Kid, ’cause dyin’ is a pain in the ass.’ But we never spoke about death or illness. We were too busy enjoying life.”
