Frank Sinatra and Juliet Prowse

This couple dated on and off for over a decade.

Frank met dancer Juliet Prowse on the set of Can-Can in 1959. She was 23 to his 44, a tall, intelligent, brilliant dancer. Frank seemed “amazingly kind and gentle”. Maybe it was because she was close to his daughter’s age. There were times, Juliet said, when they sat quietly by the pool while she knitted socks for him. She tended the garden and he painted. “She smothers me, and I love that,” Frank told Shirley MacLaine.

Frank proposed to Juliet. She resisted, however, and continued to do so even after five proposals. Though Frank was good to her, she did not like what happened when he got drunk. He tore into good friends for no reason, or would “throw things on the floor if the service was not as he wanted it to be”. For six months, from the summer of 1961, they did not see each other. Frank did, however, see Marilyn Monroe.