There was a time when, if you needed a good cheeseburger in Manhattan, Frank Sinatra could tell you where to get it — and who should serve you. Tony Bennett would have agreed with him.
Both crooners dated Pat Moore, a model turned waitress who was a superstar server at P.J. Clarke’s for some 45 years. So did Warren Beatty, William Shatner and Tim Mara of the New York Giants dynasty.
Moore, who died on August 15 at age 89, is remembered as a woman who could make just about any customer, famous or not, fall in love with her — and often had the highest check average per shift to prove it.
That’s because, family and friends say, she treated everyone like they were a star, remembering their names and favorite orders.
“There are certain key people in this town that make it a small town. They recognize you when you come in,” Brooke Kennedy, producer of the “The Good Wife,” told The Post. “It takes a very specific personality to maneuver all these other personalities and keep it going. People like Pat have a larger idea of who and what you are — even when you’re Jackie Onassis.”
As for the rich and powerful men who wooed Moore, P.J. Clarke’s waitress Linda McInerney thinks she knows why they were drawn to her: She was the one thing not on the menu.
“They loved her beauty. But they could never get her — and they tried. She always played coy,” McInerney said. “Maybe her reluctance to commit to any of them made them chase harder.”
“There was something special between her and Tony Bennett,” Clarke’s bartender Gerry Biggins told The Post. “He did a painting of her and would pop in to see if she wanted to go for a drink across the street. He would sit at the bar and wait for her. She would go to his concerts and he would serenade her.
“I believe that Tony Bennett was the love of her life.”
At the time she was involved with Bennett in the 1960s, Moore was apparently also involved with Sinatra.
“Both were vying for her attention on the regular,” McInerney said. “I think they overlapped somewhat.”
What a life it was for an Irish lass from The Bronx. Born Patricia Shavley, the daughter of a firefighter and a switchboard operator, she had a spark for adventure.
She was elected Miss Fordham while attending the university, and pageant judges Jerry and Eileen Ford offered her a contract with Ford Models. That’s when she changed her name to Pat Moore.
Appearing in print ads for everything from perfume to crackers, bras to whiskey, she wed a fellow model, Gene Watts, in the 1950s and had one son, Sean.
The single mom supported herself as a film representative after her modeling career was over — and also landed a bit part in “The French Connection” as a cigarette girl whom Gene Hackman greets with a kiss. It was, according to Moore lore, a scene that required many takes.
Her real life was just as dramatic.
Sinatra and Moore, who were introduced by Sammy Davis Jr., had a sometimes rocky relationship. Once, she used Warren Beatty to get back at him, while Sinatra’s right-hand man Jilly Rizzo was watching.
“She was mad at [Sinatra] once and knew Jilly was at the bar,” recalled McInerney, remembering that Beatty, who Moore had gone on a few dates with, walked into the bar. “So she held his hand and kissed him and walked him through the bar, so Jilly would see. Then they walked out the side door.”
Sean Watts, 67, recalled receiving a surprise visit from William Shatner when his mom briefly dated the “Star Trek” actor.
“We would sit down and watch ‘Star Trek’ together,” Sean told The Post. “I’d look at him, look at the TV and then look back at him.”
While Shatner didn’t ask Moore to marry him, Sinatra did. (“Right down on 50th Street and Second Avenue, by the mailbox in the vestibule,” Sean told the New York Times.) So, McInerney said, did Mara.
Besides her famous boyfriends, Moore was also a favorite waitress of Johnny Depp, Andre Agassi, Brooke Shields and George Steinbrenner.
“Johnny would come in and bring her flowers,” Biggins told The Post. “He’d sit at table 20, Frank Sinatra’s table. He’d talk about what was going on in his life and ask about her granddaughter, Samantha.”
Now 37, Samantha Watts works as a director for the fashion brand alice + olivia, grew up close to Grandma Pat.
She remembers receiving an after-school call from Depp and celebrating her birthday in style at Yankee stadium.
“George Steinbrenner facilitated it so that my name was put up in lights,” said Samantha. “And after a Tony Bennett concert, we got driven home with his motorcade. It was the coolest. I had candy in the limousine.”
As McInerney remembers of Moore: “She had such a colorful life.”
