Vanity Fair's Maureen Orth Reveals More Details From Explosive Mia Farrow Interview

Maureen Orth talks to "Nightline" about her explosive sitdown with the actress.

ByABC News
October 3, 2013, 9:38 AM

Oct. 3, 2013— -- There are new questions this week about one of Hollywood's most famous and famously fractured families. Among them are whether Ronan Farrow, the son of the Oscar-winning director Woody Allen, may actually be the biological child of Frank Sinatra. Ronan's mother and Allen's longtime romantic partner, Mia Farrow, suggested in a recent interview that might be the case.

In the interview with Vanity Fair magazine special correspondent Maureen Orth, Farrow was asked point-blank if her son Ronan Farrow is really Sinatra's son. Farrow responded, "Possibly."

Her response unleashed a tidal wave of speculation. Farrow and Sinatra were once married and the romance reportedly continued after their divorce. Ronan does bear more than a passing resemblance to "Ol' Blue Eyes" Frank Sinatra and, according to Orth, it goes beyond looks.

"He was singing a Steven Sondheim song," Orth told "Nightline" in an interview Tuesday. "It was just the way he moved, the way he sort of was at ease and the way he sort of threw the phrases out there, and I thought, 'Wow, this is pretty professional sounding, and it isn't that far away.'"

WATCH: Maureen Orth on Interviewing Usually Private Actress

Sinatra, the man Farrow calls the "love of her life" in the Vanity Fair interview, was one of the most glamorous stars of his day, and he was behind some of the most iconic songs of his generation.

Sinatra and Farrow met when she was the 19-year-old star of the 1960s TV series "Peyton Place." He was 30 years her senior. The two were married in 1966.

But after a year and a half of marriage, Sinatra famously served Farrow with divorce papers while she was shooting the 1968 movie "Rosemary's Baby." But their love affair reportedly didn't end there.

"She and Frank had never really completely broken up," Orth told "Nightline." "They had remained close throughout the years on and off, and I asked her, 'Is he the great love of your life?' And she said, 'Yes.'"

The two were so close that Orth said the Sinatras treated Ronan like family.

"I also did email Nancy Sinatra Jr., and she was very forthcoming in how much they loved Ronan and consider him a member of the family," Orth said. "He told me that his, that Nancy Sinatra Sr. cooked for him and fussed over him, and I really do think they do consider him a member of their family."

But Frank Sinatra's widow dismissed it as "phony" reports that the late singer may have fathered Mia Farrow's son, Ronan.

"I can't hardly believe that. It's just a bunch of junk. There's always junk written -- lies that aren't true," Barbara Sinatra, 85, who has a home in Rancho Mirage, Ariz., told The Desert Sun.

Woody Allen was the other legendary man in Farrow's love life. Over the course of 12 years, the couple adopted two children, and Allen was a father figure to the others that Farrow had adopted. But only one -- Ronan -- was thought to be Allen's biological child.

Farrow was Allen's artistic muse in more than a dozen movies, including such Oscar-winning classics as 1986's "Hannah and Her Sisters." But their collaboration came crashing down during the filming of "Husbands and Wives," released in 1992, when Farrow found lewd Polaroids of her adoptive daughter Soon-Yi on Allen's fireplace mantle at his apartment. The scandal became a prolonged tabloid obsession.

Allen and Farrow's break-up hit the entire family hard. Their biological and adoptive children, many with severe disabilities, were devastated, according to Orth.

"The Soon-Yi revelations were absolutely devastating to this family, according to the eight children I spoke to. Not a single one said it was anything less than utterly shocking," Orth said. "Because here he was, the de facto dad in the family for a long, long time. ... So the fact that suddenly their sister ... sort of betrayed their mother and ran off with Woody and he didn't act like anything had gone wrong."

Ronan Farrow was 4 years old at the time, and, according to Orth, always had a difficult relationship with the famed auteur.

"Ronan and Woody seemed to have always been like oil and water," Orth said.