Frank_ The Voice Part 19

The affair, previously just whispered about (though in Hollywood it was the worst-kept secret in town), was officially public. Reading about it over his morning coffee, moving his lips as he read, Frank's champion and old Hasbrouck Heights neighbor Willie Moretti shook his head, frowning. Never one to keep his opinion to himself (and now, in the grips of secondary syphilis, more disinhibited than ever), Moretti phoned Western Union and, in his high, hoa.r.s.e voice, dictated a telegram: "I am very much surprised what I have been reading in the newspapers between you and your darling wife," he said. "Remember you have a decent wife and children. You should be very happy. Regards to all. Willie Moore."

Still. Now Frank could-G.o.d help him-do precisely as he pleased.

On February 10, Sheilah Graham wrote: "Ava Gardner's current travels with Frank Sinatra include a stop-over in San Francisco. Ava is telling her friends that she wants to get married. She did not say to whom."

The day after Valentine's Day, Hedda Hopper's piece ran in the Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Times: FRANK SINATRA'S WIFE DECIDES ON SEPARATIONNancy Sinatra has finally decided to separate from her husband Frank, claiming that her married life with the crooner has become "unhappy and almost unbearable.""But I do not see a divorce in the foreseeable future," she said yesterday.First a property settlement will be worked out, and Nancy will ask for custody of their three children, Nancy, 9; Frank, 6; and Christina, 2. Her attorney is Arnold M. Grant.This is the third separation for the Sinatras, who were married Feb. 4, 1939. Frank left home in October, 1946, but reconciled with his wife two weeks later.In January, 1950, he again left home, but that time Nancy said, "He's done it before and I suppose he'll do it again, but I'm not calling this a marital breakup."With Nancy taking the initiative this time, it looks like the real thing.

The next day, as Gardner wrote in her autobiography, the s.h.i.+t really hit the fan. In the next few weeks, I was receiving scores of letters accusing me of being a scarlet woman, a home wrecker, and worse. One correspondent addressed me as "b.i.t.c.h-Jezebel-Gardner," the Legion of Decency threatened to ban my movies, and Catholic priests found the time to write me accusatory letters. I even read where the Sisters of Mary and Joseph asked their students at St. Paul the Apostle School in Los Angeles to pray for Frank's poor wife.

Louella Parsons had apparently heard the good Sisters' plea. She wrote: I am very glad Nancy Sinatra will not divorce Frankie-that she will ask for a legal separation, because somehow I believe these two will go back together.Frankie is planning a trip to Europe this spring, just about the time Ava Gardner leaves to make Pandora and the Flying Dutchman Pandora and the Flying Dutchman with James Mason in England. with James Mason in England.But I've seen Frankie get these crushes before, and I'm not for a minute taking his friends.h.i.+p with Ava as anything serious. Ava, too, gets crushes, and gets over them. But the one I really feel sorry for is little Nancy, who is such a fine woman.

And hate mail was only the beginning of Ava's problems. Soon Dorothy Kilgallen was reporting in her column that, as if Ava weren't in enough trouble with the country at large, her "romantic episode with Frank Sinatra has put her in the MGM doghouse. She has been warned to avoid further 'entanglements.'"

Earlier that month, in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy held up a piece of paper and said, "I have here in my hand a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."

The effect of the so-called Wheeling speech on a country already in the throes of Communist paranoia was electric. McCarthy, heretofore a marginal and intensely unpopular legislator, instantly shot to prominence.

Frank Sinatra, suspected by many of having Communist sympathies and now a certified moral reprobate, was ripe for the pillory. As was Ava. Erskine Johnson's March 10 column noted: "Ava Gardner's lines as a husband-s.n.a.t.c.hing hussy in East Side, West Side East Side, West Side drew snickers at a preview." drew snickers at a preview."

There was a satisfying symmetry in the equally squalid Ingrid Bergman affair. On March 15, another senator from the heartland, Edwin C. Johnson of Colorado, mysteriously decided that the Bergman and Rossellini affair was the nation's business. On the Senate floor he called Ingrid Bergman an "apostle of degradation" and declared that the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, of which he was chairman, would begin hearings on "the serious moral questions raised by movieland's lurid headlines."

Bergman or Sinatra? Newspapers could hardly decide which scandal to run with on any given day. The March 17 edition of the Lebanon, Pennsylvania, Daily News Daily News carried a page-one story headlined HUSBAND WILL FIGHT BERGMAN IN COURT and, inside, a United Press dispatch that read as if it had been written by Lee Mortimer himself: carried a page-one story headlined HUSBAND WILL FIGHT BERGMAN IN COURT and, inside, a United Press dispatch that read as if it had been written by Lee Mortimer himself: Crooner boy Frankie Sinatra's charm seems to have gone afleeting.His bobby sox brigades are conspicuous-by their absence.Frankie currently is sequestered in a 33rd-floor duplex suite at Hamps.h.i.+re House, on Central Park, where reportedly he is paying a little bagatelle of $100 a day.By a coincidence, actress Ava Gardner occupies a suite in the same diggings...And-horrible thought-the crooner's once-faithful squealing teen-age admirers aren't bothering him a bit. Only two fans showed up yesterday at Hamps.h.i.+re House to get a look at their idol.One was a youngster of about 13. The other, a patient middle-aged matron, hid behind a potted evergreen in the lobby.But the irked Frankie avoided them like the plague.Nor was there any word from Miss Gardner.Times, it seems, have changed. Maybe the bobby soxers are getting more absorbed in such little matters as the H-bomb.

Sinatra was in New York to begin an eight-week stand at the Copacabana,3 his first New York nightclub appearance since he'd played the Riobamba five years earlier. He was scared. He had avoided the Copa, worried that its grinding three-show-a-night format would strain his vocal cords. And these days, he had plenty of reason to worry about his instrument: those guilt germs George Evans used to talk about were in the air. his first New York nightclub appearance since he'd played the Riobamba five years earlier. He was scared. He had avoided the Copa, worried that its grinding three-show-a-night format would strain his vocal cords. And these days, he had plenty of reason to worry about his instrument: those guilt germs George Evans used to talk about were in the air.

Walter Winch.e.l.l, March 19: "Items-We-Doubt: That F. Sinatra's parting from his wife is a gimmick to attract the attention he used to get by crooning."

It was the phone calls that got to him, Little Nancy calling every day and asking when he was coming home, that little voice sounding so far away on the scratchy cross-country connection, the voice of Judgment itself. Frank had the shakes. "I found myself needing pills to sleep, pills to get started in the morning and pills to relax during the day," he would recall. And it wasn't just pills. Ava remembered: "Every single night we would have three or four martinis, big ones in big champagne gla.s.ses, then wine with dinner, then go to a nightclub and start drinking Scotch or bourbon. I don't know how we did it."

They were both on edge. She was on her way to England to start shooting her movie; the steady barrage of angry letters and bad press was tempting her to get out of the country early. But she stayed for Frank's big opening on Tuesday, March 28.

It didn't help that Nancy's birthday, her thirty-third, was on the twenty-sixth. He sent her a mink coat: no reply. Ten grand and no reply. For days he pestered everyone around him (except Ava, naturally), agonizing: Should he call her? Should he?

Sanicola and Van Heusen, who sensed that he really did want to call his wife, advised him to do so.

So he called her-and reached the maid, who told him that Missy Sinatra was in Palm Springs. Frank phoned there, too: no answer. He found out later that night that her friends had thrown her a big party, that Nancy had made a grand entrance in the mink coat.

Frank knew he needed help. You couldn't open at the Copa without special material. Sammy Cahn was the world master of special material-but Cahn had been on Sinatra's s.h.i.+t list for over a year for some minor infraction. That was the way it went with Frank. ("Someone told Sinatra that at a dinner party at my house his name was, as I believe they say, taken in vain," Sammy recalled. "He thought I should have slapped the offending person's face.") Another man might have called and mended fences; Frank just called. Out of the blue, after a year and a half.

"Sam, Frank."

"Hey, Frank."

"Sam, you got a moment? I'm opening at the Copa."

"Hey, not only did I know that you were opening at the Copa, but I've been thinking, if we were speaking, what would I have written?"

"Will you come to New York?"

"Yes, I will."

So Sammy took the Super Chief to Chicago and the Twentieth Century Limited from Chicago to Grand Central-three thousand miles, two and a half days; writing the whole way.

The night of the opening, Sinatra paced his tiny dressing room, unable to stop sweating. He had to shower and change his s.h.i.+rt twice. Ava was sitting with him, her brow wrinkled with concern. She could be awful, but when he was really in trouble, she could be wonderful.

She stroked his hand and looked into his eyes. She hated to see him this way. She would call the doctor and get Frank something for his nerves.

While she dialed, he stared at Nancy's good-luck telegram on the mirror.

When the doctor arrived, Ava went out to the table at ringside-there was a stir when the other customers spotted her, incandescent in a black off-the-shoulder dress-and sat down with Dolly and Marty, Sammy Cahn, Phil Silvers, Manie Sacks, Joe Fischetti, and Willie Moretti. The house was packed, the place vibrating with excitement. Then Frank bounded out and went into his opening number, Cole Porter's "I Am Loved": I'm adored, I'm adored, By the one who first led my heart astray.

The crowd went nuts. They ate it up when he did Sammy's special material, putting on a c.o.o.nskin cap, snapping a whip, and blowing a duck call as he sang bawdy new lyrics to Frankie Laine's "Mule Train" and "The Cry of the Wild Goose." They roared when he ripped the press: "My voice was so low the other night singing 'Ol Man River' that I got down in the dirt, and who do you think I found throwing mud down there? Two Hollywood commentators! They got a great racket. All day long they lie in the sun, and when the sun goes down, they lie some more!"

He was a smash hit. "After the opening, he got great reviews," Sammy Cahn recalled. "I was so proud, I was so happy."

But Cahn's memory was rose-colored: the show-business crowds loved Frank; the critics weren't so sure. "Whether temporarily or otherwise, the music that used to hypnotize the bobbysoxers-whatever happened to them anyway, thank goodness?-is gone from the throat," the Herald Tribune Herald Tribune's reviewer wrote. "Vocally, there isn't quite the same old black magic there used to be when Mr. Sinatra wrenched 'Night and Day' from his sapling frame and thousands swooned."

Sammy wasn't the only one with a forgiving memory. "Frank was nervous before he went on, which was unlike him," Ava Gardner wrote in her autobiography, "but he sang like an angel, especially 'Nancy with the Laughing Face,' a song written about his daughter, not his wife. I've always thought it was a beautiful song, and contrary to what everyone seems to believe, it was never the reason for a single quarrel between us."

Another account has it somewhat differently. "Did you have to sing that f.u.c.king song?" Ava is said to have asked Frank, after the Copa audience snickered during the number. "It made me feel like a real fool."

That wasn't the only thing she was unhappy about. As she loyally stayed for night after night of the Copa stand, MGM pelted her with telegrams reminding her she was overdue to start filming in England. And night after night she found herself in the company of some of Frank's less cla.s.sy friends, including the Fischetti brothers and Frank Costello. She was bored, feigning smiles. She and Sinatra were starting to squabble.

Meanwhile, Artie Shaw was in town.

Her own Svengali was back from one of his periodic sabbaticals from the music business, playing a gig at Bop City on Fifty-second Street. Shaw had a beautiful apartment on Central Park West. He was getting some interesting people together: Would Ava and Frank like to come up to his place for c.o.c.ktails?

Frank wouldn't like to. Over the years, he would go considerably out of his way to forge bonds with people he considered cla.s.sy. He just hated Artie Shaw.

The feeling was mutual. In the early 1940s, Frank had wanted to sing with Shaw's band, then the hottest in the land: Shaw had turned him down. Over the course of his long life, the pedantic bandleader, always eager to flaunt his intellect, would go to great lengths to deprecate the singer, with subtle rationalizations or faint praise. "We took a plain, ordinary singer, who was a good singer-there was nothing wrong with that; he was able to sing-and we made him into an icon," Shaw told an interviewer many years later.

Frank knew that Ava still called Shaw up for advice sometimes. ("Artie solved other people's problems in a couple of sentences," she would write years later, with barely disguised irony.) Frank also knew that Artie Shaw was very smart, very talented, and a devil with the ladies, and he had a gnawing fear that Shaw was going to lure Ava back into the sack.

And after a couple of nights of listening to the Fischettis' deses, dems, and dirty jokes, she was feeling not just bored-always a dangerous mode for her-but rebellious. Who the h.e.l.l was he he to tell her what she should or shouldn't do? And worse, what did it say about him that he to tell her what she should or shouldn't do? And worse, what did it say about him that he liked liked those goons? those goons?

She finally went to see Shaw.

Accounts of the evening differ. One version says that Ava rebelled and decided to attend one of Shaw's high-toned gatherings alone. Ava herself-not necessarily the most reliable of narrators-says she and Frank had a fight, ostensibly about his wandering eye: Restaurants were frequently where our quarrels began, and I have to confess I started a lot of them, sometimes before the appetizer arrived. A pretty girl would pa.s.s and recognize Frank. She'd smile. He'd nod and smile back. It would happen again. Frank would feel the temperature rising across the table and try to escape with a sort of sickly look. I'd say something sweet and ladylike, such as, "I suppose you're sleeping with all these broads," and we'd be off to the races.

She says she stomped out that night and took a taxi back to the Hamps.h.i.+re House. After stewing awhile, she phoned Shaw, who told her his girlfriend was with him but she was welcome to come over and talk. Another account has Ava leaving the Copa, ostensibly to wait for Frank back at their suite, but actually to go nightclubbing with a writer friend, Richard Condon,4 and Condon's girl. According to this story, the three wound up at Bop City, seated at Shaw's table, and when Ava phoned Frank, ostensibly to ease his mind about her whereabouts, Frank shouted that he was going to kill himself. and Condon's girl. According to this story, the three wound up at Bop City, seated at Shaw's table, and when Ava phoned Frank, ostensibly to ease his mind about her whereabouts, Frank shouted that he was going to kill himself.

In Ava's version, Sinatra shows up at Shaw's apartment, loaded for bear-or, rather, Frank's version of being loaded for bear, which meant bringing along Hank Sanicola. This is where Artie Shaw's side of the Rash.o.m.on tale comes into play. Since he told the story frequently, he occasionally liked to freshen it with piquant new details: She called at two a.m. and said she had been with Sinatra and the Fischetti boys. One of the guys had thrown a gla.s.s of whiskey in the face of one of her girlfriends, and she had to get away. She said she wanted to see me. I explained that I wasn't alone. But she came anyway, dressed to the nines and saying she wanted to ask me some questions. I asked my girlfriend to go back to bed so Ava and I could talk.

Ava complained to Artie about Frank and his mobsters, but then, according to Shaw, she got down to the nitty-gritty: "When you and I were, you know, doing it"-that was her way of saying it-"was it good?" I said, "If everything else had been anywhere near as good, we'd have been together forever and I'd never have let you out of my sight." She gave a sigh of relief. I asked why. She said, "With him it's impossible." I said I thought he was a big stud. She said, "No, it's like being in bed with a woman. He's so gentle. It's as though he thinks I'll break, as though I'm a piece of Dresden china and he's gonna hurt me."

Then, as if the s.e.xual self-aggrandizement weren't enough, Shaw declares Ava left and Frank entered, along with "the heavyweight fellow." All that's missing are the slamming doors.

It's all very entertaining. And ultimately, what truly happened is unknowable. But on this score everyone seems to agree: After Ava got back to the Hamps.h.i.+re House, where she and her sister Bappie were sharing one bedroom and Frank was staying in another, her phone rang. "It was Frank, and I'll never forget his voice," Ava recalled. "He said, 'I can't stand it any longer. I'm going to kill myself-now!'"

Then there was this tremendous bang in my ear, and I knew it was a revolver shot. My whole mind sort of exploded in a great wave of panic, terror, and shocked disbelief. Oh, G.o.d! Oh, G.o.d! I threw the phone down and raced across the living room and into Frank's room. I didn't know what I expected to find-a body? And there was a body lying on the bed. Oh, G.o.d, was he dead? I threw myself on it saying, "Frank, Frank..." And the face, with a rather pale little smile, turned toward me, and the voice said, "Oh, h.e.l.lo."The G.o.dd.a.m.n revolver was still smoking in his hand. He had fired a single shot through a pillow and into the mattress.

She wasn't mad at him, only relieved. "He was alive, thank G.o.d, he was alive," she wrote. "I held him tightly to me."

At this point-since a gunshot in the middle of the night in a luxury hotel suite will not go unnoticed, even in New York City-the farce continues: the desk clerk phones, Sinatra professes innocence, good old Sanicola is summoned to spirit away the incriminating mattress (in one version he's helped by, of all people, David O. Selznick, who's staying down the hall). The NYPD arrives, and different versions of the story hit the papers.

Frank on the edge. The Copacabana, spring 1950, just before his voice gave out. He wears a c.o.o.nskin cap and snaps a whip to lampoon Frankie Laine; meanwhile, he's taking "pills to sleep, pills to get started in the morning, and pills to relax during the day." (photo credit 24.2) (photo credit 24.2) Whatever really happened that night, the episode speaks to Frank Sinatra's deeply divided nature. He is a thirty-four-year-old man, famous and brilliant and deep voiced and well-endowed and s.e.xually voracious, certainly by many measures the big stud Artie Shaw makes him out to be. Yet his behavior throughout this singular evening is oddly childlike, especially when it comes to the faked suicide. That pale little smile when Ava-on top-finally gives him his sought-after, maternally consoling embrace; that cartoonish "Oh, h.e.l.lo." It's like the climax of a game of hide-and-seek.

Artie Shaw's story about Ava's s.e.xual confession ("It's like being in bed with a woman") may be half-true; it certainly shows Shaw to best advantage, and Sinatra to worst. But it chimes oddly with the incident at the Hamps.h.i.+re House. Sinatra certainly had a hysterical side, and was nothing if not hypersensitive. And Ava was all things to him, siren and drinking buddy and mother surrogate, and great artists have polymorphous souls. Even her private name for him, Francis, sounded (perhaps purposely) androgynous. Pica.s.so, who was every bit as macho as Frank, said, "Every artist is a woman and ought to be une gouine une gouine [a d.y.k.e]." In any case, if Ava was looking for a man who would dominate her, she was, as would become increasingly evident, betting on the wrong horse. [a d.y.k.e]." In any case, if Ava was looking for a man who would dominate her, she was, as would become increasingly evident, betting on the wrong horse.

25.

Frank and Mitch Miller rehea.r.s.e in Columbia recording studio, circa 1951. The tension between the domineering singer and the domineering producer is palpable. (photo credit 25.1) (photo credit 25.1) Now that Manie had left the picture, Columbia, too, was starting to wonder about Sinatra. From virtually carrying the company, he had become a major liability. (As soon as Sacks arrived at RCA, he tried to sell his colleagues on signing Sinatra: no one was interested.) On March 30, 1950, Columbia Records' president, Ted Wallerstein, sent a memo to his next in command, Vice President G.o.ddard Lieberson: As you know, we got rid of a very bad Sinatra deal some six months ago by a new agreement under which we advanced him $50,000 and agreed, at the same time, to pay the income tax on this original $50,000 the following year, and the tax on the tax the third year.The total of this is going to run to about $120,000. This, as accompaniment costs, with certain limitations, are advances against royalties; therefore, practically the biggest problem we have in the pop field is to get some big-selling records out of Sinatra...Please push this continuously while I am away.

Manie, Frank's ultimate protector, had been the one behind the big advances. With Manie gone, and RCA surging, a cold wind was blowing at Columbia. Wallerstein had already given Mitch Miller the same message he'd sent Lieberson: "Mitch, we've got to make this money back."

The head of the pop-singles department knew exactly what he had to do. Before this, Frank's ratio of rhythm numbers to ballads had been about one to ten; Mitch Miller decided to try the reverse. The producer's exquisite ear and cla.s.sical background never got in the way when it came to commercial matters. "What makes you want to dig in your pocket and buy a record?" he mused many years later. "It's got to be something you want to play over and over again. You look for qualities to make somebody buy it. I was trying to put stuff in records that would tighten the picture for the listener."

For Miller's first collaboration with Sinatra, the producer brought the singer an up-tempo Arthur Altman, Hal David, and Redd Evans tune, "American Beauty Rose": Daisy is darling, Iris is sweet, Lily is lovely, Blossom's a treat.

With a bouncy Dixieland-style arrangement by Norman Leyden, who'd pepped up Glenn Miller's and Tex Beneke's bands, "American Beauty Rose" bounds out of the gate at a breakneck tempo and never lets up. (Miller himself conducted.) The astute Will Friedwald calls the number "irresistible," and Sinatra's rendition "joyous," but to my ears the song just sounds fast and mechanical, a vapid counterpart to Como's "A-You're Adorable." Frank is in great voice, but there's no smile in his voice. He sounds as if he's just watching Mitch's relentlessly waving baton and going through the motions.

The heartbreaking thing is that Miller knew exactly what he was doing: America wanted wanted vapid novelty numbers in 1950. It just didn't want Sinatra very much-"American Beauty Rose" charted, but only made it to number 26, and only for two weeks. At this point, Frank's name was plastered all over the newspapers every day of the week as a family deserter and a has-been. You didn't have to be officially declared persona non grata on the Senate floor, the way Ingrid Bergman had been, to be counted out by the American public. vapid novelty numbers in 1950. It just didn't want Sinatra very much-"American Beauty Rose" charted, but only made it to number 26, and only for two weeks. At this point, Frank's name was plastered all over the newspapers every day of the week as a family deserter and a has-been. You didn't have to be officially declared persona non grata on the Senate floor, the way Ingrid Bergman had been, to be counted out by the American public.

But Mitch Miller had set the new tempo, and Frank had to keep dancing faster and faster. Not only was he playing three shows a night at the Copa and broadcasting the frenetic Light Up Time Light Up Time five evenings a week from the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center, but he was cranking out new records at a brisk new clip in hopes of generating the hits that would pay back Columbia (not to mention the IRS). In April alone, he did three recording sessions and eight new songs-almost a third as many as he'd recorded in the entire previous year. All eight were up-tempo numbers. five evenings a week from the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center, but he was cranking out new records at a brisk new clip in hopes of generating the hits that would pay back Columbia (not to mention the IRS). In April alone, he did three recording sessions and eight new songs-almost a third as many as he'd recorded in the entire previous year. All eight were up-tempo numbers.

Almost all the new songs were arranged by George Siravo, the same man who'd been arranging fast-paced numbers for Frank throughout the 1940s and who had collaborated with Sy Oliver on the July 1949 session that produced the joyous versions of "It All Depends on You" and "Bye Bye Baby." But the differences between July 1949 and April 1950 in Sinatra's life and spirit were profound. The previous July, he'd been in the first flush of his grand affair with Ava. Now the affair had entered a complex second phase. Siravo's new arrangements were lively and inventive, but Sinatra was subtly dragging them down. As with "American Beauty Rose," he was singing well enough, but joylessly. On "You Do Something to Me," he hit some outright clams, flat notes that seemed to mirror his mood.

None of the new sides charted.

In the meantime, Ava had finally heeded MGM's importuning and flown with Bappie to London. For all the sweet sorrow of parting with Frank-they wept as they embraced-she felt nothing but relief as she boarded the BOAC Stratocruiser. She would be going to Europe for four months-four months without hate mail, American newspapers, the Legion of Decency. Whether she and Frank would be seeing each other during that time was left up in the air.

"Oh, G.o.d," Ava wrote in her autobiography, "Frank Sinatra could be the sweetest, most charming man in the world when he was in the mood."

But being with him, she thought, was what it must be like to have a particularly demanding child.

In addition to three shows a night at the Copa, five radio broadcasts a week, recording sessions, and the usual fun and games with the Varsity, toward the end of April Frank opened a one-week stand at the Capitol Theater, where he had drawn less than sensationally in 1947. This time there were even more empty seats. He had been in show business half his life, and he was tired: his eyes bloodshot, his face drawn and thin. The rumors that he was having voice problems persisted-he had a cold that wouldn't go away. And now there was new gossip: Ava, shooting in Spain, had taken up with a bullfighter. Frank's stomach hurt at the thought, but he knew just where to look for consolation: sweet Marilyn Maxwell was in town, glad to listen to his troubles and not as worried about being sloppy seconds as, perhaps, she should have been. Then there were the Copa Girls, four of them-imagine the possibilities. The long nights melted into blue dawns, then he slept a little and woke to the brazen light of Manhattan afternoons...

Coughing. He would light a cigarette before he got out of bed, and when he was through shaving, he would light another. Then whoever had shared his bed would have to get the h.e.l.l out of there, because he had to get ready for the show.

Meanwhile, in Santa Monica on April 26, Nancy filed a suit for separate maintenance. Her lawyer was Gregson Edward Bautzer-Greg to his friends, of which he had many, mainly female. The das.h.i.+ng, hard-drinking Bautzer was renowned in Hollywood for having taken Lana Turner's virginity (she didn't seem to have enjoyed the experience very much), and his specialty was representing beautiful women in their divorce cases: Turner; Ginger Rogers; Ingrid Bergman. These days he was seeing Rogers, when he wasn't seeing Joan Crawford. Maybe he was also seeing Nancy?

Her suit alleged that Frank had treated her with "extreme cruelty" and caused her "grievous mental suffering" without provocation on her part. "She estimated the crooner's 1949 income at $934,740," said the a.s.sociated Press, "and the value of their community property at $750,000." She also asked for custody of their three children.

There was a crowd of reporters outside the courthouse: they wanted to know if the couple were getting a divorce. Nancy, dignified in a gray dress and the three-strand pearl necklace Frank had given her, said quietly that no divorce action was contemplated. Both she and her husband were Catholics, she said, and "neither of us wants one."

Two days later, Frank was in the news again: MGM had let him go.

Frank Sinatra, cast loose romantically when sued for separate maintenance by his wife, Nancy, last week, was a free lance in his profession as well today.Breaking another tie of years of standing, the singer asked for and was given a release from his $5,000-a-week contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Sat.u.r.day.The parting, effective immediately, was described as friendly.A joint statement by the studio and Sinatra's agent, Music Corporation of America, pointed out:"As a free lance artist, Sinatra is now free to accept unlimited important personal appearances, radio and TV offers that have been made to him."His contract with MGM restricted him in all of those respects and particularly with regard to television. The studio does not permit its stars to work in that medium.

While it was true that Sinatra wanted to work in television, and equally true that in 1950 the movie studios were increasingly paranoid about the hot new medium, Frank's separation from Metro came at the studio's request, not his-and in particular at the request of Louis B. Mayer, who had a very specific grievance. A couple of months earlier, after a horseback-riding accident, the boss had been pushed into work in a wheelchair, a cast on his leg. While Sinatra sat with some pals at lunch in the MGM commissary, someone said, "Hey, did you hear about L. B.'s accident?" And Frank said instantly: "Yeah, he fell off of Ginny Simms."

Ginny Simms, a former band singer with Kay Kyser and now a wannabe movie star, was Mayer's mistress.

Frank's remark got a big laugh at the table. He could be funny when he wasn't trying too hard, though, as with Dolly, his jokes usually had a stiletto concealed-or not concealed-about them. In this case, the blade was double-edged: Simms, while vivacious and appealing, was no beauty. To put a finer point on it, she was a bit horse faced.

The remark got back to Mayer.

Frank made the long trudge into the inner sanctum. The old man was ominously calm. He was even smiling a little.

"So," he said. "I hear you been making jokes about my lady friend."

Frank winced. "I wish I could take that back, Louis. I'm so sorry. I wish I'd never said anything so stupid."

"That's not a very nice thing to do," Mayer said. "I want you to leave, and I don't ever want you to come back again."

That had been in February. Mayer had been genuinely offended by Frank's remark, but he was also a businessman. The gaffe had given him a perfect pretext to unload damaged goods. By the end of April, MCA was finished working out the severance: Sinatra would receive a final payment of $85,000. Greg Bautzer instantly called MGM and slapped a restraining order on the check until Nancy and Frank settled the separate-maintenance suit.

Meanwhile, Frank was doing big business at the Copa, thanks to the cognoscenti, who, heedless of his troubles, continued to roll in night after night. But every dime he made, and then some, was going straight out the door. He went to MCA's chairman, Jules Stein, for a loan; Stein all but laughed in his face. Those "unlimited important personal appearances, radio and TV offers" mentioned in the press release were in fact extremely limited: Frank Sinatra was a drug on the market.

Not to mention a king-sized pain in the a.s.s. He treated everyone at the agency like a servant, including his chief representatives, Lew Wa.s.serman in Hollywood and Sonny Werblin in New York. MCA might have stood for this behavior if he'd been bringing in money. As it was, Sinatra's agents had effectively cut him loose: by 1950, they were no longer working actively on his behalf.

Worse, he was losing what was most precious to him: his voice. Many years later, Mitch Miller recalled: Listen, Sinatra had a marvelous voice, but it was very fragile. There were certain guys like Gordon MacRae who could stay up all night and drink and sing the next day-he could sing underwater. But if Frank didn't get enough sleep or if he drank a lot the night before, it would show up. And Frank was a guy-call it ego or what you want-he liked to suffer out loud, to be dramatic. There were plenty of people, big entertainers, who had a wild life or had big problems, but they kept it quiet. Frank had to do his suffering in public, so everyone could see it. And this was a time he was having trouble with Ava, she was in Spain, and it showed in his work. He would come in to record, and he couldn't get through a number without his voice cracking.

Every time Frank's voice went, Miller would have to start the session over again, racking up studio fees and musicians' overtime. (Which, as per Sinatra's unique contract with Columbia, were the label's responsibility.) But thanks to the new technology of tape recording, Miller was able to come up with a simple fix: I can say this now: I could have been kicked out of the musicians' union because tracking was not allowed. There were a lot of musicians involved. So what I did, to save the session, I just shut off his mike and got good background tracks. Didn't even tell him.Then after it was over, I said, "When your voice is back..." We'd come in crazy hours, in a locked building, so no union representative could come in. Then when Frank came in, say, at midnight, we would play the disc. He would put earphones on and he would sing, just the way they do now. And we would remix it. He did them very well after that, and the whole orchestra was perfect on it.

It sounds simple, but it couldn't have been. Sinatra, who revered musicians and always insisted on doing right by them, knew he was taking money out of his musicians' pockets, not to mention depriving himself of the pleasure of working directly with them. The pleasure of being with being with the musicians was central to Sinatra as an artist, and it infused all his best recordings. Indeed, even as recording technology advanced and tracking (today known as overdubbing) became almost universal, Sinatra did not like to record separately-and when he did, the music was always the worse for it. The renowned sound engineer Lee Herschberg, who supervised most of Frank's Reprise sessions in the 1960s, noted that unlike most other singers, Sinatra couldn't bear to sing behind sound-absorbing isolation panels-gobos. "You couldn't do that with him, because he wanted to hear the piano, number one," Herschberg said. "He'd stand right behind Bill Miller, or whomever." the musicians was central to Sinatra as an artist, and it infused all his best recordings. Indeed, even as recording technology advanced and tracking (today known as overdubbing) became almost universal, Sinatra did not like to record separately-and when he did, the music was always the worse for it. The renowned sound engineer Lee Herschberg, who supervised most of Frank's Reprise sessions in the 1960s, noted that unlike most other singers, Sinatra couldn't bear to sing behind sound-absorbing isolation panels-gobos. "You couldn't do that with him, because he wanted to hear the piano, number one," Herschberg said. "He'd stand right behind Bill Miller, or whomever."

Frank wanted the intimacy. He'd stand right behind Miller and tease him, and Miller, or whoever, would joke back, and the studio would start to take on a kind of glow. "Sinatra wasn't like some of the other people you would record," Herschberg recalled. "When he walked in, it was special. Because there was an air in the studio that something special was going to happen. He always had the best arrangers and he had the best players, and everybody was having such a good time and was so happy to be there, and it really made him give what he had to give."

That was in the 1960s. In 1950 it was a very different story: good times were in short supply; Sinatra was sinking fast. During the day he was stripping the gears-and obsessing over Ava. "Every day," writes Gardner's biographer Lee Server, "he would send off a heartfelt cable and then telephone her in the early evening in New York, late night in Spain, and try again sometime after midnight, early morning [at the location] in Tossa de Mar."