Frank_ The Voice Part 31

On May 16, precisely as the Naples audience was stamping, booing, and yelling for Ava, "I'm Walking Behind You" hit number 7 on the Billboard Billboard chart. It was Frank's first hit since "The Birth of the Blues" had charted at number 19 the previous November-his longest drought in ten years. The problem was that Eddie Fisher's version of "I'm Walking Behind You" was number 1. chart. It was Frank's first hit since "The Birth of the Blues" had charted at number 19 the previous November-his longest drought in ten years. The problem was that Eddie Fisher's version of "I'm Walking Behind You" was number 1.

It was not to be a great year for Sinatra sales. Paradoxically, "Walking" would be Frank's biggest hit for 1953, though Alan Livingston knew in his bones that the Stordahl-arranged song represented the singer's past, not his future. But even the present looked iffy. When "I've Got the World on a String" hit the charts on the Fourth of July, it was only at number 14, and it stayed there for just two weeks.2 Nineteen fifty-three was a year for Fisher and Perry Como (who had two number-one hits) and Patti Page, with her monster Columbia hit "Doggie in the Window," conducted and arranged-complete with barking-by Mitch Miller. Nineteen fifty-three was a year for Fisher and Perry Como (who had two number-one hits) and Patti Page, with her monster Columbia hit "Doggie in the Window," conducted and arranged-complete with barking-by Mitch Miller.

In many ways it seemed as though 1953 might not be Sinatra's year at all. He had little to show but bruises for his Continental tour. He could dimly remember having thrown heart and soul into From Here to Eternity; From Here to Eternity; but back in England (where Ava had rented a big flat in St. John's Wood), in the days when overseas really was overseas, he'd only heard second-and thirdhand about the excited rumors-about both the film and his performance-flying around Hollywood. He was cast up on foreign sh.o.r.es, with little to back up his confidence, least of all his wife's esteem. "We came back to London under a terrible cloud," Ava recalled. In truth, she was sick of him. In a photograph of the two of them at a prizefight in early June, their bodies aren't quite touching. (At one point, during a lull in the action, Frank called out, "Why don't ya fight, ya b.u.ms, ya!" Ava rolled her eyes.) but back in England (where Ava had rented a big flat in St. John's Wood), in the days when overseas really was overseas, he'd only heard second-and thirdhand about the excited rumors-about both the film and his performance-flying around Hollywood. He was cast up on foreign sh.o.r.es, with little to back up his confidence, least of all his wife's esteem. "We came back to London under a terrible cloud," Ava recalled. In truth, she was sick of him. In a photograph of the two of them at a prizefight in early June, their bodies aren't quite touching. (At one point, during a lull in the action, Frank called out, "Why don't ya fight, ya b.u.ms, ya!" Ava rolled her eyes.) Still, his manager had been able at the last minute to throw together a tour of Great Britain: from June till early August, Sinatra would scramble from London to Bristol back to London up to Birmingham and back to London, then up to Glasgow and Dundee and Edinburgh and Ayr, then down to Leicester and Manchester and Blackpool and Liverpool, then back to London. Ava, busy playing Guinevere (and perhaps also busy with her co-star and old flame, Robert Taylor), would not accompany him.

Then a successful June show on the BBC buoyed Frank's morale. The Brits, having just crowned a new young queen, were in correspondingly good spirits. They didn't come out in huge throngs to hear Frank, but the crowds who did come applauded appreciatively as he sang old songs ("Night and Day," "Sweet Lorraine," "You Go to My Head") and new ones ("The Birth of the Blues" and "I've Got the World on a String") and sipped tea between numbers. His voice gained strength with every stop. "Sinatra is still the greatest male singer in pop music," the New Musical Express New Musical Express said. "His range and power seem greater than ever." And his cheekiness ("Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Odeon or whatever this joint's called," he said at the Blackpool Opera House) rubbed the Brits the right way. They knew all about b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness. said. "His range and power seem greater than ever." And his cheekiness ("Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Odeon or whatever this joint's called," he said at the Blackpool Opera House) rubbed the Brits the right way. They knew all about b.l.o.o.d.y-mindedness.

Harry Cohn used to say that he could tell whether a movie was any good depending on whether his f.a.n.n.y squirmed or not. "Imagine," said the screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. "The whole world wired to Harry Cohn's a.s.s!"

And strangely enough, when Columbia Pictures ran its first preview of From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity, "Cohn had decided to use a new electronic system of recording audience reactions," Fred Zinnemann recalled. The screening took place over the summer: a few weeks, pointedly enough, after the Rosenbergs were electrocuted.

About two hundred people were, literally, wired to their seats in a large projection room. There were small levers each could push-to the right if they liked the scene, to the left if they didn't. At first this seemed a ridiculous enterprise, especially discouraging because there was absolutely no reaction from the audience. They sat there like wax figures at Madame Tussaud's, busy concentrating on those levers. I was convinced we had a disaster on our hands.Then Harry Cohn came tearing in, carrying a roll of paper twenty-five feet long, with the combined graph of those two hundred people plotted on it, and he said excitedly that the curve indicated Columbia was going to have its biggest-ever hit.

He was so certain of his film's success that he conceived a crazily inspired plan for the premiere. "We all thought Cohn had gone mad when he decreed that 'this picture will open in the Capitol Theater on Broadway in New York in August,'" Zinnemann wrote.3 There was no air-conditioning then, and in August New York was a sweatbox. No one had ever heard of releasing a major film in mid-summer. We were convinced that his gambler's instinct was leading to certain suicide. More was to come: Cohn declared that there would be no publicity, except for one full-page ad in the Times Times which which he he would sign as president of Columbia, urging people to see it. would sign as president of Columbia, urging people to see it.

Wednesday, August 5, was a reliably miserable summer day in Manhattan, the temperature a humid eighty-eight degrees. The smart money, of course, was at the beach; those unlucky enough to have to stay in town walked around fanning themselves and complaining. "I was in Los Angeles when the picture opened on Broadway, on a sweltering August night," Zinnemann recalled.

No premiere, no limousines, nothing. At 9:00 p.m., Marlene Dietrich (whom I hardly knew) called from New York and said that it was midnight there but the Capitol Theater was bulging, people were still standing around the block and there was an extra performance starting at one in the morning! I said, "How is that possible? There has been no publicity." "They smell it," she said.

William Morris cabled the good news to Frank: From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity looked like a huge hit, and his performance was a big part of the equation. His mood, already up from a successful week at the Empire in Liverpool, soared. Suddenly Frank was grinning and strutting, and Ava's eyes were narrowing. But the two of them pulled it together on August 6, when they paid a call on Mr. and Mrs. Earl Wilson at the Savoy. The columnist and his Beautiful Wife were beginning a round-the-world tour, Mrs. Wilson was celebrating her birthday, and the mood was festive. Frank and Ava "came up from the lobby and were in a merry mood," Wilson recalled. looked like a huge hit, and his performance was a big part of the equation. His mood, already up from a successful week at the Empire in Liverpool, soared. Suddenly Frank was grinning and strutting, and Ava's eyes were narrowing. But the two of them pulled it together on August 6, when they paid a call on Mr. and Mrs. Earl Wilson at the Savoy. The columnist and his Beautiful Wife were beginning a round-the-world tour, Mrs. Wilson was celebrating her birthday, and the mood was festive. Frank and Ava "came up from the lobby and were in a merry mood," Wilson recalled.

"He doesn't know whether to believe all the talk," Ava said when Frank went to the bathroom...Frank was torn about what att.i.tude to take about all the buildup. Should he be humble or, as one of his realist friends said, "should he start getting that old s.h.i.+tty feeling toward everybody who'd helped him?"

Including his wife, who after all had been instrumental in getting him the role in the first place?

"There was a series of senseless quarrels with Ava," Wilson wrote. She wanted him to stay in London until she was finished shooting her picture; he had no intention of playing the prince consort. "I've got a career too, you know," he said coldly. A couple of nights after they made nice for the Wilsons, the Sinatras had such a violent battle in the St. John's Wood flat, replete with flying furniture and broken crockery, that their landlord lost his English composure and, red faced, threatened them with eviction. It didn't matter: Frank was already gone.

"Dialogue between Ava and hubby Frankie Sinatra as actually heard in London's sw.a.n.k Amba.s.sador hotel dining room," Frank Morriss wrote in his August 12 column: Frankie-Boy: What time is it? Ava: How do I know?Frankie-Boy: I'll be seeing you...Whereupon he exits...

That night he packed his bags and flew home. Alone.

When he landed at Idlewild, it was as if he'd gone through the looking gla.s.s-from drab, still war-ravaged England, cool and clammy even in August, to hot, pulsating New York City, where everyone-everyone, from baggage handlers to cabbies to cops-was congratulating him on his brilliant performance.

Hey, Frankie! Hey, Frankie! Hey, Maggio!

He couldn't stop grinning. Suddenly everybody wanted to be his friend. The phone in his suite at the Waldorf Towers was ringing off the hook, with more congratulations, and with offers. NBC, which had been interested in him in 1952 but had faded fast when CBS canceled his TV show, was back, talking about an exclusive contract for radio and television. Milton Berle, the guy who used to make fun of his low ratings, wanted Frank to appear on his show for $6,000. Six thousand dollars, for one night-almost as much as he'd made for all twelve weeks of From Here to Eternity; From Here to Eternity; more than three times as much as they'd paid him for that night in Naples. more than three times as much as they'd paid him for that night in Naples.

Offers kept flooding in. Skinny D'Amato's 500 Club in Atlantic City wanted Frank as soon as he could get there; so did Bill Miller's Riviera in Fort Lee. He was called for television and films: an Army movie with Dan Dailey; a Fox musical with Marilyn Monroe, Pink Tights Pink Tights. And most interesting of all, a waterfront picture with Elia Kazan, set in Hoboken...

In the meantime, MGM was planning to rerelease The Kissing Bandit- The Kissing Bandit-a backhanded compliment if there ever was one. His agents at William Morris were suddenly all smiles: he could hear it in their voices over the phone.

Frank distrusted every last glad-hander. He preferred to believe the grudging noises his former detractors were making. "Looking through my Frank Sinatra file today, I discovered that I have been about evenly divided in my praise and my criticism of Frankie-boy," the Hollywood gossip Jimmie Fidler wrote in mid-August.

Of late, the file is heavily critical, so it pleases me at this time to add something to the good side of the Sinatra ledger.I am referring to the strong comeback Frank has made, just when everybody figured he was washed up...About his performance in "From Here to Eternity" a number of columnists are predicting that Sinatra has next year's Academy Award in his hip pocket.

His performance had thrown everybody for a loop. The toughest reviewers were melting. "For the first time," the New York Post New York Post's Richard Watts wrote, "I find myself in the ranks of his ardent admirers. Instead of exploiting a personality, he proves he is an actor by playing the luckless Maggio with a kind of doomed gaiety that is both real and immensely touching."

"Doomed gaiety"-that was good. For the past three years doomed gaiety had been the only kind he'd had. But it was the death scene that got them, he knew it. He and Monty had talked about that scene a dozen times. The trick, according to Clift, was not overplaying it. Dying was like snow falling.

But now he was living-livin' in a great big way, as the old Dorothy Fields lyric had it. Again he could stroll into Toots Shor's like the conquering hero ("You crumb b.u.m!" Toots sang out happily at the sight of him); again he could wink at the Copa Girls and decide which would be on the menu first.

Atlantic City was golden in the late-August sun. Frank flared his nostrils and inhaled the salty air. Skinny spread his well-tailored arms to hug him, then indicated a short, sour-looking man in sungla.s.ses and a fedora. Surely Frank remembered their good friend Sam Giancana?

The boardwalk crowds surged into the club to get a glimpse of Frank; the sunburned honeymooners held each other close as he sang to them, better than ever. Dolly came down and pinched his cheeks some more. Skinny wouldn't let her touch her purse. He was having to put on extra shows at 2:00 a.m. to accommodate the overflow.

Eternity was breaking box-office records in New York and Chicago, the only two cities where it was playing so far: canny Cohn had decided to build the fire slowly. And the Oscar talk was gathering steam. ACADEMY AWARD RACE BEGINS, read an August 30 headline in Lubbock, Texas, where was breaking box-office records in New York and Chicago, the only two cities where it was playing so far: canny Cohn had decided to build the fire slowly. And the Oscar talk was gathering steam. ACADEMY AWARD RACE BEGINS, read an August 30 headline in Lubbock, Texas, where From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity couldn't even be seen yet. "Biggest surprise of the film is the reportedly fine straight acting of Song-and-Dance Man Sinatra," the accompanying story read, a little wistfully. couldn't even be seen yet. "Biggest surprise of the film is the reportedly fine straight acting of Song-and-Dance Man Sinatra," the accompanying story read, a little wistfully.

Naturally, his good fortune couldn't go uncontested. "Frank Sinatra has been receiving a merciless needling," Jimmie Fidler noted, "from a New York columnist-one with whom Frank swapped punches in front of a night club a year or so back. Some of the newspaperman's cracks have been so ugly that even people who admit they have no great admiration for Sinatra are beginning to take offense."

In fact, Frank's a.s.sisted mugging of Lee Mortimer at Ciro's had taken place not a year or so before, but in April 1947-ancient history in newspaper terms. Mortimer had long since had the opportunity to mug Sinatra back, and to savor his downfall. And Frank had fallen and fallen, but-maddeningly-never quite hit bottom. Now, just as the singer was starting to enjoy an improbable resurgence, the columnist was gently fading into obscurity. Throughout the summer, filling in for the vacationing Walter Winch.e.l.l, Mortimer snapped at Sinatra's heels. On August 31, he wrote: "Those dark cheaters Frank Sinatra is sporting on Lexington Ave. are not to hide him from the autograph hunters. He's got a beautiful s.h.i.+ner."

Whether Frank had received an actual black eye from a romantic rival or a metaphorical one from the envious columnist was never answered. It was Mortimer's last shot at the singer.

Frank called his wife almost every day, even after he'd sent another conquest home in a cab. Ava, after all, was the one he couldn't conquer. He tried everything on the transatlantic phone that August: at times, knowing that she took pleasure in his success (and disdained him for his failures), he spoke with pride of his growing triumph; but the second he began to sound c.o.c.ky, he could hear her glancing at her watch. Then there were the bad moments, when she made him crazy enough to try to bully her.

The h.e.l.l with St. Louis Woman St. Louis Woman. He'd rather work with Marilyn Monroe.

Click.

At last, they made a provisional agreement to make up. The minute Ava's work on the dumb costume epic was completed, she and Reenie threw all her things into her bags. She was bored with England anyway. Clark Gable, who'd stayed in London after Mogambo Mogambo wrapped, came over for a farewell drink-and reminded her that she'd completed only half of the eighteen months' foreign residence the IRS required for a ma.s.sive tax break. wrapped, came over for a farewell drink-and reminded her that she'd completed only half of the eighteen months' foreign residence the IRS required for a ma.s.sive tax break.

"Ava, honey, you do know what you're doing, don't you? You're packing up and throwing away a hundred fifty thousand dollars in those suitcases."

She didn't give a flying f.u.c.k. She wanted to see her husband.

Gable smiled, squinty eyed, over his highball gla.s.s. Lucky husband.

But at the last minute, Ava decided to stop over in Madrid: Spain made her happy, and she had new friends there, not the least of whom was Luis Miguel Dominguin.

As always, the press took note of her every movement, and since Frank read the papers like everyone else, he got wind of her layover. As far as he was concerned, she had stood him up, but he wasn't about to tell the reporters that. No comment, was what he said instead. He was booked at the 500 Club through Labor Day-the very day Ava arrived in New York. Frank stayed put.

Ava walked off the plane at Idlewild, her big sungla.s.ses hiding the circles under her eyes, and ran smack into a crowd of eager reporters.

Where was Frankie? Were she and he not getting along?

She adjusted the shades and walked coolly through the pack. "I have nothing to say about it," she said. She believed he had a singing engagement in Atlantic City.

Did she plan to see him?

"Not today," she said. "I have no definite plans." She pulled off her gloves-every man watching her hands with widening eyes-and put them in her bag. "I don't want to discuss it."

The reporters crowded closer. One suggested that her answers strongly implied there was some kind of rift.

"It doesn't imply anything," she said, getting into a waiting car. The driver closed the door, and then she was gone.

Frank came to New York the next day and checked into the Waldorf. Ava was in the Hamps.h.i.+re House.

The press smelled blood. "A close friend said the couple had been squabbling and that things might be patched up with a telephone call or 'blow sky high in 24 hours,'" the United Press reported on September 9. And, the next day: FRANKIE AND AVA FEUDINGNEW YORK (UP)-Ava and Frankie are feuding in frosty silence today just 12 city blocks apart...Sinatra...told his friends he was completely mystified over Ava's unannounced return three days ago and her anger. He refused to say why he didn't pick up the phone and ask Ava."I hope to see Frank before I leave next week," Ava said. "That's what I came home for." She wouldn't say why she neglected to phone him or where she intended to go from here."I don't care to talk about it further," she said pleasantly, leaning back on the couch and exposing her bare legs. The question of hemlines arose."If women follow that very short skirt fad they're fools," Ava said. She paused and smiled. "But then, we're fools."

It sounded like a high-school quarrel. Speaking to another reporter, Sinatra was the soul of disingenuousness. "I saw a picture of Ava at the airport," he said, "and that's the first inkling I had that she was in town. I don't understand it. We'd had no trouble. I can't make a statement because I don't know what she is planning. It's a crying shame, because everything was going so well with us. Something may work out, but I don't know."

Ava replied (to another reporter): "You start with love, or what you think is love, and then comes the work. I guess you have to be mature and grown up to know how to work at it. But I was the youngest of seven kids and was always treated like the baby, and I liked it, and played the baby. Now I'm having a h.e.l.l of a time growing up."

While Frank opened at the Riviera, she went with a girlfriend to a Broadway show-as it happened, the premiere of Carnival in Flanders Carnival in Flanders, book by Preston Sturges, music and lyrics by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke. Despite the brilliant creative team, the critics murdered the show, which ran for only six performances. The failure hastened Burke's decline into alcoholism and steeled Chester's resolve to stick to writing for the movies. (But as Ava sat there that night, she got to hear John Raitt debut Van Heusen's greatest song, "Here's That Rainy Day"-of which Sinatra would record the greatest version six years thence.) Meanwhile, across the river, Frank was knocking them dead. "Every big star-except Ava Gardner-was at Frank Sinatra's big, spectacular opening at Bill Miller's Riviera," Earl Wilson wrote. "(Martin & Lewis couldn't get a table!)"

It was true: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, virtual proteges of Frank's, and now arguably the biggest stars in the world, were refused the ringside table they demanded. It was a maitre d's dream and nightmare: the place was simply too jammed with celebrities to admit any more. The duo walked off in a huff. It was a subtle changing of the guard.

Dean and Jerry missed a h.e.l.l of a show. "Electrifying," said Eddie Fisher, who had been more prudent about getting a reservation. "Frank let loose a vocal tour de force, accompanied by Bill Miller at the piano and a seven-piece band," Variety Variety's critic wrote.

He held the floor a solid 60 minutes and while he might and should cut 10 minutes there was no gainsaying the consistency of his socko. He's in for $10,000 a week, for two weeks, and both he and [club owner] Bill Miller owe a lot to Harry Cohn for what the Columbia picture did for all concerned. Oh yes, he also sang "From Here to Eternity" and wisely sh-sh'd some exuberant bobby-soxers who squealed an occasional "Oh Frankie."

Frank was in great voice and delighted to be performing for an American audience, and a hip one at that. He could even make fun of his marital troubles: when he sang Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You," he mimed getting booted in the b.u.t.t, as if by you-know-who, to gales of laughter. "Frank Sinatra's intimates say he hasn't been as happy in years, despite the rift with Ava," Dorothy Kilgallen wrote early in the second week of the stand. "The success of his dramatic effort in 'From Here to Eternity' plus his great hit as a ballad singer at the Riviera have lifted him out of the bitter depression that was beginning to worry all his a.s.sociates. In the long run, his career seems to be more important to him than any luscious female."

While this was true in the long run, Sinatra was paying a bitter price. Friends like Van Heusen and Sanicola and Jule Styne, friends he made stay up with him every night until dawn, took the true measure of his misery. And no matter how many laughs he enjoyed with his buddies, Ava made him miserable. He couldn't dominate her; he couldn't understand her. The more inconstant she was, the more he needed her.

On September 12, Earl Wilson, who fancied himself a friend, devoted almost his entire column to a jocular account of his failed attempt to bring Frank and Ava back together. "As a Cupid, I'm stupid, for I just made a gallant effort to melt the deep freeze between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra...and fixed everything up so good that the freeze is now twice as deep," he wrote.

Ava and I met in a large eatery run by a large eater. After talking about her next picture, "Mogambo," in which she is a real s.e.xpot, I happened to mention her Herculean husband whom she considers has neglected her, which-if it's true-makes him this century's man of iron."You still haven't seen him or talked to him?" I asked."No." She sipped her tea...She was wearing, I noticed, Frank's wedding ring, also a large frosty smile of independence..."Can I be an intermediary?" I asked. "I know a lot about patching up quarrels with wives. First the husband says it was all his fault and after that everything's easy.""n.o.body can help us but ourselves," she answered. "You must talk, you must understand each other. Listen to me. Lady psychiatrist!""I still think you should have been [at the Riviera]," I said."I don't have to defend myself," she said, "as long as I'm sure in my heart that I was right."

Dolly sailed into the breach. Talking to her son on the phone, she instantly heard the sadness in his voice.

He went on and on about the crowds at the Riviera. He was doing great.

Dolly grunted. Bulls.h.i.+t.

She phoned Ava at the Hamps.h.i.+re House. Ava asked her please to come right over. "She kissed me, and after a few minutes she began to cry," Dolly recalled.

She had been tired, she said, when the plane came in, and when she didn't see Frank, she felt bad. Then she found out he was in Atlantic City with me and said, "Mama, I don't know how to explain this, but I know how little you get to see him. I thought for once you're together, just the two of you, and I didn't want to spoil it."

"Frankie is so upset," Dolly said. "It's drivin' him nuts you two not speakin'." He was drinking; he was taking pills to sleep. Ava's mother-in-law looked her up and down.

"Jesus Christ! You know you two kids love each other! So quit all this f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.+t, for G.o.d's sake!"

And so Dolly hatched her grand plan. She invited Ava to Weehawken for a big Italian dinner the next night, then she phoned Frank and invited him him.

"Who's gonna be there?" he asked suspiciously.

"Never mind-you just come." Seven sharp. If he was late, she would feed his dinner to the dog.

Ava came at six thirty; Frank, at seven. They stood in the hall and stared at each other, smiling a little bit. "Hey," Dolly told her son and daughter-in-law. "Come into the kitchen and see what I'm making for you tonight."

They followed like obedient children. "We walked to the stove," Dolly recalled, "and I took the big spoon I use for stirring the gravy and I made them both taste it. Then they both began to laugh and talk and before you knew it they were hugging each other and then they grabbed me and the three of us stood there just hugging and laughing and I think we all felt like crying a little bit too."

After dinner, Dolly and Marty and Ava and Frank drove to Fort Lee for Frank's late show. He forgot all about the boot-in-the-a.s.s shtick from "I Get a Kick Out of You"-now he sang the song right to her. Her eyes gleamed. "The Voice unleashed a torrent of sound at the sultry Ava," the New York Journal American New York Journal American's reviewer wrote. "Emotion poured from him like molten lava."

The next day, Frank moved out of the Waldorf and into Ava's suite at the Hamps.h.i.+re House.

36.

Ava at the Los Angeles premiere of Mogambo Mogambo, October 8, 1953. Alone. She and Frank were headed inexorably toward separation. (photo credit 36.1) (photo credit 36.1) It couldn't last, of course: it never had, and it never would. In the end, Dolly's Cupid act was to prove no more effective than Earl Wilson's. Cupid didn't have enough arrows in his quiver for this pair.

A couple of nights after Frank moved back in with Ava, he told her he'd be home by 2:00 a.m.-and stayed out till 5:00, getting congratulated for everything by his pals. He could take a lot of congratulation.

"Isn't it a little late to be coming home?" she asked him.

His lips tightened. "Don't cut the corners too close on me, baby," he said. "This is the way my life is going to be from now on."

That night Ava's reserved table at the Riviera was empty. His concentration shot, Frank gave a dud of a show.

"When he was down and out," Ava said, "he was so sweet. But now that he's successful again, he's become his old arrogant self. We were happier when he was on the skids."

There was a grain of truth to it, but just a grain. The reality was that their relations.h.i.+p was impossible by definition. They were compet.i.tors as well as lovers. And now the only glue that held them together was loosening: Ava confided to friends that Frank could no longer satisfy her s.e.xually.

"Almost since their marriage, the Ava GardnerFrank Sinatra situation has been what the military experts call 'fluid,'" Dorothy Kilgallen wrote on September 30.

So anyone who writes a newsnote about them does so in the full knowledge that it may be one hundred per cent wrong by the time the paper is on the stands.However, the latest bulletin from their chums has them apart again. As evidence, the pals point to the fact that Frank dined alone at the Villanova and later turned up at the Marciano-LaStarza fight without his glamorous bride. True, they say she might not like fights (especially after all the ones she's had in her own private life) but what has she got against spaghetti?

It wasn't the meals she disliked; it was his choice of dining companions. At Joe E. Lewis's Copacabana opening, Frank sat ringside with a group including Frank Costello and a comely young thing who reportedly found Sinatra "devastating." Ava read the report, and blew up. Ava's old ally, the quiet but effective MGM publicity chief, Howard Strickling, got wind of the umpteenth domestic disturbance, and gently reminded her that the studio was still paying her sizable salary. Could she and Strickling figure out a way, just for a moment, to divert the public's attention from her marriage and redirect it to Mogambo Mogambo? It would be nice if Ava could attend the premiere with her husband; it would also be nice if they managed to look like a happy couple.

Somehow they brought it off. On October 1, at Radio City, an a.s.sociated Press photographer got a shot of the pair standing close together and grinning real grins. "Together again," the caption read. "The situation may change greatly before press time, but Frank Sinatra and his actress wife, Ava Gardner, were together Thursday night and here's a picture to prove it."

The next morning, the papers were full of rave reviews for her performance as Honey Bear Kelly. But when a reporter phoned and read her some of the notices, she told him, "Don't believe a word of it-I don't."

She might as well have been talking about her marriage.

That night, she and Frank took a TWA Constellation to Los Angeles-she had an L.A. premiere for Mogambo; Mogambo; he was booked for a week at the Sands-and, somewhere over Nebraska, they reached an accommodation. A reporter called one of Strickling's minions (the studio employed a publicity staff of fifty) and wondered aloud about the dissonance between the cozy images and the continuing reports of marital unrest. "They're together-and that's the main thing," the MGM rep said. he was booked for a week at the Sands-and, somewhere over Nebraska, they reached an accommodation. A reporter called one of Strickling's minions (the studio employed a publicity staff of fifty) and wondered aloud about the dissonance between the cozy images and the continuing reports of marital unrest. "They're together-and that's the main thing," the MGM rep said.

Ava did her best to defend the united front. "If Frankie goes to New York to do 'Waterfront' for Elia Kazan, I'll accompany him," she told a columnist. "Meanwhile, we are sort of up in the air. We don't have a house or even a car."

It was all a ruse. The moment the press wasn't looking, they put on their sungla.s.ses and went their separate ways-Frank to 20th Century Fox to discuss Pink Tights Pink Tights, Ava to Culver City to see what fresh outrage Metro had in mind for her. But it seemed there was a live possibility outside the studio: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Herman's younger brother and currently the hottest writer-director in Hollywood (he'd won Oscars in both categories in 1950 and 1951, for A Letter to Three Wives A Letter to Three Wives and and All About Eve All About Eve), had written a script called The Barefoot Contessa The Barefoot Contessa, and would be shooting it in Rome in January. Mankiewicz would also be producing. He had already signed Humphrey Bogart, and he wanted Ava, badly. He was bargaining with the studio chairman, Nicholas Schenck, in Metro's New York office, for her services.

Ava sat up and took notice. Bogart...Rome...a barefoot contessa...She didn't know what the h.e.l.l the movie was about, but it sounded just right for her. She decided she wanted it.

Meanwhile, an odd item appeared in Jimmie Fidler's column: Two intimates of Frank Sinatra are the source of my information that the singer is becoming daily more upset over the constant bickering between himself and his wife, Ava Gardner. They don't think Sinatra will put up with it much longer, because (they swear to this) Frank is a changed man since his career went on the zoom and he wants to settle down to a quiet, secure future...One of the two mused into my willing ear: "Wouldn't it be ironic if Sinatra, now apparently desirous of a peaceful life, should return to the person with whom he had it, his ex-wife?"