Ava Gardner

by Lee Server

  Cabre, that day in the bullring, had thrown her his cap and had made the traditional dedication of the bull to her honor. And Ava, gripping the matador’s cap in her hands, had watched with anguish and excitement the mounting drama of the estocade, and she had shown a great emotional (and some said erotic) release in the tragic last moments and the final deadly lunge of Cabre’s sword that collapsed the huge animal at his feet.

  Next thing anyone knew, Ava and Mario were what the columnists would call “an item”—dining together, seen holding hands, walking the old streets of the walled enceinte and along the beach under the Mediterranean moon. “After one of those romantic, star-filled, dance-filled, booze-filled Spanish nights,” Ava would write, “I woke up to find myself in bed with Mario Cabre.” Cabre’s more metaphor-charged version of those events was captured in numero uno of his “Ava poems”:

  The night was of one color

  Yet when she came the sky held a rainbow.

  For Ava was the dawn.

  She would recall it as a one-night-only “single mistake,” but others remembered a more lingering relationship. At first, recalled Jeanie Sims, all communication between the two was in sign language, since Cabre did not speak English (his lines in the film were memorized, it was said, parrot fashion). “Mario spoke to her in Spanish, and Ava spoke no language except American. Ava said to me, Tm enjoying my time with Mario, but neither of us can understand what we’re saying.’ I said, ‘Is that important?’ And Ava said, ‘It is, rather, you know. I’d like to get to know him better. Know what he’s saying to me.’ And that’s when I got dragged in as translator, because Mario did speak French and so did I, sort of fractured French, but I was understandable. So I was made to be there with them, and Mario would speak French to me while staring at her, and I would then translate it for Ava, and she would speak English and I would translate it to French for Mario. Luckily I was not feeling that well and became laid up for a couple of weeks with jaundice, so I didn’t have to continue this translating job, and by the time I was back on my feet—the Spanish doctor prescribed a bottle of wine a day—they had been together so much that they could understand each other pretty well without my help.”

  “He was a nice man,” said Jack Cardiff. “Didn’t speak more than three words of English, but he was very genuinely in love with her, I think. And he wanted to show off a bit, and he had a private showing in the bullring for Ava and I was there, at just before dusk actually. He got this bull out and she was there watching him and he did the mariposa, the butterfly, where he holds the cape behind him and walks backwards, which is the most dangerous move—it’s almost suicidal. But he was trying to show off. Ava was really terrified that he would be killed, and she was still upset about it after. And he did it very well. He was quite brave. But I don’t think he realized what he was getting into with Ava and that she was too much of a handful for him. He would write poems in Spanish about her and read them, and she was very naughty because she would say things to him in English, knowing that he didn’t understand, and some of the things she said could be pretty derisive.”

  The “Ava poems,” which Cabre began to recite at full voice to anyone who would listen, were passionate, intimate, and in parts just a bit—un poco—indelicate. “How torrid was your blood when you caressed me” began one stanza. “And Plowed your fingernails under my skin. ...”

  Cabre was particularly eager to share his feelings for the beautiful American with any and all available members of the press. “After working for a fortnight with Ava I know she is the woman I love with all my heart and soul,” he declaimed to one gathering of journalists. “Many times have I been gored by el toro. But Ava, she has struck me deeper than any horn of the bull. Here—in my heart! Oh, my Ava, from your fingers caresses sprout…. Your lips give rapture.”

  Thanks to Mario’s rapport with the Spanish reporters who passed through Tossa de Mar, word of the romance spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula and soon across the Atlantic to the United States. Photos of Ava and Cabre together appeared in one weekly under the caption, “This Is a Real Romance, Not Film.” Ava was quoted: “My third love will be eternal,” and her numero tres was understood to mean Mario Cabre.

  On May 11, Frank Sinatra landed in Barcelona. They had talked about him coming over for a few days sometime or other. Sinatra had suddenly decided that now was the time.

  A crowd of press representatives awaited him at Prat de Llobregat airfield. They found him looking “tired and forlorn,” in a “grouchy mood.” Was he there to visit Ava Gardner? asked one reporter.

  “Yes.”

  “Is she your novia?” asked another. “Your sweetheart?”

  “No comment.”

  They eagerly updated him on the latest details of Ava’s friendship with the matador, Sinatra listening glumly, saying he had heard Cabre’s name, knew nothing about him. He was holding a package wrapped in tissue paper, and someone asked if that was a present for Ava Gardner.

  “What do you think, pal?”

  “I think it’s jewelry for Miss Gardner.”

  (Sinatra had brought two gifts from home: six bottles of Coca-Cola— she had bemoaned its unavailability in Tossa—and a ten-thousand-dollar emerald necklace, which would be impounded by the Spanish authorities and released to her only when she left the country.)

  Sinatra said, “Why don’t you people leave me alone?”

  The reporters seemed reluctant to do that. Sinatra said he was in Spain for a rest, had a problem with his throat, and was under doctor’s orders to talk as little as possible. A reporter asked if he had anything else to say.

  “I think,” said Sinatra, “Bing Crosby is the best singer in the world.”

  “Sinatra arrived suddenly and unexpectedly,” recalled Jeanie Sims. “And there was a problem. Ava was not on the location where she was supposed to be. She and Mario had gone off on their own somewhere and couldn’t be found and somebody came to me; the publicist, I think, said, ‘What are we going to do?’ He said, ‘We can’t let him go to the location because everyone told him Ava is there and she isn’t.’ So they sent me to intercept him and keep him from finding out she was with Mario. So I did. I met him and took him around to the various spots. And I’m quite sure he knew exactly what was going on, but he gave no indication. He was really nice to me, even when it got to the point of desperation and I was taking him to meet the electricians and the Spanish crew. We went to the bar and I even said, ‘Why don’t you sing us a song?’ but he just laughed and said, ‘No, I’m on holiday.’ And the electricians who were there and not working started a poker game and they said, ‘Why don’t you join in?’ And Sinatra said, ‘Fine,’ and he sat there and played poker until someone had managed to find Ava and get her away from Mario. And finally she showed up, saying, ‘Oh, what a lovely surprise! Darling! How great!’ “

  They drove off in Frank’s rented automobile. Ava was startled by his ravaged appearance. He had dropped what looked like twenty pounds, a considerable loss for an already skinny man. His face was drawn, haunted, showed not only the exhaustion of a long flight but every other strain he had experienced in the last five months.

  “Francis, honey, you look like shit,” Ava told him.

  They drove out into the countryside, tried to get comfortable with each other again. Later they went to the Bier, a tiny tavern on the beach Ava liked, and they drank a powerful homemade aperitif, nibbling from an unending array of tapas the owner brought out from the tiny kitchen; they drank enough to get them both blotto and looking at each other with the old tenderness and heat.

  But then Sinatra remembered the matter that had brought him to Spain in such a hurry.

  “So what is with you and this fucking greaseball?”

  “Who? You mean Mario?”

  “Is that what you call him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s in all the papers, sweetheart.”

  “Frank, you of all people know better than to believe what you read in those t
hings.…We’re making a movie together, that’s all.”

  The Pandora people had anxiously gotten Mario away from them. John Hawkesworth, the set dresser, shared a room at the hotel with Cabre and saw the matador’s reaction to Sinatra’s arrival. “My bullfighter had no sense of humor whatever, and he was crazy for Ava, though I think it was completely one-sided. He was in a fury over Sinatra coming all the way from Hollywood to see her. And he said—we spoke French to each other—’When I see him…I am going to kill him.’ He was very serious sounding. And the man had swords and knives all over the room. So I went to Al and I told him. I said, ‘We better be careful, Al, because we could have a lot of trouble. This bullfighter is passionately in love with Ava, and he means business.’ And Al said, ‘You’re right, it would not be good for one of our actors to murder Frank Sinatra.’ And quickly Al had me get Mario away from there and take him to Gerona to start rehearsing for the bullfight scenes and not come back till Sinatra was gone.”

  A villa was found for Frank, for appearance’s sake. The second day he came to the set where they were filming and restlessly watched Ava shoot a few setups. After that he stayed in his house during the day, and they met later for dinner.

  Quarters were too close to completely avoid the reporters skulking about the village, and it seemed better to throw them a few half-truths than give them free reign to make up their own. “Ava is a wonderful girl,” said Frank, sipping chilled champagne in the hotel that served as the production company’s headquarters, a phonograph now playing some of his records to make him feel welcome. “I knew she would be homesick in a strange country, and I knew how I would feel if I were alone. Of course, I knew what people would say when I flew here. I am not a youth anymore. I expected this curiosity.”

  Later in the week it began to rain all over Catalonia, and filming was halted. It gave Frank and Ava more time to be together, and more time to get on each other’s nerves. Jealousy hung over the reunion—Frank brooding about the rival who was being kept hidden away until he left. The hours of romance and fun—they ate, drank, made love, went out on a boat tuna fishing with one of the village fishermen—were regularly interrupted by sniping and shouting. They made up, fought, made out, fought. Finally, with Ava called back to work, Sinatra cut short his stay, kissed her good-bye, and, miserably, got in his car and drove back to Barcelona.

  Mario Cabre, meanwhile, had been talking to the press again. “Who is Sinatra? When he is gone I will be back with Divine Ava.…Our love will survive, because she is the kind of woman you dream of, but, in her case when you wake up, the dream continues!”

  Frank turned up in Paris a couple of days later, traveling with his composer/ pilot/whorehound buddy Jimmy van Heusen. From a phone in the Club Lido on the Champs-Elysées, Sinatra took an overseas call from Broadway columnist Earl Wilson. Willing to set the record straight for the U.S. public, Sinatra told Wilson that the Spanish press had “bullied and bulldozed” him and tried to stir up trouble. “It’s a lousy trick they pulled,” he shouted into the phone. Wilson believed he could hear champagne bubbling in the background and interjected for his readers that the Club Lido had bare-breasted chorus girls although “the floor show is American-type and decent.” Sinatra continued: “This bullfighter is nothing to her. Nothing! NOTHING! This girl is very upset because she’s had nothing to do with this boy. The Spanish press has tried to make a hero out of this guy. It would be a feather in their cap if they could claim he had Ava interested in him. As a matter of fact—and off the record—we’re closer now than we’ve ever been! We’ve kept this [as] clean as anybody could just so nobody could hit below the belt. We were well chaperoned all the time, like a high school dance. ALL THE TIME!” Earl Wilson suggested that if Frank continued shouting he was going to hurt his voice again. “Here’s something you can use,” Sinatra told him. “Everybody’s talking about Ava and me getting married—EVERYBODY—except Ava and me!”

  Mario Cabre’s shining hour, his very real bullfight to be filmed for the movie, was now at hand. The company was all driven out to the grand old plaza de toros at Gerona. The rain had stopped; it was a beautiful warm day. Saving money on extras (Lewin was already £25,000 over budget) they had simply put up ads for the bullfight and let everyone in for free. “My boss, John Bryan, the designer, gave me all sorts of extraordinary things to do on this production,” said John Hawkesworth. “Things I was not qualified to do at all. And one of these was to arrange for the bullfight and to buy the bulls we would have there for Mario to fight. I had only joined the film industry in England three or four years before, and I had no experience with buying bulls in Spain, I assure you. I had to go to Barcelona to buy the bulls, and they arrived just in time for the filming. And it turned out I had bought the wrong sort of bull. They had these very huge horns and were much more dangerous for fighting, and they were all we had now and I felt very sorry for Mario because he was going to fight them anyway.”

  Further complicating matters, it was determined that the British censors would not allow any footage of the bullfight with the animal bearing the wounds from la suerte de banderillas, the second part of the tercera, when the short spears or darts are stabbed into the bull’s backbone to sap his strength before the fight properly begins. It was suggested that the banderillas be stuck to the bull’s back with suction cups, but this was rejected as being still possibly censorable not to mention insulting to the bull. They decided the best idea was to shoot an international version with the banderillas and another version with none. Cabre was asked if for the British market he wouldn’t mind fighting the bull with all its titanic power intact, more dangerous by far, but the matador agreed, bravely conceding that the show must go on. Cabre seemed, as always, distracted by Ava. It was suggested that Mario take his time with the bull so that they would be sure to get enough coverage for the editing of the scene. Cabre, standing over his object of love in her front row seat in the plaza, explained that a bull ordinarily could not be fought for more than twenty-five minutes; longer than that and the animal becomes bored or sees through the game with the cape and charges directly at the matador and certainly kills him. But, for the sake of the film, Cabre would try to keep the bull going as long as he and the beast were both willing. He turned to Ava, sighed fatalistically, and smiled; someone translated his words to be: “Bulls hate to rehearse.” Essentially, the bullfight for the film would be more dangerous than a “real” one would have been. Heading out into the ring, Cabre told John Hawkesworth, “Perhaps today I am going to die for Ava Gardner.”

  “We shot the bullfight exactly as it was happening,” Hawkesworth recalled. “There was no planning or faking anything. He fought the bull right there in front of the public, And everything went well until the last bit, when the bull and the matador meet each other face to face. And the bull got too close and knocked him over. It turned around right away and charged him, it went right onto him with the horns down and I thought, Oh, no, that’s the end of him! The bull’s going to rip him to pieces!’ And I thought, ‘And I’ll get the blame!’ “

  But the bull’s big horns just grazed the Spaniard’s skin, and his cuadrilla—his team of assistants— was upon the beast in a moment and the matador was whisked to safety. “De nada“ said Cabre. He was more disturbed watching the filming of the scene in which he did not perform on camera but which showed his movie character Montalvo’s death at the horns of the bull. This one moment of fakery was to be shot using a life- size rubber dummy created in Mario’s likeness. The bull seemed to show great delight in gutting the Mario dummy. Cabre, taking the hint, said, “This could happen to me one day.” They were about to conclude the filming when the bull suddenly turned to the camera crew filming on a wooden rostrum and charged them directly, crashing into the platform, convulsing it, and nearly toppling it over. The camera was still turning, and the operator (or someone) shouted: “What a damn good shot we got!” At last it was time to return to London. Cast and crew gathered for a final seaside party, most eager t
o go home, but some, like Ava Gardner, only too eager to return again to Spain. Mario Cabre had written new poems to recite, mostly sad laments for his departing beloved.

  They were to see each other again, for Mario would come to England to shoot the interior sequences but he sensed—correctly—that things would not be the same away from his native land. “She is a perfect angel,” he moaned to any who would listen. “I am desperately in love.” They kissed once more before she was driven off to the airport. Mario shouted to her in English, words learned from his American friend: “Good-bye, baby!”

  Later, Ava would explain to the Daily Mirror, “The stories that Spanish bullfighter Mario Cabre has a mad crush on me are just a publicity gag to help our picture. It’s a shame to involve the boy in this sort of story.”

  Elsewhere in the news, in New York City, Pepita Marco, a Spanish dancer in a Greenwich Village nightclub, declared to reporters that on account of stories about her fiancé and some Hollywood actress she had broken off her engagement to Mario Cabre and before witnesses had torn up his photograph and stamped on the fallen pieces. Asked about the raven- haired dancer, Cabre said, “It is not true we are engaged. A girl for marrying is one thing and a girl for amusement is something else. She is trying to get publicity!”

  Shooting of the interior sequences at Shepperton Studios went on through the month of June. Ava took up residence in a Park Lane luxury flat, her upstairs neighbor her old friend George Raft, who was also in London making a picture. Reporters camped out at the entrance to the building, recording her various entrances and exits with all the professionalism and objectivity of aroused autograph seekers; one journalist, greeted by Ava on her arrival one evening, seemed all but sexually undone by the brief encounter (“Her perfume—a cloud of it, exotic, French—sent me into raptures!”). The newspapers squinted for a fresh romantic liaison and briefly linked her with a performer named Jack La Rouq, a violinist at a café called The Society (Ava: “Oh, yes, I know him, but never outside the club. And now it’s romance! How typical!”). Leatrice Gilbert, Ava’s old comrade from their early days at MGM, who had abandoned all that for marriage and motherhood, ran into her former fellow starlet in London at a party in the home of expatriate American actors Ben Lyons and Bebe Daniels. “Gregory Peck and his first wife were there and some others, and we were all playing canasta, and Ava came in and she looked marvelous. And she was very sweet and she remembered me. We talked and she came and watched us play cards. I watched her and thought of the girl I had known before. She was still very sweet, but I could see the changes; she was harder, she was drinking. The innocence, I think, was now gone.”