Ava Gardner

by Lee Server

  “Yeah, that she would like,” Frank said when they were brought out. “How much?”

  “Twenty-two thousand,” said Ruser.

  Sinatra leaned back from the counter and looked away, stricken.

  “Frank, give the earrings to Ava,” the jeweler said.

  “Billy, I can’t afford these.”

  Ruser said, “Don’t worry about it. You pay me when you have it.”

  Whether he had known of the pregnancy earlier or not, it was in December, in the African wilds, that he learned of the abortion. The few who would ever claim to have heard Sinatra speak of the matter would recall him as stricken, devastated. It was a crushing revelation in many ways, the tragedy of a lost child to endure, the blow to his masculine pride and sense of control, and perhaps worst of all to a man still painfully in love, the lingering implication of her action—a terrible signal that all that talk of family and future was no longer a reality to his wife, that part of her might have already left him behind. “He never got over it, he never discussed it,” said Hank Sanicola. “The only thing he ever said to me about it was, ‘I shoulda beaten her fuckin’ brains out for what she did to me and the baby, but I loved her too much.’ “

  The Mogambo company’s stay at the Kagera River camp was to conclude just before Christmas. It had been quite an adventure: thrilling, tedious, exhausting. There had been danger: many close calls, the truck in which Ava and Gable were riding attacked by a rhino, and another time an angry mama hippopotamus nearly capsizing the canoe in which the actress was sitting, the strenuous, increased strokes of the Congolese rowers saving the day by mere seconds. And there had been death: a twenty-six-year-old production assistant from England and two Africans killed when their Land Rover went off the side of a mountain road. And romance. “Three or four marriages sprang out of seeds sown during the safari,” Bunny Allen would recall. “And affairs—crikey, one runs out of fingers! And some of the affairs were too short to be noticed—all hot and scorching one night and cold as charity in the morning!”

  Metro bankrolled a grand-scale Christmas party in the wild. A chartered cargo plane brought in a vast supply of goodies: two hundred fresh turkeys, crates of champagne. A twisted baobob was covered with painted lightbulbs. A dance floor was laid out on the dirt. Frank Sinatra sang. John Ford recited “The Night Before Christmas.” A chorus of fifty Congolese sang carols in French. “These handsome oarsmen with minimal clothes and these great voices, holding their oars on their shoulders,” Eva Monley recalled. “It was an amazing scene. I remember Ava completely taken aback. The whole place was deadly silent except for the Christmas songs soaring into the night. Then came the cakes and the champagne. People began dancing on the tables. Africa does that to you.”

  Late in January 1953 the Mogamho company departed from Nairobi. After a brief time off they would begin shooting interior sequences at Elstree Studios in England. Frank had returned to the States for a singing engagement at the Boston Latin Quarter. Ava decided she wanted to make a stopover in Rome en route to London and persuaded Grace Kelly and Robert Surtees to come along. When they had first met, Grace had been taken aback by Ava’s wild behavior and after witnessing her brawls with Sinatra, she had reported to a friend, “Ava is such a mess it’s unbelievable.” But her opinion would change considerably during their weeks in the African bush, as Grace came to appreciate Ava’s unrestrained style and began to loosen her own very restrained facade, falling into an intense love affair with Clark Gable and becoming more familiar with the allure of alcoholic refreshment (though after a few drinks she usually ended up turning pink and running into the bushes to vomit). By the time they reached Rome together, Grace was an adoring friend and tentative emulator. On their night out Ava demanded they visit some Roman whorehouses, Grace seconded the idea, and Surtees, who had spent a year in the city filming Quo Vadis, reckoned he knew enough of such places to play tour guide. They went from brothel to brothel, chatting with the girls, buying drinks for the house. By the end of the tour the demure Grace Kelly had even found a boyfriend at one place and had dragged him into the backseat of the taxi for some heavy necking as they drove back to the Hotel Excelsior and called it a night.

  In the 1950s, Hollywood was increasingly finding it advantageous to produce films in other countries, where profits frozen by local tax laws could be accessed, where the costs were generally much cheaper and craft-guild rules could be circumvented, and where new and scenic locations were available to the color camera and—as of ‘53—wide-screen lens. In addition, a loophole in the American tax code of the period allowed a hefty income exclusion to anyone residing outside the United States for eighteen months, for film people a lucrative advantage to making a movie or two overseas. To that end, and eager to see more of the world anyway, Ava had followed the advice of her financial team at Morgan Maree in Los Angeles and arranged with Metro for back-to-back assignments overseas. Following Mogambo Ava would be playing Guinevere in Knights of the Round Table, filming in the studio outside London and on locations in the English countryside and in Ireland.

  With three weeks off at the conclusion of Mogambo and unable to return to America, she happily went on holiday to Spain, seeing her friend and Madrid resident Doreen Grant and her film executive husband, accompanying them and some new acquaintances to the feria in Seville. At a party she would meet a young man, a matador—indeed the most famous matador in Spain, Luis Miguel Dominguin. A charming man, she thought, very handsome and very sexy, with a relaxed, cool style (so different from the pompous and vain Mario Cabre, her previous point of reference for bullfighters). They had done some innocent flirting. He spoke no English, and after all she was a married lady and he’d had a beautiful girlfriend with him at the time.

  Ava came away more enchanted with Spain than ever.

  Sinatra had stayed in touch with phone calls and letters. While working in Boston he received the news he had been praying for: Harry Cohn had decided to give him the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, adding him to a cast that would include Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, and Ernest Borgnine. Ava told him how happy she was, that this would do much to turn his bad luck around, just as he was saying. Then to herself she wondered how he could pin so much hope on one lousy part. Good pictures were a fluke, not a sure thing. Perhaps the loudmouth Harry Cohn would screw it all up. Just because people liked a book, there was no guarantee they were going to like the movie. Hadn’t she done a picture based on some goddamned classic by Dostoyevsky? You couldn’t drag anybody to see that dog.

  Knights of the Round Table costarred Robert Taylor as Lancelot and Mel Ferrer as King Arthur. Producer Pandro Berman and director Richard Thorpe had reteamed after their surprisingly successful adaptation of another tale of knighthood in flower, Ivanhoe. Thorpe was an old Metro veteran, with some good pictures in his past (notably the MGM Tartans with Johnny Weissmuller), but he was mainly prized by people like Pan Berman for his ability to get usable film in the can faster than anybody. Ava, whose part was something of an afterthought amid all the clanking armor and swordplay, quickly realized that the film would not be so good (“It stinks,” she told one English reporter without hesitation when asked for a review of the work-in-progress) and resigned herself to clocking in and out and collecting her paycheck. There was so much location work for which she was not needed that the studio agreed to give her some time off early in the production so she could join Frank in May for his first extensive concert tour of Europe.

  There had been exciting developments in Frank Sinatra’s career since he and Ava had parted company in the winter. From Here to Eternity was in the can and he was very pleased with his performance. He had found new representation at the William Morris Agency, and his agents had at last obtained for him a recording contract (though one with a minimal union-scale advance) with Capitol Records in Hollywood. In April, when he went into the studio to record, he was paired for the first time with arranger-conductor Nelson Riddle, whose complex, heart
beat- pulsed, irresistible arrangements would immeasurably help Sinatra find what became his new style and new sound—swaggering, sexy, brassy, ultra-rhythmic.

  The results of these developments were still uncertain at the time Frank returned to Europe in the spring, his professional future in abeyance, but hope seemed now definitely on the horizon. It became a happy reunion in London, Ava delighted to see her “old man” recharged and affectionate, the funk and anger of the winter in Africa—memories of her terminated pregnancy—apparently faded away. Frank’s absences tended to make Ava’s heart less fond—it was just her nature—but when she saw him now in the flesh, at the airport, she immediately melted. The tour was going to be a “second honeymoon,” work combined with much pleasure. They expected good things from Frank’s Continental dates. The audiences had been so enthusiastic at his debut in London two years ago that he and Ava could only ponder with excitement howpaisan Sinatra would be received in Naples and Milan.

  Not well, as it happened. In Naples the audience showed more interest in seeing Ava in her seat than listening to the singer on the stage. A spotlight found her, the crowd chanted her name, drowning out the music. There was a near-riot. Ava was rushed out of the theater, Frank put down his microphone and walked off until order was restored. In other cities in Italy, Sweden, and Denmark, newspapers heralded his arrival with stories of a failing career. Everywhere he performed to half-empty theaters. There would be fights with photographers, blowups with airline personnel, editorials headlined: SINATRA GO HOME. They returned to England under a cloud. The second honeymoon was over.

  The plan had been for Sinatra to stay with Ava at her Regent’s Park flat in London until she had completed her work on Knights of the Round Table. But Frank found the return to his secondary role intolerable. The European tour had, anyway, left him bruised, embarrassed. He wanted done with the whole continent. He complained of the plumbing, the rain, the food. They fought—at home, in nightclubs, in taxis. Finally, a month early; he said he was leaving; he had some shows to rehearse and Columbia would be wanting him to publicize From Here to Eternity, which was set to have its premiere in mid-August.

  “Where’s Frankie?” people asked her.

  “Oh, he didn’t like the bathrooms,” she would say. “Me, I don’t mind European plumbing so much.”

  For the next month in London she lived quietly. No scandals, no brawls. She started going to bed early. She even gave up alcohol for a while. “I’m on a health kick. Grapefruit juice is all.” When she went out it was to plays and to concerts. Many nights she stayed home and cooked for herself, sometimes for a few friends, giving a number of English people their first taste of authentic Southern fried chicken, her mother’s recipe.

  The Love Goddess, born of the sea and the sky: Ava Gardner, 1947.

  Ava, age eighteen, in her first moments before a motion picture camera, on a soundstage in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, summer of 1941. (Courtesy of Diana Altman)

  From her original screen test for MGM, the close-up that brought Ava Gardner to Hollywood. (Courtesy of Diana Altman)

  Ava with her oldest sister, Beatrice, nicknamed “Bappie” (their brother, Jack Gardner, is seen in the photograph on the table), visiting North Carolina the year after their move to California. (State Library Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina, courtesy Raleigh News & Observer,)

  Starlet: in training as a movie actress, Ava spent her first years at MGM mainly in extra work—walk-ons and posing for photographs, images to promote her name and the studio—most of it sweetly sexy cheesecake work done in the portrait gallery or in salubrious locations like hotel swimming pools and the beach at Santa Monica.

  Honeymooners Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Rooney visit the bride’s family in North Carolina. Mollie Gardner, delighted by her irrepressible new son-in-law, offers a platter of her legendary Southern fried chicken. (State Library Collection, Raleigh, North Carolina, courtesy Raleigh News & Observer)

  Howard Hughes, not long after his most spectacular airplane crash in the summer of 1946. Hughes and Ava had a complicated, tumultuous relationship lasting more than a dozen years. (Courtesy Houston Library Research Center)

  Nightclubbing, 1945, Ava and husband Number Two, Artie Shaw, brilliant, imperious superstar of the Big Band era. Shaw encouraged her intellectual development while trampling her self- esteem. (Courtesy Associated Press)

  The big break: the sensational stars of The Killers, Burt Lancaster, making his screen debut, and Ava Gardner, a virtual newcomer even after nearly six years in the movies. CCourtesy Museum of Modern Art)

  Architects (with screenwriters John Huston and Anthony Veiller) of Ava Gardner’s movie stardom, here on the set of The Killers, director Robert Siodmak (left) and producer Mark Hellinger. (Mark Hellinger Collection, US C Cinema- Television Library)

  Eight-story billboard advertisement for the premiere New York run of The Killers in the summer of 1946. (Mark Hellinger Collection, US C Cinema- Television Library)

  Opening week for The Killers, the Winter Garden box office and entrance with the larger- than-life cutout of Ava Gardner as Kitty Collins, femme fatale in black satin. (Mark Hellinger Collection, US C Cinema- Television Library)

  Getting splashed on the set of The Bribe, Ava and Robert Taylor, discreet lovers. (Courtesy Cinedoc)

  Ava Gardner and Robert Mitchum in My Forbidden Past, produced by Howard Hughes, shot in 1949, and not released for two years while Hughes played with the editing. Ava and Bob enjoyed each other’s company, after work off on nocturnal adventures. “Yeah, they were having some fun.” (Courtesy Museum of Modern Art)

  Ava posing for the legendary Man Ray. The painting, intended for the film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, was rejected, but a photograph of Ava by the artist was used. “She was,” said Ray, “absolutely ravishing.” (Lewin Collection, US C Cinema-Television Library)

  Ava on the beach at Tossa de Mar, Spain, with the adoring Albert Lewin, writer- producer-director of Pandora. (Lewin Collection, US C Cinema-Television Library)

  Mario Cabre, matador, actor, poet. (Lewin Collection, USC Cinema-Television Library)

  Between takes on the Costa Brava, Ava as Pandora the temptress, James Mason, her Flying Dutchman, trying not to be tempted. (Lewin Collection, USC Cinema-Television Library)

  A “Romance of the Century”: Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. Here, reunited after another angry breakup, at the rally for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson at the Palladium in Los Angeles, October 1952. (Courtesy Associated Press)

  At the height of the “scandal,” summer of 1951, Ava and Frank at the Riverside in Reno, Nevada. Frank, fortunes declining, sports a new look with an Errol Flynn mustache. (Courtesy Associated Press)

  Hounded by the press: newspapers and magazines charted the Gardner-Sinatra affair and then marriage with daily updates and the most intimate revelations.

  Ava would make three films with her girlhood idol, Clark Gable. Their best film together, Mogambo (1953), was a remake of Gable’s earlier hit Red Dust, a movie Ava had seen with her mother more than two decades earlier. (Courtesy Museum of Modern Art)

  Publicity poster for Mogambo. (Author’s collection)

  She roamed the city alone, not bothered, unphotographed—was it really as easy as that? When you stopped running away from them they stopped chasing you? With Frank it always seemed a life-and-death struggle. Compared to moving around in public with her husband, she felt blissfully invisible. She went to prim little shops and to flea markets and ate sandwiches in the park. One day she strolled over to Rillington Street to see the house where they had recently discovered the serial killer John Christie’s victims; she stood gawking through the iron fence with a chatty East Ender who explained where each body had been found and in what state of decomposition, then blithely asked for an autograph.

  In August Frank’s movie opened, and it was a sensation. He called her, “I’m back, baby. I’m back!” His records were starting to sell again, the critics returned to his corner, praising t
he new bright sound and the voice, different now, older but freer, sharp as a razor on the rhythm numbers, with a wounded soulfulness on the ballads. (“It’s like a cello,” said Nelson Riddle of Frank’s new vocal instrument. “Ava taught him the hard way.”) He wanted her to come home, he told her on the phone, in letters and cables, to share it with him; he needed her, when the hell was she coming back? Did she still love him or didn’t she? He would call every day, pleading one time, angry and slamming the phone down the next.

  So she went. It meant losing her tax break. Clark Gable told her, “It’s going to cost you a hundred fifty thousand bucks the moment you put your foot down in New York.”

  There would be other conversations with Frank in the days before she departed London. At times he was insufferably full of himself about his regained success. She could grant him his pleasure in this “comeback,” he had pined for it for so long. But much of it took the form of harsh teasing and taunts, how the women were throwing themselves at him, how he was thinking that instead of making St. Louis Woman with Ava he might instead make a musical with the “new” big thing in Hollywood, the sexy Marilyn Monroe.

  Ava made a last-minute decision to return to America by way of Spain, fitting in another visit to Madrid, taking a few days to see some of her new friends and acquaintances in that city of which she had grown so fond. And once again she ran into the charming and handsome Luis Miguel Dominguín. He had even picked up a few lines of English since their last meeting.