by Lee Server
*A second unit was dispatched to Pamplona, to shoot the July feria, the daily bullfights, and especially the encierro, the traditional and frenzied running of the bulls that Hemingway’s novel had made world famous, but none of the film’s stars were present.
TEN
Vita, Dolce Vita
She began the last film of her MGM contract—the end of a seventeen- year relationship—in a state of anxiety and fear. She wanted only to be left alone, to keep out of sight while her face healed, to hide out at La Bruja and let time (as Sir Archibald recommended) take care of what she had recklessly done to herself. But her employers were waiting: The Naked Maja, an Italian production into which Metro had invested her in return for partial ownership and international distribution rights, was scheduled to begin shooting after the first of the year, and she saw no way of avoiding it. Terrified of going before the camera with her features still distorted, she was as much afraid of asking the producers for a postponement or to relieve her of the assignment altogether. To do so at such a time, she was certain, would be to confirm the speculation and fuel new gossip about her injury, to provide the scandal press with all the facts they needed and the rest they could think up on their own. Pictures taken of her fall had appeared in one magazine after another around the world (she had half-convinced herself that she had been set up that day at the plazita just to provide someone a lucrative photo opportunity; it gave her someone else besides herself to blame for the debacle). She imagined the press stalking her for a close-up, imagined the headlines: MIDNIGHT FOR THE HOLLYWOOD CINDERELLA. And if the public believed it, if they believed they were no longer going to get the perfection they were paying for— and if there was truth behind the juicy headlines, all the worse—then, she was certain, it meant the end of her as a star. For what else did she have to offer? Her skill as an actress? She would never believe it. They went to Katharine Hepburn or Bette Davis if they wanted a great performance, not to Ava Gardner. And to lose her value as a star meant to lose the opportunities ahead—the game plan she had been nurturing expectantly— to make real money and retire from the movies in a few years and on her own terms, to get out for good and not look back. No, she would have to take her chances, be available for the new film as scheduled, and hope that makeup and therapy and a good cinematographer would get her past this crisis without it ending up destroying her.
For months she remained in seclusion at La Moraleja. She had kept herself out of the sunlight. She had slept only on her back. She had put no makeup or creams on her face. She received facial massages from a woman therapist from Switzerland and administered a daily steam treatment from a machine called a Gesicht Sauna that David Hanna had obtained for her in Munich. Each morning—and each afternoon and evening and many times in between—she would go to the mirror to inspect the injury on her cheek, hoping to see evidence of an improvement, and each time she would look and then lurch away in despair. Bappie and Betty Sicre and others would tell her that from most angles it was hardly visible anymore, but she refused to believe them. It was not simply the hardened bruise itself but what she saw as an alteration to the contour of her entire face. The side of her face drooped, she thought, and the best side, too.
In January, reluctant, despondent, she left Madrid for Rome, via France. Hoping to avoid the photographers who now—with the ever- increasing celebrity traffic to and from the Eternal City—staked out the airport around the clock, she flew with Bappie to Nice, where she had arranged to be met by her Italian chauffeur, Mario, a devoted occasional employee since the days of The Barefoot Contessa. In Mario’s Cadillac they drove across the French border and on south to Rome, arriving without public notice. With her usual flat on the Corso d’ltalia occupied, she took up residence in a spacious penthouse apartment at 9 Piazza di Spagna.
The Naked Maja concerned the legendary—that is to say, not altogether confirmed by historical fact—dramatic relationship between the eighteenth-century Spanish court painter of genius, Francisco Goya, and the voluptuary Duchess of Alba, his reputed nude model for the notorious painting of the title. The film story had originated with Albert Lewin, who had spent the eight years since Pandora trying to find another project that would bring him back together with his adored muse. The Naked Maja made use of Lewin’s knowledge of history and his obsession with painters and painting while providing a potentially strong, glamorous, and erotic central role for Ava Gardner in a production that was expected to be conveniently based in her own backyard. A deal was made with a rising Italian production company named Titanus. Once Gardner was contracted, however, Titanus went to work separating Lewin from his own project, and after some acrimony the writer-director was excised for a payment of one hundred thousand dollars. A new screenplay was begun from scratch by Italian hired hands. The company then encountered problems from the Spanish government, influenced by the still-powerful remnants of the Alba family, who did not approve of the film’s subject (the clan traditionally denied that their ancestor had been the immodest model for the Maja). Instead of the palaces, cathedrals, and byways of Spain, the film would be made on soundstages and back lots in Rome, and the footage of the actual Goya paintings to be seen under the credits and elsewhere in the film would have to be shot at the museums in Madrid and Toledo by a minimal second unit under the guise of making a cultural documentary. So: no Lewin, the project’s intellectual and aesthetic force, no authentic locations, and only limited access to the original art. Once again, Ava was starring in a film that had been seriously compromised before the first frame was ever exposed.
On Ava’s arrival in Rome, Titanus then made what would prove to be the practical mistake of sending her their completely rewritten screenplay for approval. She did not approve. Not only did she genuinely feel that the new script—written in Italian and given a quick English translation—was terrible, she was only too eager to be presented with cause for delaying production and allowing more time for her face to heal. The producers accepted her verdict on the screenplay, and filming was postponed while the script went through another overhaul, and another, and one more after that, the script passing through various hands, Italian and American (including Norman Corwin, who had successfully scripted another painter’s story, Lust for Life), with additions and edits from everyone including Ava, David Hanna (now signed on officially as the actress’s “sidekick, personal manager, stooge”), and perhaps even Bappie taking a shot at improving the unwieldy dialogue and ponderous arrangement of scenes.
The script problems would turn out to be just one ingredient in a confused preproduction period, Titanus clearly not yet prepared for a motion picture of this scale and expense. Filming would not begin until May, five months after the original starting date.
Though relieved of the traumatizing prospect of going before the camera right away, she continued to suffer from various uncertainties and suspicions. The injury to her face established her emotional mood, a lingering sense of anger and hopelessness. She would peer into the mirror or stroke the bump with her fingertips, then scream in frustration, “What a goddamn fool I was!”
Dave Hanna began to sense that the fall, though real and damaging, had become for her something more, a dramatic punctuation—in the life of a woman whose natural life cycles seemed always to be achieved with great drama—an exclamation point for the end of her years of youth and beauty.
She was changing. Fears and character flaws that were once incipient or occasional now dominated her behavior. She was suspicious, her temper was even quicker to flare. Her paranoia regarding strangers and especially anyone in possession of a camera had reached a level of volatility that outstripped even that of her ex-husband.
Frank. She thought of him so much of the time now. She saw him, increasingly, in dreamy terms, her knight in shining armor. His years of failure and pathos were far in the past, and he had become more than ever before a figure of power and confidence. She took pride and solace in knowing that his affection for her remained strong and that she could turn to him if the need
arose. One day she heard from him, he was coming to Europe. Would she like him to pay her a visit in Italy? Please come, she told him. But then, not too long before he was due in Rome, she began to see pictures and items in the papers about Frank in London with a new friend, the socially prominent, beautiful, American-born Lady Adele Beatty. Ava awoke from her dream at once. Frank called on arrival. She refused to talk to him. He called, sent messages, she remained out of his reach. One sleepless early morning she left the Piazza di Spagna flat to take Rags for his walk. She veered to a new route, and the corgi looked up at her with curiosity. They walked up to the Hassler Hotel, went to the front desk, and Ava had someone take her to Sinatra’s suite.
“Where the hell you been, baby?” said Frank uneasily. “I’ve been calling for two days.”
Rags recognized him right away, Ava dropped the leash and the dog jumped into Frank’s arms. Frank lifted him and petted him along the flanks as he used to do years ago, and Rags let out a satisfied yelp. Then she took the dog back and she reached out to Frank and put in his hand the wedding ring he had given her long ago.
“Give that to your English lady,” she said and turned and went out the door.
On the street outside the Hassler she started crying.
She returned to the piazza apartment miserable. “I shouldn’t have…“I’m so sorry now.” She said, “Rags was so happy to see him.”
Sinatra, with the ring she had given him still gripped in his hand, had called for a car to take him to the airport; he was gone from Rome three hours later.
Late at night, sleepless in the big apartment above the Spanish Steps, she would often play his records, the volume on high, oblivious to the neighbors, as she lay in bed or sat outside on the terrace in the dark with a drink and a cigarette. Down below, three or four in the morning, people drifting home across the otherwise silent piazza would hear the distant, unexpected voice of the American singer echoing in the empty urban canyon.
Filming, at last, began. After many attempts to find a major star to play the part of Goya—Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, and others had been approached—the role was given to a young New York stage actor, Tony Franciosa, a star from his acclaimed Broadway turns in A Hatful of Rain and Orpheus Descending. To direct, Titanus hired Hollywood studio veteran Henry Koster, whose credits included a previous and highly successful “costume picture” and the first release in Cinemascope, The Robe. All the remaining cast and crew were Italian, with the exception of Mickey Knox, another New Yorker and briefly a movie actor in Hollywood, a victim of the blacklist exiled in Europe, now working mostly be- hind the scenes as a translator and dialogue coach for coproductions like The Naked Maja. The cinematographer—whose work was a great concern to Ava—was a brilliant new talent, Giuseppe Rotunno, just beginning what would be a magnificent career. Rotunno’s careful lighting and framing of the film’s female star minimized the traces of her injury— revealed as at most a small dimple on her cheek—and in doing so eased her anxiety before the camera. She got along equally well with the rest of the Italian crew, a relaxed, happy-go-lucky lot whose slow start, long lunches, and late hours suited her fine. Filming was in the Italian style, without direct sound recording (dialogue to be postsynchronized). Many of the actors she performed with either spoke no English or had accents too thick to be understood. Sometimes the other actors did not speak their lines on camera but simply mouthed gibberish or counted numbers; you didn’t so much interact with the other players as watch and wait for their lips to stop moving.
Filming went on through the summer, under ever-more-uncomfortable conditions. Because of the delayed start, they were forced to work in the humid midyear Roman heat, under hot lights, in a studio without airconditioning. Ava’s sumptuous regal costumes weighed on her like so many wool blankets in the high temperatures (in a letter to George Cukor she wished that she could do the picture as the title said: naked). For a while, at Ava’s strong suggestion, they tried working only at night, a schedule she had always dreamed of imposing on a production, but the studio was even hotter at night after baking in the sun all day long. Koster’s direction was static and uninspired, and the script was disjointed, rewritten day by day, with new scenes and dialogue delivered on loose scraps of paper. The heat, the disorganization, the scraps of paper—it became just a bad job that had to be done and no end in sight. For Ava the only enjoyment in the work came with the chance to perform another Spanish dance on film, the days of rehearsal with a charming Spanish dance instructor and then the ultimate staging and shooting of the scene. When that was finished she went back to her interrupted states of boredom and heat prostration.
For a time she was without a romantic interest. Walter Chiari, ironically, was then making a movie in Madrid. He returned to Rome for a weekend visit, they argued without pause, and she had sent him away at the end with orders not to bother her again until called for. Then came the encounter with Frank at the Hassler, after which the two had no further contact for months. As The Naked Maja began filming she set her gaze on her costar, Tony Franciosa—like her last husband an intense, at times high-strung Italian-American. But she seemed unable to catch his attention. He was married—tempestuously—to actress Shelley Winters. And he was preoccupied in feuding with Henry Koster (Franciosa was filled with the new methods of internalized acting and liked to work his way through each scene, find the psychological mood, the physical movements, and so on, while Koster belonged to the old-Hollywood shut- up-hit-your-mark-say-your-lines-and-lunch-everybody school of directing). When nothing happened between them, the notion slipped from Ava’s thoughts; it was too hot to make a greater effort at seduction.
With Mickey Knox, the other young American actor on the production, Ava developed a pleasant rapport. In the tedious hours between setups the two would often sit together, chatting or running lines or playing a word game called Jotto. “She was terrific,” Knox would remember. “Vivacious, alive, full of fun. And beautiful. More beautiful than on the screen. She had the scar from the fall, but it was nothing. It was very attractive, actually. Kind of sexy. She was great. She loved to laugh. And she was no dummy. She was a very intelligent woman. Back when I came to Hollywood I was making a picture with Mickey Rooney. We were playing boxers in this thing, and we were working out for our fight. I remember I asked him about Ava because I knew he’d been married to her. And Rooney said, ‘Ahh, she was a fucking Red, for crissake!’ Ha! But at the time I was thinking, Well, that tells me something, that she was interested in the world around her. And she was. She was intelligent, congenial, amusing, aware. I liked her very much. I used to call her ‘Avala’—a Jewish play on her name. And she responded to that. She said, ‘The only other person that called me that was Artie.’ Artie Shaw. So we got along, we became friends, she was great.
“At the same time it was difficult to be in her company. If you’ve ever been in the presence of certain extraordinary women, you’ll know what I mean. I’ve experienced it a couple of times in my life. Facing beauty of that kind. It’s not a completely pleasant experience. She gave you this ache in your gut because she was so appealing. And because she was not yours, you know? You felt a kind of vertigo being near her. She was so desirable you felt a little sick from it. Oh my God, she was extraordinary.”
One day the friendship took a brief abrupt turn. At the studio after they had been shooting for some weeks, Knox found Ava in rehearsal for her dance, just the actress alone, working with the recorded music. He took a seat nearby and watched the choreographed routine, watched her beautiful, graceful movements repeated again and again. “I was amazed at how much talent she had as a dancer. I don’t know how seriously she took acting, although she did her job as an actress very well, but when she did the rehearsals for the dance in the picture—boy, she gave it her all, she was serious about that. I was enchanted watching her.”
At the finish of the rehearsal Ava came over to where Knox was sitting and dropped into a chair. “She sprawled in the chair next
to me, and she stretched her legs. She said, Oh, my feet are killing me ...’I said, ‘Let me massage your feet.’ And she looked at me and she said, ‘Oh, that’s great…’ And I thought, Okay! Listen, I don’t know if I was thinking beyond that; I guess in the back of my mind I was. But I knew from past experience, if you were ever going to find a time when you had an opening, massaging a woman’s feet was the time.” Knox got on his knees, took the actress’s feet in his hands, and began squeezing and rubbing them to what he recalled as sounds of increasing pleasure. “She then suggested we continue the massage in her dressing room,” Mickey Knox would remember. “So up we went.”
The intimacy was brief. Exactly one day later, a new, close relationship suddenly developed between Ava and Tony Franciosa. Knox believed it was a case of “droit de seigneur,” movie-star version, Franciosa compelled to exert his hierarchical rights over a lesser member of the production. “It was the next day. Up until then he hadn’t been interested in her. But the next day he made his move. I don’t know how, but he knew something was up and he made a move. And that cut me out immediately.”
Whatever the spark of motivation, an affair between the screen Goya and his Duchess now began. After the months of seclusion, the months of hard work, Ava, with a new love interest for inspiration, energetically revived her dormant social life. Into the hot Roman night she went in pursuit of fun and excitement, Franciosa in tow, he would recall, “like a kid in a chocolate factory.” The movie became an afterthought for them both, a brief interruption in a lusty regime, Franciosa’s months of serious re-search into the character of Goya tossed over in the heap with Al Lewin’s script, of no interest to him now as he enjoyed the sexual attentions of “the most glamorous woman in the world.” The bottles of champagne would start popping open by four in the afternoon, and the festivities would go on into the night, into the morning, from café to bar to nightclub to bed to studio. “She never slept,” Franciosa would recall to writer Rex Reed, “and I never saw a woman drink so much and still look beautiful in front of a camera.”