His Way

by Kitty Kelley

  He dragged out all the hoary tales of his so-called “slum” childhood in Hoboken with its “race wars” and “vicious gang fights” and his “poor, poor” parents who “needed whatever money I could bring into the house,” which drove him to “hooking candy from the corner store, then little things from the five-and-dime, then change from cash registers, and finally, we were up to stealing bicycles.”

  This, of course, shocked Dolly Sinatra, whose abortion earnings combined with her husband’s wages had made her family one of the most comfortable on Garden Street. Having bought Frank’s shiny new bicycles as a child, his new clothes, his car, his phonograph, and paid his charge account at Geismer’s department store, and having given him an allowance which paid for presents for his friends, she was stunned by these recollections under her son’s name. “I didn’t know any of those things he said he did,” she said. “I brought him up right.”

  Frank was equally imaginative about his Mafia friendships with Willie Moretti, Frank Costello, and Joe Fischetti. He asserted he barely knew Lucky Luciano, and despite the Italian police report of finding a solid gold cigarette case inscribed “To my dear pal, Charlie, from his friend, Frank Sinatra,” he denied ever giving Luciano any gift. He cavalierly dismissed his twelve-year marriage to Nancy, saying that he had mistaken friendship for love. And he strained people’s credulity when he said he had not dated Ava until after his separation from Nancy.

  In a final grovel to the press he ended “his” series by saying, “Well, there it is. That’s my side of the story, and I must say I feel better for having gotten it off my chest. I know that I never meaningly hurt anyone, and for any wrongs I may have done through emotional acts or spur-of-the-moment decisions, I humbly apologize.”

  “That should have told you right there that Frank didn’t write that thing,” said Nick Sevano. “He’s never apologized to anyone in his life. It’s just not in him.”

  The ghosted articles reflected how far Frank had fallen by 1952. With his career in tatters, he was willing to do anything to reclaim his stardom, and Ava vowed to stick with him through the climb back even if it jeopardized her own career. To prove it, she went on suspension at Metro to be able to accompany him to Honolulu for a booking. When they returned, the studio lent Ava to Twentieth Century Fox for The Snows of Kilimanjaro. It was based on Hemingway’s short story about a mortally wounded big-game hunter who recalls the story of his life as he lies dying in a camp at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Hemingway had asked that Ava be given the role of Cynthia, the Lost Twenties girl whom the big-game hunter had once loved and who dies during the Spanish Civil War. Ava was thrilled with the role, but Frank said she had to turn it down so she could be with him in New York.

  “But it’s the perfect part for me,” she said.

  “The perfect part for you is being my wife,” said Frank.

  Ava confided her problem to the scriptwriter, Casey Robinson. “She told me that Frank was so low, his career was so hopeless, that he needed her to go with him to New York, where he had a nightclub engagement,” he said. “He insisted on it. It was quite a problem. So I sat down with Henry King [the director], went over the schedule, and changed things around. We had to promise to shoot Ava’s part in ten days. On that promise, Sinatra gave a reluctant okay.

  “Came the ninth day of shooting. We had only one more sequence to do. Frank kept calling her on the set and making her life pretty darn miserable. I like Frank now, but at the time I hated the little bastard because he was making my girl unhappy. Now I understand him, he was so beaten and insecure. Then came the last scene, the scene on the battlefield in Spain when Ava is dying. There was a problem: we had a great many extras, four or five hundred in all, and to satisfy the ten-day agreement we’d have to shoot into the night, which would have been horribly expensive. We decided to go over the ten days and break the agreement. When King and I told Ava, all hell broke loose. She became hysterical. She called New York, and Frank was furious with her. God knows how we got through that last day.”

  Ava signed autographs as “Ava Sinatra” and took every opportunity to defend her husband to the press. “Frankie’s a great artist and terribly misunderstood, and even if I weren’t married to him, I’d defend him,” she told Hollywood columnist Sheilah Graham.

  “Yes, I concede he has a quick temper, but if the press, and particularly the photographers, would stop baiting him for the sake of a story or picture, there wouldn’t be so much tension in his relations with the press. It’s mob psychology. One person or writer takes a crack at him, and others pick it up because it seems the thing to do. They know Frank can be needled, so they let him have it.”

  Years later, Ava reflected on what was happening to her husband when all he had was fading pride and a frayed voice. His moods swung from childish self-pity and the need to be reassured to a swaggering arrogance of barked orders and commands. She indicated that he resented her stardom and her possession of a much bigger name than his. But she also said they were happiest then because he was dependent on her.

  “Yes, Frank was really up against it at that time,” said Ava in 1982. “Unknown to the public, he was having serious problems with his voice, and his agents were having difficulty booking him into the top night spots. It seems hard to believe now, but he was having to play saloons and dates that were way beneath him.”

  She accompanied him on every one of these demeaning engagements, including one in Hoboken at the Union Club in September 1952. It was probably the final affront, illustrating how far he had fallen from his days as the bobby-soxers’ idol when, in 1947, Hoboken had proclaimed a Frank Sinatra Day in his honor, presented him with the key to the city, and staged a grand parade led by his father’s fire engine. This time there was no such acclaim.

  “It was a Fireman’s Ball in the fall of 1952 and Frank came because his dad asked him to be there,” said his childhood friend, Tony Mac. “He came with Ava Gardner in a limousine and his mom made sure there were cops with billy clubs to help him get through the crowd. I remember the date well because Jimmy “Doo Doo” Shannon was dying of cancer, and this was about three weeks before he died. Doo Doo was one of the guys from the neighborhood, and Frank ate at his house all through grammar school. So we all went to see Frankie that night. I remember saying, ‘How about coming to see Doo Doo Shannon. He’s dying.’ Frank said he just couldn’t make it and leave Ava waiting in the limousine. He didn’t have the time.

  “He sang onstage that night and hit some clinkers, and so people booed him and threw fruit and stuff, kidding around. When he was singing on WAAT Radio, he hit clinkers then, too, and we laughed at him, but now, well, it was different. Oh, did he get mad.”

  Afterward Frank ran offstage and asked Tony Costello, one of the policemen, to show him out the back way. “I don’t want to have to go out through there,” he said, nodding peevishly to the crowd.

  “I led him down the back steps to the street. There were no fans, nothing. As we shook hands and said good-bye, Frank said, ‘Tony, I’ll never come back and do another thing for the people of Hoboken as long as I live.’ ”

  The next night Frank was singing at Bill Miller’s Riviera in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and Ava, sitting ringside, saw Marilyn Maxwell walk in. As soon as Frank walked onstage and started singing, Ava was convinced that he was singing for no one else but his former lover. Hurling curses in the air, she stormed out of the club and boarded a plane for Hollywood. When she arrived, she sent her wedding ring to Frank with a bitter note. Sammy Davis, Jr., later saw Frank walking down a New York street all by himself, no fans, no friends, no entourage. “I’ve got problems, baby,” Frank said. “That’s what happens when you get hung up on a chick.”

  Frank also confided in Earl Wilson. “I never so much as looked at another gal since Ava. I’m nuts about her and I don’t think it’s dead, but it certainly is all up in the air now.”

  But he told other reporters that the disagreement was trivial. “We have a career problem,” he said.
“I’m going to see my wife in about ten days in Hollywood. I think everything will work out all right.”

  Frank followed Ava to the West Coast, but the volatile union erupted again days later in Palm Springs. Ava, who seemed to thrive on danger, laughed as she recalled the hair-pulling, glass-shattering event thirty years later.

  “Frank and I were having one of our fights, as if that was anything new,” she said. “Most of our fights were funny, but that one was the funniest of the lot.

  “I was always deciding I couldn’t go on living with him, and this was one of our spells apart when he was trying to talk me into going back. He told me that he had let Lana [Turner] have the house in Palm Springs for a week, and wanted me to go away with him someplace, but I had already arranged to be with my sister, Bappie. As usual, Frank didn’t like any plan that didn’t include him, so he started his usual line: ‘Swell. You just go off with your sister, and I’ll be in Palm Springs fucking Lana Turner.’

  “I didn’t really believe him, but I did start to think about it, and I decided I didn’t like it too much. So I grabbed the car, collected Bappie, and off we drove to Palm Springs. As we got near the house, I suddenly saw Frank’s car cruising around outside as if he was keeping watch on the place. As we got nearer, he drove away.

  “When we got into the house, we found Lana there with Ben Cole, who was also a friend of mine, and they both seemed surprised and a little embarrassed to see me. They asked if I wanted them to go, and I said, ‘Hell, no. There’s plenty of room for all of us.’

  “I hadn’t been there more than ten minutes when the door bursts open and in storms Frank looking like Al Capone and the Boston Strangler rolled into one, and starts to abuse everyone present, mostly me. He seemed to be under the impression that we had been carving him up behind his back. He yelled at all of us and called Lana ‘that two-bit whore,’ and she burst into tears and got very small and said ‘I’m not going to be talked about like that’ in a very little-girl voice just like we were all in a Shirley Temple movie.

  “Frank then said to Lana, Ben, Bappie, and me: ‘Get the hell out of my house!’ And I yelled, ‘Fine! But since this is also my house, too, I’m gonna take out of it everything that belongs to me.’

  “I started taking down pictures from the wall and Frank exploded. He grabbed everything I said was mine and hurled it outside onto the lawn. It was hysterical. Lana and Ben, who were both very frightened, fled from the house to look for somewhere else to stay, and when they came back for their things several hours later, we were still at it, and by that time the place was crawling with cops because the neighbors had called the police about all the noise. In the end, the local police chief, Gus Kettman, had to be called to keep the peace between us.”

  Lana Turner has her own vivid recollection of that Saturday, October 18, 1952. She said Ava had arrived unannounced as she and Benton Cole were sitting at the pool. “I was all the more startled to see her because she and Frank were separated at the time,” said Lana, who apologized for the intrusion, saying that Frank had lent her the house. “ ‘He didn’t mention you’d be around.’

  “ ‘Oh, screw him,’ said Ava. ‘He doesn’t know I’m here.’

  “ ‘Do you want us to leave?’

  “ ‘Oh, hell, no. There’s room for all of us.’ ”

  The three of them sat by the pool together and then went into the kitchen for fried chicken when a crazed Frank Sinatra burst through the back door with his eyes blazing and his face a Day-Glo red.

  “ ‘I bet you two broads have really been cutting me up,’ he said. We couldn’t say a word, and I just kept shaking my head no because we hadn’t even discussed him,” said Lana. “With that he pointed to Ava and growled, ‘You! Get in the bedroom. I want to talk to you!’ With a shrug Ava headed for the bedroom I’d been using. Frank followed her, and before long, harsh words came from that bedroom, and a crash, as though a piece of furniture was being thrown.”

  Lana and Ben ran out of the house but, according to Lana, returned a few hours later concerned about what might have happened to Ava. “It was dark when we arrived at Frank’s place, and a strange sight greeted us,” she said. “Police cars were drawn up in front of the house, with red lights blinking, radios squawking. The glare of spotlights illuminated the house. The sounds of battle inside, I learned later, had grown so loud that neighbors had called the police.”

  Having already rented another house for the week, Lana and Ben asked Ava to join them, knowing that she could not stay with Frank. That evening, Frank moved into Jimmy Van Heusen’s house, and Bappie took her battered sister to stay with Lana and Ben. “We did what we could to make Ava comfortable,” said Lana. “Poor Ava. She was badly shaken, and after my own grim experience, I could sympathize with her humiliation. But alone in my room I was surprised that I also felt sorry for Frank. It was a bad time for him. His career had slipped badly, and he was losing Ava.”

  The fact that the police had been called to settle a dispute involving Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner hit the newspapers with headlines that caused everyone in Hollywood to speculate about what had really happened to trigger such violence on Frank’s part.

  BOUDOIR FIGHT HEADS FRANKIE AND AVA TO COURTS screamed the Los Angeles Daily Mirror.

  SINATRA-AVA BOUDOIR ROW BUZZES roared the Los Angeles Times.

  Neither story stated exactly what had happened except that Frank had ordered Artie Shaw’s second and fourth ex-wives (Ava and Lana) out of his Palm Springs house after a “dispute” and the police had been called “to restore peace.” With so much left to the imagination and no comments from anyone involved, the only possible explanation for many people was that Frank had found Lana and Ava in bed together and had become so enraged by their lesbianism that he threw them both out and then started tearing the house apart. The whispered scandal was repeated with graphic detail for years and years until it became an accepted fact. “A lot of sick, vile rumors grew out of that incident,” said Lana many years later.

  Heartsick about what had happened, Frank called Ava frequently, but she refused to answer the phone and had the number changed the next day so he couldn’t reach her. With all their plans in ruins—their trip to Ava’s home in North Carolina, their trip to Africa, their baby—Frank was so distraught that, according to Jimmy Van Heusen, he often vomited. Frank called Earl Wilson and begged him to print his plea for a reconciliation. When Ava saw the column—“Frankie Ready to Surrender; Wants Ava Back, Any Terms”—she called Frank.

  No one hoped more for a reconciliation than Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for President in 1952, who was running against Dwight Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Nixon had charged that Stevenson would not end the war in Korea, which was America’s most vexing foreign issue. He also said that a Democratic victory in November would mean “more Alger Hisses, more atomic spies, more crises.” Hollywood’s Democratic celebrities had rallied in support of Stevenson (“Madly for Adlai”), and Ava and Frank were among those touched by the magic of the man from Illinois. They had promised to make a joint appearance for him at the Hollywood-for-Stevenson rally on Monday, October 27, 1952, a few days before the presidential election. Ava was to introduce Frank, who had promised to sing “The Birth of the Blues” and “The House I Live In,” but after the Palm Springs explosion, no one knew whether the battling Sinatras would show up, and if they did, who would introduce them to each other.

  More than four thousand people jammed into the Palladium Ballroom that October night, and cheered when Ava walked onstage in a black satin strapless gown and a mink stole. Clutching the microphone, she said, “I can’t do anything myself, but I can introduce a wonderful, wonderful man. I’m a great fan of his myself. Ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Frank Sinatra!”

  Frank sang beautifully and said a few words for the candidate. He even posed for photographers with his arm around Ava. Stevenson lost the election, but he polled more votes than any previous losing presidential candidate in the nat
ion’s history. His greatest achievement, according to the Hollywood press, was reuniting Frankie and Ava.

  Resuming their plans, they announced that they were leaving in a few days for Nairobi, where Ava would star with Clark Gable in Mogambo. Frank, who was without work, had agreed to accompany his wife, but he had instructed his agents to cable him when casting started on From Here to Eternity. Having read James Jones’s novel about World War II—“It was an adventure-type story, which is the kind I like”—Frank saw himself as Maggio, the scrappy little private, and was convinced that the part would restore his career. He talked of nothing else.

  Before they left, Ava phoned Joan Cohn, the wife of Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, to ask if she could see her. Mrs. Cohn said that she was sick in bed with the flu, but Ava insisted. “Please, Joan,” she said. “It’s very, very important.”

  “That was a very brave thing for Ava to call me like that and then insist on seeing me when I was ill,” said Joan Cohn Harvey, “but she had a mission, and nothing was going to stop her. She came to the house alone in the evening and said that Frank must never know that she had been here. We both knew how much he needed and wanted to be the boss in that marriage.

  “She took off her shoes and put her feet up on the coffee table. I was astounded because she had the tiniest little feet in the world for such a big girl. She was so very beautiful, but I wondered how those little feet ever held her up. I asked if she wanted something to drink, and was so surprised when she asked for vodka.

  “ ‘God, Ava,’ I said. ‘You’re going to ruin your skin.’

  “ ‘What the hell,’ she said.”

  After taking a few sips, Ava came straight to the point. “Joan, I’ve come to ask you a big favor. I want you to get Harry to give Frank the Maggio role in From Here to Eternity. He wants that part more than anything in the world, and he’s got to have it, otherwise I’m afraid he’ll kill himself. Please, promise me that you’ll help. I’ll do anything. Just get him a test. Please, Joan. Just a test.”