by Kitty Kelley
For some, though, the suspicion always remained, understandably so, given Harry Cohn’s organized-crime ties and Frank’s various friendships within the Mafia. Later, one writer suggested that Frank Costello made an overture on Sinatra’s behalf through Johnny “Don Giovanni” Roselli, the Las Vegas-Los Angeles capo Mafioso, to get Frank the role of Maggio. Harry Cohn wore a friendship ring from Roselli, the syndicate man identified in Justice Department files as the key “to keeping peace in the movie industry in Hollywood.” Years later, Frank proposed Roselli for membership in the Friar’s Club.
Another writer, Leonard Katz, stated that when Sinatra asked for help in getting the role, Frank Costello simply contacted George Wood of the William Morris talent agency and some top movie executives on the West Coast. “It was a favor they couldn’t refuse because of favors received in the past,” he said. “Costello acknowledged to close friends that he was the one who got Sinatra the part, but he never talked about the circumstances in detail.”
“Sinatra and Frank C. were great pals,” said former columnist John J. Miller. “I know because I used to sit with Frank C. at the Copa, and Sinatra would join us all the time. He was always asking favors of the old man, and whenever Sinatra had a problem he went to Frank C. to solve it. Maggio would have been easy for Costello, who was tied in tight to George Wood, Sinatra’s agent.”
A vice-president of the William Morris Agency, George E. Wood was also a good friend of Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, a member of the Vito Genovese Mafia family in New York.
“George [Wood] was perfect for Frank because he knew all the gangsters,” said Abe Lastfogel many years later.
Some who said Frank had Mafia help getting the role of Maggio figured it came through George Wood to Jimmy Blue Eyes to Harry Cohn, but those who were involved with the movie deny it emphatically.
“There was absolutely nothing to that horse’s head business,” said Joan Cohn Harvey. “Nothing. Frank didn’t get the part that way. Really.”
“Preposterous,” said Dan Taradash.
“Pure fiction, I assure you,” said Abe Lastfogel.
“There were no horses’ heads involved,” said Fred Zinnemann. “Frank lobbied for the part by sending Harry Cohn and myself telegrams and singing them ‘Maggio.’ … His test was good and I saw no reason why he shouldn’t do it. But there was no pressure. If I hadn’t wanted him, he wouldn’t have done it.”
“As for the horse’s head in Cohn’s bed, Harry never owned a racehorse in his life,” said Jonie Taps. “No one ever forced Harry Cohn to put Sinatra in From Here to Eternity. It just took a little needling … with a little help from Ava.”
* * *
When Frank Finally received the cable informing him that Maggio was his at eight thousand dollars, he was exuberant. Pacing up and down the tent like a panther, he kept saying, “I’ll show those mothers. I’ll show them.”
This was the arrogant side of Frank that Ava detested, even more so now that she was undergoing her own personal crisis. She had decided to terminate her pregnancy and told her MGM publicist, Morgan Hudgins, that she wanted to fly to London for an abortion. Hudgins wrote to Ava’s agent saying that she needed a little time off and that he would contact MGM in Culver City to make the necessary arrangements. He followed his letter with an urgent cable: PLEASE KEEP CONFIDENTIAL GARDNER INFORMATION MY LETTER TWO DAYS AGO STOP APPRECIATE DON’T DISCUSS WITH FRONT OFFICE YET STOP WRITING NEW LETTER TODAY.
An MGM executive cabled director John Ford, saying: CONFIDENTIAL: UNDERSTAND GARDNER CABLED AGENT SHE UNSETTLED AND NOT WELL AND PLANNING BRIEF TRIP TO LONDON FEEL THIS VERY UNWISE FOR MANY OBVIOUS REASONS UNLESS YOU DECIDE IT NECESSARY OTHERWISE SUGGEST YOU USE YOUR PERSUASIVENESS AND HAVE LADY STAY PUT.
After conferring with Ava and her publicist, Ford cabled MGM: GARDNER GIVING SUPERB PERFORMANCE VERY CHARMING COOPERATIVE STOP HOWEVER REALLY QUITE ILL SINCE ARRIVAL AFRICA DEEM IT IMPERATIVE LONDON CONSULTATION OTHERWISE TRAGIC RESULTS STOP SHOULD NOT AFFECT SCHEDULE WEATHER HERE MISERABLE BUT WE’RE TRYING NO MOZEL BUT HARD WORK REPEAT BELIEVE TRIP IMPERATIVE.
On November 23, 1952, a few days after Frank had flown back to the United States, Ava flew from Nairobi to London with her publicist and the wife of Robert Surtees, the cameraman. She stayed at the Savoy Hotel and then was taken to a private nursing home in the evening. Her publicist told the press that she had a tropical infection and was suffering from a severe case of anemia. Years later, Ava came closer to the truth when she told writer Joe Hyams that she had a “miscarriage.”
“All of my life I had wanted a baby, and the news that I lost him (I’m sure that it was a boy) was the cruelest blow I had ever received,” she said. “Even though my marriage to Frank was getting shakier every day, I didn’t care. I wanted a baby by him.”
The cameraman recalled it differently. “That isn’t the way it was at all,” said Robert Surtees. “Ava hated Frank so intensely by this stage, she couldn’t stand the idea of having his baby. She went to London to have an abortion. I know, because my wife went to London to be at her side at all times through the operation and afterward, and to bring her back on the plane. She told my wife, ‘I hated Frankie so much. I wanted that baby to go unborn.’ ”
Frank flew back to Africa to spend Christmas with Ava. He had to borrow money to buy her his gifts, because she was still smarting over having to pay for her anniversary ring. She had been so angry about it, she complained to Robert Surtees. “You know what that son of a bitch did?” she said. “I got the bill for the ring!”
Frank and Ava flew to Paris for a few days of vacation in January, but their incessant fighting spun a poisonous web from which they could not extricate themselves. While in France, Frank received a cable from Cohn. MONTGOMERY CLIFT ALREADY PROFICIENT IN ARMY DRILL. SINCE YOU MUST DO SAME ROUTINE, SUGGEST YOU GET BACK FEW DAYS EARLY. FRANK WIRED BACK: DEAR HARRY. WILL COMPLY WITH REQUEST. DRILLING WITH FRENCH ARMY OVER WEEKEND. EVERYTHING O.K. MAGGIO.
Frank returned to the States knowing that his marriage was in precarious shape, but he believed that everything would work out after he completed the forty-one days of shooting required for From Here to Eternity.
Frank was humbled to be working with such accomplished actors as Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Donna Reed. He was especially impressed with Monty Clift, who was playing Prewitt, his best friend in the film. Clift, a handsome but troubled man, possessed immense screen presence and tried for perfection in his role. For weeks before filming started he had been studying with Manny Klein, a well-known trumpeter, to learn how to play the bugle. Although he made no sounds on film, he was determined to make his throat and mouth movements on screen look exactly right. Monty also jogged every day to stay in shape for his fight scenes. He worked out regularly with a trainer and took boxing lessons from an ex-fighter, Mushy Calahan. He also boxed with the author of From Here to Eternity, James Jones, who had once been a Golden Gloves contender.
Frank hadn’t seen this kind of driving perfectionism since Gene Kelly’s unsparing dance drills at MGM. Monty even had an acting coach who worked with Clift and Frank together on their scenes. “Monty was so intense about being Prewitt, he raised the level of the other actors,” said Fred Zinnemann. “He cared so much, they started caring.”
Clift also intimidated everyone in the cast. “The only time I was ever really afraid as an actor was that first scene with Clift,” said Burt Lancaster. “It was my scene, understand: I was the sergeant, I gave the orders, he was just a private under me. Well, when we started, I couldn’t stop my knees from shaking. I thought they might have to stop because my trembling would show. But I’d never worked with an actor with Clift’s power before; I was afraid he was going to blow me right off the screen.”
Shooting began in Hollywood on March 2, 1953, and moved to Hawaii for the exterior scenes at Schofield Army Barracks. The first day the cast was assembled, Zinnemann introduced Frank to the unit publicist, Walter Shenson.
“I went ov
er to shake his hand and to say that I was going to be the publicity man on the film,” said Shenson. “I asked him who his press agent was, and he said he didn’t have one. I couldn’t believe it. ‘But who’s putting all that stuff in the papers that I’ve been reading about you wanting the part and going after it and flying in for tests and flying back to Africa and all that stuff?’
“ ‘I did all that with Ava’s help,’ said Frank. ‘She’d call Harry Cohn to lean on him, and then I’d call Louella Parsons, and later we’d both call Hedda Hopper.’
“I congratulated him on a splendid publicity campaign and told him that I could do a lot for him if he’d just behave himself with the press. He was a pussycat. ‘Whatever you say, kid, whatever you say,’ he said. So I started bringing around news people to interview him. A couple of times he said, ‘I won’t talk to that one. He was rude to Ava.’ Then I’d remind him of his promise to cooperate, and he’d be a charmer.
“One day, I got a call from a press guy saying that the government had just released a statement that Frank owed $109,000 in back taxes. He wanted a comment from Sinatra, so I went to his trailer and told him. He looked at me very calmly and said, ‘You don’t think this is news, do you? If you owe $109,000, you know about it.’ I explained that I was getting phone calls from the press wanting a statement. He said to tell them anything I wanted. ‘If I do,’ I said, ‘it will have to be a quote from you.’ ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Tell them whatever you want.’
“ ‘Surely your lawyers and accountants are working with the government, aren’t they?’ I asked. Frank said they were, so I went back and called all the reporters. ‘Mr. Sinatra asked me to tell you the following: “My lawyers and my accountants are working with the government lawyers and accountants, and if it takes From Here to Eternity, I’m going to pay it all back.” ’ I later told Frank that I had to publicize the picture first and him second, but he thought that was brilliant.”
Montgomery Clift coached Frank through every syllable of his part, spelling out every beat, every movement, every motion that Maggio made. He taught him not to rely on the words but to go beyond to the characterization. “Good dialogue simply isn’t enough to explain all the infinite gradations of a character,” Monty told Frank. “It’s behavior—it’s what’s going on behind the lines.”
Sinatra was grateful. “I learned more about acting from him than I ever knew before,” he said. “But he’s an exhausting man. After those army sergeants drilled us all day, we’d have dinner—usually at Monty’s room or mine. Then Clift would jump up and say, ‘Now show me how you do that about-face again.’ I’d plead with him to lay off, but he’d start to practice all over again.”
Most nights, Frank had dinner with Monty, Zinnemann, Deborah Kerr, and Burt Lancaster; afterward, he and Monty would grab their bottles and go to Frank’s room, where he would try to call Ava in Nairobi. International calls took hours in those days, and Monty and Frank drank as they waited. By the time the Honolulu operator made a connection with Ava’s African location, she was usually out for the evening, which gave Frank reason to drink the night away. Neither he nor Monty could stand being alone, so they spent endless hours together drinking, returning to their rooms so drunk that Burt Lancaster would have to put them both to bed.
Clift’s drinking, exacerbated by his drug addiction, became uncontrollable during filming, and one night before the whole company was scheduled to leave for California, Monty and Frank showed up drunk for an important night scene. Within minutes Monty passed out, and the director was alarmed because the scene could not be postponed. Frank grabbed Monty, shook him, slapped him in the face, and then walked him to his trailer, where Frank spent the next hour sobering him up enough to go before the cameras.
“Frank was wonderful to work with about ninety percent of the time,” said Zinnemann, who did not elaborate on the other ten percent.
On the last night of shooting, Frank turned on both Monty and Zinnemann as they began the scene in which Maggio is drunk and Prew is worried about his being caught by MPs. Frank and Monty had rehearsed the scene standing up, but, just before shooting, Frank decided that he wanted to do it sitting down. Zinnemann objected, but Frank insisted—loudly and profanely. Monty backed Zinnemann and remained standing to follow the script. This so angered Sinatra that he slapped Monty hard. The director tried to placate Sinatra by agreeing to film the scene with Frank sitting if he would also do one take standing. Frank refused and became extremely abusive. Alarmed by what was happening, Buddy Adler called Harry Cohn at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where he and his wife were dining with Air Force General and Mrs. O’Daniel.
“That call came in the middle of dinner,” said Joan Cohn Harvey. “Buddy said if Harry didn’t get over there fast—within the next five minutes—everything was going to blow up because Frank and Fred were really going at it. They were arguing about the way a scene was to be played. ‘C’mon,’ yelled Harry. ‘We’ve got to go. That Buddy is so spineless.’ ”
Minutes later, an Air Force limousine arrived on the set and Harry Cohn jumped out in his white dinner jacket. “What the hell is going on here?” he yelled. He fired questions at everyone. How dare an actor tell the director what to do? Why wasn’t the director following the script? Why can’t the producer see that things are under control? He then threatened Zinnemann, saying that he would shut the picture down if things weren’t done his way.
“I was on the sidelines watching but not hearing anything,” said publicist Walter Shenson. “I could just see the pantomime of Harry Cohn running up in his white dinner jacket, striding into the middle of the set and making some pronouncement. Then he turned around and walked out and got back into the limousine. The next morning was Sunday, and I was on the beach with the rest of the crew. Cohn spotted me and asked if I had been there last night.
“ ‘Did you see that son of a bitch, Sinatra?’ he asked.
“ ‘Yeah, I saw him but I don’t know what was happening.’
“ ‘Well, that bastard guinea was trying to tell us what to do. You know where he is now? He’s on an airplane going back to the studio.’
“ ‘How could you send him back without seeing the rushes?’ I asked.
“ ‘I don’t care,’ said Cohn. ‘The hell with him. That dirty little dago is not going to tell me how to make my movies.’ ”
The entire company returned to California a few days later to shoot interiors at Columbia Studios. By then Frank and Monty were inseparable friends and spent a great deal of time with James Jones.
“We talked about the injustice of life and love,” said Jones, “and then Monty and I would listen to Frank talk about Ava Gardner.”
One night during the course of the filming, Frank became so depressed by Ava’s rejection that he threatened suicide. Monty talked him out of it.
“We would get very loaded,” Jones said. “After dinner and a lot more drinks, we would weave outside into the night and all sit down on the curb next to a lamppost. It became our lamppost, and we’d mumble more nonsense to each other. We felt very close.”
The rushes were so spectacular that Harry Cohn insisted the film be in the theaters by August. He was the first to recognize the film’s quality. So proud was he of it, that for the first time in his career he allowed his name to appear in an advertisement before release, conveying to the public his pride in presenting From Here to Eternity. It became the biggest money-maker in Columbia’s history. The final cost was $2,406,000; the first release grossed nineteen million. By fiscal 1954 gross income totaled eighty million. So great was the demand for seats that the Capitol Theater in New York City remained open almost around the clock; it closed only for an hour in the morning to let janitors sweep the floor.
Critics, as enthusiastic as the public, praised the film and everyone associated with it.
“From Here to Eternity … tells a truth about life, about the inviolability of the human spirit,” said Time magazine. “[It says] something important about America. It say
s that many Americans, in a way that is often confused and some times forgotten, care to the quick about a man’s right to ‘go his own way,’ though all the world and the times be contrary.”
“[This is] a film almost as towering and persuasive as its source,” wrote Bosley Growther in The New York Times. “It captures the essential spirit of the James Jones study. … It stands as a shining example of truly professional moviemaking.” The New York Film Critics named the picture the best of 1953 and gave awards to Burt Lancaster as best actor and Fred Zinnemann as best director. All five leading players were nominated for Academy Awards. So were the director, the screenwriter, the cinematographer, the film editor, and the sound man.
The most superlative reviews were for Frank, who surprised everyone by his performance and earned the respect of the industry, which immediately proclaimed his “comeback” as the most dramatic in show business. “He does Private Maggio like nothing he has ever done before,” said Time magazine. “His face wears the calm of a man who is completely sure of what he is doing as he plays it straight from Little Italy.”
“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,” said the New York Post.
“Frank Sinatra is simply superb, comical, pitiful, childishly brave, pathetically defiant,” said the Los Angeles Examiner. “Prew (Clift) is able to absorb ‘the treatment’ the army dishes out to him for his rebelliousness. Poor little Maggio succumbs to it, and Sinatra makes his death scene one of the best ever photographed.”
The film seemed to elevate everyone connected with it.
“There was something magic about that picture,” said Walter Shenson. “All of us went on to bigger and better things because of it. Frank’s career took off, and so did Donna Reed’s. Ernest Borgnine became a star; Dan Taradash became a producer at Columbia; our still photographer became a cinematographer, and I was made an executive. Harry Cohn felt that we were all a lucky bunch.”