by James Kaplan
FRANK SINATRA
HAS COLLAPSE
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 1, UP—Crooner Frank Sinatra today was reported suffering from a severe case of “exhaustion” and/or bad press.
His manager, John Harding, said Sinatra probably will call off his Swedish tour because he is “completely exhausted” and “needs going over very thoroughly.”
Harding admitted that the criticism in Sweden has been rough, but said Sinatra’s real trouble is “complete exhaustion.”
Ava was due back in England on June 7 to start shooting Knights of the Round Table, at $17,500 a week. Frank’s wallet was all but empty. It didn’t improve matters between them.
On May 16, precisely as the Naples audience was stamping, booing, and yelling for Ava, “I’m Walking Behind You” hit number 7 on the Billboard chart. It was Frank’s first hit since “The Birth of the Blues” had charted at number 19 the previous November—his longest drought in ten years. The problem was that Eddie Fisher’s version of “I’m Walking Behind You” was number 1.
It was not to be a great year for Sinatra sales. Paradoxically, “Walking” would be Frank’s biggest hit for 1953, though Alan Livingston knew in his bones that the Stordahl-arranged song represented the singer’s past, not his future. But even the present looked iffy. When “I’ve Got the World on a String” hit the charts on the Fourth of July, it was only at number 14, and it stayed there for just two weeks.2 Nineteen fifty-three was a year for Fisher and Perry Como (who had two number-one hits) and Patti Page, with her monster Columbia hit “Doggie in the Window,” conducted and arranged—complete with barking—by Mitch Miller.
In many ways it seemed as though 1953 might not be Sinatra’s year at all. He had little to show but bruises for his Continental tour. He could dimly remember having thrown heart and soul into From Here to Eternity; but back in England (where Ava had rented a big flat in St. John’s Wood), in the days when overseas really was overseas, he’d only heard second-and thirdhand about the excited rumors—about both the film and his performance—flying around Hollywood. He was cast up on foreign shores, with little to back up his confidence, least of all his wife’s esteem. “We came back to London under a terrible cloud,” Ava recalled. In truth, she was sick of him. In a photograph of the two of them at a prizefight in early June, their bodies aren’t quite touching. (At one point, during a lull in the action, Frank called out, “Why don’t ya fight, ya bums, ya!” Ava rolled her eyes.)
Still, his manager had been able at the last minute to throw together a tour of Great Britain: from June till early August, Sinatra would scramble from London to Bristol back to London up to Birmingham and back to London, then up to Glasgow and Dundee and Edinburgh and Ayr, then down to Leicester and Manchester and Blackpool and Liverpool, then back to London. Ava, busy playing Guinevere (and perhaps also busy with her co-star and old flame, Robert Taylor), would not accompany him.
Then a successful June show on the BBC buoyed Frank’s morale. The Brits, having just crowned a new young queen, were in correspondingly good spirits. They didn’t come out in huge throngs to hear Frank, but the crowds who did come applauded appreciatively as he sang old songs (“Night and Day,” “Sweet Lorraine,” “You Go to My Head”) and new ones (“The Birth of the Blues” and “I’ve Got the World on a String”) and sipped tea between numbers. His voice gained strength with every stop. “Sinatra is still the greatest male singer in pop music,” the New Musical Express said. “His range and power seem greater than ever.” And his cheekiness (“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Odeon or whatever this joint’s called,” he said at the Blackpool Opera House) rubbed the Brits the right way. They knew all about bloody-mindedness.
Harry Cohn used to say that he could tell whether a movie was any good depending on whether his fanny squirmed or not. “Imagine,” said the screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz. “The whole world wired to Harry Cohn’s ass!”
And strangely enough, when Columbia Pictures ran its first preview of From Here to Eternity, “Cohn had decided to use a new electronic system of recording audience reactions,” Fred Zinnemann recalled. The screening took place over the summer: a few weeks, pointedly enough, after the Rosenbergs were electrocuted.
About two hundred people were, literally, wired to their seats in a large projection room. There were small levers each could push—to the right if they liked the scene, to the left if they didn’t. At first this seemed a ridiculous enterprise, especially discouraging because there was absolutely no reaction from the audience. They sat there like wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s, busy concentrating on those levers. I was convinced we had a disaster on our hands.
Then Harry Cohn came tearing in, carrying a roll of paper twenty-five feet long, with the combined graph of those two hundred people plotted on it, and he said excitedly that the curve indicated Columbia was going to have its biggest-ever hit.
He was so certain of his film’s success that he conceived a crazily inspired plan for the premiere. “We all thought Cohn had gone mad when he decreed that ‘this picture will open in the Capitol Theater on Broadway in New York in August,’ ” Zinnemann wrote.3
There was no air-conditioning then, and in August New York was a sweatbox. No one had ever heard of releasing a major film in mid-summer. We were convinced that his gambler’s instinct was leading to certain suicide. More was to come: Cohn declared that there would be no publicity, except for one full-page ad in the Times which he would sign as president of Columbia, urging people to see it.
Wednesday, August 5, was a reliably miserable summer day in Manhattan, the temperature a humid eighty-eight degrees. The smart money, of course, was at the beach; those unlucky enough to have to stay in town walked around fanning themselves and complaining. “I was in Los Angeles when the picture opened on Broadway, on a sweltering August night,” Zinnemann recalled.
No premiere, no limousines, nothing. At 9:00 p.m., Marlene Dietrich (whom I hardly knew) called from New York and said that it was midnight there but the Capitol Theater was bulging, people were still standing around the block and there was an extra performance starting at one in the morning! I said, “How is that possible? There has been no publicity.” “They smell it,” she said.
William Morris cabled the good news to Frank: From Here to Eternity looked like a huge hit, and his performance was a big part of the equation. His mood, already up from a successful week at the Empire in Liverpool, soared. Suddenly Frank was grinning and strutting, and Ava’s eyes were narrowing. But the two of them pulled it together on August 6, when they paid a call on Mr. and Mrs. Earl Wilson at the Savoy. The columnist and his Beautiful Wife were beginning a round-the-world tour, Mrs. Wilson was celebrating her birthday, and the mood was festive. Frank and Ava “came up from the lobby and were in a merry mood,” Wilson recalled.
“He doesn’t know whether to believe all the talk,” Ava said when Frank went to the bathroom … Frank was torn about what attitude to take about all the buildup. Should he be humble or, as one of his realist friends said, “should he start getting that old shitty feeling toward everybody who’d helped him?”
Including his wife, who after all had been instrumental in getting him the role in the first place?
“There was a series of senseless quarrels with Ava,” Wilson wrote. She wanted him to stay in London until she was finished shooting her picture; he had no intention of playing the prince consort. “I’ve got a career too, you know,” he said coldly. A couple of nights after they made nice for the Wilsons, the Sinatras had such a violent battle in the St. John’s Wood flat, replete with flying furniture and broken crockery, that their landlord lost his English composure and, red faced, threatened them with eviction. It didn’t matter: Frank was already gone.
“Dialogue between Ava and hubby Frankie Sinatra as actually heard in London’s swank Ambassador hotel dining room,” Frank Morriss wrote in his August 12 column:
Frankie-Boy: What time is it? Ava: How do I know?
Fran
kie-Boy: I’ll be seeing you … Whereupon he exits …
That night he packed his bags and flew home. Alone.
When he landed at Idlewild, it was as if he’d gone through the looking glass—from drab, still war-ravaged England, cool and clammy even in August, to hot, pulsating New York City, where everyone—everyone, from baggage handlers to cabbies to cops—was congratulating him on his brilliant performance.
Hey, Frankie! Hey, Frankie! Hey, Maggio!
He couldn’t stop grinning. Suddenly everybody wanted to be his friend. The phone in his suite at the Waldorf Towers was ringing off the hook, with more congratulations, and with offers. NBC, which had been interested in him in 1952 but had faded fast when CBS canceled his TV show, was back, talking about an exclusive contract for radio and television. Milton Berle, the guy who used to make fun of his low ratings, wanted Frank to appear on his show for $6,000. Six thousand dollars, for one night—almost as much as he’d made for all twelve weeks of From Here to Eternity; more than three times as much as they’d paid him for that night in Naples.
Offers kept flooding in. Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club in Atlantic City wanted Frank as soon as he could get there; so did Bill Miller’s Riviera in Fort Lee. He was called for television and films: an Army movie with Dan Dailey; a Fox musical with Marilyn Monroe, Pink Tights. And most interesting of all, a waterfront picture with Elia Kazan, set in Hoboken …
In the meantime, MGM was planning to rerelease The Kissing Bandit—a backhanded compliment if there ever was one. His agents at William Morris were suddenly all smiles: he could hear it in their voices over the phone.
Frank distrusted every last glad-hander. He preferred to believe the grudging noises his former detractors were making. “Looking through my Frank Sinatra file today, I discovered that I have been about evenly divided in my praise and my criticism of Frankie-boy,” the Hollywood gossip Jimmie Fidler wrote in mid-August.
Of late, the file is heavily critical, so it pleases me at this time to add something to the good side of the Sinatra ledger.
I am referring to the strong comeback Frank has made, just when everybody figured he was washed up …
About his performance in “From Here to Eternity” a number of columnists are predicting that Sinatra has next year’s Academy Award in his hip pocket.
His performance had thrown everybody for a loop. The toughest reviewers were melting. “For the first time,” the New York Post’s Richard Watts wrote, “I find myself in the ranks of his ardent admirers. 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.”
“Doomed gaiety”—that was good. For the past three years doomed gaiety had been the only kind he’d had. But it was the death scene that got them, he knew it. He and Monty had talked about that scene a dozen times. The trick, according to Clift, was not overplaying it. Dying was like snow falling.
But now he was living—livin’ in a great big way, as the old Dorothy Fields lyric had it. Again he could stroll into Toots Shor’s like the conquering hero (“You crumb bum!” Toots sang out happily at the sight of him); again he could wink at the Copa Girls and decide which would be on the menu first.
Atlantic City was golden in the late-August sun. Frank flared his nostrils and inhaled the salty air. Skinny spread his well-tailored arms to hug him, then indicated a short, sour-looking man in sunglasses and a fedora. Surely Frank remembered their good friend Sam Giancana?
The boardwalk crowds surged into the club to get a glimpse of Frank; the sunburned honeymooners held each other close as he sang to them, better than ever. Dolly came down and pinched his cheeks some more. Skinny wouldn’t let her touch her purse. He was having to put on extra shows at 2:00 a.m. to accommodate the overflow.
Eternity was breaking box-office records in New York and Chicago, the only two cities where it was playing so far: canny Cohn had decided to build the fire slowly. And the Oscar talk was gathering steam. ACADEMY AWARD RACE BEGINS, read an August 30 headline in Lubbock, Texas, where From Here to Eternity couldn’t even be seen yet. “Biggest surprise of the film is the reportedly fine straight acting of Song-and-Dance Man Sinatra,” the accompanying story read, a little wistfully.
Naturally, his good fortune couldn’t go uncontested. “Frank Sinatra has been receiving a merciless needling,” Jimmie Fidler noted, “from a New York columnist—one with whom Frank swapped punches in front of a night club a year or so back. Some of the newspaperman’s cracks have been so ugly that even people who admit they have no great admiration for Sinatra are beginning to take offense.”
In fact, Frank’s assisted mugging of Lee Mortimer at Ciro’s had taken place not a year or so before, but in April 1947—ancient history in newspaper terms. Mortimer had long since had the opportunity to mug Sinatra back, and to savor his downfall. And Frank had fallen and fallen, but—maddeningly—never quite hit bottom. Now, just as the singer was starting to enjoy an improbable resurgence, the columnist was gently fading into obscurity. Throughout the summer, filling in for the vacationing Walter Winchell, Mortimer snapped at Sinatra’s heels. On August 31, he wrote: “Those dark cheaters Frank Sinatra is sporting on Lexington Ave. are not to hide him from the autograph hunters. He’s got a beautiful shiner.”
Whether Frank had received an actual black eye from a romantic rival or a metaphorical one from the envious columnist was never answered. It was Mortimer’s last shot at the singer.
Frank called his wife almost every day, even after he’d sent another conquest home in a cab. Ava, after all, was the one he couldn’t conquer. He tried everything on the transatlantic phone that August: at times, knowing that she took pleasure in his success (and disdained him for his failures), he spoke with pride of his growing triumph; but the second he began to sound cocky, he could hear her glancing at her watch. Then there were the bad moments, when she made him crazy enough to try to bully her.
The hell with St. Louis Woman. He’d rather work with Marilyn Monroe.
Click.
At last, they made a provisional agreement to make up. The minute Ava’s work on the dumb costume epic was completed, she and Reenie threw all her things into her bags. She was bored with England anyway. Clark Gable, who’d stayed in London after Mogambo wrapped, came over for a farewell drink—and reminded her that she’d completed only half of the eighteen months’ foreign residence the IRS required for a massive tax break.
“Ava, honey, you do know what you’re doing, don’t you? You’re packing up and throwing away a hundred fifty thousand dollars in those suitcases.”
She didn’t give a flying fuck. She wanted to see her husband.
Gable smiled, squinty eyed, over his highball glass. Lucky husband.
But at the last minute, Ava decided to stop over in Madrid: Spain made her happy, and she had new friends there, not the least of whom was Luis Miguel Dominguín.
As always, the press took note of her every movement, and since Frank read the papers like everyone else, he got wind of her layover. As far as he was concerned, she had stood him up, but he wasn’t about to tell the reporters that. No comment, was what he said instead. He was booked at the 500 Club through Labor Day—the very day Ava arrived in New York. Frank stayed put.
Ava walked off the plane at Idlewild, her big sunglasses hiding the circles under her eyes, and ran smack into a crowd of eager reporters.
Where was Frankie? Were she and he not getting along?
She adjusted the shades and walked coolly through the pack. “I have nothing to say about it,” she said. She believed he had a singing engagement in Atlantic City.
Did she plan to see him?
“Not today,” she said. “I have no definite plans.” She pulled off her gloves—every man watching her hands with widening eyes—and put them in her bag. “I don’t want to discuss it.”
The reporters crowded closer. One suggested that her answers strongly implied there was some kind of rift.
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“It doesn’t imply anything,” she said, getting into a waiting car. The driver closed the door, and then she was gone.
Frank came to New York the next day and checked into the Waldorf. Ava was in the Hampshire House.
The press smelled blood. “A close friend said the couple had been squabbling and that things might be patched up with a telephone call or ‘blow sky high in 24 hours,’ ” the United Press reported on September 9. And, the next day:
FRANKIE AND AVA FEUDING
NEW YORK (UP)—Ava and Frankie are feuding in frosty silence today just 12 city blocks apart …
Sinatra … told his friends he was completely mystified over Ava’s unannounced return three days ago and her anger. He refused to say why he didn’t pick up the phone and ask Ava.
“I hope to see Frank before I leave next week,” Ava said. “That’s what I came home for.” She wouldn’t say why she neglected to phone him or where she intended to go from here.
“I don’t care to talk about it further,” she said pleasantly, leaning back on the couch and exposing her bare legs. The question of hemlines arose.
“If women follow that very short skirt fad they’re fools,” Ava said. She paused and smiled. “But then, we’re fools.”
It sounded like a high-school quarrel. Speaking to another reporter, Sinatra was the soul of disingenuousness. “I saw a picture of Ava at the airport,” he said, “and that’s the first inkling I had that she was in town. I don’t understand it. We’d had no trouble. I can’t make a statement because I don’t know what she is planning. It’s a crying shame, because everything was going so well with us. Something may work out, but I don’t know.”
Ava replied (to another reporter): “You start with love, or what you think is love, and then comes the work. I guess you have to be mature and grown up to know how to work at it. But I was the youngest of seven kids and was always treated like the baby, and I liked it, and played the baby. Now I’m having a hell of a time growing up.”
