Dick Moran, who worked with George Evans and Ted Hechtman as a starstruck junior publicist in 1948 and 1949, recalled, “Ava pushed Frank into getting rid of George. I overheard her one day in the office discussing it with Frank.” Moran remembered that Ava had a vodka and tonic in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. She sat on a stool with her legs crossed, her body erect, and her head tilted back in a glamorous pose. She asked Frank how it was that “this guy, a lowly publicist who works for you, tells you what to do, tells you who to see, tells you who to date?” She asked Sinatra to forgive her if she was being presumptuous, but she had to admit that she had never seen anything quite like it. Sinatra studied her critically. He wasn’t accustomed to women taking this kind of tone with him. Making it worse, Ava had a habit of blowing little smoke rings when she had intense conversations with him, which further irritated him. (“If you’re gonna smoke, just smoke,” he’d tell her. “It’s not art, lady. It’s just a cigarette.”)
“Get some backbone, Frank,” Ava continued. She suggested that Frank tell George to “scram.” She said she knew many publicists much more professional and talented than George Evans and that if he would allow her to, she would gladly find someone for him who would do the job: “publicity, and that’s it.”
Frank walked toward Ava, put his cigarette to his lips, and inhaled deeply. He shot a thick plume of smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “I’ll deal with it my own way, sweetheart,” he said, acting like a gangster.
Ava, maybe feeling that she’d lost this showdown, rose from her stool and exited the cloud of smoke—and the room. As she did, she passed Dick Moran, who had been waiting just outside the door for the tension to subside. He would remember that her perfume, as she sauntered by him, reminded him of “rose petals in an ashtray.” According to what he later recalled, she turned and walked over to him. “Say, sweetie, how much sway do you have over this George Evans character?” she asked him.
“Well, not much,” Moran said. “He’s my boss.”
“I wonder”—she began getting closer to him—“can you arrange a meeting between me and this cat?”
“Well, maybe you should ask Mr. Sinatra to do that,” he suggested.
“Oh, Mr. Sinatra doesn’t need to know everything, now does he?” she asked, stroking his arm. “For me? Please?”
“Sure, Miss Gardner,” he said, swept away.
“You can call me Ava, handsome,” she said with a wink as she walked away.
“She was a take-charge kind of woman,” Moran recalled many years later. “My gut told me she always got her man, one way or the other. Anyway, I set up the meeting. I have no idea what happened during the meeting except that afterward, George Evans told me, ‘I’m done with Frank. That crazy broad, Ava, makes Lana Turner look like a saint.’ He said he planned to ditch Frank, that he’d had it with all of the drama. ‘You can’t fight city hall,’ he said.”
But then the next day Frank beat George to the punch, ending their relationship himself. “We’re done,” he told George. “I heard you talked to Ava about me, and that’s it. No more.”
“Wait! She asked to see me,” George said. “She called the meeting, not me.”
“That’s not the way I heard it,” Frank said. “Did you try using the morals clause card with her too, you bum?”
“No,” George shot back. “Because that’s one dame who doesn’t even have morals.”
Frank, according to what George later recalled, grabbed him by the collar. “You little weasel,” he sneered at him. “You can’t get a girl of your own so you spend all your time trying to come between me and mine? That’s pretty pathetic, George,” he said. He released him and then shoved him backward. “We’re done,” he announced. “Get lost. You don’t work for me no more.” And with that, it was over. Despite years of service spent trying to manage not only Frank’s career but also his private life, it now appeared that George Evans was to be just another close friend of Sinatra’s kicked to the curb.
Empty
In early 1951, Frank Sinatra was booked at the brand-new Shamrock Hotel in Houston, which would open its doors on January 28. He traveled to the venue with his friend the songwriter Jimmy Van Heusen. While changing planes in El Paso, they learned that George Evans had died suddenly of a heart attack. He was just forty-eight.
Dick Moran said, “To be honest, I think it ate away at George that a broad got between him and Frank. He just couldn’t get over it. He kept saying, ‘I can’t believe Frank would do that to me. I got rid of all the other dames; I just couldn’t get rid of this one. She got rid of me!’ The night he died, George called me and told me that he’d tried to telephone Frank but that he couldn’t get through. He said, ‘I don’t care if I’m working for him or not. I gotta talk some sense into him.’ Then he was gone.”
When Frank learned of George’s death, he immediately hopped on a plane for New York so that he could attend the funeral at the Parkwest Chapels on Manhattan’s West Side. In subsequent years, he never let himself think much about George Evans. In fact, if someone brought up George’s name in conversation, he would almost always change the subject. “Did he feel guilty?” Ted Hechtman asked. “I don’t know. I have spent years wondering about Sinatra. Did he have a conscience? Did he have a moral code? I kept hoping that people who knew him better than we did knew some other side of him. But then I thought, ‘Christ, if his own wife never sees it, then I don’t know what to think.’ ”
Around the time of Evans’s death, Frank found himself in another public relations imbroglio when he made some remarks about a singer and actress named Ginny Simms, with whom MGM boss Louis B. Mayer was having a romantic relationship. Mayer had recently been injured in a fall from a horse; however, Frank joked that he hadn’t fallen off a horse at all. “Actually, he fell off of Ginny Simms,” Frank started saying at cocktail parties. When he told the joke to Gene Kelly, Kelly said it wasn’t very smart. “You stupid dago bastard,” he said, according to Nancy Sinatra. “When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut?” Kelly pointed out that if the very sensitive Mayer ever heard the gag, he would be furious.
“You’re right, Shanty,” Frank said, using his nickname for him. “I’m sorry. But what’s the big deal?”
“First of all, Ginny Simms is married,” Gene Kelly said. “She’s married to the guy who owns the Hyatt hotel chain.”
“No shit?” Frank said. “I sure didn’t know that. Well . . . it’s just a joke.”
“Not a good one,” Gene said. “You’re playing with fire, Frank.”
Gene Kelly was right. As head of the studio to which Frank was under contract, Mayer was the last person he could afford to alienate. “Mayer was a very difficult man who was completely devoid of a sense of humor,” Sinatra later said. “Three days after I made that joke, he wanted to see me. I didn’t know he had heard it. So, I’m sitting there in a meeting with him, and he’s almost in tears, and he says, ‘I love you like my son. I never had a son.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, he’s gonna give me the whole studio!’ Then he said, ‘I hear you tell a funny story about me and Ginny Simms.’ My face dropped. I knew I was sunk.”
Mayer told Sinatra, “I want you to leave this studio right now, and I don’t want you to ever come back.”8
In the end, Frank’s contract with MGM was terminated a full year before it was due to expire. He was paid $85,000 to walk away, but he would much rather have had the contract.
Also complicating Frank’s life and career at this time was the resignation of Manie Sacks, a staunch Sinatra ally, from Columbia Records. His replacement, Mitch Miller, would prove to be less successful in finding material for Frank, and much of the material Frank would record with Miller would not be considered suitable by fans and critics alike. In truth, Miller, who would go on to great success with singers such as Tony Bennett and Rosemary Clooney, didn’t really know what to do with Frank.
With things so out of control and George Evans no longer around to do damage
control, Frank began to gravitate more toward Ava than ever before. He began to view her as the only truly stabilizing force in his life. He seemed to be losing everything else, but at least he had her. While he was in New York for George Evans’s funeral, he spent all of his time with her. It was more than just great sex for Frank, though. When he was with Ava, he was able to relax and forget about his flagging career and all of the disappointments of recent years. He was also able to forget about Nancy, though he felt guilty about leaving his children. “The very sight of their little faces kills me,” he said at the time. Still, Ava was a distraction when he most needed it. Frank not only wanted Ava, he needed her. As for Ava, her long-term intentions were unclear.
At the beginning, Ava was in the throes of passion and deep infatuation. She was swept away by the sheer novelty of having Frank in her life, but was her passion for him growing into love? “She was saying what Frank needed to hear when he needed to hear it,” Peter Lawford once observed. “Frank took it to heart. Very quickly, he lost himself in her,” Lawford concluded. “If Ava was capable of true love, I never saw it and I dated her, too, before Frank. I knew Ava. I knew her well. She was cold as steel. But that was just my experience with her.”
Maybe Dick Moran put it best: “They were hoping to fill one another. But how could they? They were both completely empty.”
Ava: “Nancy Will Thank Me One Day”
Frank Sinatra canceled the first couple of days of his engagement at the Shamrock Hotel in order to attend George Evans’s funeral. When he finally got to Houston to begin work, a surprise visitor was already there to greet him: Ava.
So far, Frank had been able to keep the affair with Ava out of the press. They tried not to be seen together in public, maybe just a fleeting appearance now and then, but not enough for the public and the media to put the pieces together. Frank knew that Ava’s presence in Houston was really asking for trouble—the press would surely spot them wherever they went. He was right. Ava knew it, too. That’s why she showed up. She and her maid, Rene, talked about the pros and cons, and in the end Ava did what she did best: She threw caution to the wind. It was time to move things along, she decided. How much longer were she and Frank going to act as if they weren’t a couple? Also, she felt it was time for Nancy to wake up. If Nancy still thought Frank was truly hers and hers alone, perhaps, Ava decided, it was time to disabuse her of that notion.
Frank and Ava were at a dinner party at Vincento’s Sorrentino Italian restaurant, hosted by the mayor of Houston, when trouble started. Spotting them, photographer Ed Schisser of the Houston Post asked to take their picture. Ava later said that at the sight of the lensman Frank “reacted as if he’d found a live cobra in his salad.” After Sinatra told Schisser to get lost, Schisser gave him a dirty look. That was all it took to incite Frank; he plowed into the photographer, shoving him backward into a nasty fall. The next day, news of Sinatra’s presence at the party with Ava and his confrontation with the photographer made all of the wire services.
In reading about it in the press, Nancy Sinatra still didn’t quite know what to make of the affair with Ava. Frank always seemed to come back to her sooner or later, even if just temporarily. However, when Nancy called him in Houston, he was categorical; he wanted out of the marriage for good. He said they would discuss it when he returned to Los Angeles.
On Valentine’s Day 1950—arguably not the best timing—Frank, now back home, told Nancy he was serious about Ava. He didn’t want to hurt her, he said, but the fact remained that he loved another woman. Nothing in his life meant as much to him as Ava, he said. How many times had she heard this story? “Every time you get involved with one of these women, she’s the only one for you and you want to be with her forever,” she screamed at him. “Then, a month later, it’s over and someone else is in the picture and the cycle starts again. Well, I’m sick of it!” Nancy was so angry, in fact, she slapped Frank hard across the face, kicked him out of the house, and had all of the locks changed. A legal separation, she speculated, might give him a little time to get Ava out of his system. She was certain of only one thing: She still wasn’t going to give him a divorce.
Fundamentally, Nancy’s reasons hadn’t changed. As a devout Catholic, it was against her religion to divorce. She also wanted to keep her family together for the sake of her children. Moreover, Frank just couldn’t be trusted; he was always “in love” with someone and she still wasn’t going to end a marriage over one of his flings. Also, she knew of other women in the exact same predicament. At this same time, Dean Martin had become involved with a blonde model named Jeanne Biegger. Dean and his wife, Betty, had four kids, aged between one and seven, yet that didn’t stop him from having an affair with Jeanne. Betty refused to give him a divorce until finally Dean told her that Jeanne was pregnant, upon which she decided to grant the divorce rather than allow a child to be born out of wedlock—only to later discover that Jeanne wasn’t pregnant at all. So Nancy knew that this sort of marital conflict wasn’t unusual in show-business families. She wasn’t alone, or at least that’s what she kept telling herself.
It was at around this time that Nancy lost Dolly’s support. “Give him a divorce if he wants one,” Dolly told her, this according to Tina Sinatra. “It’s better for you, better for the children.”
Nancy was deeply disappointed in Dolly. Now was not the time for her mother-in-law to waver; Nancy needed Dolly to be on her side. “How can you say that to me?” she demanded. It’s because I have children that I want to save the marriage. Isn’t that what you once told me?”
“Yes, but that was then,” Dolly said. “You can’t keep a man if he doesn’t want to be there.”
What Nancy didn’t know yet—but would learn very shortly—was that Dolly actually liked Ava very much. First, she was impressed with her celebrity; she had already been a fan. “Her birthday is December 24, and mine is December 25,” Dolly liked to remind people. “How do you like that?” Moreover, once she got to know Ava’s toughness, she respected her as a kindred spirit. And Ava knew how to make Dolly happy. When Dolly said she wanted to introduce Ava to some of her friends in Hoboken, Ava didn’t blink; she made herself immediately available and then one day went from door to door with Dolly as Dolly introduced her as “the great Ava Gardner, Frankie’s fiancée.”
Nancy, like Frank, could hold a grudge when she wanted to, and she would against Dolly. In fact, she would never quite forgive her mother-in-law for abandoning her, encouraging the end of her marriage, and then supporting Ava. Things between them would be frosty from this time forward.
On February 15, gossip columnist Hedda Hopper reported that the Sinatras had separated. Nancy told Hedda that life with Frank had become “most unhappy and almost unbearable. We have therefore separated. I have requested my attorney to work out a property settlement, but I do not contemplate divorce proceedings in the foreseeable future.” Nancy admitted that this was actually the couple’s third separation. (“Really?” Ava said to a friend. “The son of a bitch never told me that.”) “He’s done it before, and I suppose he’ll do it again,” Nancy said of Frank’s behavior. She added that the decision to separate had been her own.
The reaction of the press and the public to Nancy’s news was decidedly negative for both Frank and Ava. Frank was perceived as a cheater; Ava, a home-wrecker. Movie magazines, the 1950s version of today’s supermarket tabloids, trumpeted sensational details of the affair and of Nancy’s heartbreak over it. “The shit really hit the fan,” Ava would have to admit years later. “In the next few weeks, I received scores of letters accusing me of being a scarlet woman, and worse. The Legion of Decency threatened to ban my movies. Catholic priests found the time to write me accusatory letters. I even read that the Sisters of Mary and Joseph asked their students at St. Paul the Apostle School in Los Angeles to pray for Frank’s wife. I didn’t understand then, and still don’t, why there should be this prurient mass hysteria about a male and a female climbing into bed and doing what comes nat
urally.”
Ava’s Metro boss, Louis B. Mayer, joined the fray in being outraged about the affair, and, citing the same morals clause in her studio contract that George Evans had decided not to try to use against her, threatened legal action against her. Indeed, as with all actresses, Ava’s contract stipulated that she was to act “with due regard to public conventions and morals” and that she must not “do or commit any act or thing that will degrade her in society, or bring her into public hatred, contempt, scorn or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or offend the community in general.” Mayer had already gotten rid of Frank, and he said he would be happy to do the same with Ava. But Ava said she thought the morals clause was “worth a few laughs.” It meant nothing to her.
Meanwhile, Ava’s feelings about Frank’s marriage to Nancy remained simple. “If he was happy with her, he would have stayed with her. But he wasn’t, which is how I got him.” She couldn’t relate to Nancy Sinatra and seemed not to have much empathy for her. In fact, Ava liked to believe she would never find herself in the same situation. If a husband of hers ever wanted out of a marriage, she would say, she would be more than happy to set him free.
“Why would a woman want a man who doesn’t want her in return?” she asked her friend Lucy Wellman over drinks one night at the Polo Lounge. (Wellman had been hired to be Ava’s personal assistant, but the two women decided they were better off as friends; they remained so for thirty-five years.) Lucy told her that it wasn’t so simple, that love was complicated and that perhaps, because there were children involved, Ava should back off. Ava strongly disagreed. “Why would Nancy Sinatra be so devastated to have a man who doesn’t want her out of her life?” Ava asked. “I would say, ‘Good riddance. Get out! You don’t want me? Fine. I don’t want you.’ ”
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