Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  “But you have three kids,” the lawyer told him. “Obviously, Nancy didn’t always feel that way.”

  “I’d have four if I wasn’t such a fuckup,” Frank said. “I can’t let Ava do this. I have to convince her.”

  Frank would say that one of the major reasons he was so confounded by Ava’s ambivalence about being a mother to his child was that she was so good with his daughters. Nancy Sr. would often drop Nancy Jr. and Tina off at Ava’s sister Bappie’s home so they could spend time there with Frank and Ava. A practical woman, Nancy never tried to keep her offspring away from Ava. If Frank was to be with Ava, she reasoned, she would have to accept Ava as a stepmother to her children. (The daughters figured more into this equation than Frank Jr., who didn’t seem interested in being with either his father or his stepmother.) Ava was very solicitous to both daughters. For instance, she gave Nancy her first lipstick and taught her how to use it. She taught Tina how to sew. They spent time watching television together. They went for long walks and had fun “girls only” luncheons, and then dinners with Frank. From the start, Tina adored Ava. “She made a fundamental impression on me,” Tina recalled. “She seemed to stir all my senses at once. She was gentle and accessible. She immediately knelt to come down to my level. I have never forgotten that gesture.”

  It took Nancy Jr. some time to warm to Ava. “One day while I was playing dress-up in Mom’s dressing room, I climbed up on a chair to get a shoebox off a shelf and knocked to the floor a stack of magazines that Mom had hidden in the closet,” Nancy recalled. “They were movie magazines—Modern Screen, Photoplay, and so forth— and they were filled with pictures of my dad and a pretty lady named Ava Gardner and Mom and Frankie and Baby Tina and me. I was devastated—just like Mom. He had left me too. Eventually, inevitably, I would meet this other woman. My heart just melted looking at her. I was only a kid, I didn’t know about beauty—that awesome kind ofbeauty that takes your breath away. She was just the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my entire life. I couldn’t stop staring at her. In my pre-teenage wisdom, I had some understanding why Daddy had left us.”

  It’s not surprising that Nancy finally “got it” where Ava was concerned. After all, she and her father had a special connection; she would say that she was always able to somehow intuit what was going on in his heart. She would be able to understand and in some way even relate to his feelings for Ava, though she knew how much those emotions were tearing apart her mother.

  After Nancy came around, all she and Tina wanted was to be barefoot all the time and smell just like their stepmother, Ava—her gardenia-scented perfume fascinated them. To her credit, Nancy Sr. tolerated it. To Frank, Ava’s behavior with his daughters not only demonstrated her willingness to be a part of their lives, but also suggested that she could be a fine mother to any children he might have with her. Thus for Ava to want to abort their baby was the source of great frustration for him.

  What he did not know, because Ava had elected not to tell him, was that this was her second pregnancy by him. The first time, in Los Angeles, she had decided not to tell him. “I went to St. John’s Hospital with her during the first pregnancy,” recalled Rene Jordan. “Thing was solved very easily by what is referred to as a D and C [dilation and curettage]. In a campsite in the middle of the bush, things were not quite that easy.”

  Obviously, Ava was not ready to be a mother, no matter the circumstances. It’s also likely that what she observed of Frank as an absentee father to his own children likely didn’t encourage her in wanting to add to his brood. Before the couple was able to reach a decision, though, Frank received an exciting telegram from his new agent, Bert Allenberg, of the William Morris Agency: Harry Cohn had agreed to screen-test him for From Here to Eternity. Frank would have to leave on the next plane back to the States. He just hoped he and Ava would be able to work out all of this confusion between them later. Making him feel all the more dismayed, doubtless, was the fact that he didn’t have enough money for a plane ticket back to the States. He was that broke! He had to ask Ava to spring for a ticket, which she did.

  “Once Frank was gone and she had a chance to think about it, Ava decided that she and Frank shouldn’t bring a child into the marriage,” said Lucy Wellman.

  “The way we fight tells me that there is something wrong with our marriage, and I just think it’s not right to bring a baby into it,” Ava told Lucy in a telephone call from Africa. Lucy warned her that springing an abortion on Frank was not the best way to proceed. She suggested that Ava and Frank had to reach such an important decision together, as a couple. But Ava disagreed. She said that she knew Frank would never allow her to have an abortion. She felt she had no choice but to make the decision herself. “I have to be strong for the two of us,” she maintained. Lucy reminded her of how hurt Frank would be, and Ava agreed. In fact, she said she believed Frank would be “devastated. I think he’ll kill me, actually,” she fretted. “But it’s for the best.”

  “But how are you with all of this?” Lucy asked. “I’m very worried about you.” Ava said that she just couldn’t think about it any longer. In fact, she said, if she thought about it for even one more second, she wouldn’t be able to do it. “I just have to block it all out of my mind and go on and do it,” she said, “and then it will be done.”

  The film’s director, John Ford, also tried to talk Ava out of it. “Ava, you are married to a Catholic, and this is going to hurt Frank tremendously when he finds out. I’ll protect you if the fact that you’re having a baby starts to show,” he told her. “I’ll arrange the scenes; I’ll arrange the shots. We’ll wrap your part up as quickly as we can. Nothing will show. Please go ahead and have the child.”

  “No, this is not the time,” Ava insisted. “I’m not ready. We’re not ready.”

  Ford capitulated and, along with some MGM higher-ups, arranged for his star to go to London for the procedure on November 23, 1952. Ava secretly left Africa with her publicist and the wife of cameraman Robert Surtees at her side and checked into the Savoy Hotel. From there, she went to a private nursing home, where she had the procedure. Afterward, she gave an interview to a reporter for Look magazine to discuss her marriage to Frank, which she painted as being very happy. That reporter only revealed to his closest friends that he did the interview with Gardner while sitting on the edge of her bed in the clinic after she had ended the pregnancy. In his story, he reported that she had dysentery.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, back in the United States, Frank’s screen test had been very well received by the studio. During the test, Frank had improvised a saloon scene in which Maggio shakes dice and then casts them across a pool table. He used olives instead of dice. “That one scene, that one moment of ingenuity, won him the role as far as I was concerned,” said director Fred Zinnemann a couple of years before his death in March 1997.

  But that wasn’t all there was to Frank’s performance. By all accounts, it was a commanding audition in every sense: part realistic, part theatrical, and filled with as much artistry as an actor can possibly squeeze into fifteen minutes. As written, the role was dark and intense. Sinatra, a desperate actor and even more desperate man, gave it all he had.

  Producer Buddy Adler recalled, “I didn’t think he had a chance [of getting the role] and didn’t even go down to the soundstage for the test. But I got a call from Fred Zinnemann, telling me, ‘You’d better come down here; you’ll see something unbelievable; I already have it in the camera. I’m not using film this time. But I want you to see it.’ Frank thought he was making another take, and he was terrific. I thought to myself, ‘If he’s like that in the movie, it’s a sure Academy Award.’ ”

  There was nothing left to do now but to wait for a decision, but it was looking good.

  * * *

  As he waited for news about From Here to Eternity, Frank got the alarming news that Ava had collapsed on the set and had been briefly sent to a hospital in London. In a prepared statement, her publicist confirmed that s
he had some sort of “tropical infection” and was also suffering from anemia. Frank, concerned about the baby, tracked Ava down at the Savoy in London. Lying, she assured him that she was fine, as was the baby.

  It wasn’t until Frank got back to Africa around Christmas that Ava finally confessed to him that she’d terminated the pregnancy. Frank couldn’t believe it. It had happened again, another life terminated by its mother and done so behind his back. He demanded to know what Ava was thinking. Staring at that familiar inscrutable expression of hers made him feel all the more helpless. She vaguely explained her reasons. However, after about fifteen minutes, she just wanted to go.

  “Stay with me,” he begged her. “We need to talk about this, Ava.”

  “No,” she decided. “I really must go.” However, on the way out—as Ava later remembered it—she paused for a moment. She looked at Frank and pleaded with him, “Don’t hate me, Frank. Just don’t hate me. I couldn’t take that.”

  “Too late,” Frank said through gritted teeth.

  “I’m afraid there’s no coming back from this,” Ava later confessed to Lucy Wellman. She said that she just didn’t see how she and Frank could ever recover. “What I’ve done is so monstrous,” she said, sobbing. Lucy told her that she needed to take a moment and think specifically about what she wanted at this time in her life, what she now needed. She pointed out that Ava had suffered two great losses, not just the baby but maybe Frank as well. “Yes, I’ve ruined what was left of us,” Ava said tearfully. “Maybe on purpose,” she added. Then, almost as if she’d just had some sort of epiphany, she asked, “Oh my God! Do you think I did this on purpose? Do you think I ruined us on purpose?” Her friend said she didn’t know, but maybe it was possible. Ava, too emotional to continue the conversation, hung up the phone.

  Filming From Here to Eternity

  By the end of 1952, Frank Sinatra was fairly certain that another actor, his friend Eli Wallach, had gotten the role he so wanted in From Here to Eternity. “When I heard that Eli Wallach had tested for it, I said, ‘Forget it,’ ” Frank remembered. “He’s a seasoned actor and a fine, fine performer.” But then “I got the call,” he said. “They decided that I had the part [at a salary of just $1,000 a week]. “I woulda done it for nothing,” he said, “because it was something I really understood.”

  “I’ll show them,” he said excitedly after he hung up with the studio. “They’ll be glad they finally cast me.”

  Shooting for From Here to Eternity would begin in Hawaii on March 2, 1953. All of the exteriors were filmed at the exact locations described in the novel: Schofield Barracks, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Waikiki Beach, Diamond Head, and the Wailea Golf Course. Harry Cohn sent cast and crew to the islands with a strict budget regarding money and time. The chartered plane arrived at 5 a.m on March 2. By the time the plane landed, Frank and Montgomery Clift were so drunk, an annoyed Burt Lancaster said later, “They were gone. Deborah [Kerr] and I had to wake them up. This is the way they arrived, and Harry Cohn is down there with the press and everything.”

  During filming, director Fred Zinnemann was surrounded by actors with different temperaments. “It wasn’t easy,” he said. “But then again, it was never easy. No film is easy.” Burt Lancaster was protective of Deborah Kerr in her role of the adulterous wife, a 180-degree change from her usual noble characters. But with Zinnemann, Lancaster was argumentative and difficult, trying to get the director to change his lines the way Lancaster felt they should be written. Clift made no secret of the fact he considered Lancaster “a big bag of wind.”

  Later, Zinnemann would say that Frank was easy to work with “90 percent of the time.” When asked to elaborate, Zinnemann said, “Sinatra was really no problem at all. We had disagreements only 10 percent of the time we worked together. With other actors, you were lucky to have 40 percent cooperation. Frank was very giving, very eager. He was troubled. He had a dark side; that was definitely true. He drank much too much. He must have been an alcoholic; he simply must have been. Though, I have to say, he was never a falling-down drunk. He just became very, very ugly when he drank. He brooded. But I felt that whatever he was going through in his personal life somehow added dimension and depth to his performance. He imbued the role with his life experience at the time, whatever it was, and that was clear to anyone watching. He was a pleasure to work with and to watch as he worked.”

  The scenes between Frank and Montgomery Clift were challenging. As soon as Clift knew he was going to play Prewitt, he took boxing and trumpet lessons and also learned how to march in close-order drill so that he could appear as authentic as possible on film. He rehearsed before every scene, encouraging retakes as he discovered different nuances with each take. The intensity that Clift brought to the role had a positive effect on the other actors. They became better in their own parts because he set such high standards for himself. Frank, however, was known as “one-shot Sinatra.” By the third take, he was bored, and he showed it.

  “As a singer, yeah, I rehearse and plan exactly where I’m going. But as an actor, no, I can’t do that,” he once explained. “To me, acting is reacting. If you set it up right, you can almost go without knowing every line. But if you’re not set up right, if the guy you’re acting with doesn’t know what he’s doing, forget it, the whole thing’s a mess. If I rehearse to death, I lose the spontaneity I think works for me. So, yeah, it’s a problem for me sometimes working with a guy, or girl, who has to go over something fifty times before they get it right. I wanna climb the wall. I wanna say, ‘Jesus Christ, just do it and let’s move on.’ With Montgomery, though, I had to be patient, because I knew that if I watched this guy, I’d learn something. We had a mutual-admiration thing goin’ there.”

  Montgomery Clift had been a longtime fan of Frank Sinatra’s. He felt that Frank had many personality traits that he himself lacked. It was more than Frank’s superb musical ability that fascinated Clift. Inhibited and timid, Clift admired Sinatra’s freewheeling ways. For Frank’s part, he was just impressed by Clift’s devotion to acting. So when Clift offered to help him, Frank jumped at the chance. In many ways, Clift took Sinatra to a place he had never before been as an actor. He made him look deep into the role and taught him to experience a part rather than just react to what the other actors were doing.

  Author James Jones was usually on the set and often joined the two of them—Sinatra and Clift—after the day’s work. And what a sad trio they were. Frank would try to reach Ava on the telephone, always a nearly impossible task. As Burt Lancaster put it, “In those days in Spain, if you lived next door to your friends, you couldn’t get them on the telephone, let alone try to get them on the phone from Hawaii. He never got through. Not one night.” James Jones was unhappy because he felt that the movie script was not being true to the book. Meanwhile, Montgomery Clift was secretly wrestling with his own demons.

  The three men would break out a couple of bottles and drink away their misery, night after night, until they passed out cold. Burt Lancaster often had to gather them up, take them to their rooms, get them undressed and into bed. Frank was able to compose himself for the next day’s shooting; Monty was not always so fortunate. There were times when he had to be pumped full of coffee just to do a single scene.

  After forty-one days, shooting on From Here to Eternity was finally wrapped. All Frank could do now was wait to see if his instincts had paid off.

  Frank Signs with Capitol

  With the movie done, a priority for Frank Sinatra was to get his recording career back on track. While it’s difficult to imagine today, back in 1953 Frank simply couldn’t secure a record deal. His contract with Columbia had expired at the end of the previous year, and the company showed no interest in renewing it.

  Sinatra’s good friend Manie Sacks, in a top-level position at RCA at the time, attempted to sell him to that label by calling a meeting of just about every top executive and saying, “He’s available. We need to sign him up. What can we do?” A few days later, Sacks got
back the word: “Manie, we can’t do it. There’s nothing we can do with Sinatra.” Frank Sinatra Jr. later remembered, “Manie said it was the hardest thing he ever had to tell my dad. ‘The guys don’t think they can move you,’ he told him. ‘I could force it and get you on the label with us. But I’d rather you went somewhere else than have you come on with these guys who think, in all honesty, they can’t do it.’ Pop assured Manie he understood.”

  Other record companies were also approached, but there was no interest. Finally, executives at Capitol Records expressed some modest curiosity about Frank and offered him a substandard one-year deal that called for no advance against royalties. All arranging, copying, and musician costs were to be incurred by Frank—the kind of contract that was offered when record-company executives felt they were taking a chance on the artist. Even then, three of Frank’s supporters had to push for it: Axel Stordahl (husband of Capitol recording artist June Hutton) asked Glenn Wallachs (president of the label) for a favor in signing Sinatra, as did Dick Jones (who had played piano for Frank’s wedding to Ava) and Dave Dexter, Capitol’s jazz producer. Dexter was a big fan of Frank’s, but Frank, ever the grudge-holder, rewarded Dexter’s support for him in his hour of need by later rejecting him as a producer because he had once written some critical reviews of Sinatra’s music for Down Beat magazine.

  Frank’s first recording date for Capitol was on April 30, 1953. Producer Voyle Gilmore wanted to team Frank immediately with trumpeter Billy May as arranger, but May was unavailable. So Heinie Beau substituted for him and arranged Frank’s session, “Lean Baby,” on April 2. Also, Axel Stordahl arranged “I’m Walking Behind You” for that same session.

  For Frank’s first Capitol sessions, Gilmore recruited thirty-one-year-old Nelson Riddle (former trombonist-arranger for Tommy Dorsey and arranger of the classic “Mona Lisa” for Nat King Cole) to arrange “I Love You” and “South of the Border.” Other tunes were also recorded at this time, including the marvelously optimistic “I’ve Got the World on a String” (which Frank would often use as an opening number in his act), and the contemplative ballad “Don’t Worry About Me,” both arranged by Riddle. Now it seemed as if everyone was finally on to something magical; Riddle had injected new life into Sinatra’s sound.