Without a doubt, Nelson Riddle was the primary architect of Sinatra’s swinging sound of the 1950s at Capitol. Said Riddle of Sinatra, “There’s no one like him. Frank not only encourages you to adventure, but he has such a keen appreciation of achievement that you are impelled to knock yourself out for him. It’s not only that his intuitions as to tempo, phrasing, and even figuration are amazingly right, but his taste is so impeccable.
“Working with him was always a bit of a challenge, and there were times when the going got rough. Frank was never a relaxed man, as Nat Cole was, for example. He was a perfectionist who drove himself and everybody around him relentlessly. You always approached him with a feeling of uneasiness,” Riddle admitted, “not only because he was demanding and unpredictable but because his reactions were so violent. But all of these tensions disappeared if you came through for him. This man is a giant. Not that there aren’t other good singers around. But he has the imagination and scope of the rarest.” Riddle, who collaborated with Sinatra on more than ninety recording sessions, also mentioned that Sinatra was not one to give praise to producers and arrangers after successful sessions. “He’d never give out compliments,” he said. “He just isn’t built to give out compliments. He expects your best.”
Considering the circumstances of his signing with Capitol, the albums that resulted from Frank’s next seven years at the label are among his best and most memorable. Whereas Columbia nurtured the smooth balladeer in Frank, at Capitol would be born the cool, swinging Sinatra, although he did also record some of his greatest ballads during this period. There was just something different about Frank now. At Columbia, he was a phenomenon who took the world by storm. At Capitol, where time, place, and circumstance, not to mention personal experience, all played a big part in his stunning evolution as an artist, he would become a very serious singer who carefully chose his material. During the “Capitol Years,” as Sinatra devotees call the period from 1953 to 1961, he just sounded better.
“Nelson began to pump a little more power into the sound,” Frank Sinatra Jr. once observed. “Instead of sounding like that silky-smooth crooner of the forties, now Pop was putting more energy into it, belting a little more. His voice lowered too, got better, lost some of its sweetness. His whole attitude was becoming a little more hip. The curly-haired, bow-tied image was gone. Now there was the long tie and the hat.”
Part Six
BACK ON TOP
Success
From Here to Eternity opened at the Capitol Theatre on Broadway in New York on August 5, 1953. Harry Cohn, president of Columbia, decreed that there would be no standard grand premiere with stars, limousines, and interviews. Instead, the movie debuted with a full-page ad in the New York Times, signed by Cohn and urging people to see it. Incredible as it may seem, the lines were so long on opening night—advance word of mouth about the film had been so positive—that the theater management added another show at 1 a.m. to accommodate anxious ticket buyers. Shortly thereafter, the Capitol Theatre was showing From Here to Eternity around the clock. They closed for a short time in the early morning hours just so that the janitors could do their jobs.
Frank was astonished by the public and critical reaction to the film. “I knew it was a good movie,” he said, “and I sensed that I was good in it. But the way the people reacted to it, well, I never expected all of that. I was grateful.”
“He called me up, and I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years,” said Joey D’Orazio, his friend from Hoboken. “And he said, ‘Hey, man, you gotta go see me in this picture. I’m great in this picture.’ I said, ‘Frankie, I already seen it, and you were great.’ ‘I know it, man,’ he told me. ‘I know it.’
“He was just so happy. He said, ‘I’m back. This is my comeback.’ And I said, ‘Frankie, you never left.’ He laughed and said, ‘You know what? There are a lot of people out there, Joey, who thought I was down. But I’m proving them wrong now, aren’t I? And I’m not even singing in this picture!”9
By September, From Here to Eternity was a critical and popular sensation and Frank’s career was showing definite signs of revitalization. In September he appeared at the Riviera in Englewood, New Jersey, to a sold-out crowd.
Joey Bishop was Sinatra’s opening act in Jersey. “Frank had seen me at the Latin Quarter in New York City,” he said, “liked my act, and asked me to open for him. There were eleven hundred people in the audience opening night, and I wanted to make a good impression. I was a little nervous. So I’m saying, ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,’ and all of a sudden the man I am looking at dead center, ringside, is suddenly on my right side. And the guy who was at my left is suddenly sitting dead center. And I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is going on? The room is spinning!’ Then I see Frank in the wings with his thumb to his forehead and waving the rest of his fingers at me. Turns out it was a revolving stage, and I didn’t know it. Frank was back there pushing the button that made it turn. And then he said to the audience on a backstage mike, ‘Place your bets, folks, ‘cause I don’t think he’s comin’ around again.’ I started thinking, ‘Okay, he’s getting his humor back.’ It made me feel like maybe things were going to be okay with him.”
Eddie Fisher remembered Frank’s opening at the Riviera this way: “[It was] one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. He couldn’t sing a wrong note, couldn’t make a wrong move. It was electrifying. There was only one empty seat on that opening night—the one reserved for Ava.” Indeed, Frank and Ava had another argument and she opted out of his opening night. She was present for the second night, though. She sat with Eddie Fisher in the audience. A Journal-American story the next day reviewed the show: “The Voice unleashed a torrent of sound at the sultry Ava. Emotion poured from him like molten lava as he piled the decibels ceiling high. He sang twenty-four songs with scarcely a pause for breath. The customers, except those completely numbed by the moving reconciliation [with Ava], loved it. Never before in the history of nightclubs had an artist been so generous with his voice.”
On October 2, Ava’s Mogambo premiered in New York, and the Sinatras attended the festivities at Radio City Music Hall. The next day, they flew back to Hollywood.
About a week later, Ava went to the Palm Springs home to rest, while Frank was off to Las Vegas to prepare for a singing engagement at the Sands, which would commence on October 19. He was disappointed that Ava would not be joining him for opening night, but—as was par for the course by this time—apparently the two had had another fight, and everyone knew about it because it made all the papers. “I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I love her,” Frank told Louella Parsons from Las Vegas. She responded by saying, “You should be telling that to Ava, not to me.”
The Final Straw
Marilyn Cain was a switchboard operator at the Sands Hotel at the time of Sinatra’s October 1953 engagement there. “One evening, before he retired, he told me that he should not be disturbed unless his wife called. Well, she did call at about three in the morning and said, ‘Connect me to Mr. Sinatra’s room.’ Because I had instructions not to connect anyone unless it was his wife, I politely asked, ‘Who’s calling, please?’ And she screamed at me, ‘You know damn well who this is. This is his wife. Now get him on the line.’ Startled, I said, ‘Yes, Mrs. Sinatra,’ and she said, ‘Miss Gardner. My name is Miss Gardner. Now get him on the line.’ She was upset, to put it lightly.’ ”
Lucy Wellman remembered that Ava had told her that she’d heard that Frank was “shacking up in his room” at the Sands with a Copa Girl. (Much to Ava’s consternation, now there were Copa Girls not only at the Copa in New York but at the Sands in Las Vegas.) “If it had been a major star, then fine,” Ava reasoned. “I could deal with it. I could even compete with it if I chose to. But a showgirl?” When Ava telephoned her husband to check on the rumor, she heard a woman’s voice in the background.
“That’s when the fight started,” Lucy Wellman said. “She was sure Frank was cheating on her. This would be, as it would hap
pen, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. After all the fights, it all came down to this—again, a doggone Copa Girl! I told her that perhaps it was room service she had heard in the background. And she said, ‘At three in the morning the only room service he’s getting is between his legs. Believe me. I know my son of a bitch of a husband.’ She made up her mind then and there that the marriage was over. She told him on the telephone that she was filing for divorce.”
A memo from Sands hotel and casino manager Jack Entratter addressed to “Front Desk Personnel” and dated October 25, 1953, seemed to sum up the status of the Sinatras’ marriage at this time. The memo, found among the Sands Papers housed at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, states, “As per Mr. Frank Sinatra’s instruction, his wife, Ava Gardner Sinatra, is hereby barred from the premises of the Sands Hotel for the remainder of Mr. Sinatra’s engagement here. If Mrs. Sinatra attempts to check into the hotel, she should be referred to this office. Under no circumstances is Mrs. Sinatra to have any contact with Frank Sinatra. Therefore, no telephone calls from Mrs. Sinatra should be connected to Mr. Sinatra’s suite. Furthermore, as per Mr. Sinatra, all media inquiries regarding the status of the Sinatra marriage should be directed to the office of [publicity director] Al Guzman without comment.”
Howard Strickling, MGM’s chief publicist, issued a statement on October 27, 1953, announcing that Ava and Frank had separated and “the separation is final and Miss Gardner will seek a divorce.”
The night after the divorce was announced, Sydney Guilaroff, who was Ava’s personal hairstylist, was watching the evening news when he was startled by the doorbell. When he opened the door, he found Ava. Clearly shaken, she said, “I’ve got to talk to someone.” He moved to hug her, but she backed off onto the front lawn. She started sobbing, and from her obvious tremor, Sydney recalled, he feared the worst. “Is Frank okay?” he asked. Ava took a deep breath and let out a long sigh. Her mouth hung open, and suddenly the glamour she had always worn so well seemed to vanish. She embraced him, and with her chin on his shoulder, she whispered, “I thought I could do it, but I can’t talk about it.” Sydney shook her free, looked into her eyes, and said firmly, “Please come inside.” Ava gathered herself as best she could. “No, no. I’d just break down, and that’s what I’m trying not to do,” she said.
Thinking it best that she be left alone, Sydney went back into the house. For hours, he kept a vigil, peering out his front window, only to find Ava still on his lawn, pacing back and forth, awash in moonlight. Well after midnight, he turned in. Finally, a couple hours later, the roar of her car’s ignition awakened him. He got up and watched as she drove off into the night.
Vegas Investment
Two days after the announcement concerning the status of his marriage to Ava was made, Frank appeared before the Nevada Tax Commission. As it happened, a few months earlier he had applied for the purchase of a 2 percent interest in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. There was a great deal of discussion among the members of the commission about the fact that Frank still owed the government $70,000 of a $160,000 levy. In fact, one commissioner argued that the $54,000 Sinatra was using to buy into the Sands should be applied to his tax debt. However, Frank had been diligent in paying his back taxes, $1,000 off the top of what he was paid for each singing engagement. He had already paid $90,000 of the debt. Because they felt he was acting in good faith, the commission would eventually vote six to one in Frank’s favor, even though there was considerable concern about his connections to the Mafia.
The fact, though, was that the Sands was practically run by mobsters anyway because it was so easy to skim from the take, lie about gross receipts, and only report to the Internal Revenue Service whatever was left. Moreover, because it was not required at that time that cash transactions be reported to the IRS, Las Vegas quickly became a haven for underworld activity. Mobsters were welcome in the city as guests of the hotels and friends of many of the stars who performed there. Some of the entertainers, like Frank, always knew with whom they were dealing when they played Vegas and made “connections” there for other business opportunities. In other words, Frank was proactive in getting involved with such underworld characters. Others, like Sammy Davis Jr., just did their jobs, asked no questions, and kept their distance from unsavory types.
Frank’s interest in the Sands—which in time would grow to 9 percent—would prove to be invaluable to him financially. It was a wise investment that would make him a millionaire many times over in the next couple of years. Eventually, he would become vice president of the Sands Corporation. For him, it was a combination of business and pleasure because, above all, he loved to gamble. It was one of his passions. Both of his parents were gamblers; he would say that “it’s in my blood.” He would be given thousands of dollars a night in credit by the Sands with which to play poker. If he won, the winnings were his. If he didn’t win, he walked away without losing money. He particularly enjoyed the game of baccarat and would lose up to $50,000 a night playing.
Conflicted Christmas
There were a number of significant Frank Sinatra recording sessions for Capitol in the winter of 1953. One of the most noteworthy, on November 5, 1953, was the classic Sinatra interpretation of Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine,” arranged by Nelson Riddle. Originally composed for the Broadway musical Babes in Arms in 1937, “My Funny Valentine” is one of the finest of the love songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Frank’s sentimental, graceful delivery is unforgettable, and he would go on to perform the song in nightclubs and concert halls for the next forty-some years. But “Valentine” was just one of the many classic tracks he recorded on November 5 and 6, for the ten-inch, eight-song Capitol album Songs for Young Lovers and Frank’s Swing Easy!: “A Foggy Day,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” “Like Someone in Love,” “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and “Little Girl Blue.”
On December 8 and 9, 1953, Frank was in the recording studio again. He and Ava were now separated, and though she had not filed for divorce, it seemed that they would never reconcile.
“It was all Mondays” is how Frank once remembered this time in his life. He was down to about 118 pounds. Yet he was making some extraordinary music, including the plaintive and clearly heartfelt “Why Should I Cry Over You” and the universally beloved “Young at Heart.”
Fortuitously for Frank, “Young at Heart” had been turned down by a number of artists, including Nat King Cole. But Jimmy Van Heusen convinced Sinatra to record it, and the song would take Frank to new heights of success when released a month later. Part of the magic of these recordings was their simplicity, and “Young at Heart” is a perfect example. It’s a straightforward, uncluttered, lilting performance.
At Christmastime, Ava was in Italy filming The Barefoot Contessa. Frank telephoned her in Rome and told her that he wanted to be with her for the holidays and also to celebrate her thirty-first birthday. She didn’t discourage him, but she wasn’t happy about it either. During the time away from him, she had another epiphany of sorts about their marriage. “I liked myself more before Frank,” she told Rene Jordan. “What I became as his wife—the way I ended the pregnancies and all of that—I don’t even know who that woman is. That’s not me. I need to be out of this marriage, maybe even more than Frank does. Look what it’s done to me!”
Ava told people in her inner circle that she had wanted to be free of Frank for a very long time, but that she knew she couldn’t do it while he was at such a low point in his life and career. “You’ve been my only way through all of this,” he told her, a constant refrain of his. Making light of it, she would say, “The pressure of that, the responsibility of that, it’s enough to make a girl drink.” The duty of being Frank’s be-all and end-all had, by her own admission, distorted her personality and character, and she had lost her self-respect. Now that his life was on the upswing again, she saw her opportunity to finally extricate herself from the marriage. She believed he was strong enough now to make it on his
own.
Frank arrived in Italy armed with expensive gifts for Ava. However, Ava had already left for the Madrid home of film executive Frank Grant. Had they gotten their signals mixed up, or was she trying to evade him? It didn’t matter to him; he followed her there anyway and they spent Christmas together.
Frank made it clear that he still wanted them to work on their marriage. However, by this time, Ava was in full self-preservation mode. “We need to take some time to fix what is broken in us,” she told him. “You’re a good man, Frank. Let’s get off of this merry-go-round while we can. It’s not right.” Then, perhaps to force the issue, she told Frank that she was dating someone else—a handsome Spanish bullfighter named Luis Miguel Dominguín.
“She was the prettiest and the most fierce,” Dominguín said. “I had a very fierce wolf in a cage.”
Ava couldn’t have been surprised by Frank’s reaction to the news. He proceeded to completely trash the room in which she was staying at Grant’s home. First he threw the television set out the window. Then he shattered all of the crystal. He threw lamps against the walls, turned over tables, and hurled expensively framed photographs all about, sending shards of glass into the air like little missiles. Ava was terrified; she ran for cover. She later told Lucy Wellman she was scared that Frank was going to kill her. “Stop it, baby!” she demanded.
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