However, Frank didn’t stop until the room was completely demolished. Then, before he walked out the door, he went into his suitcase and pulled from it a large envelope. It was full of hundred-dollar bills. He took the money and threw it at Ava. The cash came raining down around her. “There’s the nineteen thousand dollars you lent me,” he said bitterly. “And, oh, by the way, if you ever call me ‘baby’ again, I’ll rip your fucking tongue right out of your mouth!” With that, he walked out the door.
On her knees and crying, Ava collected all of the money. Then, sobbing, she sat on the floor and counted it as if she didn’t know what else to do.
Meanwhile, Frank took a cab to the airport, got on a plane, and went to Rome for a few days to cool off before returning to New York. “A downcast and lonely-looking Frank Sinatra sneaked out of Rome this afternoon on a New York-bound plane after a five-day attempt to win back his wife,” wrote Reynolds Packard of the New York Daily News.
“That’s it,” Frank told Jimmy Van Heusen when he returned to the States. “What else can I do? I gotta move on. This broad is gonna kill me. I swear to you, no woman will ever do this to me again, because I’ll never let another woman—another person—get this close to me.” Jimmy and Frank were having a drink and a smoke with Sammy Davis Jr. in Davis’s home.
“Don’t say that, Frank,” said Jimmy.
“I mean it, Jimmy,” Frank said. “This will never happen again. You will never see me like this again. You got a Bible around here somewhere, Charlie?” he asked Sammy.
“I could get one,” Sammy offered.
“Get it,” Frank said.
In five minutes Sammy returned with a Bible. Frank, who had a scotch in his left hand, put his right hand on the Bible. “I swear to God, this is the last time a woman will ever get to me like this,” he said. “I swear on the Bible that . . . This. Will. Never. Happen. Again.”
“Holy shit! This cat means business,” Sammy exclaimed to Jimmy. “That’s serious, swearing on the Bible like that. In fact, I think my man here just saved a whole lot of women a whole lot of heartache,” he concluded, slapping Frank on the back.
Sammy was trying to lighten the mood, but Frank wasn’t laughing.
Marilyn Monroe—Take One
During this time, another great screen star, Marilyn Monroe, was also dealing with heartbreak after her divorce from Joe DiMaggio was just being finalized. Frank and Marilyn were good friends, though it’s difficult to determine when they first met. Some point to a meal at Romanoff’s in 1954. It’s known that a year earlier, Marilyn had rejected a script (Pink Tights, a remake of Betty Grable’s 1943 movie Coney Island) that would have teamed her with Frank, causing her to be put on suspension by Fox. (She called that script “cheap, exploitive.”) However, she had always been a fan of Sinatra’s.
Joey Bishop recalled the time Marilyn went to see Frank at the Copacabana, “sometime in the fifties. I’m doing my act, and in the middle of it in comes Marilyn Monroe walking into the room like she owns the joint,” Bishop remembered. “Of course, I lost the crowd. Who’s gonna pay attention to me when Marilyn Monroe walks in? There wasn’t an empty seat in the house, so they pulled a single chair up for her to sit in and stuck it ringside, about four feet away from me. I looked down at her and I said, ‘Marilyn, I thought I told you to wait in the truck.’ ”
In 1954, Marilyn went to live with Frank for a while so that she could regain her emotional bearings. The two consoled each other over their marital woes. They were both still in love with their estranged spouses, so for a time there was nothing sexual going on between them. Frank wasn’t interested in anything anymore, though it was difficult for his friends to fathom that he had one of the most beautiful and sought-after movie stars in the world living with him and there was nothing going on.
The fact that Marilyn had a habit of not wearing clothes didn’t make it any easier on Frank. She simply would rather be naked. Her friends and staff were used to seeing her au naturel. Therefore, it wasn’t a surprise to find her in that state, and she liked to surprise visitors by suddenly materializing in a room with nothing on but that beautiful Monroe smile. When she stayed with Frank during this time, she didn’t change that behavior.
One morning—as Frank used to tell it—he awakened, went into the kitchen wearing just his boxers, and found a naked Marilyn standing in front of the open refrigerator with her little finger in her mouth, trying to decide between orange and grapefruit juice. “Oh, Frankie,” she said, “I didn’t know you got up so early.” That moment marked the end of their platonic relationship.
“He told me that he took her right there in the kitchen, up against the closed refrigerator,” reported one close friend of Sinatra’s. It was the beginning of a long, on-again/off-again affair between them, one that lasted until she died in 1962. “Frank loved her . . . as much as he could love at that time, anyway.”
Frank thought Marilyn was intelligent, witty, sexy, and exciting—and, most of all, unpredictable. But there were a number of reasons why he wouldn’t allow himself to become more serious about her, not the least of which was that the passion he had enjoyed with Ava simply wasn’t there with Marilyn. Besides that, he was still racked with pain over the breakup with Ava. When Marilyn felt strong enough to be on her own and was able to move out of the apartment, Frank was actually relieved. It certainly would not be the end of their relationship, though. In fact, in a few years’ time he would find himself even more deeply immersed in her chaotic world.
After Frank?
Ava didn’t apply for her divorce from Frank until 1954, the grounds she cited having to do with “desertion.” Her attorney, Raul de Villafrance, claimed that “for no legal reason” Sinatra walked out of the home he and Ava shared “for more than six months.” Frank didn’t bother to contest it. Desertion? To him, it was all too ridiculous to even fight. The proceedings would take three years to finalize.
Ava would never marry again.
As for the other casualty of their failed relationship, Nancy had begun to rebuild her life through the love and caring of her three children. As the years passed, she regained the elegance and bearing as well as the sheer spunk that had made her so attractive to Frank in the first place. Her daughter Nancy put it best when she once said, “She has more genuine glamour in an inch of her than in all the stars and starlets put together.”
“My mother, who is a little Italian girl from New Jersey, is without a doubt one of the most remarkable people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing,” said Frank Jr. “She’s like a real tower of strength. She’s never wavered. There could have been a time when she could have made things very unpleasant for my father, but she always remained loyal to all four of us. And my father is most appreciative of this, as am I.”
After their divorce, Nancy remained a respected member of Hollywood society, which is a testament to her popularity, since abandoned wives of stars are rarely heard from again. Nancy was the friend and confidante of many celebrities and so-called industry movers and shakers. “Nancy Barbato Sinatra survived the pain and the notoriety and surfaced with her dignity intact,” concluded her daughter Nancy.
Like Ava, Nancy would also never marry again. When one friend asked her why she never wed, she responded, “After Sinatra?”—which could probably be taken a number of ways.10
The children would survive, as well. By 1954, Nancy was fourteen, Frank was ten, and Tina was six. Surprise visits from Daddy were the best of times. If they didn’t expect him and suddenly saw him pull into the long driveway, they would feel lifted to the sky. He would take them to dinner and, for those couple of hours, be the father to them that they longed for. Then, of course, he would look at his watch and tell them it was time for him to go home. Nancy Sr. would walk him to his car, and as the kids watched, she would whisper to him. They had no idea what she was saying, but to their way of thinking as children, it always sounded loving and reassuring. Frank would listen patiently, nod his head, hug her goodbye, and then ge
t into his car and drive away. No one knew when he would return.
Sometimes they missed their father so desperately that Nancy and Tina would sneak into the room upstairs reserved for him. Some of his freshly pressed suits were stored in a closet there, his ties . . . his fedoras . . . his colognes on a dresser. Taking in the scent of Yardley lavender soap, the girls would thumb through his shirts arranged by color on hangers, and they would wax nostalgic about the times they’d had with him. When they looked back on it as adults they both felt a sense of profound loss. Frank Jr., so disaffected at just ten, would walk by and see his sisters in Daddy’s room and wonder what the fuss was all about, why they were even in there. “Daddy doesn’t live here,” he would tell them matter-of-factly. “I don’t know why you’re in here. Who cares about this room? Let’s go outside and play.”
1954: Academy Award
March 1954 would prove to be a spectacular month for Frank Sinatra. His career was on the upswing, which undoubtedly helped him face a life without Ava. “Young at Heart” hit number one on Your Hit Parade and would become his first Top Five hit in eight years. He was chosen as Most Popular Vocalist of the Year by a Down Beat poll. Frank was also named top male vocalist by Billboard, Down Beat, and Metronome, and by the end of the year it was hard to believe that just a short time earlier no record company was even interested in him. “Only in show business can things turn around that quickly for a guy,” Ava would say. “He deserved it, too. I don’t know anyone who deserved it more.”
Frank’s return to the top was complete when he attended the Academy Awards ceremony on March 25, 1954. He was thrilled about having been nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his performance in From Here to Eternity. His competition was Eddie Albert (Roman Holiday), Brandon deWilde (Shane), Jack Palance (Shane), and Robert Strauss (Stalag 17). Although he was rumored to be the favorite, he realized that there were no guarantees. One thing was certain, though: The nomination served to validate his own judgment about the role of Maggio. He knew all along he was right for it when everyone else, except Ava, thought he was dead wrong.
On March 25, Frank sat close to the back on the left side of the Pantages Theatre, one of twenty-eight hundred people attending the ceremony. Beside him sat Nancy, and beside her, Frank Jr. That day had been Nancy Sr.’s birthday, and she had invited Frank to dinner, during which they gave him a small gold medallion. On one side was a bust of Saint Genesius, the patron saint of actors. On the other was a miniature Oscar in bas-relief. The inscription read: “Dad, all our love, from here to eternity.” He couldn’t have been more touched.
Of the awards presentation, Frank Jr. recalled, “I was a young boy, of course, wearing my first pair of long pants, with very little understanding of the purpose of this event. I knew that something important was going on that night because all through the previous year I had been hearing about my father’s performance in From Here to Eternity. As the evening progressed, I forgot the crowds of cheering people and thought only that I was getting very sleepy. But when [actress] Mercedes McCambridge announced Frank Sinatra as the winner, the audience in the theater gave a cheer and broke into spontaneous applause. The theater went crazy. Men and women cheered, tears flowed from the faces that had suddenly turned to where we were seated. My father slowly rose from his chair and began to walk to the stage, the greatest walk of his life, to receive his Oscar. On his face was a smile I will remember forever.”
Frank clasped the Oscar and for a moment didn’t know what to say. He was that stunned. “Ladies and gentleman,” he finally began. “I’m deeply thrilled and very moved. And I really, really don’t know what to say because this is a whole new kind of thing, you know? I’m a song-and-dance type.” Members of the audience chuckled at the irony of his statement, for it was precisely that sentiment that nearly prevented him from getting the role in the first place. “I’d just like to say, however,” he joked, “that they’re doing a whole lot of songs here tonight, but nobody asked me [to sing]. I love you, though. Thank you very much. I’m absolutely thrilled.”
Frank Jr. recalled, “When Dad, carrying his trophy, returned to Nancy and me in the audience, Donna Reed spoke to us in a loud whisper.’Oh, let me just touch it,’ she said, and she placed her hand on the gold statue. Then, just a few minutes later, her name was called as the winner of Best Supporting Actress for the same film. I can still see the smile on her face.”
In all, the film won eight of the thirteen Academy Awards for which it had been nominated—including Best Picture—which tied the record for wins, previously set in 1939 by Gone with the Wind. Variety reported Frank’s win as “the greatest comeback in theater history.”
Ava had also been nominated for Best Actress for her role in Mogambo, but she didn’t win. When she heard about Frank’s victory, she cried tears of joy. As she would later admit, she felt oddly displaced knowing that he was celebrating his win with Nancy. After all, she had been at his side for the gestation of the project, and knew how much he wanted—needed—the role, and she had pushed for him to get it. Her first impulse was to call him to offer personal congratulations. However, she feared that the sound of her voice might ruin the moment for him. Instead, she sent a telegram. “He thinks I’m a monster,” she told her friend Lucy Wellman. “And I suppose I shouldn’t blame him. I did do some monstrous things to him, didn’t I?” she asked sadly.
“Talk about being born again,” Frank would later recall of the post-Oscar bash at his apartment on Wilshire Boulevard, hosted by Nancy. “I couldn’t even share it with another human being. I ducked the party, lost the crowds, and took a walk. Just me and Oscar. I think I relived my entire life as I walked up and down the streets of Beverly Hills. I started the decade as ‘the man least likely’ and closed it out as a grateful human being given a second shot at life.”
Sammy Davis’s Accident
In November 1954, Sammy Davis performed with his family act, the Will Mastin Trio, at the Old Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas. During that engagement, he was involved in a terrible automobile accident. The next morning, he woke up in a hospital room in San Bernardino, California, his face covered with bandages above the nose. It all came back to him. His head had smashed into the pointed cone in the center of the steering wheel. When he woke up after the impact, he reached up to his cheek and felt his left eye hanging by a thread. He was lucky to be alive, he was told.
After a few days, when the bandages were removed, Sammy began wondering why Frank had not visited him. He became even more concerned when his father brought him a copy of the gossipy Confidential magazine with the headline “What Makes Ava Gardner Run for Sammy Davis Jr.?” It was a completely fabricated story about a romance between Sammy and Ava (as if Sammy would ever have taken such a chance with Sinatra’s friendship). Sammy was frantic. What if Frank saw it? Even if Frank’s gut told him that the story was untrue, he might still have some doubt. And what about Ava? How would she react? As if Davis didn’t have enough to worry about at this time, he telephoned Ava’s publicist from the hospital to find out if there’d been any repercussions. He was told that Ava had decided to ignore the story. However, there was no word from Frank’s camp. For the next few days, Sammy had to sweat it out and wonder why Frank hadn’t sent even a get-well telegram to the hospital.
Then, one afternoon soon after, while Sammy was being examined by a doctor, an excited nurse burst into his room. “It’s Frank Sinatra,” she said breathlessly. “He’s on his way up.” As doctors and nurses crammed the hallway to get a glimpse of the star, the buzz through the hospital was palpable. When Frank finally strutted into Sammy’s room, he tossed his hat onto a chair, lit a cigarette, and then gave Sammy a big bear hug. Sammy would later say he was never so happy to see another person.
Not only was Frank not upset about the Confidential piece, but he arranged for Sammy to stay at his home in Palm Springs during his recuperation. “So what else is new?” he finally said of the magazine story when Sammy pushed for a reaction to it
. “Forget it, Charlie,” he said, using his nickname not only for Sammy but for many people for whom he had affection. “You don’t even have to mention it.”
During his convalescence, Sammy confessed to Frank that he feared his career was over. “Who wants a one-eyed entertainer?” he asked. Frank told him to relax. He predicted that Sammy would be bigger than ever. “Trust me,” Frank said. “The public likes a good comeback story. Take it from me.”
“But how am I going to dance if I can’t keep my balance?” Sammy asked. He said that if he couldn’t dance, he didn’t even want to live. Frank hugged him tightly and kissed him on the neck. Then he held his face in his hands with more affection, as Sammy would recall it, than he’d ever seen from a man. “You’re gonna be fine,” Frank whispered. “Charlie, you gotta be strong. You’ll come outta this thing bigger than ever. You’re alive, man. You’re alive.”
“Frank’s idea of rehab was a little unusual,” his valet George Jacobs recalled with a laugh. “One day he called me into Sammy’s room and said, ‘Your responsibility today, my good fellow, is to teach Charlie here how to light a cigarette, because he only got one good eye and his field of vision is all cocked up!’ So I spent about three hours working with Sammy on how to light a cigarette. Soon he was striking up matches like nobody’s business.”
Four months later, Sammy Davis was back onstage, at Ciro’s in Hollywood, and Frank Sinatra was the man who introduced him to an enthusiastic crowd of celebrities, including Cary Grant, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Jimmy Cagney, and Spencer Tracy. When Sammy walked out, they stood and cheered, shouting, “Bravo!”
Golden
The next two years would prove to be a creative renaissance and golden age for Frank Sinatra. In 1954 and through the end of 1955, he would make a number of successful films, including Suddenly (in which he played a coldhearted killer, to terrific reviews); Not as a Stranger (as a dedicated doctor, with Olivia de Havilland and Robert Mitchum); The Tender Trap (as a ladies’ man and actor’s agent, opposite Debbie Reynolds); and Young at Heart (as an out-of-work songwriter opposite Doris Day). Doris and Frank had worked well together as early as 1949 when both were Columbia recording artists, dueting on “Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk,” from Irving Berlin’s Broadway musical Miss Liberty. However, on Young at Heart they had a number of disagreements, mostly having to do with the production schedule: She liked to start early; he, late in the day. In the end, Doris’s heart went out to Frank when, after a scene in which she had to cry, someone tossed a box of Kleenex at her. When it hit her in the forehead, Frank became upset and scolded the pitcher, “What’s the matter with you? You don’t throw things at a lady! Understand?” Even today, Doris says she often thinks of Frank whenever she reaches for a Kleenex.
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