Sinatra

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

Mia wasn’t happy about it. “But why?” she asked.

  “Because I said so.”

  The wedding took place the next day in Las Vegas. Mia wore a white silk dress with full caftan sleeves, the kind of informal dress a woman might wear for her second wedding, not her first. Her hair was boyish, cut as close to her head as Frank’s. He was dapper in a dark suit and tie. Red Skelton, the famous comedian, was one of the few witnesses. “That guy over there, Red? He just shot his wife,” Frank confided to Mia right before the ceremony. She was shocked. What kind of world was she entering, where a man shoots his wife and then attends the wedding of a friend? “Don’t worry. It’ll be ruled an accident,” Frank assured her. “She accidentally shot herself,” he added with a wink. (Red’s wife, Georgia Skelton, was in the hospital in Las Vegas after suffering a gunshot wound to the chest on July 19, the day before the wedding. Skelton said his wife might have brushed against the loaded gun while reaching for a dressing robe. Just as Frank predicted, the shooting was ruled accidental.)

  In a few hours, the newlyweds were at Frank’s home in Palm Springs.

  Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, it was Dean Martin who alerted Tina. She happened to be at his home, and he asked to speak to her in his den. “I just want you to know, kiddo, your dad and Mia are getting married,” he told her.

  “What? When?” she asked.

  “Right now. In this very second,” he said.

  “Are you kidding me?” Tina asked, shocked.

  “Nope. It’s happening right now,” Dean said, according to Tina’s memory of the conversation. “Go home and tell your mom before she hears about it on the news.”13

  Tina thanked Dean for the information and left his house, racing back to hers as quickly as possible. By the time she got home, her mother had already gotten the news. Dorothy Manners, who was now writing Louella Parsons’s column for her, had called to get a comment after the wedding photos made the wire service. Nancy was upset. She couldn’t believe Frank would marry Mia and not tell any of them about it in advance.

  About an hour later, Frank finally called, but he was the last person on earth Nancy wanted to speak to. Tina took the call. Frank said he wanted to warn them; something “big” had happened. “Too late,” Tina told him. “We already know.” Father and daughter then had a very heated discussion.

  Tina’s disappointment in Frank was understandable. He had trusted her enough to allow her to meet and befriend Mia, and she had no harsh judgment about the relationship. She was on his side, if in fact sides were to be taken. Why then would he exclude her from his plans to marry Mia? Worse yet, in her mind anyway, that her mother should have to hear about it from a gossip columnist was unacceptable.

  “But I want you to be happy for me,” Frank said.

  “That’s impossible,” Tina said angrily. “I’m too busy being pissed off at you.”

  “That’s not fair,” Frank said. “I’m happy for you and Sammy, aren’t I?”

  At this time, Tina was dating a Realtor, Sammy Hess, who was ten years her senior; she was eighteen, he was twenty-eight. Hess would present her with an emerald cut diamond, but not before asking Frank for permission to marry her. Sinatra appreciated the gesture; he liked Hess. Even though there was a big age difference, he decided to support Tina. Now he wanted her to do the same for him. Tina actually had no problem with the age difference between him and Mia. It was his secret marriage that bothered her. “How would you like it if Sammy and I just up and eloped and didn’t tell you about it?” she asked Frank. He had to admit, he would be very unhappy. (In the end, Tina decided not to marry Hess, breaking off their engagement twice just before going to the altar. Years later, Hess would end up dating Mia Farrow!)

  In the end, Tina refused to give Frank her blessing, and during the ensuing argument made a few comments she would later feel badly about, and for which she would apologize. Years later, she would say, “I can’t blame Dad for keeping his secret. He couldn’t trust his family because he didn’t want to hear what he already knew: that he was nuts.”

  Nancy Sr. and Nancy Jr. were just as upset at Frank as Tina. They knew they’d have to get over it, though. What were they going to do? Cut him out of their lives? Nancy, who was truly bereft, issued a statement: “Of course, none of this came as a surprise to us. Our father told us he was going to marry Miss Farrow last weekend. So we knew it was happening.”

  Meanwhile, Frank Jr. was performing at the KoKo Motel in Cocoa Beach, Florida, when reporter George Carpozi, hopeful of soliciting a comment from him, called him with the news of his father’s marriage. “You must be kidding,” Frankie gasped. “I don’t believe it. When did it happen?”

  After Carpozi explained the details, he asked why Sinatra Sr. had married so quickly—and quietly.

  “I think you ought to confine questions like that to Frank Sinatra,” Frank Jr. said.

  “Is this true love?” Carpozi said, pushing.

  “How the hell am I supposed to know?” Frank Jr. yelled into the telephone. “You got the wrong person, I told you. Go ask Frank Sinatra.”

  Mia Meets Ava

  In a few days, Frank was back in London to continue work on The Naked Runner, a suspense drama in which he portrays an inadvertent assassin, but now with Mia at his side and the press stalking the couple at every turn. While in London, he took Mia to meet Ava one night at her new town house in Ennismore Gardens in Knights-bridge. George Jacobs recalled, “The three of us walked up to Ava’s door, knocked on it, and when it opened, there stood magnificent Ava, with all of this raven hair all teased out like a big black cloud around her face. She took one look at Mia with her short, short haircut and her mouth dropped wide open. But she recovered quickly and welcomed us into her home.”

  “Francis, now why don’t you and George take little Rags out for a wee-wee,” Ava said, referring to her corgi. (This was the second corgi Ava had named Rags.)

  “Well . . .” Frank hesitated. He glanced at Mia, who looked terrified.

  “Oh, come now,” Ava said, putting her arm around Mia. “I won’t bite, I promise.”

  “We walked out the door with Rags on a leash,” George Jacobs recalled, “and Frank said, ‘Leaving Mia with Ava is like sending a lamb to the slaughter.’ We tried to make it quick, but the dog wouldn’t piss. ‘If this little bastard doesn’t go soon, I’m gonna strangle him,’ Frank warned me. ‘We gotta get back to Mia!’ I asked him, ‘Why did we even bring her to meet Ava?’ And he said, ‘Because Ava has been bugging me about it ever since she found out we were going to be in town. I had no choice.’ He was a nervous wreck.

  “Finally, when we returned, Ava and Mia were sitting on the couch, having cocktails and laughing away. Mia was just fine. Ava was very tipsy. Obviously she’d had a head start on us. We sat down and joined them.

  “Francis, now why didn’t you tell this child that you called me on your wedding day?” Ava asked Frank.

  “Um . . . well . . .” Frank stammered, looking uncomfortable. “Did I call you, Ava?” he asked, looking like a deer in headlights.

  “Why, of course you did!” Ava exclaimed. “Remember, you said, ‘Tomorrow, when you read about this wedding in the papers, know that no matter how I feel about this girl, I will always have a place in my heart for you.’ That was so sweet of him, wasn’t it, dear?” Ava asked, turning to Mia.

  Mia nodded with a frozen smile. “Well, it is interesting, I’ll say that much about it,” she observed. “I think what’s even more interesting, though,” she added, glancing at Frank, “is that he wouldn’t let me call my own mother, yet he called you, his ex-wife.”

  “Now, that is interesting, isn’t it, dear?” Ava agreed, nodding.

  “Mr. S. looked like he wanted to dig a big hole in the floor and just jump right in,” recalled George Jacobs. “After about another hour, Mr. S. decided we had to leave because he had to get up early and be on set. When we got up, Ava asked about Tina and Nancy. Frank said they were fine. Then she asked about Frank Jr. ‘He’
s good,’ Frank said quickly. ‘And what does he think of this young girl?’ she asked, referring to Mia. Frank stammered and turned to Mia and said, ‘Have you met my son?’ And Mia said, ‘Um . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so. Have I?’ Ava just shook her head.

  “As we walked to the door, Ava took Mr. S.’s arm and I heard her say, ‘I approve, Francis. I can’t say that I understand. But I do approve.’

  “In the cab on the way home, Mia didn’t say a word,” George Jacobs continued. “I think she was still a little rattled by what she found out Frank had told Ava on her wedding day. Frank didn’t speak, either. I had a sense that if I hadn’t been squeezed between them in the backseat of a taxi, they probably would have had words.”

  The next day, Frank woke up feeling like he needed a break. Since he was a producer on the film, he felt he could take a brief hiatus if he wanted to do so. He wanted to go back to Palm Springs for a few days, maybe even film the rest of the movie there. “I’m tired and so’s Mia,” he told director Sidney Furie. Therefore, George Jacobs called the airline and made reservations for the three of them to depart the next morning.

  Later that evening, Frank and Mia attended a party at a nightclub called Dolly’s on Jermyn Street. Suddenly . . . there she was again: Ava. Frank had gone to the men’s room and Mia was dancing with George on the very crowded dance floor when Ava approached. “Daaaaarling, I never said it,” she told Mia urgently while pulling her in closely. Mia looked confused. “The papers!” Ava exclaimed, ignoring George. “They wrote that I said, ‘I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a boy!’ But I didn’t say it, my dear,” she insisted, slurring her words. “I meant to tell you this yesterday, but it completely slipped my mind. You must believe me. Tell me that you do!”

  It was such a mad scene, with loud, thumping music and partygoers squeezed so tightly together, Mia could barely move, let alone think. She didn’t know what to say to Ava. “Well, thank you,” she finally managed over the din. “Thank you for telling me that, Miss Gardner.”

  And with that, someone pulled Ava Gardner back into the crowd.

  Unkind

  For the rest of 1966 and into 1967, Mia Farrow did her best to be Frank Sinatra’s dutiful wife at the desert compound. When guests would visit, she tried to be gracious, but still, she was a clumsy and inexperienced hostess. She would much rather have been at the Factory—a discotheque in Hollywood—dancing with people her own age than be stuck in Palm Springs (“Graveyard for the Dead-and-Coming,” as she called it), serving cocktails to people twice—even three times—her age. “More gasoline for everyone,” Frank would tell her. Always at Frank’s side in Palm Springs were people like Bill and Edie Goetz—she was Louis B. Mayer’s oldest daughter and a renowned socialite with an art collection worth more than $50 million; Jack Entratter, president of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, and his wife, Corinne; Rosalind Russell and her husband, movie producer Frederick Brisson—people who were more the peers of Mia’s mother than of Mia. “All she wanted was to be Mrs. Frank Sinatra,” said one of her friends. “That was all she wanted, that’s all she was. So she just tried and tried.”

  In the spring, Mia went to Europe to make A Dandy in Aspic, with Laurence Harvey. Frank, not crazy about her having a movie career, decided she could make one picture a year, just to placate her. Meanwhile, he took on an engagement at the Fontainebleau in Miami while at the same time filming the movie Tony Rome. It was a tough schedule—before cameras by day and audiences by night. He and Mia spoke on the telephone three, sometimes four times a day, and seemed to be on good terms. It would be ten days in London for her, and three in Berlin, or so Mia promised Frank. She told him she would be home “soon.”

  Of course, as often happens in the movie business, there were all sorts of production delays, not the least of which was caused by the sudden death of the film’s director, Michael Mann. When Mia called Frank to tell him of Mann’s death, she was very distraught. He’d been such a gentleman, she said, yet when he died everyone—even his own wife—seemed more concerned about how the movie would be finished than about his demise. Mia said that they called room service instead of a coroner. And there was Michael Mann, sprawled out on the bed dead, while everyone ate and talked about how the show had to go on. Mia told Frank that based on that macabre scene alone, she didn’t feel she was cut out for the movie business. Even though she was crying, none of it seemed to matter to Frank—at least not until she said, “It looks like I’ll be here for at least an extra week.” Now he was listening. “Absolutely not,” he said. He didn’t care about the movie’s scheduling problems or even about Michael Mann’s death, he just wanted his wife home. Now Mia was even more upset; she demanded to know why it was that her problems never seemed to matter. After all, she pointed out, she dealt with Frank’s problems every single day of the week, yet when she had one, it meant nothing to him. He hung up on her.

  When Mia finally did return to the States, things seemed different with Frank. He was more distant, aloof and even unkind. One afternoon, George Jacobs found Mia on a lounge at the pool, crying softly. He felt badly for her. He walked out to the patio, lit a joint, and handed it to her. Though the two did get high from time to time, they never did so at the house because they knew how Frank felt about drugs. Usually they’d take a drive into the canyons and fire up a joint there. But she was so sad, George felt Mia deserved a bit of a respite. Besides, Frank wasn’t home; he was at a meeting. She smiled up at him, took the joint, put it to her mouth, and inhaled deeply. After he sat next to her, they finished the joint. After about twenty minutes, Mia took a final hit, closed her eyes, and exhaled a plume of smoke toward the sky. “Right now, to tell you the truth, Georgie Porgy,” she said with a sigh, “I couldn’t give two shits about Frank Sinatra.”

  “Somethin’ Stupid”

  On April 15, 1967, Frank Sinatra had a number one record in a duet with his daughter Nancy with the catchy song “Somethin’ Stupid.” The tune had been recorded back in February at the end of sessions for the critically hailed album Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

  “Somethin’ Stupid” is the only father-daughter duet to ever go to the top of the charts. Lee Hazlewood found the song for Nancy—it was originally recorded in the early 1960s by folksinger Carson Parks. When Hazlewood played the Parks song for Frank, he felt it would be a perfect duet. He told Lee that if he didn’t want to record it with Nancy, let him do it. The idea of Frank and Nancy on a record together was too good to resist. In the end, it was coproduced by Frank’s producer, Jimmy Bowen, and Hazlewood. The single was completed in just four takes.

  Some executives at Reprise were a little concerned that a father and daughter singing a love song to each other would seem . . . odd. One voiced that opinion to Frank, who said, “C’mon. Forget it. The song is gonna be a hit.”

  Mo Ostin, president of Reprise, was one of those who thought the song would bomb. He bet Frank two bucks on its quick demise. Needless to say, he lost the wager.

  The song spent four weeks at number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. It would be Frank’s second gold single, and Nancy’s third.

  Personality Disorder

  In September 1967, Mia would get another strong dose of Frank’s volatile temper, and it would once again place her in physical peril.

  Frank was back in Las Vegas, at the Sands. Mia wasn’t fond of Vegas and found herself bored whenever she went there with Frank. It annoyed her that he was usually off gambling while she—and the wives and girlfriends of his pals—dutifully watched them win or lose from the sidelines. “The women, who didn’t seem to mind being referred to as ‘broads,’ sat up straight with their legs crossed and little expectant smiles on their carefully made-up faces,” Mia later remembered. “They sipped white wine, smoked and eyed the men, and laughed at every joke. A long time would pass before any of the women dared to speak; then, under the mainly male conversation, they talked about their cats or where they bought their clothes, but more than hal
f an ear was always on the men, just in case. As hours passed, the women, neglected in their chairs, drooped—no longer listening, no longer laughing. Often, I fell asleep with my head on my arms folded on the table.”

  One Friday evening, Jack Swigert, Wally Schirra, Tom Stafford, Gene Cernan, Walt Cunningham, and Ron Evans—all Apollo astronauts—came to see his show. Afterward, they joined Frank at the baccarat table. Frank asked for credit, as he did every night, but this time he was flatly rejected. He could hardly believe his ears. Eleanor Roth, who was Jack Entratter’s assistant, later recalled, “He was humiliated in front of his heroes.”

  What Frank didn’t know was that the casino’s executive vice president, Carl Cohen, had just cut off his credit that very morning. An interoffice memo to the hotel’s new owner, Howard Hughes, from his top aide, Robert Maheu, notes, “Carl Cohen stopped Sinatra’s credit after he lost approximately fifty thousand dollars and would not cash out.” Maheu also explained to Hughes that another reason Cohen cut off Sinatra’s credit was because Frank had earlier been “running around the casino stating in a loud voice that [Hughes] had plenty of money and that there was no reason why [he] should not share it with him since he had made the Sands the profitable institution it is.”

  Frank had really prided himself on that line of Sands casino credit. He loved that he could saunter up to one of the tables with a “dame” on his arm and say, “Hey, Charlie, shoot me some credit,” and always get it. But the reality of a credit line is that it’s not just free money. Eventually, the tab has to be paid . . . but Frank never wanted to do so.

  Irate about the humiliation in front of others, Sinatra found Carl Cohen. He and Cohen had a history; they hated each other. In Frank’s mind, Cohen was just a hotel employee. He had no authority, he was just a chump with a high-paying job. For his part, Cohen viewed Sinatra as a blowhard, an overly indulged entertainer who, though he admittedly generated business, definitely wasn’t worth all the trouble he caused.