Frank_ The Voice Part 32

Most likely the leak was an attempted warning, on Frank's part, to Ava; but it only steeled her resolve to get out of town-without Frank. On October 5, she officially asked MGM for a temporary release from her contract in order to do The Barefoot Contessa The Barefoot Contessa.

And Frank went on the radio. He didn't want to do another television series-it was too hard, and the screen was too small. His future, he felt, would be about making records and movies. In the meantime, though, he could keep his profile high, and his wallet full, with comparatively little effort. On October 6, at Radio City West on Sunset and Vine, Sinatra taped the first episode of a detective-themed new series t.i.tled, a little too poignantly, Rocky Fortune Rocky Fortune.

Frank played the t.i.tle character, "a footloose and fancy-free young man"-out of work, in other words-who got a different job a.s.signment every week from the Gridley Employment Agency. Over the show's twenty-five-week run, Rocky would labor as a process server, museum tour guide, cabbie, bodyguard (to a professional football player-the magic of radio!), truck driver, and social director for a Catskills resort, among other things.

On the premier episode, he took script in hand and read into the mike: "Hi, I don't know what it is about me and employment-we start out together but sooner or later, usually sooner, we reach the fork in the road. You take last week: the employment agency sent me out on a job as an oyster shucker, but someone tried to serve me up on a half sh.e.l.l, with a real crazy c.o.c.ktail sauce-blood."

It was the radio equivalent of a B movie-unapologetically cheesy, though perhaps there should have been some apologies. Among the writers who produced this claptrap were Ernest Kinoy and George Lefferts, both of whom would go on to win Emmy Awards for dramatic television-but Sinatra really should have known better. Still, he imparted a certain tongue-in-cheek verve to the enterprise, and he collected that paycheck.

Of all the numerous characters who'd been b.u.t.tering Frank up in the last two months, the most insistent was a movie producer named Sam Spiegel. Spiegel was an operator straight out of a Saul Bellow novel: heavy jawed, prow nosed, and pinkie ringed, he had an indefinable Eastern European accent, a looming, slightly menacing stare, and a murky past, complete with at least one deportation and jail time for kiting checks. "He was always surrounded with beautiful women, whom he graciously dispatched to his friends, or whomever he wanted to sell something to," recalled George Jacobs. "He seemed like a joke. Yet he was the real deal."

Spiegel began his producing career in Berlin and fled Germany upon the rise of the n.a.z.is. His path to America was circuitous, and likely illegal: when he finally made it to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he adopted the alias S. P. Eagle in an attempt to throw off the bloodhounds. Over the next decade he bootstrapped himself into a Hollywood career, forming important alliances with two equally colorful characters, Orson Welles and John Huston. In 1951, Spiegel produced The African Queen The African Queen, with Huston directing and Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in the starring roles: Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor.

Sam Spiegel began pursuing Sinatra relentlessly. According to Spiegel, the role of the longsh.o.r.eman and ex-prizefighter Terry Malloy in Budd Schulberg's script for On the Waterfront On the Waterfront had practically been written for Frank. The film was even going to be shot in Hoboken: it was perfect. "For Chrissakes, you had practically been written for Frank. The film was even going to be shot in Hoboken: it was perfect. "For Chrissakes, you are are Hoboken!" the producer told Sinatra. Hoboken!" the producer told Sinatra.

But in Hollywood's eyes, Frank was still not a star. He had given one terrific performance, but in the cold-eyed view of the movie business he might still be a flash in the pan. He had dazzled in an ensemble, but could he actually carry a dramatic picture? Was Sam Spiegel, gambler though he was, willing to make that bet?

In fact, with Sinatra, Spiegel was hedging his bets.

The actor Spiegel really wanted to play Terry Malloy was Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando could carry a dramatic picture; Marlon Brando was It. Not yet thirty-eight years younger than Sinatra-Brando had already redefined the art of movie acting. When he was on a screen, even just scratching himself, you couldn't take your eyes off him. He had already been nominated for two Academy Awards, once as the oaf Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire, and then-utterly transforming himself-as the t.i.tular Mexican revolutionary in Viva Zapata! Viva Zapata! He had transformed himself again and again-into Mark Antony in He had transformed himself again and again-into Mark Antony in Julius Caesar Julius Caesar, into a motorcycle hood in The Wild One The Wild One.

Marlon Brando could do anything, especially put a.s.ses in movie seats. But Brando didn't want to join the cast of On the Waterfront On the Waterfront, because both Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg had named names in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee.

For months, the actor refused even to read Schulberg's script, yet Spiegel, even as he wooed Sinatra, kept after Brando. "Politics has nothing to do with this," the producer told him. "It's about your talent, it's about your career."

Finally, Brando read the script, and saw Spiegel's point. It was an extremely powerful story, a metaphor for important themes of the era: political corruption, the perils of silence. None of the roles the actor had played so far embodied an inner torment anything like that which Budd Schulberg had written into Terry Malloy. As with Maggio, there was a Christlike quality to Malloy. It was another story about a common man facing down brute authority, and it would have been right up Sinatra's alley.

Elia Kazan almost agreed. "Frank Sinatra would have been wonderful, but Marlon was more vulnerable," the director said. "He had this great range of violent emotions to draw from. He had more schism, more pain, and so much shame-the actor who played Terry had to have a lot of shame."

An interesting point. Frank was filled with vulnerability, but shame wasn't quite part of his artistic palette. Not that it was a foreign emotion-he would feel deep shame at crucial moments throughout his life-but it wasn't one he was fond of showing. Vulnerability was useful: vulnerability could get you laid. Showing shame, by Frank's lights anyway (and maybe even by the code of the streets of Hoboken), could get you nothing but contempt.

Kazan was right: Brando was the better choice for Terry Malloy. And when Spiegel had to break the news to Sinatra, he found it convenient to blame the decision on the director. It was a rotten business, the producer cooed; a terrible thing-might Frank be interested in the role of Father Barry, the waterfront priest?

Frank swallowed the urge to tell Sam Spiegel that he and Elia Kazan could go f.u.c.k themselves. Instead, what he said was that he had already played a priest once, in The Miracle of the Bells The Miracle of the Bells, and it hadn't worked out. He was going to leave the turned-around-collar business to Crosby.

With all due respect, Spiegel said, The Miracle of the Bells The Miracle of the Bells was pap. And that had been years ago, before Frank showed the world what he could really do as an actor. Father Barry was a great part, an important part in a hard-hitting script, Spiegel said. Would he consider it? was pap. And that had been years ago, before Frank showed the world what he could really do as an actor. Father Barry was a great part, an important part in a hard-hitting script, Spiegel said. Would he consider it?

He considered it. "Frank Sinatra's now practically sure to play the labor priest in S. P. Eagle's waterfront picture," Earl Wilson wrote on October 2.

Then, on October 10, Louella Parsons wrote, "Frank Sinatra has decided against doing 'Waterfront' with Elia Kazan in New York. 'I love the role of the priest,' he said, 'but I only had two scenes.'"

But what had really happened in the week between Wilson's column and Parsons's was that Spiegel and Kazan had given the key role of Father Barry-who was in many more than two scenes in On the Waterfront- On the Waterfront-to Karl Malden, who'd co-starred with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire A Streetcar Named Desire and had won an Academy Award for the role. Frank had been quite thoroughly shut out. and had won an Academy Award for the role. Frank had been quite thoroughly shut out.

George Jacobs, Frank Sinatra's valet for almost twenty years, recalled in his memoir that in the fall of 1953, his boss was even more preoccupied with work than with matters of the heart. "In what would become a continual aspect of my working for Sinatra, we'd sit and play cards late into the night, and he'd drink 'Jack' (Daniel's) and obsess about his career," Jacobs wrote.

He was on the comeback trail, though he didn't feel he was home free again by any means. As far as he was concerned, his career was still up in the air. Although Eternity Eternity was doing big box office, Oscar nominations had not been tallied, and Mr. S still did not have his next film job... was doing big box office, Oscar nominations had not been tallied, and Mr. S still did not have his next film job...The first (of many) people I would see Frank Sinatra hate was the man who went on to be considered one of the grandest of all Hollywood producers, Sam Spiegel. One day I arrived to see the living room half destroyed. Two lamps had been knocked over, broken gla.s.s was covering the floor. At first I thought there had been a burglary, until I began cleaning up and found the remnants of several drafts of a script ent.i.tled On the Waterfront On the Waterfront by Budd Schulberg...I found Mr. S in bed nursing several bad paper cuts on his hands, which he got ripping up the script. He apologized for flipping out and told me he had just been f.u.c.ked over by the worst real Sammy Glick in the business, Sammy Spiegel...Then he went into a tirade against Sam Spiegel that lasted for the next couple of weeks. by Budd Schulberg...I found Mr. S in bed nursing several bad paper cuts on his hands, which he got ripping up the script. He apologized for flipping out and told me he had just been f.u.c.ked over by the worst real Sammy Glick in the business, Sammy Spiegel...Then he went into a tirade against Sam Spiegel that lasted for the next couple of weeks.

Mysteries abound in Jacobs's beautifully candid, thoroughly believable autobiography, Mr. S Mr. S. For one thing, the Sinatra he presents us with is far more human and complex and vulnerable than the two-dimensional images-Sinatra the Thug; Sinatra the Genius; Ring-a-Ding-Ding Sinatra; Sinatra the Wonderful Dad; Greathearted Sinatra the Secret Philanthropist-put forth by so many books and remembrances. Of course Frank could be all these things at various times, but he was also much more: at his center was the compound enigma of which George Jacobs enjoyed a uniquely close-up view. "I slept in the same room room with that man," he told me in 2009. with that man," he told me in 2009.

Other paradoxes crop up when Jacobs's account appears to contradict the smooth chronology of Sinatra's life. Why, for example, would Frank even have have a valet in 1953, when he was rarely in the same place for more than a week at a time, and in any case was pretty much broke? a valet in 1953, when he was rarely in the same place for more than a week at a time, and in any case was pretty much broke?

Sinatra appears to have first met George Jacobs sometime in the summer of 1951, when the singer's career was plummeting. The scene was a Hollywood party. Jacobs was standing outside, next to the Rolls-Royce he drove for the agent Irving "Swifty" Lazar.1 Lazar was indoors. Jacobs badly wanted a cigarette, and decided he would cadge one from the first person who came up the street. That person was Frank Sinatra. Sinatra told Jacobs he didn't have a cigarette-oddly enough-but a few minutes later emerged from the party holding a gold bowl full of them. Jacobs took one, but Frank insisted he keep the whole bowl. He patted Jacobs's arm and went back into the house. Lazar was indoors. Jacobs badly wanted a cigarette, and decided he would cadge one from the first person who came up the street. That person was Frank Sinatra. Sinatra told Jacobs he didn't have a cigarette-oddly enough-but a few minutes later emerged from the party holding a gold bowl full of them. Jacobs took one, but Frank insisted he keep the whole bowl. He patted Jacobs's arm and went back into the house.

Sometime in early 1952, Sinatra realized he needed a Los Angeles base of operations. Hotels were too expensive, and Ava's Pacific Palisades love nest was often a little too hot for comfort. Accordingly, Frank rented a five-room apartment in a Spanish Missionstyle garden complex at the corner of Wils.h.i.+re Boulevard and Beverly Glen-the same complex, it turned out, where Irving Lazar lived.2 According to George Jacobs, Lazar spoke witheringly about Sinatra's career slump. "He's a dead man," the agent would say. "Even Jesus couldn't get resurrected in this town." According to George Jacobs, Lazar spoke witheringly about Sinatra's career slump. "He's a dead man," the agent would say. "Even Jesus couldn't get resurrected in this town."

Now and then, after Frank moved into the new place, Jacobs would spot him taking a walk down Beverly Glen to Holmby Park, "head down, all alone," as Jacobs remembered.

Where were all those screaming teenagers now that he needed them, I'd think to myself...If I ever made eye contact, I'd smile at him, and no matter how down he looked, he'd always pull it together and smile back. I'm not sure he remembered the cigarette incident. He was just a naturally nice guy. "Everybody's nice when they're down and desperate," was Lazar's take on the situation. "Losers have the time time to be nice." to be nice."

By the fall of 1953, things had changed substantially. Frank's marriage was disintegrating: he didn't just need a place to camp out; he needed a permanent residence. At the same time, counter to everyone's expectations (especially Swifty Lazar's), his career was on the upswing-there was enough new action that he had to hire a secretary, a mousy-looking lady in spectacles named Gloria Lovell, and install her in an office at the Goldwyn Studios. One day, while Jacobs was doing an errand there for Lazar, he ran into Frank, who greeted him with great friendliness and directed him to go see Lovell at once. She handed him an envelope that turned out to contain keys to Frank's apartment. "Welcome aboard," Lovell said. Sinatra, who always enjoyed giving Swifty the needle, had simply hired Jacobs away.3 This was the apartment where Frank retreated from the chaos with Ava; this was where he ripped up the script for On the Waterfront On the Waterfront. Everything about the place spoke eloquently of its unique and obsessive-compulsive tenant. "When I opened his apartment door, I was surprised he needed a valet at all, the place was so immaculately neat," Jacobs recalled.

The five-room, two-bedroom unit was a shrine to Ava Gardner. There were pictures of her everywhere, in the bathrooms, in the closet, on the refrigerator. There were a couple of framed photographs of his children and of his parents but none of his ex-wife Nancy. Aside from one bookcase, almost all biographies (Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, and a lot of Italians-Columbus, da Vinci, Machiavelli, Garibaldi, Mussolini), most of his possessions were records and clothes. There was a whole wall of sound, though it wasn't all jazz as I would have guessed, but alb.u.ms and alb.u.ms of cla.s.sical music.The closets were in perfect order, with all the clothes organized by color, fabric, and style. Most of the colors were orange (his favorite) or black. I figured the guy wanted to come off like a tiger. There were more sweaters than I'd ever seen, cashmere, mohair, lamb's wool, alpaca, you name it. And as for shoes, Imelda Marcos had nothing on Frank Sinatra. He had a whole closet just for shoes, dozens of wingtips predominating, with a good number of elevators. No wonder he seemed taller than his given five seven. There were also a lot of hats, which seemed odd for casual Los Angeles, but because of a receding hairline, hats had become his thing, just as they were Humphrey Bogart's. It was clear from his wardrobe that he had been keeping his eye on Bogart, because a lot of Sinatra's clothes were identical to Bogart's. The biggest surprise in the apartment was the industrial supply of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum. I had no idea the man was a gum chewer, like his original teenage fans, but he was.

Frank chewed a stick of Wrigley's Spearmint as he drove Jacobs (rather than the other way around; he insisted) up Beverly Glen in his black and silver Cadillac Brougham Coupe. He was taking his new valet to meet his family.

It was odd, Jacobs recalled, being introduced to his new boss's ex-wife, "who didn't seem ex at all." On the other hand, the valet thought, "Mr. S was like a little boy who had just gotten out of camp coming home for a home-cooked dinner...Big Nancy was so maternal to Frank, she seemed like his mother rather than his wife."

Jacobs was struck by 320 North Carolwood's "rococo New Jersey style" furniture, its "bright orange and black color scheme, and countless family pictures everywhere, with Mr. S in all of them." The place looked, he thought, exactly as though Frank still lived there.

After dinner, while her ex horsed around with the kids, Nancy gave George a crash tutorial on how to cook for Frank: The correct way to prepare the paper-thin steaks and pork chops, the scrambled-egg sandwiches, the bread to be sauteed in Italian, never Spanish, olive oil, the soft, never crisp, bacon he wanted for breakfast. She emphasized his disinterest in most vegetables, except for eggplant parmigiana and roasted peppers, and precisely which brands of pasta were acceptable, how many minutes to cook each, and how much salt to put in the water. Finally, of course, that marinara sauce, with the Italian plum tomatoes, crushed just so, and the prescribed balance of garlic, parsley, and oil.When they left,[t]he kids never begged him to stay, but their longing expressions conveyed the powerful message, and it hurt. Driving back to the apartment, Mr. S looked down. I told him how much I liked his family, and all he could say was, "I know, I know." He would call them every single day, wherever he might be, at six o'clock just before their dinner, and be the best telephone father there ever was.

And in the meantime, the woman for whom he had sacrificed it all wasn't speaking to him.

While Frank opened at the Sands, Ava attended the Los Angeles premiere of Mogambo Mogambo on the arm of her business manager Benton Cole, looking spectacular in a decollete silver-spangled gown and a white mink stole, throwing her head back and laughing as the flashbulbs popped. "There's nothing like the premiere of a girl's new picture to lift her spirits," read a newspaper caption. on the arm of her business manager Benton Cole, looking spectacular in a decollete silver-spangled gown and a white mink stole, throwing her head back and laughing as the flashbulbs popped. "There's nothing like the premiere of a girl's new picture to lift her spirits," read a newspaper caption.

"Everything is fine, for the moment at least, between Frankie and Ava," Louella Parsons wrote a few days later, "in spite of the rumors of a new rift that popped up when she failed to attend his opening at the Sands in Las Vegas."

Of course everything was far from fine. On opening night at the Copa Room, in front of a capacity crowd, Frank cursed out his musicians when somebody hit a clam; a couple of days later he was crying on Parsons's shoulder over Ava: "I can't eat, I can't sleep, I love her."

He certainly wasn't sleeping. Not even in the Sands's Presidential Suite, with its three huge bedrooms and its own swimming pool. After finis.h.i.+ng the last show of the evening toward 5:00 a.m., Frank, in his silk dressing gown, would sit on the side of the bed and phone his wife in Palm Springs, where she was renting a house with Bappie. He would yell, cajole, and weep until the sun rose. Ava, convinced he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in Vegas, was resistant to the theatrics. Frank would emerge from his suite, dazed, in mid-afternoon, after a couple of hours' drug-induced slumber. Trying to placate his most valuable a.s.set, Jack Entratter issued a memo on Frank's behalf to Sands staff on October 20: for the rest of Mr. Sinatra's engagement, Miss Gardner was banned from the premises should she attempt to show up, and under no circ.u.mstances should any phone calls from her be put through to him.

But Frank's attempt at face-saving was hollow: all the calls were going in the other direction, and Ava was immovable. Then came the call that did the trick. Unable to bear her coolness any longer, he took an old acquaintance to bed one night after the late show: a six-foot showgirl from Lou Walters's Folies Bergere revue (they'd met once before, in Boston). As she lay snoring afterward, Frank again phoned Palm Springs. Ava answered, sounding groggy.

Frank announced that he was in bed and he wasn't alone. He'd been drinking, a good bit; he was holding a gla.s.s now.

Silence on the other end.

Frank spoke a little too loudly. If Ava was going to accuse him all the time when he was innocent, he said, he might as well get the fun out of being guilty.

When Ava hung up, she remembered years later, she knew she and Frank had reached a point of no return.

"Hollywood's still betting the Ava GardnerFrank Sinatra reconciliation ends in a divorce," Erskine Johnson wrote on the twenty-first.

Hollywood was betting on a sure thing. On October 29, Howard Strickling issued a memo on behalf of MGM: "Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra stated today that having reluctantly exhausted every effort to reconcile their differences, they could find no mutual basis on which to continue their marriage. Both expressed deep regret and deep affection for each other. Their separation is final and Miss Gardner will seek a divorce."

In the meantime, Frank had brought record-breaking crowds to the Copa Room. True, these were still early days in Vegas-there were only seven hotels on the Strip; the tumbleweeds blew among them. The Sands had been open less than a year; the paint was barely dry. But a pattern had been set, thanks in no small part to the heat of From Here to Eternity: From Here to Eternity: suddenly, in this two-horse town, Sinatra meant excitement, excitement meant crowds, crowds meant gambling, and gambling meant money for the casinos, especially the one where Frank was playing. Ten years later, Billy Wilder summed up the phenomenon: "When Sinatra is in Las Vegas, there is a certain electricity permeating the air. It's like Mack the Knife is in town, and the action is starting." suddenly, in this two-horse town, Sinatra meant excitement, excitement meant crowds, crowds meant gambling, and gambling meant money for the casinos, especially the one where Frank was playing. Ten years later, Billy Wilder summed up the phenomenon: "When Sinatra is in Las Vegas, there is a certain electricity permeating the air. It's like Mack the Knife is in town, and the action is starting."

In a very real way, Sinatra built Vegas: not only was he present at the creation, but he was responsible for it. And the town's true owners-Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello and Joe Adonis and Doc Stacher-wanted him to feel welcome, to come back again and again, and to bring all those lovely crowds with him. "The object was to get him to perform there," Stacher said, "because there's no bigger draw in Las Vegas. When Frankie was performing, the hotel really filled up." The Sands's real owners wanted Frank to own a piece of the place, 2 percent, and they wanted it badly enough that they were glad to front him the money, a mere $54,000. The problem was the Nevada Tax Commission, which smelled a New York or Miami rat and used Sinatra's difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service as a club to beat him with.

The equity idea had first come up in March; Nevada newspapers had inveighed against it; the tax commission had tabled it. Now, however, for whatever reason, the wheel had turned. On October 31, Frank went before the commission, in Carson City, to plead his case, and though one out of the state's seven commissioners remained adamantly opposed,4 wondering yet again why the $54,000 Sinatra supposedly had in hand shouldn't go straight to the IRS, the matter was put to a vote and he got his gambling license. wondering yet again why the $54,000 Sinatra supposedly had in hand shouldn't go straight to the IRS, the matter was put to a vote and he got his gambling license.

When he left the commission, the reporters were waiting, but it wasn't gaming licensure they wanted to discuss.

"Frank! Is your marriage to Ava over?"

He squinted behind his sungla.s.ses. "I guess it's over if that's what she says."

"How do you feel about it?"

A long pause while Frank tried to think how he felt about something in whose reality he did not believe. "Well, it's very sad," he finally said. "It's tragic. I feel very badly about it."

"What about the rumors that you might get back together with Nancy?"

He waved the question off as he might have waved off a pesky housefly. Sanicola opened the car door for him and he got in.

In Los Angeles, at exactly the same time, a United Press reporter who had managed to get the private number at 320 North Carolwood was asking the same question of Frank's ex-wife.

"There is positively no chance of a reconciliation," she said. "All the rumors about Mr. Sinatra and me are false." She slammed down the phone and leaned on the kitchen counter for support, staring out the window for a long time.

Frank flew back to Las Vegas and, that night, hosted a Halloween party at the Sands. The next day, the New York papers carried an a.s.sociated Press photograph of the host standing between two chorus girls, wearing a clown costume. If his life was a kind of opera, at the moment it was Pagliacci Pagliacci.

37.

Frank, hairline headed north, with the two Eddies: Cantor and Fisher. Colgate Comedy Hour Colgate Comedy Hour, November 29, 1953. Sinatra's cuff conceals the bandages on his left wrist, the result of a suicide attempt two weeks before. (photo credit 37.1) (photo credit 37.1) He'd been singing to many audiences, good, bad, and indifferent, over the past six months, but the songs he'd sung had s.h.i.+mmered out into the air and vanished: over that tumultuous period he hadn't committed a single tune to posterity. This all changed on Thursday, November 5, when Frank returned to Capitol's Melrose studios, shook hands with Nelson Riddle and Voyle Gilmore, and began recording what would become his first alb.u.m for the label, Songs for Young Lovers Songs for Young Lovers.

There were only eleven musicians in Studio C that night: two reeds, four strings, piano, guitar, ba.s.s, drums, and harp. No bra.s.s. George Siravo, not Riddle, had written the arrangements, months before, for the even more stripped-down bands (eight players) that accompanied Sinatra at the 500 Club, the Riviera, and the Sands. On this night, Riddle was there only to conduct, a role he never had much taste for. But it was Sinatra, and Nelson was glad to receive Frank's warm greeting: he was now a known quant.i.ty.

Nelson Riddle heard, from the moment he lowered his baton, that something was different-that this was not the same Sinatra he'd recorded with the previous May. During that last session, Frank had sung beautifully but politely over the lushly orchestrated strings, m.u.f.fling the promise of the great "I've Got the World on a String" he'd recorded just two days before. Now he fulfilled that promise. This time, with only half the number of musicians he'd had in May (and just four fiddlers rather than nine), his voice was more exposed. The band was hipper-Allan Reuss's electric guitar imparted a 1950s-modern sound on some numbers-and the songs were better: two Gershwins ("A Foggy Day" and "They Can't Take That Away from Me"), a Rodgers and Hart ("My Funny Valentine"), and Tom Adair and Matt Dennis's lovely (and gorgeously t.i.tled) "Violets for Your Furs."

This time, coming out from the protective cover of the orchestral backing, Sinatra was astonis.h.i.+ng. On the first song, "A Foggy Day," he established dominance. The voice was as magnificent as ever, but now he showed a rhythmic ease, a sense of play, that he hadn't shown since he'd recorded the jazz-trio throwaways "That's How Much I Love You" and "You Can Take My Word for It, Baby," and his great "Sweet Lorraine," with the Metronome All-Stars, in 1946. His tossed-off, Hoboken-bratty lyrical improvisations ("I viewed the morning with much alarm/The British Museum-it lost its charm") showed the world that while Ira Gershwin might be Ira Gershwin, Sinatra was Sinatra.

He'd been loose in 1946 and he was loose now, but with a new component added: maturity. This year Frank had been through the crucible, emotionally and professionally. His "Foggy Day," from pensive verse ("I was a stranger in the city...") to joyous chorus, is an autobiography in miniature, a masterpiece of phrasing forged from Sinatra's inseparably intertwined life and art.

Frank had always been in impatient command in a recording studio-even with Mitch Miller. Nelson Riddle recalled: "If I wasn't conducting the orchestra to his liking, he'd shove me out of the way and take over. If he asked for diminuendo from the orchestra and didn't get it immediately, he'd take things into his own hands and you can believe that they d.a.m.n well played softer for him than they did for me."

On "World on a String," Frank had brought a new kind of authority to the music itself. On "Foggy Day," he once more took charge, but with a chastened undertone. "Ava taught him how to sing a torch song," Riddle would say later. In this "Foggy Day," you can feel Frank and Ava's actual agonies and ecstasies in the real London, just three months before. His voice has such a plaintive tremolo that you worry for his emotional well-being. On the song's ultimate line, "and in foggy London town the sun was s.h.i.+ning everywhere," Frank sings the word "s.h.i.+ning" not once, not twice, but five five times in a row-sings it so pa.s.sionately that you can feel the deep dark in back of the sunlight. times in a row-sings it so pa.s.sionately that you can feel the deep dark in back of the sunlight.

The next night he recorded four more songs, and one of them, the first-a pretty BurkeVan Heusen tune called "Like Someone in Love"-had been arranged by Riddle. Siravo's charts were lovely, but this orchestration, with its Debussy/Ravel-esque flute pa.s.sages (the flute would soon become a Riddle signature), was something special: a gift from one lover of impressionism to another, and a promise of more complex beauty to come.

Sat.u.r.day night, November 7, wasn't just the loneliest night of the week, as Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne's great song had it, but the loneliest of Sinatra's life: his second wedding anniversary, with his wife nowhere in sight. Accordingly, when Jimmy Van Heusen-Frank's master of revels, and the champ at getting him to Forget-picked him up at Beverly Glen, he announced in his wry voice that they were going to get Frank laid. But good. He was as good as his word.

The next night Chester accompanied Sinatra to the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, where Frank was to do a guest spot on The Colgate Comedy Hour The Colgate Comedy Hour, with his old pal Jimmy Durante. If Frank was suffering over Ava, he hid it well, clowning it up with the Schnozzola, who kept interrupting him whenever he tried to sing-especially when he tried to sing "From Here to Eternity." The two did a musical quiz-show skit together; they sang a duet about how all comedians want to be singers and all singers want to be comedians. Frank even warbled the Halo Shampoo jingle, "Halo, Everybody, Halo."

Maybe he was able to feign good spirits so convincingly because he'd found a pleasant distraction: while he sang the jingle, a blond twenty-two-year-old beauty-pageant winner from North Dakota named Angeline Brown d.i.c.kinson smiled and showed off her silky tresses for the camera. Later, she and Frank-and then she and Frank and Jimmy-struck up a conversation backstage. Angie d.i.c.kinson was very young and, as she remembered vividly many years later, "bursting with awe" at being in Sinatra's presence. She had a humorous, easygoing presence about her that he liked a lot. She was witty, but not caustic; she knew how to talk, but she knew how to listen, too. It turned out she was married in an informal sort of way, yet she was also an extremely practical girl, and her sights were set firmly on Hollywood. Chester asked her for her number-for Frank, of course-and of course she gave it to him.

Ava was still wrangling with MGM over The Barefoot Contessa The Barefoot Contessa. The studio was demanding an exorbitant fee from Mankiewicz for her services-and proposing stingy terms for her end of the loan-out. She didn't give a rat's a.s.s about the terms. She had just had it with Hollywood, a company town whose business she neither liked nor trusted, and she had had it with Frank. She wired Schenck himself: I AM DESPERATELY ANXIOUS TO DO THIS PICTURE...YOU MUST KNOW MY TERRIBLE DISAPPOINTMENT AT NOT BEING ABLE TO ACc.u.mULATE SOME MONEY AND SECURITY WHICH I HAD CONTEMPLATED WHEN I MADE MY NEW CONTRACT WITH METRO...AND I THINK THE LEAST THAT THE COMPANY CAN DO IS TO GIVE ME SOME MEASURE OF HAPPINESS IN DOING THE KIND OF PART I WANT TO DO AT THIS TIME AS I COULD LEAVE FOR EUROPE IMMEDIATELY.

Metro, of course, didn't give a good G.o.dd.a.m.n about its spoiled star's happiness, except insofar as it affected business. The right deal was all Schenck cared about. The horse-trading continued.

Frank knew how badly Ava wanted this role. What it really meant as far as he was concerned was that she wanted to return to Europe. Alone. And not just for a visit, but to stay, as long as she could. If she got the job-and she tended to get what she wanted-she would leave at the end of November for an indefinite period: three months of shooting in Rome, and then Spain, probably.

If she didn't get the job, she told the press, she might go to Spain anyway.

Frank knew who was in Spain, and he felt a kind of rising panic-the end of November. Maybe the two of them really were through; maybe she could resist him after all. There were times, at five or six in the morning, when he had to pour another Jack Daniel's and tell himself he must think of something to keep her here. He couldn't. He was constantly on edge: when he found out she'd had a drink with Peter Lawford at the Luau on Rodeo Drive (a totally innocent thing-Lawford's manager and Bappie were also present-but Hedda Hopper blared it as a date in her column the next day), Frank went nuts. He was not just a cuckold but a public cuckold, and in his own backyard. He phoned Lawford and told him he was a dead man-his exact phrase. He screamed into the phone that he was sending somebody to break the actor's legs.

Now it was Lawford's turn to panic. He called his manager, Milt Ebbins-whose idea it had been in the first place to go have that drink with Ava-and begged him to call Sinatra and tell him that he was completely innocent.

Ebbins was glad to call Frank and try to set things straight, but there was a small problem: Frank had left town, and n.o.body knew where he was.

Hysterical with fear, Lawford begged his manager to find him.

Ebbins found him, but it wasn't easy. It turned out Van Heusen had flown Sinatra to New York on his plane, and Frank was holed up at Chester's West Fifty-seventh Street apartment. Jimmy answered the phone, whispering hoa.r.s.ely, his hand s.h.i.+elding the mouthpiece: "Yeah, he's here! Jesus Christ, and he's driving me crazy! Ava, Ava, Ava! A billion f.u.c.king broads in the world, and he's got to pick the one that can take him or leave him!"

"Eventually they got Frank onto the phone," Ebbins recalled.

And he started threatening me...I said, "Frank, Frank, listen to me, it wasn't Peter. I I wanted to see Ava!" He said, "What?!" I said, "Listen, it was my idea to go to the Luau, I just wanted to meet Ava is all"...And it took some time to calm him down. I think he believed me. Well, he never said anything more. He never says that he's sorry. And when he got a hate on, forget it. He didn't talk to Peter for years. wanted to see Ava!" He said, "What?!" I said, "Listen, it was my idea to go to the Luau, I just wanted to meet Ava is all"...And it took some time to calm him down. I think he believed me. Well, he never said anything more. He never says that he's sorry. And when he got a hate on, forget it. He didn't talk to Peter for years.

He'd come to New York to begin yet another radio show for NBC: To Be Perfectly Frank To Be Perfectly Frank, a fifteen-minute, twice-a-week broadcast on which Sinatra played DJ, spinning the records of other vocalists and singing a number or two of his own, backed by a five-piece combo. The show was a strangely mixed bag, reflecting both Frank's resurgent fortunes and the declining state of radio. At first a sponsor couldn't even be found. "Ten years ago, even five," wrote the critic Jack O'Brian, "such a show starring such a revivified 'hot' personality as 'The Voice' would have had 35 musicians, a 'name' conductor, a chorus of 16, several announcers and highly-paid guest stars. Now it's just Frank, five musicians, and recordings."

He was taping the shows for later broadcast on NBC affiliates, and during the ten days he spent in New York that November, he was in a kind of fever, consuming coffee and pills and cigarettes instead of food, recording episode after episode over the course of long days in the Rockefeller Center studios, stockpiling shows against the trip he knew he had to make to win back his wife.

In the meantime, he was a walking wreck, able at times to simulate his old charming self, but mostly obsessing about her, trying in vain to reach her on the phone (she and Bappie were lying low in another Palm Springs rental). Van Heusen took him out to Toots Shor's and "21," where Frank-still wearing his wedding ring, the gossips were interested to note-declined to sing when Chester sat down at the piano. Not in the mood, he said. A pretty blonde sitting nearby, "Melissa Weston Bigelow of New York and Southampton society," according to Kilgallen, found his moodiness attractive. After a couple of days it wore thin. When she left, Chester brought in the usual paid company (after an early experience with a pro who bore a slight resemblance to Billie Holiday, Frank had discovered a special fondness for black women), sometimes in twos and threes.

Jimmy Van Heusen indulged his friend as fully as his imagination and resources would allow, but even he, renowned for his heroic energy, was fraying out. He marshaled the usual reinforcements: Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn (though not together, just at the moment: they were having an idiotic feud), Manie Sacks, Ben Barton, Frank Military, Al Silvani.

Not Tami Mauriello, though. The old pug had actually gone and gotten a part-a pretty fair-sized one-in Kazan's f.u.c.king waterfront picture, which was just about to start shooting in Hoboken, where the populace was all agog at the arrival of the movie people with their trucks, lights, and cables. Not to mention the breathlessly awaited appearance of Marlon Brando.

After a few days, Frank stopped going out. He stiffed NBC, failing to appear for the premiere of Perfectly Frank Perfectly Frank, which was to be broadcast live; the network had to do a fast shuffle and throw one of the tapes he'd already stockpiled onto the air. The suits were not pleased-there were grumbles about legal action. Sinatra couldn't have cared less. He was walking around Jimmy's apartment in his pajamas, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, gazing into s.p.a.ce or out the window or at the flickering gray and white images on TV: Lucy and Ricky jabbering about this or that, to uproarious laughter. Husband-and-wife situation comedies were all the rage that fall, and a number of them featured actual couples-the Arnazes, Ozzie and Harriet, Burns and Allen, the Stu Erwins, Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling on Topper Topper. When MGM announced the Frank-and-Ava split, some Hollywood wit cracked, "Well, that washes them up. They'll never get a TV situation comedy show now!"