Frank_ The Voice Part 16

There was reality-complicated, th.o.r.n.y, less hospitable every minute-and there was Frank in a yachting cap with an ice-cream cone. He strutted; he kept up appearances; he would keep believing in himself till there was no other alternative. His agents had gone out and done battle for him and got him a new radio show, really a return to an old one: Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade, still sponsored by Lucky Strike. The good news was that for the first time since the show's inception in 1935, a single star would be at its center, singing the tunes and doing many of the commercials himself.

The bad news was that-gradually, then all at once-it wasn't really Frank's show. He wouldn't get to sing his own songs, unless his songs happened to be on the hit parade, an occurrence that seemed less likely with every pa.s.sing week. Even as Hearst kept snapping at his heels, the public's musical tastes were changing. Suddenly Sinatra's record sales were dropping; his concert and nightclub bookings had declined. His yearly income had dropped below $1 million for the first time since 1942. n.o.body was feeling very sorry for him.

On the first broadcast of his second Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade run, on Sat.u.r.day, September 6, Frank introduced Axel Stordahl, who had replaced Mark Warnow as bandleader, and, as co-star for the show's first two months, Doris Day. From Sinatra's first song, it was clear that something was deeply wrong. run, on Sat.u.r.day, September 6, Frank introduced Axel Stordahl, who had replaced Mark Warnow as bandleader, and, as co-star for the show's first two months, Doris Day. From Sinatra's first song, it was clear that something was deeply wrong.

The song was called "Feudin' and Fightin'," a novelty number about life down in the holler, Hatfield-and-McCoy style. It was the kind of faux-folksy trifle Bing Crosby could bring off without breaking a sweat, but with Frank singing it, it felt as phony as a three-dollar bill. His heart wasn't in it. (And he certainly hadn't read these lyrics like a poem before singing them.) But it was on the hit parade, which meant the American public wanted to hear it. And more and more, Sinatra and the American public appeared to be going their separate ways.

The ground was sliding beneath Frank's feet. His singing was the one part of his life where he couldn't dissemble. His belief in a song was part of what made him great; when he lost conviction, his vocal quality became two-dimensional. Metronome Metronome, which only two years earlier had crowned Frank Act of the Year, and with whose All-Stars he'd recently recorded the sublime "Sweet Lorraine," was withering about the new edition of Your Hit Parade: Your Hit Parade: The show is alternately dull, pompous and raucous. Frank sings without relaxation and often at tempos that don't suit him or the song. Axel plays murderous, rag-timey junk, that he, with his impeccable taste, must abhor. And poor Doris Day, making her first real start in commercial radio, is saddled with arrangements which sound as if they were written long before anybody ever thought of having a stylist like her on the show...Frank sounds worse on these Sat.u.r.day nightmares than he ever has since he first became famous.

There may have been schadenfreude in this; even those who had been his biggest boosters probably weren't averse to the pleasures of piling on. But to listen to the show proves Metronome Metronome right. Westbrook Pegler was another matter. The columnist, who had been otherwise engaged for a couple of years, now went at Sinatra with a fresh vengeance. Throughout September he hammered on Frank, trotting out all the sins for which the Hearst papers had lavishly been taking him to task, and now-his one new note-slamming Sinatra's defenders. "A campaign of propaganda has been running in some areas of our press, including magazines, and on the radio to rehabilitate the reputation of Frank Sinatra," his column of September 10 began, ominously. In this loaded time, such phraseology was guaranteed to raise a Red flag. In some papers this column ran side by side with one by Victor Riesel, which began: right. Westbrook Pegler was another matter. The columnist, who had been otherwise engaged for a couple of years, now went at Sinatra with a fresh vengeance. Throughout September he hammered on Frank, trotting out all the sins for which the Hearst papers had lavishly been taking him to task, and now-his one new note-slamming Sinatra's defenders. "A campaign of propaganda has been running in some areas of our press, including magazines, and on the radio to rehabilitate the reputation of Frank Sinatra," his column of September 10 began, ominously. In this loaded time, such phraseology was guaranteed to raise a Red flag. In some papers this column ran side by side with one by Victor Riesel, which began: I insist the "Communist Party" is more of a plot than a party, and I say that for too long the Communist propaganda machine, directed by many Broadway and Hollywood publicists, writers and "wise-crack" specialists, has bullied government officials so that they fear to disclose evidence of this plot.

The message, to any right-thinking reader, was clear: subversive elements were trying to undermine America, and Frank Sinatra-with his Mafia connections, his draft-dodging and s.e.x-offending past (not to mention his oily hair and Italian surname)-was their standard-bearer.

Pegler was clearly building a case, but for what? Frank had acted badly: this was not in dispute. He had acted very badly. In the matter of his Havana adventure, depending on the contents of that heavy valise, he may even have broken the law. Had he dodged the draft? Probably. So had John Wayne. Had he been convicted on those two 1938 s.e.x arrests? He had not. But rhetorically speaking, Pegler (he portentously called the complainant a "girl") felt the arrests were worth mentioning again. As was the fact that somebody had been lying about Frank's age.

The rock-jawed columnist (a photo of his unimpeachably Waspy countenance ran with every installment) was throwing everything he had at Sinatra, building up to a bombsh.e.l.l of some kind.

The propaganda campaign, Pegler said, consisted of many writers, including night club, radio, and movie columnists of New York and Hollywood, who have minimized incidents of Sinatra's career which other persons might have viewed with severity. Dozens of these "interpreters" and propagandists purport to be authorities on the personal histories of all such "celebrities." Many of them draw outlandish salaries as "reporters." But not one of them has ever reported this episode [the 1938 arrests], the most dramatic in Sinatra's life.

So he was not only a crook, a bully, and a draft dodger; he was a pervert. And his apologists, Pegler said, were legion. Of all the supposed dozens, the columnist singled out two egregious offenders, the Daily News Daily News's Ed Sullivan and the New Yorker New Yorker's E. J. Kahn Jr. Sullivan, still a year away from his television career, had, for whatever reason, early on adopted a Sinatra-right-or-wrong stance in his columns. The News News columnist, Pegler thundered, had "impugned the professional integrity of legitimate journalists who had faithfully covered the 'Sinatra story' in the Havana and Hollywood [Mortimer] episodes. [Sullivan had insisted Mortimer's] motive was to punish Sinatra because he gave of his spare time and energy 'to persuade kids to be nice to minority groups.'" columnist, Pegler thundered, had "impugned the professional integrity of legitimate journalists who had faithfully covered the 'Sinatra story' in the Havana and Hollywood [Mortimer] episodes. [Sullivan had insisted Mortimer's] motive was to punish Sinatra because he gave of his spare time and energy 'to persuade kids to be nice to minority groups.'"

Fair enough. Sullivan was more or less in the bag. (Maybe, as with Wilson, a gold cigarette case had sealed the deal.) But Kahn was scarcely another Broadway hack. On balance, the worst that can be said about his three-part New Yorker New Yorker profile (subsequently expanded into the slight but charming book profile (subsequently expanded into the slight but charming book The Voice The Voice) is that it was written in the amused, breezy tone so common to that magazine in those days, the verbal equivalent of Eustace Tilley deigning to glance through his lorgnette at a b.u.t.terfly. "Sinatra has several other friends who, while not precisely desperadoes, are fairly rough-and-tumble individuals," reads a typical sentence in Kahn's piece. The pa.s.sage immediately following soft-pedals Sinatra's acquaintance with Joe Fischetti and his meeting with Lucky Luciano.

For whatever reasons-surely artistic rather than political-Kahn minimizes Sinatra's bad behavior. But the writer's worst offense, according to Westbrook Pegler, was this: "Kahn writes also that some of Sinatra's public earnestly believe that his birthday is second in importance to only that of Jesus Christ."

Pegler, who would become an increasingly rabid anti-Semite (he liked to refer to Eastern European Jews as "geese"), didn't have to state the obvious: Kahn was a Jew. And worse still, a Jew bowing down to an Antichrist. This is no exaggeration. In his column of September 26, Pegler wrote, "There is a weird light playing around Sinatra. Hitler affected many Germans much the same way and madness has been rife in the world."

This was not just some California kook writing the FBI about the nefarious possibilities of swooning bobby-soxers. This was a Pulitzer-winning columnist, with the broadest possible platform, the five hundred newspapers of the Hearst Syndicate, comparing a popular entertainer to the worst ma.s.s murderer in history.

And Pegler wasn't done yet.

On December 8, he went for the knockout punch, beginning with the magic triangulation: "From time to time, these dispatches have disclosed and commented on a strange liaison between our journalism and the underworld and Communist fronts of the amus.e.m.e.nt industry."

Communism never came up again in that column-in those days you only had to say it once. After dropping the word, Pegler segued right back into the familiar theme of Frank's nasty a.s.sociations. First he took on the Varsity member Jimmy Tarantino, who had moved to California and started a scandal sheet called Hollywood Nite Life Hollywood Nite Life, a precursor of Confidential Confidential. Tarantino was a s.k.a.n.ky character, one of the many who would stick a little too closely to Sinatra throughout the years.2 In this case the glue was Hank Sanicola, Tarantino's partner on In this case the glue was Hank Sanicola, Tarantino's partner on Hollywood Nite Life Hollywood Nite Life. (Mickey Cohen, quite the man about Tinseltown, might also have been involved.) Frank should have given Jimmy Tarantino-and a lot of other people throughout the years-a wide berth, but if a man was loyal and amusing, Frank never bothered to do a background check. He liked to laugh, and fun came first. If the price was the vitriol of Westbrook Pegler and Lee Mortimer, so be it. Yet there was another price to pay.

At the end of the column, Pegler returned to the reliable theme of s.e.x: specifically, Sinatra's role as seducer of the nation's youth. But in a curious (and more than slightly kinky) twist, the columnist now blamed the seducees: There has been strident controversy as to Sinatra's real opinion of the nasty little chits who used to loiter late into the night around night clubs, theaters, and other inappropriate haunts for children, where Sinatra was earning his living or taking his ease with the Fischetti freres of the Chicago underworld and Lucky Luciano, the exiled Sicilian prost.i.tutioneer. Mortimer called them little morons. This was outlandish flattery in the reckless tabloid manner, and Sinatra caught him when his head was turned and slugged him...In a study of this matter at the time I wrote that Mr. Evans, the manager and press-agent, had expressed the same opinion of these sinister little tramps...It was...Mr. Evans, Sinatra's own manager and propagandist, the man who fomented the excitement over this exaggerated roadhouse moaner, who spoke to me of Frankie Boy's following as s.e.xually excited jailbait, a million of them, squealing like animals.

Pegler is finally showing his true colors. The real surprise is George Evans's disaffection. No matter what he actually said to Westbrook Pegler-and the lack of a direct quotation is suspicious-the fact that he spoke to him at all (and in all likelihood really did say something derogatory about Sinatra's fan base) hints at trouble in Frank's professional life. At the end of the column Pegler, in high poetic mode, wrote, "Sinatra laid an egg at the Capitol theater and the amorous cult had vanished away like the insect clouds that madly swarm and dissolve." There was certainly no love lost between Westbrook Pegler and Frank Sinatra, but where the Capitol Theater gig was concerned, the columnist was, for once, telling the straight story.

Sinatra's stand at the Capitol, the site of his famous opening with the Hoboken Four, was meant to be a triumphant return. "FRANK SINATRA/M-G-M's Singing Star/IN PERSON," a poster trumpeted. But the tanking of It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn, along with the star's current publicity, hinted that triumph might not be in the cards. (And then, for anyone who cared to pay attention, there was the t.i.tle of the movie that accompanied the Capitol show: Her Husband's Affairs Her Husband's Affairs, with Lucille Ball and Franchot Tone.) By the end of the second week of the three-week engagement, it was clear that something was very wrong. Lee Mortimer reported, gleefully but with the numbers to back him up: "The crooner, expected to pile up new highs, almost hits a new low. His second week...was a sickly $71,000, half of the advance estimate." And in a subsequent column: "Broadway whispers this will be Sinatra's last appearance here, and that didn't kill my appet.i.te for the family turkey dinner."

It was no fluke: the wheel really had turned. The relentless bad publicity couldn't have helped; still, the cold fact was that Frank's core audience, those nasty little chits, that s.e.xually excited jailbait, were growing up and moving on. Throughout the year, despite Sinatra's unprecedented number of studio sessions, his record sales had slipped badly: his discs spent just twenty-six weeks on the Billboard Billboard charts in 1947, as compared with ninety-seven the year before. He was putting more in and getting less out. On charts in 1947, as compared with ninety-seven the year before. He was putting more in and getting less out. On Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade, he was almost always singing other people's songs: one of the first, in September, had been that old chestnut, "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," a big hit for Perry Como-who, by the way, now stood one notch above Frank on Billboard Billboard's annual performance chart.

Sinatra had been singing professionally for a dozen years; he had had an amazing run. Maybe his time was pa.s.sing. He might have been The Voice, but there were other voices the public found pleasing. That nice Perry Como had a very pleasant tone (and a nice face too), and you didn't see him running around with gangsters or slugging people.

All but buried at the bottom of the poster for the Capitol Theater engagement, far beneath "SINATRA" and in significantly smaller type than the billings for Lorraine Rognan (Pet.i.te Comedienne) and Skitch Henderson (his Piano and his ORCH.), was the name of Frank's opening act: "WILL MASTIN TRIO with Sammy Davies Jr."

Misprint aside, the billing was deceptive: Sammy Davis Jr. was the one whose name should have been first, in big capital letters. He had been the star of the act since age three, in 1928, when his father, Sammy Davis Sr., and vaudeville partner Will Mastin first put the little boy on the stage. From childhood, Sammy had been a miraculous performer, a show-business prodigy who could instantly pick up complicated dance routines, sing like a natural, and learn to play any instrument that was put into his hands. About to turn twenty-two, having reached his adult height of just five feet three, he was a tiny whirlwind of singing and dancing genius: he not only had a beautifully rich baritone but could do tap routines of blinding speed and precision. He could play piano, saxophone, and drums. He did eerily accurate impersonations of Cary Grant, Boris Karloff, Edward G. Robinson-and of his idol Frank Sinatra.

He was also a desperately lonely young man. His parents had split when his father took him on the road; performing had been his whole life. Little Sammy spent his childhood running from truant officers, missing his mother, living for the charmed moments each day when he could win the love of an audience. The hours between those moments were long and empty. In his spare time he imagined the fame that would bring him true love at last. Fame, he knew, was everything.

Davis had been obsessed with Sinatra from the moment he first heard about him. That voice made his hair stand on end-as did the idolatry. As Sammy toured the unapologetically racist country, scrounging a living in flea-bitten vaudeville theaters, carrying the act named after the bitter and domineering old man who also loved him like an uncle, he thought constantly of Frank-bought his records and fan magazines, kept a sc.r.a.pbook of articles about him, imitated his dress and mannerisms. And-since he was not just an entertainer but also a stargazing fan who haunted stage doors wherever he played, trying to get a glimpse of, and maybe an autograph from, stars like Milton Berle, Danny Thomas, Bob Hope-Sammy dreamed of the day he would meet his idol in person.

It came, unexpectedly, at Detroit's Michigan Theater in 1941, when the Mastin Trio filled in for Tommy Dorsey's warm-up act Tip, Tap, & Toe. There was a friendly backstage handshake between Sinatra and the awestruck sixteen-year-old, and then the road took them their separate ways. Over the next couple of years, as Frank's star rose and the Mastin Trio kept scrounging, Sammy dreamed of the reunion that would validate his existence. His chance came in the fall of 1945, in Los Angeles. Though he'd been discharged from the Army in June, he got out his uniform, had it pressed, and put it on so he could get a serviceman's ticket to Sinatra's radio show at CBS. Afterward, he recalled in his autobiography.

I hurried around the corner to the stage door. There must have been five hundred kids ahead of me, waiting for a look at him. When he appeared, the crowd surged forward like one ma.s.sive body ready to go right through the side of the building if necessary. Girls were screaming, fainting, pushing, waving pencils and papers in the air. A girl next to me shouted, "I'd faint if I had room to fall down." She got her laugh and the crowd kept moving. I stood on tiptoe trying to see him. G.o.d, he looked like a star. He wasn't much older than a lot of us but he was so calm, like we were all silly kids and he was a man, sure of himself, completely in control. He acted as if he didn't know there were hundreds of papers being waved at him. He concentrated on one at a time, signing it, smiling, and going to the next. He got to me and took my paper. He used a solid gold pen to sign his name. I thanked him and he looked at me. "Don't I know you?"

The story rings true, solid-gold pen and all. Sinatra did have an amazing memory for names and faces, and Sammy Davis didn't look like anybody else. Frank invited him to come to his dressing room after the next week's show. Sammy remembered that once there, all he could do was stare at his idol and think, "'I can speak to Frank Sinatra and he'll answer me.' But I couldn't think of anything clever enough to say so I just watched him, smiling and laughing at his every word."

It was a perfect relationship for both men.

By the time Frank got to the Capitol in November 1947, he had established a tradition. "Frank Sinatra," Will Mastin explained to the two Sammys after the fateful telegram came, "always has a colored act on the bill with him."

Even if George Evans had nothing but public relations in mind when he pushed his star client to accept all those tolerance awards, that didn't make Sinatra a phony liberal. And his sentiments about working with black entertainers ran deep: artistically speaking, he knew where his bread was b.u.t.tered. He simply understood too much about the roots of American popular music to imagine that he didn't owe an important debt to the geniuses of Fifty-second Street, Billie Holiday first among them.

But aside from that, Frank genuinely liked black people. And, understanding this, most black people-who, by the fact of their existence in America, possessed an intricate radar for racism-liked him back.3 He clearly understood what it was like to be discriminated against. He had great style. And that voice of his told the truth, no matter what color your ears were. He clearly understood what it was like to be discriminated against. He had great style. And that voice of his told the truth, no matter what color your ears were.

So he hired colored acts. Sinatra, in addition to being color-blind, was generous-and, once he had decided to help someone, tenacious. MGM could squawk all it wanted about taking on those unknowns Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne, but if they didn't, they didn't get Sinatra. The Capitol Theater could remind Frank until they were blue in the face that if he wanted a colored act, he could easily get the more famous Moke and Poke, or the Berry Brothers, or the Nicholas Brothers, who were even in a movie, for G.o.d's sake. Frank shook his head obstinately. "There's a kid who comes to my radio show when he's in town, he works with his family, his name is Sam something. Use him."

"All right, Frank, if you want 'em you got 'em. How much do you want to give them?"

"Make it $1,250."

"We can get the Nicholas Brothers for that kind of money and...they're hot."

"$1,250. That's it. I don't want the Nicholas Brothers. I want Sam and his family."

And once the Will Mastin Trio (which up to this point had been making $350 in a good week) was onstage at the Capitol, Frank would stroll out and throw his arm around Sammy's shoulder-in an era when such a gesture from a white man to a black man was a very rare sight indeed-and personally introduce him to the crowd.

Even if the crowd, especially by the second week, was no longer quite the size the crowds had been so very recently.

During all this disappointment, Frank kept recording as though his life depended on it-which, in a very real way, it did. In October alone, he cut an amazing twenty sides at Liederkranz Hall, more than he had done in all of 1943. Committing to sh.e.l.lac such great standards as "All of Me," "Laura," "The Song Is You," and "What'll I Do?" was a kind of atonement for all the mediocre material he was being forced to sing on Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade. On Friday, October 31-having spent the previous afternoon grinning through a cold rain as Hoboken celebrated Frank Sinatra Day-he recorded three beautiful songs, "Mean to Me," "Spring Is Here," and "Fools Rush In," and he sang them beautifully.

The only problem was, the public wasn't buying.

Dolly had stood close by Frank's side as the mayor of Hoboken presented him with a giant wooden key to the city. Wearing a big feathered hat and the mink stole Frank had bought her, she threw her head back as the photographers snapped away, a rapturous smile creasing her chubby cheeks. Rain or no rain, her moment in the sun had come at last. Frank Sinatra Day, Dolly Sinatra Day-same thing. At his son's other shoulder stood Marty, looking grim in his old-fashioned fire captain's uniform with its two rows of bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Firemen marched in parades; they didn't lead them.

Just out of range of the photographers stood Nancy, smiling despite the proximity of her mother-in-law. George Evans was holding an umbrella over her. She wore a wool coat, the Tiffany pearl earrings Frank had bought her, and, out of sight but cool against her breastbone, the triple strand of pearls. She was also carrying a very tangible token of her husband's recommitment to their marriage: she was pregnant again.

At the construction site on Alejo Road, out in the desert at the edge of Palm Springs, the bulldozers and cement mixers ran double shifts, working all day and then at night under floodlights as the builders hurried toward the Christmas deadline. E. Stewart Williams had shown Frank Sinatra two very different sets of drawings: one was of the Georgian mansion Frank had requested, and the other depicted Williams's far more modern concept, a low-lying concrete structure with tall picture windows and a shed roof. The young architect had literally held his breath as the singer scanned the drawings, a serious look on his tanned features. Sinatra's domineering reputation had preceded him, yet Williams, trying to forge a career, knew that building Georgian in the desert-impractical as well as retrograde-would make him a laughingstock in the field. He would be seen as a servant rather than an artist. Frank nodded, frowning, as he inspected the modern design, then, suddenly looking interested, nodded some more.

Williams exhaled.

The house wasn't quite a mansion-at forty-five hundred square feet, it was large but not gigantic, and there were only four bedrooms-but the rooms and the windows were big, and every window, as well as a sliding gla.s.s wall, looked out onto the swimming pool, which was shaped (Williams couldn't help smiling at this inspired touch) like a grand piano. A breezeway over one end of the pool was designed to shed shadows that would resemble piano keys. Bright sun and sparkling light off the pool filled the living room: if shade was needed, the flick of a switch closed a $7,000 motorized curtain. In the distance stony Mount San Jacinto shimmered white in the fierce sun; in the foreground, two palm trees waved in the desert wind. The house, made pleasant by air-conditioning in the summer and fireplaces in the winter, would be a shelter from the desert around it. Frank would call the place Twin Palms.

Twin Palms, Palm Springs. Architect E. Stewart Williams designed the desert retreat, complete with piano-shaped swimming pool, for his demanding client and his family; within weeks of its completion, Frank was courting Ava Gardner. (photo credit 21.2) (photo credit 21.2)

22.

No one like her, before or since. "I just noticed the body," said Sammy Cahn's first wife. "It just moved like a willow. She was built beautifully. She was a gorgeous creature." (photo credit 22.1) (photo credit 22.1) As his wife grew great with child for the third time, Sinatra found more and more reasons to be elsewhere. Pregnancy may be deemed s.e.xy by some cultures in some eras, but in late-1940s America it was anything but. The women got fat and sick and peevish; the men took increasing notice of the unbelievably slim waistlines of the young women they pa.s.sed. For Frank, the delectable bodies of the young women all around him proved increasingly irresistible.

It was a time of challenge in general. A new American Federation of Musicians strike had begun on the first day of 1948: once again, there could be no recording with orchestras. The ban wouldn't end until early December. In the interim, Sinatra would go into the recording studio exactly twice, laying down just three sides-two that would be released later with overdubbed orchestral backing, and one with a choir ("Nature Boy," a version far inferior to the glorious one Nat Cole had recorded before the strike began).

Sinatra was not spending much time in movie studios, either. The Kissing Bandit The Kissing Bandit had wrapped, thank G.o.d (though Frank's agony was to be prolonged: extra scenes had to be shot the following March); production on had wrapped, thank G.o.d (though Frank's agony was to be prolonged: extra scenes had to be shot the following March); production on The Miracle of the Bells The Miracle of the Bells had finished at the end of September. He would start work on a new Metro musical with Gene Kelly, had finished at the end of September. He would start work on a new Metro musical with Gene Kelly, Take Me Out to the Ball Game Take Me Out to the Ball Game, in July.

In the meantime, he was largely idle. On Sat.u.r.day nights came Your Hit Parade Your Hit Parade, with its occasional pleasures but mostly its tribulations: in January, he sprinted through a version of "Too Fat Polka" ("I don't want her, you can have her, she's too fat for me") so dispiriting that to listen to it is to risk bursting into tears. Worse was to come. He did a couple of guest spots on Jack Benny's and Maurice Chevalier's radio shows. But mainly, he did a lot of drinking and poker playing with the Varsity.

Frank had officially moved out of his penthouse at the Sunset Tower apartments years before, but had held on to it-for the times he recorded late at night and had to be at the studio early the next morning; for business meetings; for other things. For a while, Axel and Sammy Cahn had roomed together in a suite a couple of floors below: now Sammy was married, but he still liked to stop by Frank's place now and then for a drink, a few hands of cards, some laughs.

One night, after some of each, Sammy and Frank were out on the terrace, looking down over the Sunset Strip. A violet evening, the little lights twinkling in the Hollywood hills. Sammy pointed, a little unsteadily, across the street. Did Frank know who lived down there?

Frank just shook his head at him.

"If you looked down from Frank's terrace," Cahn wrote in his autobiography, "you'd see, across the street, a series of little houses, one of them owned by Tom Kelly, a noted interior decorator; the occupant of that house was Ava Gardner."

When Sammy told him this, Frank shook his head again, this time in wonderment. For a moment, he stared fiercely into the twilight. Then he cupped his hands to his mouth. "Ava!" he yelled. The big voice carried far into the quiet evening. "Ava Gardner!"

Sammy Cahn looked at his hero and grinned. n.o.body like him. Now he cupped his hands to his his mouth. "Can you hear me, Ava?" he called, in his high, hoa.r.s.e tones. "We know you're down there, Ava!" mouth. "Can you hear me, Ava?" he called, in his high, hoa.r.s.e tones. "We know you're down there, Ava!"

"h.e.l.lo, Ava, h.e.l.lo!" Sinatra called. As if he were yelling down a wishing well.

The two men looked at each other and began to giggle. Giggling turned to laughing. Laughing became hysteria. Soon they were both clutching their sides painfully and bellowing into the night. Down on the sidewalk, one or two pa.s.sersby-in those days there weren't many pedestrians on the Strip-stared up at the terrace.

And then a miracle: in the little house nestled into the trees on the north side of Sunset-torn down many years ago and replaced by a railroad-car restaurant-a curtain was drawn, a window opened.

Ava stuck her head out the window and looked up. She knew exactly who it was: the voice was unmistakable. She grinned, and waved back.

Was it an accident that they ran into each other just a few days later, in front of her place? And then again, a few days after that, near Sunset Tower? Frank wasn't much for walking, but suddenly there was something compelling about those stretches of sidewalk. The third time, they both spotted each other a half block away; both began laughing as they converged.

He grinned as he said h.e.l.lo.

Ava's eyes searched his. Was he following her?

He met her gaze boldly. If he were following her, he'd be behind her.

She put a hand on her hip. Uh-huh.

"Ava, let's be friends. Why don't we have drinks and dinner tonight?"

"I looked at him," she wrote in her autobiography.

I d.a.m.n well knew he was married, though the gossip columns always had him leaving Nancy for good, and married men were definitely not high on my hit parade. But he was was handsome, with his thin, boyish face, the bright blue eyes, and this incredible grin. And he was so enthusiastic and invigorated, clearly pleased with life in general, himself in particular, and, at that moment, handsome, with his thin, boyish face, the bright blue eyes, and this incredible grin. And he was so enthusiastic and invigorated, clearly pleased with life in general, himself in particular, and, at that moment, me me.

She accepted his invitation, and they went to Mocambo, just up the Strip. There were a lot of drinks. She had taken up the habit soon after she married the tyrannical Artie Shaw, to quell the feelings of intellectual inferiority he so easily aroused in her. This night there were different feelings to quell. In any case, alcohol, in quant.i.ty, made her forget her deep self-doubt, made her feel like a different person-glamorous, intelligent, desirable, a person worthy of the attentions of Frank Sinatra. She had always had a thing for musicians: Shaw, with his Svengali act, had taken advantage of that. But Sinatra was in a category all his own. He was, she'd felt from the first time she heard him, "one of the greatest singers of this century. He had a thing in his voice I've only heard in two other people-Judy Garland and Maria Callas. A quality that makes me want to cry for happiness, like a beautiful sunset or a boys' choir singing Christmas carols."

And now here she was, sitting with him. She leaned her head on her hand tipsily and looked sideways at him. He was telling a story, animatedly. She could barely make out the words. It didn't matter. Could she be in love with this man? She shook her head, as if in wonderment at something he was saying, but really to herself: this wouldn't do.

Frank was not immune to guilt either, though alcohol and admiration could quickly make him feel that other rules applied in his case. He had told himself that with dozens of girls-but Ava was different. Marilyn Maxwell had been sweet and sincere and deliciously naughty; Lana was gorgeous and fiery but ultimately too self-protective and shallow: her deepest belief was in her own celebrity. This one stared at him-and stared at him and stared at him-and her green-gold eyes said that she knew all his secrets. The smile that curled one corner of those amazing lips confirmed it. And his deepest secret was this: she possessed him.

After a long time they realized they were hungry, and they ate a little something. But-there were more drinks with dinner-mostly they devoured each other with their eyes. And laughed, when the tension became unbearable. He lit both their cigarettes with a gold lighter, then paid the check. He took her hand (she kept stealing glances at his hands; they were beautiful) and led her to his car.

She resisted for a moment, then she didn't.

Just a little while.

As drunk as she was-and her head seemed to be floating a vast distance over her feet-she swore her deepest oath to herself: she would not sleep with him. Somehow, whether he knew it or not, he was testing her, and she was testing herself. If she crossed this line, he would categorize her. If she crossed this line, she would be back in the bad place she had been with Artie, adrift and uncertain, a poor fatherless girl from nowhere, and nothing.

They went someplace-she was never sure, later, just where. Not his place was all she knew. A beautiful apartment, someplace. With paintings, and big windows with a view of the city, and music-his-and a divine fragrance she couldn't get out of her mind for days afterward. He took her hand and led her to the bedroom, and she stopped in the doorway. He gave her the gentlest pull, but this time she stood firm. So they sat on the couch in the living room and kissed. Kissed and kissed. She had never kissed like this before. Kissing him, she thought, was in a different universe from f.u.c.king almost anyone else.

He reached around and began to unzip her dress. And though she loved her own body, and in most cases was out of her clothes in a second, at this moment she hesitated. She touched his arm.

Francis.

No one had ever called him this before.1 He moved his hand back, and they kissed some more. For a long time. He moved his hand back, and they kissed some more. For a long time.

He said her name, softly, after a while. Then he took her home.

Neither of them slept that night. It would be months before they saw each other again.

The house in the desert was finished on time and, thanks to the round-the-clock construction schedule, phenomenally over budget. Twin Palms wound up costing $150,000, a huge sum in 1948, and five times the original estimate. But it was finished, and it was beautiful, and now Frank and Nancy and the children had an incomparable weekend refuge. Palm Springs looked like no place else. There were a couple of paved streets; the rest was just sand and stones and palms and orange groves and blazing flowers and crystalline air-it all made you feel you'd landed on a different planet. Frank felt freer there; the lines on his forehead smoothed out. He'd bought an Army-surplus jeep for fun, and he drove the kids over the sand (of course Nancy couldn't go in her condition), gunning the engine and beeping the horn and bouncing and whooping and laughing.

When they got back, Nancy was sitting by the pool in the sun, her belly rising like a hill in her maternity bathing suit. As the kids bounded into the water, Frank leaned down and kissed her on the top of the head; she patted his hand, pressing her lips together.

She knew almost everything, knew that this was the way it was going to be until-or unless-they weren't together anymore. She had fooled herself, till the pregnancy was too far along to change anything, that this time might be different. Tonight he would disappear once more: even in the desert, there were places to go. When he returned, deep in the night, she would smell the liquor and tobacco and perfume on him; when he patted her shoulder, she would turn and pretend to be asleep.

Many years later, Nancy Sandra remembered one of these weekends at Twin Palms: Her father had gone out there first, then the next day big Sam Weiss-the song plugger who had helped Frank out during the Mortimer encounter at Ciro's-drove Big Nancy and the children to the Springs. Three hours over two-lane blacktop, the warm wind shooting through the open windows, Nancy and Sam chatting in the front seat, then falling into long silences. "On this trip," Nancy Sandra writes in Frank Sinatra: My Father Frank Sinatra: My Father, the plan was...for us to see Daddy for a couple of days, and then for Sam to drive us home, leaving our parents alone. They didn't get to spend time alone very often. When I realized I was being sent away, I couldn't stand it. I cried and cried-not a tantrum, not angry, but afraid of leaving my mom; I had never been without her.I couldn't stop crying. Frankie, never lacking emotion, caught it, and we both cried and cried. Daddy, out of pity, or in a desperate attempt to save his sanity, eventually said to Mom, "I guess you'd better go with them." So Mom packed us up, put us in the car with Sam, and climbed in the back seat next to her spoiled brat of a daughter. When we were out of sight of the two skinny palm trees and Daddy, Mom started to cry softly. She tried to hide her tears behind dark gla.s.ses. Now, I had never seen my mother cry before-I mean, mothers don't cry, children children cry. It's not a mother's job. cry. It's not a mother's job.I was shocked and frightened...

And Weiss, Nancy writes, was "disgusted" with both children-the three-hour drive back to Toluca Lake felt like twelve. When they got home, the children's new governess, Georgie Hardwick-until recently employed by the Bing Crosbys-came out to meet them: We'd had a few other governesses-Whitey, Kathleen, Dolores, Mamie-but Georgie was the toughest. She was great. And in this situation, expecting to see only two very small people walk through the door sans mother, she flashed me a look I'll never forget. From that day on, without lectures, without words, Georgie quietly, gently, transformed me into an unspoiled child.