Frank_ The Voice Part 27

Touring the provinces...it had such an air of n.o.blesse oblige about it. And it was all talk, of course: if Frank was going to tour any provinces, it would be the provinces of Missouri or Pennsylvania, or wherever else he could dig up a gig or two. The humble act that had gone over so well with Ava was all too real, and the flip side of it was that he felt lousy about himself. All that stuff about staying as close as possible to her in Africa was her idea: that, and a visit to her family in North Carolina, were her price for reconciliation. A family visit he could take; Africa was another matter. In truth, he dreaded the trip-dreaded John Ford with his sharp tongue and his three Academy Awards, even dreaded Gable, the King, with his phony teeth and his easy insouciance (and, perhaps, his a.s.sumptions about the leading man's prerogatives when it came to Ava). What would Frank say to them?

He had heard nothing from Cohn. A day went by, and another day, then a week, and soon Sinatra began to believe that Cohn had just been humoring him. In fact, Columbia was d.i.c.kering with the stage actor Eli Wallach, whom everybody, Cohn and Zinnemann and Buddy Adler, wanted for Maggio. But Wallach's agents were being a pain in the a.s.s, insisting that the thespian be paid $20,000 for the role when the studio had budgeted $16,000, tops.

Frank, knowing nothing of all this, was as nervous as a cat. Three nights after Hedda spied him in Frascati's, he made a guest appearance on Jimmy Durante's All-Star Revue- All-Star Revue-a bone tossed to him by his old It Happened in Brooklyn It Happened in Brooklyn sidekick. Afterward, Frank and Ava went out to dinner with friends in the Valley, and they got drunk, and Frank said something awful. It was all too predictable. "By the time we'd gotten home to Pacific Palisades, my mood had taken on an icy, remote, to-h.e.l.l-with-all-men tinge," Ava recalled. sidekick. Afterward, Frank and Ava went out to dinner with friends in the Valley, and they got drunk, and Frank said something awful. It was all too predictable. "By the time we'd gotten home to Pacific Palisades, my mood had taken on an icy, remote, to-h.e.l.l-with-all-men tinge," Ava recalled.

To emphasize the remoteness I felt, I retired to the solitude of my bathroom. So there I was, lying in my tub, soothing myself under the bubbles, when Frank came breezing in, picking up the argument where it had left off.I was furious. I hate intrusions when I have my clothes off. It's a bred-in-the-bone shyness, some sort of deep insecurity which I guess comes from my childhood. As I've said, with each of my three husbands it took me several drinks and a lot of courage to appear disrobed in front of them.I reacted instinctively. "Get out of here!" I yelled.Naturally, that gave my husband the feeling that he was not truly loved.Frank exploded. He yelled back, "For Christ's sake, aren't I married to you?"That cut no ice with me. I was still outraged."Go away!" I screamed.Which paved the way for what I have to admit was a truly memorable exit line. "Okay! Okay! If that's the way you want it, I'm leaving. And if you want to know where I am, I'm in Palm Springs, f.u.c.king Lana Turner."

How to get your wife's attention...Thus began a Hollywood operetta that would become the subject of heated fascination for years to come. History swirls with conflicting accounts of the next twenty-four hours, which commenced with Frank slamming doors, jumping into his car, and screeching off into the night, ostensibly in search of Lana Turner, who was indeed in Palm Springs-a fact of which Frank was well aware because she was staying in his G.o.dd.a.m.n house. Ava had lent her the G.o.dd.a.m.n house.

Frank's old flame was hiding out in Twin Palms under the protection of her (and Ava's) business manager Benton Cole, because Turner's boyfriend, Fernando Lamas, had recently beaten her up in a jealous rage. Lana, who possessed an infallible trouble-seeking radar when it came to men, had provoked Lamas's ire by dancing with the movie Tarzan Lex Barker at the very party (Marion Davies's) at which Lamas had stared deeply into Ava's eyes...

In fact, Hollywood in the early 1950s was a slick and dark fantasy world in many ways like the climactic house-of-mirrors scene in Orson Welles's recent Lady from Shanghai- Lady from Shanghai-self-reflective to the point of disorientation. Lamas, a hotheaded Argentinean who was about to co-star with Turner in MGM's Latin Lovers Latin Lovers, had recently slapped her on-screen in The Merry Widow- The Merry Widow-which, he apparently felt, now gave him license to do the job for real. First, though, he turned his perfect profile to gaze soulfully at Ava precisely as a newspaper photographer snapped the scene-and as Lana sat at his side, looking appropriately humiliated.

All this at a party Marion Davies had thrown for over a thousand guests, including the press, because, said Davies, "I want to have some fun before I die."

Benton Cole had come to Lana's aid before. The previous September, in the wake of marital woes and a couple of box-office flops, Lana had (not unperceptively) declared her career "a hollow success, a tissue of fantasies on film," and slit her wrists in the bathroom of her Beverly Hills house. Cole broke down the door and took her to the hospital.

Now, with her career on the upswing but her personal life a familiar shambles,2 the movie queen Frank Sinatra had once promised to marry was sitting with her manager-protector, smoking and drinking and bruised, in the love nest on Alejo Road as Frank and Ava converged separately on Palm Springs. the movie queen Frank Sinatra had once promised to marry was sitting with her manager-protector, smoking and drinking and bruised, in the love nest on Alejo Road as Frank and Ava converged separately on Palm Springs.

Despite his shouted declaration, Frank had absolutely no desire to f.u.c.k Lana Turner. He had just been angry. (Not to mention the fact that in her early thirties, she was already starting to look middle-aged.) He had pa.s.sed over Lana and married Ava for a reason, and it was more than just that the s.e.x was great. Lana Turner was, as witness her long, sad stumble through life, an empty sh.e.l.l of a human being, devoid of intellectual or spiritual resources of any sort. Ava Gardner, on the other hand, was a woman of enormous mettle and variety and spirit, one who would, after Frank, go on to fascinate Hemingway and Robert Graves, and not just because of the beauty of her person.

Frank knew all this (and the s.e.x was great). Ava knew it only intermittently. She wasn't sure she could act, she wasn't sure she could think, but she did know she was a physical phenomenon. It was her one piece of certainty, and she gloried in it and suffered from it like any other star-if not more so, because of the depth of her sensibility. Her perpetual state of insecurity often made her feel that at bottom, nothing was really worth anything. The ground was constantly shifting beneath her feet-and beneath the feet of anyone who stood close to her. It made her at once fascinating and impossible.

Some of this may have occurred to Frank as he drove toward the desert in the pre-sunrise twilight, but what he was mainly thinking about was his own problems. He was feeling extremely sorry for himself, and he just wanted to take solace in the one place that gave him any comfort. And he wanted to be there alone. First, though, he wanted to pay a call on Jimmy Van Heusen-who loved the desert as much as Frank did, and had a place out in Yucca Valley-and talk it all out.

The first thing Ava did after Frank's dramatic exit was call Bappie and ask her to drive with her to Palm Springs. She wanted, against all logic, "to catch Frank in the act." When the sisters reached Twin Palms, Ava climbed over the chain-link fence in back and tried to peer in the windows, but the curtains were all drawn. Then the door opened. Benton Cole had heard her poking around; now he let her in-and Frank was nowhere in sight. Just Lana, "looking lovely as ever," Ava remembered.

I knew that at one time she felt like she'd been on the verge of marrying Frank, which certainly gave some impetus to my suspicions, but we'd always been good, if not close, friends. And I'd always admired her as a great movie star. I remembered when I first arrived in Hollywood, a starlet green as a spring tobacco leaf. I'd glimpsed Lana on a set one day, and I'd thought, Now, there's the real thing. She had a canvas-backed chair inscribed with her name and a stool next to it holding her things. What struck me was that among them was a gleaming gold gold cigarette case and a cigarette case and a gold gold lighter. Without envy I'd thought, Now that's what a lighter. Without envy I'd thought, Now that's what a real real film star should look like. That's style. film star should look like. That's style.

To say that she was style without substance is perhaps shining too harsh a light on Turner: stardom is a real phenomenon. But the remoteness that combines with physical presence in the peculiar chemical reaction that produces stardom is usually a measure of distance from self. "Everybody wants to be Cary Grant," Grant once said. "Even I want to be Cary Grant." "It is true," Earl Wilson wrote, "that movie stars get to believe their own publicity." It is actually half-true. Stardom is a seductive idea, easier to believe in if the self doesn't get muddled up in it. Stars find it easier to believe in other stars' publicity. Now, there's the real thing Now, there's the real thing. To Ava, Frank's angry talk had all the power he'd intended: he was, after all, talking about Lana Turner Lana Turner.

On the other hand, in the morning light that filtered in around the edges of the heavy drapes, Ava couldn't help taking note of the tired-looking woman who sat across from her in Frank's living room-the tired-looking woman with bruises on her face who kept tapping her cigarette on the ashtray as she drank gla.s.s after gla.s.s of vodka. Ava and Bappie and Ben Cole and Lana had decided to make a regular party of it, getting pie-eyed and telling scandalous Hollywood stories, hooting with laughter.

That was when Frank burst in, furious.

Chester had not been home. And so Sinatra had headed down to his place, seen the cars parked outside, driven around Palm Springs awhile as the sun rose, building up a head of steam. When the light began to hurt his eyes-he loved the blue just before sunrise, hated the full morning light-he went back to Alejo Road, walked up to the front door, and heard the loud laughter inside. In his G.o.dd.a.m.n house.

At first the sight of them all sitting there having a gay old time rendered him speechless. Then Ava piped up. "Ah, Frank! I thought you were going to be down here f.u.c.king Lana!"

He blinked, looking fl.u.s.tered for a second. "I wouldn't touch that broad if you paid me," he said.

Lana jerked upright as if Fernando had slapped her again. It was the truth, and the truth hurt. No one was more sharply aware than she of the new lines on her face and the puffiness under her eyes, not to mention the contusions on her cheek.

For his part, Frank could only think of his own hurt. "I bet you two broads have really been cutting me up," he said.

Lana was shaking her head, her eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g at the injustice.

"Frank-" Ava warned.

At this point, accounts diverge. Frank either ordered Ava into the bedroom or commanded everyone to get out of his house. Ben Cole and Lana may have left immediately or somewhat later. In her memoir, Lana recalled that Ava shrugged and went to the bedroom, followed by Frank, and that soon the sounds of a terrific battle, complete with crashing furniture, could be heard. According to Turner, Bappie later brought a "battered" Ava to stay with her and Cole. "We did what we could to make Ava comfortable," she recalled.

Poor Ava. She was badly shaken, and after my own grim experience, I could sympathize with her humiliation. But alone in my room I was surprised that I also felt sorry for Frank. It was a bad time for him. His career had slipped badly, and he was losing Ava.

This has a self-serving sound to it-as though Turner merely wanted a sister in suffering. In her own reminiscences, Ava mentions nothing about a beating, even though her fights with Frank always seemed to devolve into physical mayhem as a prelude to s.e.x. Instead, she claims she gave as good as she got, informing her husband haughtily that it was her house too, and proceeding to pull all her books and phonograph records from the shelves. "Frank seemed to approve of this idea," she remembered.

Furiously he scooped up everything I'd thrown on the floor and heaved it all out the still-open front door...and onto the pitch-dark driveway. Not to be outdone, I stalked across to the bedroom and bathroom and started to pile my clothes, cosmetics, and every other G.o.dd.a.m.n odd and end I had in a heap on the floor. And Frank grabbed those as well, raced to the door, and tossed them out into the night to join the ever-growing mess in the driveway.

Soon, according to Ava, Frank had seized her by the waist and was trying to toss her out too, while she clung for dear life to a doork.n.o.b. In the meantime, the forty-nine-year-old Bappie-conceivably with a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other-was attempting to make peace between the two. "For G.o.d's sake, kids, will you please knock it off?" she said. "This is disgraceful disgraceful!"

At last somebody, either Frank or the neighbors, or both, called the police, who arrived, in the form of the genial former football star August "Gus" Kettmann-Palm Springs PD chief and, according to Ava, a friend of Frank's. Kettmann looked at the mess, looked at Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra's flushed faces, looked at the mess again. He pushed his hat back and scratched his head. There had been a lot of noise but no criminal activity, and the whole episode had taken place on private property. He could book the couple for disturbing the peace, but what would be the point? He told everyone to simmer down and left.

Naturally, word got out. Word always got out.

Two days later the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times put the story, what they had of it, right on page one, under the headline NOT CONFIRMED, and the subhead "Sinatra-Ava Boudoir Row Story Buzzes." put the story, what they had of it, right on page one, under the headline NOT CONFIRMED, and the subhead "Sinatra-Ava Boudoir Row Story Buzzes."

At that point it was all sizzle and no steak. The Times Times quoted Chief Kettmann as saying he knew nothing about anything. "I was off duty and there's nothing on the record about a disturbance," he claimed, not very convincingly. quoted Chief Kettmann as saying he knew nothing about anything. "I was off duty and there's nothing on the record about a disturbance," he claimed, not very convincingly.

The reporter then tried to goad the chief into more of a response by citing "Palm Springs rumors": namely, "that Sinatra ordered his beautiful film actress wife out of their desert mansion."

"Well," harrumphed Kettmann, "after all, if John Smith and his wife had a fight at their house I wouldn't feel privileged to tell you of any discussion that went on in their bedroom between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and our officers. I know nothing about it."

Kettmann may not have been telling the press much, but according to Earl Wilson "the Palm Springs police were talking"-their tongues perhaps loosened by some folding money. It was the peak of a big presidential election season-a tight race between Adlai Stevenson and Dwight D. Eisenhower-but the Frank and Ava Show was vying for America's attention. In the October 21 Fres...o...b..e Fres...o...b..e, at the top of a page filled with headlines like NIXON SAYS ADLAI HAS RING IN NOSE, BARKLEY PREDICTS SWEEP IN SOUTH, STEVENSON OPENS LAST BIG WHISTLE STOP CAMPAIGN, and MRS. FDR PICKS ADLAI AS HER CHOICE IN RACE, there appeared the following news flash: COLUMNIST SAYS SINATRA BOOTS AVA OUT OF HOMENEW YORK-AP-Columnist Earl Wilson reported today in the New York Post Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner have separated after a spectacular quarrel.

When Wilson phoned Van Heusen and asked to speak to Sinatra, Chester said, "Frank's in the bathroom throwing up."

In the absence of hard information, rumors sprouted and flourished. Soon the kinds of salacious tales that Ava and Lana had been bandying over vodkas in the living room of Twin Palms were flashing around Hollywood: Ava had walked in on Lana and Frank having s.e.x. Frank had walked in on Lana and Ava having s.e.x. A more elaborate version even found its way into a subsequent FBI report on Sinatra: Frank had walked in on Lana and Ava having a three way with another man. Why not throw in poor Bappie too?

The fact was, Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were a permanently unstable compound, and no amount of s.e.xual intercourse, no matter how spectacular, was sufficient to keep them bonded. Or as Ava later confided to the singer Bricktop: "The problems were never in bed. The problems would start on the way to the bidet."

Then they were back together again. Fittingly, since they belonged to the public, the reconciliation proceeded largely through public channels. Phase one was brokered by their hovering chronicler Earl Wilson, who leaned on Frank to admit how miserable he was, then ran a column in the New York Post New York Post headlined FRANKIE READY TO SURRENDER; WANTS AVA BACK, ANY TERMS. After friends and colleagues alerted her to the piece, she let it be known that she would accept her husband's call. headlined FRANKIE READY TO SURRENDER; WANTS AVA BACK, ANY TERMS. After friends and colleagues alerted her to the piece, she let it be known that she would accept her husband's call.

He called.

After the obligatory private phase two, phase three took place onstage at the Hollywood Palladium in front of four thousand people, at a rally for Adlai Stevenson on October 27. Then as now, many of the stars came out for the Democrats, Frank and Ava prominent among them. The couple had been slated to appear together for weeks, but of course in the wake of the previous weekend's events no one had any idea if they would actually show up.

Then Ava walked out onto center stage, wearing a black-satin strapless dress and a mink jacket, and smiled dazzlingly into the spotlight. The audience, filled with her peers, smiled back at her, knowing a great show when it saw one. She stepped to the microphone and waited for the applause to fade. "I can't do anything myself," Ava said, "but I can introduce a wonderful, wonderful man. I'm a great fan of his myself. Ladies and gentlemen, my husband, Frank Sinatra!"

The roar that followed was more about them than about him and he knew it, but he smiled anyway as he stepped into the spotlight and put his arm around his wife's shoulder. Frank looked like h.e.l.l. He wore a big ADLAI b.u.t.ton on the lapel of his dark suit, and as he stood with Ava, he spoke a few words about the candidate they both admired, but he might as well have been moving his lips soundlessly for all the audience cared. Here was a couple whose magnetism trumped that of all Hollywood couples before or since.

Then Frank was kissing Ava, she was waving and stepping out of the spotlight, and the band struck up and he sang-first hard and swingingly, on "The Birth of the Blues"; then soft and feelingly, on "The House I Live In"-and the hushed crowd remembered, for a few minutes, just how great he had been.

She stood in the wings staring at him as he sang, head over heels all over again. He was just f.u.c.king magic, she thought. The reporters gathered backstage kept tossing questions at her as she watched and listened, but Ava just gazed at Frank, smiling.

Some guy from a Chicago paper, greasy hair and thick gla.s.ses, tried to cut through the clutter. "Hey, Ava-come on!" he called. "What do you see in this guy? He's just a hundred-and-nineteen-pound has-been!"

Not even blinking, she said, "Well, I'll tell you-nineteen pounds is c.o.c.k."

The reporter stood frozen, his mouth open, his pencil poised over his notebook amid heavy masculine laughter. Ava smiled serenely and kept watching the audience held spellbound by the memory of Sinatra.

Frank and Ava and Bappie landed at Idlewild and found the usual wall of reporters, hoping for a fight, a cross word-anything. Seeing the couple apparently happy, the men of the press did their best to get something going.

"So, Frank-are they going to try and find you a role in Mogambo Mogambo?"

He gave the guy a look. "Yeah, I'm gonna play a native, in blackface."

Another reporter: "What'll Frank be doing while you're making the movie, Ava?"

"Oh, he'll do his act in some African nightclubs."

"Who's opening for him, Tarzan?" a guy in the back called out.

After braving it as best they could, they had sandwiches and a few drinks, then got on another plane for Winston-Salem. This was Frank's end of the bargain, or the first half of it at any rate: they had spent plenty of time with his family; now it was time for him to meet hers. It was her first trip back home in three years.

He was not in a good frame of mind. A month had gone by since his lunch with Cohn: no word. Frank now knew Columbia was testing other actors, real actors, for the role of Maggio. He had sent more telegrams signed with the character's name, trying to be cute, trying not to show how desperate he felt. Silence. Ava, of course, had mentioned nothing of her meeting with Harry's wife: she understood her husband's complex Italian pride. She looked at him, worried; she tried to keep his spirits up. The best he could manage was gallows humor. Most of the time he was uncharacteristically silent. He read and reread his rumpled copy of Eternity Eternity.

This was his life for now. They would go to North Carolina, then they would go to Africa, where she would work and he would sit. Just before Thanksgiving he would fly back to do two weeks at the French Casino, a club in the Paramount Hotel on Forty-sixth Street, at ten grand a week. It would have been half-decent money if Frank were actually getting any of it. (By comparison, Martin and Lewis, who were all over television, radio, the movies, theaters, and clubs, were then earning a guaranteed ten thousand a night a night for live performance.) It wasn't much of a booking, but it was a booking. He had no television or radio show, no movie deal, no record label, no concerts, no nothing. Lastfogel was working on all of it for him, making heroic efforts. "Sinatra smelled like a loser in those days," the agent would say years later. for live performance.) It wasn't much of a booking, but it was a booking. He had no television or radio show, no movie deal, no record label, no concerts, no nothing. Lastfogel was working on all of it for him, making heroic efforts. "Sinatra smelled like a loser in those days," the agent would say years later.

So, reeking of failure, Frank went to Winston-Salem. There, at least, he was Frank Sinatra Frank Sinatra. There, the locals blushed and tripped over themselves at the mere sight of him-or rather, him and Ava. He and his wife and Bappie went to Ava's sister Myra's house: a little house, filled with relatives and the smells of delicious cooking. It all took Frank back to Hasbrouck Heights: the smells were different, the voices were different, but the mixed tides of love and claustrophobia were much the same.

Ava gleamed and glittered, too big and bright for the small rooms, her gorgeousness burnished by her success and the proud love of her family. Frank did his best. Myra's husband, Bronnie Pearce, ran a laundry in Winston-Salem, with a pick-up-and-drop-off diaper service. Frank's interest in the laundry business was limited...But they were good people, the Pearces and the Grimeses and the Creeches and the Gardners, so he made an effort, answering every question no matter how dumb, making conversation while he held a plate heaped with country food, glancing out at the gray trees and wondering when he could escape.

"Frank was very nice-a little quiet and shy," Billy Grimes's sister Mary Edna remembered many years later. A stray moment stayed with her: seeing Sinatra in the living room, sitting on the piano stool and talking with her ten-year-old brother about his clarinet lessons at school. "I heard him tell Michael how he'd learned to play the flute when he was young," she said. She was struck by Frank's serious respectfulness with the boy.

He was also depressed. Under the circ.u.mstances, one day in North Carolina was about all he could stand. He told Ava he had to get back to Manhattan; he was desperate to recharge his batteries. She wasn't happy, but she understood. She told him she needed another day with her family. Things were cool between them now: she was rising, rising, like a runaway balloon, and there was nothing Frank could do to stop her. Nor anything she could do to stop him-Ava went to see him off at the airport. Reporters were present, of course: they groaned with disappointment when Frank gave her a farewell peck on the cheek. Once more with feeling, please, for the cameras...And then he was dashing across the tarmac, turning for a second to say one more thing to his wife as he ran to the plane. The men of the press listened carefully, pencils poised.

"Goodbye, Dolly," Frank yelled, over the engine noise. "I'll call you."

32.

Arriving in Nairobi as Ava heads to work on Mogambo Mogambo, November 1952. (photo credit 32.1) (photo credit 32.1) They celebrated their first anniversary on board another plane, this time en route to Nairobi, opening a warmish bottle of champagne and exchanging gifts that she had paid for: a diamond-studded ring from him, a platinum watch from her. "It was quite an occasion for me," Ava recalled. "I had been married twice but never for a whole year."

Clark Gable came to meet their flight at Eastleigh Airport in Nairobi. "Hiya, Clark!" Ava called, when she spotted him. They embraced. Gable growled h.e.l.lo: she looked as ravishing as always. He looked magnificent in his khakis and bush hat. Frank, standing by in his rumpled airplane suit, his tie loosened, his thin hair flying in the breeze, faked a smile. In fact he needn't have worried. Though Ava and Gable were old drinking buddies from their co-starring stint in the miserable Lone Star- Lone Star-and had had the obligatory on-location fling-she'd quickly come to see the gulf between image and reality. "Clark's the kind of guy that if you say, 'Hiya, Clark, how are you?' he's stuck for an answer," she told friends. She loved him like an uncle-and kept sacrosanct the steamy black-and-white memory of his commanding eyes in Red Dust Red Dust.

But while the 1932 Red Dust Red Dust had been shot in its entirety on Stage 6 at MGM, the Technicolor 1950s required greater verisimilitude. had been shot in its entirety on Stage 6 at MGM, the Technicolor 1950s required greater verisimilitude. Mogambo Mogambo would be filmed, as Metro's ad copy trumpeted, "on safari in Africa amid authentic scenes of unrivaled savagery and awe-inspiring splendor." The savagery was a little too real for comfort: the Mau Mau Uprising had recently begun in Kenya, and Kikuyu rebels had killed dozens of whites. "The movie company had its own thirty-man police force," Ava remembered, "and when we got to what was then British East Africa, we were under the protection of both the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Queen's African Rifles...Everyone in the cast was issued a weapon." There is no record of whether Frank brought his own. would be filmed, as Metro's ad copy trumpeted, "on safari in Africa amid authentic scenes of unrivaled savagery and awe-inspiring splendor." The savagery was a little too real for comfort: the Mau Mau Uprising had recently begun in Kenya, and Kikuyu rebels had killed dozens of whites. "The movie company had its own thirty-man police force," Ava remembered, "and when we got to what was then British East Africa, we were under the protection of both the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Queen's African Rifles...Everyone in the cast was issued a weapon." There is no record of whether Frank brought his own.

East Africa had never seen a safari quite like this: a cast and crew of almost six hundred, including bearers, guides, chefs, nurses, servants, native extras, and no fewer than eight big-game hunters, chief among them a rakish English expat named Frank "Bunny" Allen. The whole contingent moved from location to location in a convoy of fifty trucks, and, Ava recalled, once we settled our encampment was three hundred tents strong. And if you think those tents were just for sleeping, think again. My G.o.d, we had tents for every little thing you could think of: dining tents, wardrobe tents with electric irons, a rec room tent with darts for the Brits and table tennis for the Yanks, even a hospital tent complete with X-ray machine, and a jail tent in case anybody got a tiny bit too rowdy.

Along the Kagera River on the Tanganyika-Uganda border, the stars (twenty-three-year-old Grace Kelly played Gable's other love interest) lived in Abercrombie & Fitchlike safari splendor: fancy flown-in French food (Sinatra brought a supply of pasta and tomato sauce), fine wines and liquors, even heated water for baths and showers. It might as well have been a penal colony as far as Frank was concerned. The temperatures rose well into the hundreds during the day; dust blew into every crevice. One shower a day didn't begin to suffice...But mainly, he was a fifth wheel. Ford liked throwing orders at him, with a broad wink to the others: "Make the spaghetti, Frank." The malicious old Irishman constantly tested everyone around him for weakness, prodding and needling: one of the first things he told Ava was that he'd really wanted Maureen O'Hara to play her role.

For Frank, all of Mogambo Mogambo boiled down to one object-a camp chair. While Ford took the cast and crew out into the bush every morning to shoot, Frank parked his a.s.s in that d.a.m.n chair, rereading that G.o.dd.a.m.n book for the umpteenth time, thinking about all the other actors who were testing for Maggio, and wondering if Harry Cohn was ever going to call him back. boiled down to one object-a camp chair. While Ford took the cast and crew out into the bush every morning to shoot, Frank parked his a.s.s in that d.a.m.n chair, rereading that G.o.dd.a.m.n book for the umpteenth time, thinking about all the other actors who were testing for Maggio, and wondering if Harry Cohn was ever going to call him back.

It didn't make him especially good company. By the time the movie people returned in the evening, he was two or three drinks ahead of them, grumbling into his gla.s.s about the dirt and the flies and Columbia Pictures.

Out in the bush at night, there was little to do but drink, and behind thin tent walls there were few secrets. The show people and crew engaged in the usual location mischief-Gable and Kelly had a hot affair; Bunny Allen had quite a few-but Frank and Ava mainly battled. The situation wasn't helped by the fact that she was feeling lousy. Maybe it was dysentery-a lot of people, including Ford, were sick-but by the time Frank had complained for the thousandth time about his troubles, she had had it. "Why don't you just get on with your f.u.c.king life?" she screamed at him one night. Many heard her.

Every morning, the company's DC-3 would b.u.mp down in the clearing the crew had bulldozed, bringing supplies and mail from Nairobi. And one morning, a long week after Frank and Ava had arrived, there was a cable for him in the morning mail.

Some say it was from Buddy Adler; some say it came from Bert Allenberg, one of Sinatra's new agents at William Morris. In any case, the cable was short and to the point: Frank was to report to Culver City to be screen-tested for the role of Maggio.

He read it over and over again. There was no mention of exactly how he was supposed to get to Culver City from the middle of the G.o.dd.a.m.n jungle, and he didn't have the price of a ticket.

Frank hated asking Ava for money, but she didn't hesitate for a second. She had an MGM account: all she had to do to charge airfare was say the word. It was the best she had liked her husband in weeks-because it was the best he had liked himself in weeks. Go knock 'em dead, she told him.

With the New York gig coming up, he might as well stay through, he said. It meant he wouldn't be back for almost a month.

She agreed with him, the faintest hint of coolness in her voice. He picked it up, but there was no time to investigate.

He threw his things together in record time, kissed her, and clambered aboard the DC-3, strapping himself into a jump seat behind the pilot and waving out the window as the plane started to b.u.mp down the runway. Then he was gone.

He left the location on Friday, November 14, took a long overnight flight from Nairobi to London, and arrived the next day. He stayed at the Savoy, and when he departed on Sunday for New York, he left a brown-paper-wrapped package he'd brought with him in the hotel's safe-deposit box. Ava had asked him to take the package, containing her diamond earrings and a diamond bracelet, so the Mau Maus wouldn't get them.

Frank landed at Idlewild on Monday morning. He had handed his declaration sheet to the customs agent and walked blearily through the checkpoint when another agent waved him aside. Suddenly two cops appeared and escorted him to an office. Frank asked what was going on, but n.o.body said anything. Soon the office was filled with cops and U.S. customs agents. The agents asked if they could open his suitcases, then told him they had the authority to do so whether he agreed or not.

Frank asked once more what the h.e.l.l was happening. No one answered.

He stomped around a side office for almost two hours, fuming, while the agents inspected his bags minutely. He was going to miss his G.o.dd.a.m.n flight to Los Angeles. He was going to call a lawyer. He phoned Sol Gelb, who said he would look into it, but that in the meantime Frank should try to be cooperative. Frank phoned Sanicola, who drove out to Idlewild and b.u.t.ted heads with the customs people, who were very polite but very firm. No one would say what was going on. Finally, when it was clear that Frank had indeed missed his flight, customs let him go. Cursing, he got into Hank's car, rode into the city, checked in at the Regency, and phoned Buddy Adler-who told him that tomorrow would be fine for his screen test.

The next morning he went to Idlewild to catch another flight, and the plane was delayed for three hours by mechanical problems. Frank turned around, went back to the Regency, and opened a fifth of Jack Daniel's. Buddy Adler was understanding. Sanicola said that Sol Gelb had spoken to customs-which informed the lawyer that someone had sent in a crank letter saying that Sinatra was going to smuggle diamonds into the country.

On Wednesday the nineteenth Frank finally made it to Los Angeles. It was after five when he landed, and Adler's office said Frank could come in the next day. He spent the evening drinking, rereading the Maggio pa.s.sages for the thousandth time, and wondering if he had a s...o...b..ll's chance in h.e.l.l of getting the role.

Ava had suspected it for a while, and by Tuesday of that week she knew she was pregnant. It was definitely Frank's (she'd been good for a while), but she didn't want it. "I had the strongest feelings about bringing a child into the world," she would recall years later.

I felt that unless you were prepared to devote practically all your time to your child in its early years it was unfair to the baby...Not to mention the fact that MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies. If I had one, my salary would be cut off. So how would I make a living? Frank was absolutely broke and would probably continue to be (or so I thought) for a long time...[T]he fact that I was pregnant would be showing quite plainly long before [Mogambo] was finished, so Jack Ford had to be told for starters. I felt the time just wasn't right for me to have a child.

The time would never be right. She was at best ambivalent and at worst terrified; the prospect of motherhood held no charms for her. As the adored and magically splendid baby of the Gardner family, she she was the world's child; there was no room in her life for others. (For all Nancy junior's starry awe about her, Ava wasn't always particularly friendly to Frank's children.) And having a baby would change her body, and she knew where her bread was b.u.t.tered. "I often felt," Ava wrote, "that if only I could act, everything about my life and career would have been different. But I was never an actress-none of us kids at Metro were. We were just good to look at." was the world's child; there was no room in her life for others. (For all Nancy junior's starry awe about her, Ava wasn't always particularly friendly to Frank's children.) And having a baby would change her body, and she knew where her bread was b.u.t.tered. "I often felt," Ava wrote, "that if only I could act, everything about my life and career would have been different. But I was never an actress-none of us kids at Metro were. We were just good to look at."

It wasn't just that she felt she couldn't act. Usually she didn't want to, much. "The truth is that the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing absolutely nothing," she wrote in her memoir. "I don't understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of G.o.dd.a.m.ned duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect."

Nice work if you can get it. "Let's put it this way," Ava told Hedda Hopper before leaving for Africa. "I was going to be a secretary. But I'd rather be a star than a secretary...I'll go along with acting so long as it gives me financial security."

Oddly enough, though, she was having more fun making Mogambo Mogambo than she'd ever had on a picture before. Ford was a great director, despite his surliness-or maybe because of it. He was a strange cat: a self-invented character and natural storyteller, obsessed with manliness (and perhaps a closeted h.o.m.os.e.xual), p.r.o.ne to the most outrageous verbal cruelties...It was said he was the only man who could make John Wayne cry. Ava was made of sterner stuff. She brought the director around, after he'd zinged her early on, by telling him to take that handkerchief he was always chewing-nervous habit-and shove it up his a.s.s. than she'd ever had on a picture before. Ford was a great director, despite his surliness-or maybe because of it. He was a strange cat: a self-invented character and natural storyteller, obsessed with manliness (and perhaps a closeted h.o.m.os.e.xual), p.r.o.ne to the most outrageous verbal cruelties...It was said he was the only man who could make John Wayne cry. Ava was made of sterner stuff. She brought the director around, after he'd zinged her early on, by telling him to take that handkerchief he was always chewing-nervous habit-and shove it up his a.s.s.1 That did the trick with John Ford. He put his arm around her shoulder, took her aside, and said, "You're d.a.m.n good. Just take it easy." That did the trick with John Ford. He put his arm around her shoulder, took her aside, and said, "You're d.a.m.n good. Just take it easy."