Frank_ The Voice Part 30

Astonishing to think that only a couple of months before, he'd been languishing in Africa, cooking spaghetti and sweating bullets. Now he was back in action-not quite clicking on all cylinders, but busy. Hedda Hopper spotted him dining with Judy Garland and Sid Luft. "Could they have been talking about getting Frank to play opposite Judy in the musical version of 'A Star Is Born'?" the columnist wondered. (If indeed that's what they were discussing, Frank might have found the role of the alcoholic fading movie star Norman Maine a little too close for comfort.) The television columnist Hal Humphrey noted that "Sinatra appears to be almost set to star in a TV series to be produced by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The story would deal with the trials and tribulations of a musician and is called 'Blue in the Night.'"

Also a little too close to the bone.

Frank was talking to all kinds of people. Amazingly, given the state of his finances, not to mention his situation with the IRS, it was reported in March that he was seeking a Nevada gambling license and a 2 percent share in the brand-new Sands Hotel & Casino, in Las Vegas, at a price of $54,000. Where did a man who barely had a pot to make pasta in intend to get $54,000? A lot of people, including the Nevada Tax Commission, were interested in that one. "The singer said in his application that the money would come from his own a.s.sets and that he has no liabilities," reported the a.s.sociated Press. "But the tax commission said it wants to investigate, among other subjects, Sinatra's federal tax status."

The seventh casino on the Strip, which had opened on Frank's thirty-seventh birthday, December 12, 1952, was a natural foothold for Sinatra. With its ultramodern Googie-style architecture by the Desert Inn designer Wayne McAllister, its seventeen-story main tower looming in lonely splendor over Route 91, the Sands was a signpost of the new Vegas, a s.p.a.ceship that would transport the town from its spurs-and-tumbleweed past into a neon-bright future. A big-time Houston gambler named Jakie Freedman had founded the place, but unlike the Flamingo's Billy Wilkerson and the DI's Wilbur Clark, who had run out of money while constructing their dream palaces and had to let the Mob muscle in, Freedman came to town loaded (after it got too hot for the quasi-legal casino he owned in his native Houston) and stayed loaded. Freedman was also connected. He had important friends in Vegas, and in New York and Miami, friends who were eager to tap into the cash cascades that were flowing from the Sands, but shy about seeing their names in cold type in the newspapers and on legal doc.u.ments.

Sinatra and Freedman had friends-or, as the expression went, friends of friends-in common. Possibly some of the men who had looked kindly on Frank from the beginning were now extending him a favor, fronting him the money to buy into a dream? Or was he being asked to return a favor, by putting his name to a contract in their stead?

Suffice it to say that Frank had nothing like $54,000 lying around, that the money he wasn't sending straight to Nancy's lawyers he was paying to William Morris, and that Las Vegas-and the Sands in particular-had suddenly become a very friendly place. Jakie Freedman had even persuaded the guy who'd been running the Copacabana for its real owner to bring a little New York west and run the Sands for him. Jack Entratter was the guy's name: a former bouncer-a big, heavyset fellow with dark slick hair and a ready grin on his tough moon face. In honor of Jack (and of Frank Costello, too), Jakie decided to name the main showroom at the Sands after the Copa. It was a room Sinatra would soon own a piece of, then more than a piece.

On the evening of Monday, April 6, Fred Zinnemann and the stars of From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity flew to Hawaii for two weeks of location shooting. Burt Lancaster recalled the flight: flew to Hawaii for two weeks of location shooting. Burt Lancaster recalled the flight: Deborah Kerr and me and Frank and Monty are sitting up in the front of the plane. And he and Monty are drunk. Monty, poor Monty, was this kind of a drinker-he'd chug-a-lug one martini and conk out. And Frank was, I believe, having a few problems, and so, when we arrived, these two b.u.ms were unconscious. They were gone! Deborah and I had to wake them up.

Harry Cohn, who had already taken up residence at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, met them at the airport, all but tapping his wrist.w.a.tch. Perhaps, he told Zinnemann, one of the night scenes could be shot right away-maybe that thing with Burt and Deborah on the beach? Zinnemann took Cohn aside and told him gently that there were tides and other logistics involved; it wasn't a scene that could just be dashed off. Besides, he asked (as Lancaster discreetly helped his two groggy co-stars into a car), mightn't everyone do better with a day to get acclimated? Cohn grumbled. Zinnemann gave him a Viennese smile. Production began on Wednesday morning the eighth.

The work went fast and mostly smoothly. Frank was still completely engaged, but Zinnemann had stumbled upon an unusual challenge in shooting the scenes between Maggio and Prewitt: Sinatra was at his best in the first or second take of a scene: in later takes he was apt to lose spontaneity, whereas Clift would use each take as a rehearsal to add more detail so that the scenes gained in depth as we went on. It was an interesting problem when they did a scene together: how to get the best performance from them both in the same take.

As the actor Robert Wagner recalled, "Frank was very conscious of his lack of [acting] training; he was never sure that he would be able to reproduce an effect more than once or twice because he had to rely on emotion more than craft." But Zinnemann's account shows that it wasn't just about temperament: Sinatra knew what really worked for him.

He and Monty labored diligently during the day, but as had been the case the previous month, the evenings were another story. "Every night, after work, we would meet in Frank's room," Lancaster recalled.

He had a refrigerator and he would open it and there would be these iced gla.s.ses. He would prepare the martinis with some snacks while we were getting ready to go to an eight o'clock dinner. We'd sit and chat about the day's work and he would try his nightly call to Ava, who was in Spain. In those days in Spain, if you lived next door next door to your friends you couldn't get them on the telephone, let alone try to get them on the phone from Hawaii. He never got through. Not one night. When you finished your martini, he would take your gla.s.s from you, open up the icebox and get a fresh cold gla.s.s, and by eight o'clock he and Monty would be unconscious. I mean really unconscious. Every night. So Deborah and I would take Frank's clothes off and put him to bed. Then I would take Monty on my shoulders and we would carry him down to his room, take to your friends you couldn't get them on the telephone, let alone try to get them on the phone from Hawaii. He never got through. Not one night. When you finished your martini, he would take your gla.s.s from you, open up the icebox and get a fresh cold gla.s.s, and by eight o'clock he and Monty would be unconscious. I mean really unconscious. Every night. So Deborah and I would take Frank's clothes off and put him to bed. Then I would take Monty on my shoulders and we would carry him down to his room, take his his clothes off and dump clothes off and dump him him in bed. And then she and I and the Zinnemanns would go out and have dinner. in bed. And then she and I and the Zinnemanns would go out and have dinner.

Ava was in Spain on vacation, after recuperating from the abortion and finally wrapping Mogambo Mogambo, but she wouldn't be coming back anytime soon: she had become an expatriate. She would remain one, more or less, for the rest of her life, having learned-Frank wasn't the only one worried about taxes-that she could keep the bulk of her income out of the clutches of the G.o.dd.a.m.n IRS if she lived overseas. And Europe, with its wine and its siestas, its depressed economy and its relaxed att.i.tudes about all kinds of things that upset puritanical, work-obsessed, Red-obsessed America, was more to her liking anyway.

She was investigating the many advantages of her new turf. Frank wouldn't have been consoled to know that, as was her habit when he was far, far away, Ava was kicking up her heels. And not alone. As Dorothy Kilgallen noted provocatively in her column: "Frank Sinatra, who tossed Lana Turner out of his Palm Springs house when he found her visiting his wife a few months ago, may make more blow-top headlines before long. Despite his disapproval-to put it mildly-of their friendship, Lana and Ava have plans to do some vacation chumming in Europe."

Then, in Ava's case, there was another bullfighter.

This was a very different one, and this time she was the pursuer rather than the pursued. Mario Cabre had been a clown, a puffed-up poetaster, but Luis Miguel Dominguin was the real deal: the greatest matador in Spain, after the tragic death of Manolete. Tall, coolly humorous, devastatingly handsome, Dominguin was a great favorite of Ernest Hemingway, who would later write about him-calling him "a combination Don Juan and Hamlet"-in The Dangerous Summer The Dangerous Summer. At twenty-six, he was also four years younger than Ava; he also had a gorgeous Portuguese-Thai girlfriend, which made him all the more intriguing. The movie star and the torero smiled, they flirted; he spoke no English. It was three glorious weeks of sun and fiestas, then Lana had to go home and Ava had to return to London to work on Knights of the Round Table Knights of the Round Table.

Frank was luckier. In photos from the set, he was all business in his regulation khakis and Smokey the Bear campaign hat, looking as neat and trim as the soldier he never was, eyes wide with interest as he listened respectfully to Zinnemann. For weeks on end Sinatra channeled all his intensity into the role. "He was very, very good-all the time," Zinnemann said years later. "No histrionics, no bad behavior...He played Maggio so spontaneously we almost never had to reshoot a scene." Yet during the shooting of a climactic scene, he finally exploded. Zinnemann recalled: One of the last location scenes to be shot in Hawaii was a night exterior-Maggio's arrest by the military police. Maggio, blind drunk along with Prewitt in a Honolulu park, feels hara.s.sed beyond endurance; his rage boils over, he jumps up jumps up, berating the policemen, who are twice his size, and attacks them.The afternoon's rehearsal was excellent, but Cohn had heard about it and thought that we would be in trouble with the Army-Sinatra was just too provocative. He wanted us to tone things down; the actors and I disagreed with this view, although I felt the objection had come from someone outside, above Cohn.For a few mad hours I believed that I could get away with shooting the scene as rehea.r.s.ed and presenting Cohn with an accomplished fact. Night fell; lights and camera were ready. Cohn was not present, but his informers were. At the last moment, he roared up to the set, together with the garrison's top echelon of officers. They had come ostensibly to watch us at work but it soon became clear that a confrontation could develop and lead to closing down the picture. We were, after all, on army territory. I knew that we could be jeopardizing the whole film; it was a situation I could not win. To quit was out of the question as far as I was concerned.

In Kitty Kelley's rendition of the incident, "Frank and Monty had rehea.r.s.ed the scene standing up, but, just before shooting, Frank decided that he wanted to do it sitting down. Zinnemann objected, but Frank insisted-loudly and profanely. Monty backed Zinnemann and remained standing to follow the script. This so angered Sinatra that he slapped Monty hard. The director tried to placate Sinatra by agreeing to film the scene with Frank sitting if he would also do one take standing. Frank refused and became extremely abusive."

Zinnemann, Harry Cohn's wife, Joan, and the unit publicist, Walter Shenson, each gave a different account, but none of them jibe with Kelley's version, which feels off. Why would the kinetic and impatient Sinatra want to do any scene sitting rather than standing? What seems more likely is that Zinnemann rehea.r.s.ed the scene as written, and that when Cohn came roaring up (memorably, in a military limousine, still dressed in the white dinner jacket he'd been wearing while dining with the general in command of U.S. Army forces in the Pacific), a Situation developed. Zinnemann chose the better part of valor, and Frank, who had believed pa.s.sionately in the film from the beginning, but even more so now that he'd put in six weeks' worth of hard work, simply blew. "His fervor, his anger, his bitterness had something to do with the character of Maggio," Burt Lancaster said, but also with what he had gone through in the last number of years: a sense of defeat, and the whole world crashing in on him, his marriage to Ava going to pieces-all of those things caused this ferment in him, and they all came out in that performance. You knew this was a raging little man who was, at the same time, a good human being. Monty watched the filming of one of Frank's close-ups and said, "He's going to win the Academy Award."

And now they-whoever they were-wanted to neuter his big scene. No wonder he lost it.

"I was on the sidelines watching but not hearing anything," Shenson recalled.

I could just see the pantomime of Harry Cohn running up in his white dinner jacket, striding into the middle of the set and making some p.r.o.nouncement. Then he turned around and walked out and got back into the limousine. The next morning was Sunday, and I was on the beach with the rest of the crew. Cohn spotted me and asked if I had been there last night."Did you see that son of a b.i.t.c.h, Sinatra?" he asked."Yeah, I saw him but I don't know what was happening.""Well, that b.a.s.t.a.r.d guinea was trying to tell us what to do. You know where he is now? He's on an airplane going back to the studio.""How could you send him back without seeing the rushes?" I asked."I don't care," said Cohn. "That dirty little dago is not going to tell me how to make my movies."

In fact, he hadn't. In the end, as Zinnemann said, "Sinatra delivered his speech while seated seated." Frank had caved, not triumphed, and the resulting scene isn't nearly as powerful as it would've been had Zinnemann been able to follow the script, and Sinatra, his artistic instincts. Remarkably, though, during the course of this long day Frank had both rehea.r.s.ed and capitulated, two courtesies he would be less and less willing to grant his directors as his star began to rise again.

All too predictably, though, Sinatra blamed Zinnemann. (And in all likelihood, kept blaming him. In the seventy-plus linear feet of Fred Zinnemann's papers in the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, there is not a single piece of correspondence from Sinatra.) "I can't blame him for being upset," Zinnemann recalled, years after tempers had cooled-or his had, anyway-"but I wonder whether he ever understood what was at stake."

In the director's estimation, the movie itself had been at stake. Eternity Eternity was made with the cooperation of an all-powerful U.S. Army, not so long after that army had done nothing less than save the free world, and just three months after General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been elected president. It was not a time for tweaking authority. During the filming of was made with the cooperation of an all-powerful U.S. Army, not so long after that army had done nothing less than save the free world, and just three months after General Dwight D. Eisenhower had been elected president. It was not a time for tweaking authority. During the filming of From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity, the accused atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg sat on death row; Senator Joseph McCarthy was continuing to conduct hearings of accused subversives, many of them in the movie industry. Fred Zinnemann was a European Jew, with an acute sense of the unpredictability of power. Harry Cohn was a tough American Jew who, as the maker of a movie determinedly friendly to Army interests, could break bread with the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific.

And Frank Sinatra didn't care about any of it. They had messed with his scene, and they could all screw themselves.

He'd had another reason to be tense. The afternoon before shooting that last scene, Frank had phoned Axel Stordahl. They had a recording date at Capitol set up for the Thursday after he got back from Hawaii, and Sinatra wanted to discuss the song list. But after a couple of moments of chitchat, the arranger fell silent. Frank asked him if anything was wrong.

Axel said he couldn't be at the session. He was leaving for New York tomorrow.

He was what?

He was beginning a TV show. With Eddie Fisher.

The last three words might as well have been a carving knife plunged into Sinatra's chest. There was a long silence.

Apparently, Axel hadn't heard what Frank had said. They had a recording session at Capitol on Thursday night.

Stordahl said he couldn't be there. He had a contract.

Another deep silence.

The arranger began to elaborate, but then he realized the line had gone dead.

Frank called Alan Livingston and let him have it. Livingston was ready for him. He listened patiently, counted to five, and then almost instantly defused Sinatra's anger by telling him he'd secured Billy May to lead the session. May was a top-drawer bandleader, one of the hippest arrangers and conductors around (and also an old Livingston cohort who'd done the music for the Bozo the Clown records). A big, hearty guy, tough but cheerful. Livingston knew Frank couldn't object, and he didn't.

In fact, though, the executive was playing a sh.e.l.l game with the singer. Livingston had known for a while that Stordahl was leaving-he'd encouraged it. It was time for Sinatra to move on. Axel was wonderful, but those somnolent strings of his were a relic of Frank's Columbia past. Livingston had made big hits with Nelson Riddle and Nat "King" Cole, and now he wanted to make more big hits with Riddle and Sinatra. Riddle wanted in, too, but Riddle was an arranger's arranger, a studio man who'd never led a band or made a splash. Livingston would have to work a minor subterfuge.

The morning after his climactic scene, Frank was on an airplane back to Los Angeles. His movie work was done, his fate was in the hands of a thousand imponderables-Hollywood, in other words-and it was time to get back to what had made him great in the first place. To what he could, to a great degree, control.

Just after 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 30, an unseasonably cool and rainy day, Frank got out of his car, flicked his cigarette into the gutter, and strode into Capitol's KHJ studios at 5515 Melrose Avenue. Studio C, down the hall on the first floor, was warm and pleasantly crowded, once again full of familiar faces-Skeets, Zarchy, Miller, Alvin Stoller, Conrad Gozzo-and a couple of unfamiliar ones. One was a sad-eyed trombonist with a jutting lower lip: his name was Milt Bernhart. Frank, who had specifically requested Bernhart after hearing his beautiful solo on a Stan Kenton number called "Salute," looked right through the newcomer, more concerned with another stranger standing on the podium, right where Billy May should have been. Sinatra turned to a producer he knew, Alan Dell, and with a sideways jerk of his head indicated the serious-looking, chubby-cheeked, V-hairline character with the baton in his hand.

"Who's this?" he said.

"He's just conducting the band," Dell said quickly. "We've got Billy's arrangements."

May, Dell explained (Livingston had prepped him), had had to leave town unexpectedly to do a gig in Florida. But his arrangements were golden, and what's-his-name on the stand-Sinatra didn't catch the name-was very capable.

Frank reviewed the song list: Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen's "I've Got the World on a String," Koehler and Rube Bloom's "Don't Worry 'Bout Me," a bouncy old Harlan ThompsonHarry Archer tune, "I Love You" (not to be confused with the Grieg-inspired "I Love You" he'd recorded for Columbia, or the Cole Porter "I Love You" he wouldn't get around to recording for a few more years), and his Dorsey standby "South of the Border." He'd been singing the last one since he was a kid, and the second two for years. As for "String," he'd only put it on his repertoire for club dates during the past year, partly in ironic tribute to his troubles, also from a sincere wish that things might actually go his way again, soon. In any case, it was a great song. He liked to perform it at medium tempo, a semi-ballad cadence: ballads were still his home base.

From the moment the nervous-faced guy on the podium signaled the downbeat, Frank knew something was up. Stoller clashed a pair of cymbals; the horns swirled a downward-spiraling cadenza; and then the second Frank sang, "got the string around my finger," the bra.s.s kicked- kicked-BANG!-and the band was cooking. Frank was smiling as he sang, as the seventeen musicians swung along behind him-he even had a smile for the unsmiling guy on the stand, who was waving his arms for all he was worth.

It sure didn't sound like Billy to Frank. It didn't sound like anybody. He loved it.

They did a take, and then another, got it just right. It was golden-but it wasn't Billy May. "Who wrote that arrangement?" Frank asked Alan Dell.

"This guy," Dell said, indicating Mr. Serious, who was distractedly leafing through pages of sheet music. "Nelson Riddle."

The name registered for the first time. Sinatra made a surprised face. "Beautiful," he said.

It was a serious compliment. Frank was generous with gifts and money but extremely stingy when it came to praise. If he said it, he meant it; if he didn't mean it, he didn't say anything.

He looked at Riddle and said it again. "Beautiful." And Mr. Serious managed a quick, almost undetectable smile: more like a wince, really.

Nelson Smock Riddle (the unfortunate middle name was Dutch) may have been the most important man in Frank Sinatra's life whom Sinatra never even tried to befriend. Unlike so many men in the popular-music business, the arranger never pretended to be a hail-fellow-well-met; rather, he was intimacy averse, a dour, caustic, b.u.t.toned-up Lutheran who happened-like the man he was meeting for the first time that Thursday evening in April 1953-to be a musical genius.

Like Sinatra, Nelson Riddle was a New Jerseyborn only child of a domineering mother and a weak father, a man with powerful s.e.xual urges and a fondness for alcohol. Like Sinatra, he was awash in conflicts; unlike Sinatra, Riddle buried his conflicts rather than acting them out. He was a solitary drinker, and he either sublimated his obsessions with women into his work or hid them in clandestine affairs. Although he would become moderately famous, his introverted nature and his preference for the more intellectual art of arranging over composition threw him into the shade. Later Riddle would feel desperate envy for the fame and wealth of such big-name show-offs as Henry Mancini and Andre Previn, men who could compose and arrange and smile for the television cameras. He would chew himself up inside as he created masterpieces for others.

He was a middling professional trombone player, skillful enough to play for the Charlie Spivak and Tommy Dorsey big bands at a young age (he joined Dorsey at twenty-three, in 1944, and held the third chair in the trombone section), but more valued for his skills as an arranger. When Nelson Riddle set pencil to paper, magic happened.

It is extraordinarily difficult, in the postrock 'n' roll, post-singer-songwriter, digitized world of modern popular music, to convey just how important a figure the arranger used to be. Of course orchestration was always essential to cla.s.sical music, but in the early twentieth century jazz and jazz-based popular music began in improvisation. Yet as the Jazz Age turned into the Swing Era, as the bands got bigger and the dance numbers got more elaborate, arrangements became ever more essential. And writing the tempi and harmonies and counterpoints in such a way as to match-or even deepen-the heart-quickening rush of improvised jazz was an art few men could master. Many of the early white big bands-like Paul Whiteman's-were tootling, anodyne versions of more dynamic and artistically complex black organizations such as Duke Ellington's and Jimmie Lunceford's. This had less to do with the players-there was no shortage of great white instrumentalists-than with the men who were writing the charts. Tommy Dorsey's band got a rocket boost in 1939 when Dorsey stole Lunceford's great arranger Sy Oliver. And Oliver was still writing for Dorsey when Nelson Riddle joined Dorsey's band five years later.

Riddle had great ears-cla.s.sically trained ears-and he paid close attention. According to Peter J. Levinson, "He couldn't help but notice the inherent charm in Oliver's writing-his strong sense of the beat, the basic swinging effects, staccato phrases with an element of humor; a brilliant sense of continuity and climax-which was combined with his superlative use of dynamics. (As Oliver once told Dorsey's close friend Eddie Collins, 'Dynamics, that's the secret.')"

Nelson Riddle had all kinds of secrets. While the other players in Dorsey's band were staying up to all hours, getting pie-eyed, chasing skirts, snoring through the morning, then staggering blearily to the next gig, Riddle was listening to his records of Debussy and Ravel and Delius. He too loved liquor and women and the pounding beat of great jazz. He loved Sy Oliver's arrangement of Lunceford's "Stomp It Off"-and he loved Jacques Ibert's "Ports of Call." His writing flowered in the territory between.

Riddle spent a year in the Army at the end of the war, then, fatefully, decided against returning to being a cog in Dorsey's trombone section. He wanted to write. As the big-band era gave way to the age of the singer in the mid-and late 1940s, he found himself in Los Angeles, arranging for anyone who would hire him. Up to the time when he first met Sinatra, Riddle's strongest suit had been ghostwriting. He was so musically adept-and so naturally self-effacing-that he could arrange in anybody's style. He also frequently subcontracted: he first connected with Nat "King" Cole when an overtaxed arranger named Les Baxter threw Riddle a couple of tunes to orchestrate for a Cole recording date. One of the songs was 1950's "Mona Lisa." It turned into a monster hit.

By late 1951, Riddle had become Nat Cole's musical director, a job that led to freelance arranging gigs for a wide variety of singers: Billy Eckstine, Kate Smith, and Mel Torme, among others. Yet, according to Will Friedwald, "Riddle was still considered a newcomer when [Alan] Livingston and [Voyle] Gilmore brought him to the attention of Frank Sinatra in 1953."

Hence all Alan Dell's prefatory disclaimers about Billy May at the April 30 session-and hence Riddle's extreme seriousness. The state of Sinatra's career didn't matter a hill of beans to Nelson Riddle: he knew a fellow genius when he heard one. And he wanted very badly to work with Frank Sinatra-as himself. His grave demeanor on the podium hid the fact that he was quaking inside.

He was able to show what he had on the first two numbers, "I've Got the World on a String," then "Don't Worry 'Bout Me." Then he waxed chameleonic. "Now we have to make like Billy May," he announced, in businesslike tones, as he led Frank and the band into "I Love You" and "South of the Border." The arrangements sounded exactly like May, and the players swung precisely as they would have under his baton. Fifty years later, Ted Nash, a sax player on the session who'd also worked with May, declared, "'South of the Border'-I thought that was Billy's arrangement-it's so typically Billy. I can't picture that Nelson would have done that in Billy's style-Nelson was so so ultra-serious! All Billy's arrangements were written out for us. Billy was known for his special slides and slurps. There would be special coding on the paper, so the notes to slide on were known. We all knew how he worked and the sounds to aim for." ultra-serious! All Billy's arrangements were written out for us. Billy was known for his special slides and slurps. There would be special coding on the paper, so the notes to slide on were known. We all knew how he worked and the sounds to aim for."

Frank recording at Capitol Studio C, West Hollywood, April 1953. (photo credit 34.2) (photo credit 34.2) Riddle had written every slide and slurp. And not only the latter two May-esque cuts, but the first two also, would be released under the label "Frank Sinatra with Billy May and His Orchestra."

Frank loved Billy May; he would do important work with him in the years to come. But as Sinatra listened to the gloriously exuberant playback of "I've Got the World on a String" late that Thursday night, he knew that something very new, and very big, was up, something rich and strange and quite extraordinary. It was as if he had awakened from a long winter into a spring unlike any he had ever imagined. And more: the words of the song had come true at last.

"Jesus Christ," he breathed, almost prayerfully, his eyes wide and blazing. "I'm back! I'm back, baby, I'm back!"

35.

Frank and Ava in Italy, May 1953. He knew he was back, but the world would take a while to find out. His European tour went from bad to worse. (photo credit 35.1) (photo credit 35.1) Yet the rest of 1953 was to be a period of hard work and only momentary triumphs, of dazzling new artistic landscapes glimpsed teasingly, then fogged in. The day after Frank recorded "I've Got the World on a String," he had another session at Capitol, with the same players as the day before, a tight jazz ensemble-reeds, bra.s.s, rhythm, no strings. Riddle was once again on the podium. This time it was his session, with his arrangements exclusively, and it went terribly wrong on the first run-through. The first number was Koehler, Barris, and Moll's "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams." "Sinatra was at his lead sheet-I don't think we'd even made a take yet," the trombonist Milt Bernhart recalled.

He was running the song over, and suddenly stopped-cold. And the band stopped. Frank said, "Give them a break." He crooked his finger at Nelson, and they walked out of the studio. I recognized that the arrangement hadn't gone over at all. Most of the guys began to play poker; I don't know why, but I followed [Sinatra and Riddle], and watched them in the smaller studio, from the hallway.

Bernhart could see the singer and the arranger behind the soundproof gla.s.s, but couldn't hear what they were saying. "Nelson was standing frozen, and Frank was doing all the talking," Bernhart said.

His hands were moving, but he was not angry...he seemed to be telling [Riddle] something of great importance. He was gesticulating, his hands going up and down and sideways. He was describing music, and singing! When we came back, the date was over. And I was positive that I knew what Frank was telling him-it was about the arrangement! I could tell it was very busy. Too busy. There was no room for the singer. If they had taken away the singer, it would have made a great instrumental...At that point, Nelson had a lot of technique as an arranger, but he had to be told to take it easy when writing for a singer. And he was told! Frank was giving him a lesson: a lesson in writing for a singer. A lesson in writing for Frank Sinatra...Sinatra could have dumped him. Other singers would have said, "Well, get another guy," if they were as important as Frank Sinatra. But he didn't. Which means that he recognized something in Nelson that a lot of people wouldn't. Namely, that Nelson was brilliant, and he was trying too hard. He had already pa.s.sed the audition. Sinatra addressed him as one craftsman to another, and with a note of gentle respect. Frank chose four new numbers, Riddle worked feverishly through the night, then they reconvened the next day, this time with a full orchestra and strings, for a rare Sat.u.r.day session.Frank and Nelson shelved "Dreams" and tried four ballads: "Anytime, Anywhere," "My One and Only Love," "I Can Read Between the Lines," and, of all things, the theme to From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity, onto which lyrics had hastily been slapped to capitalize on the film's summer release. Sinatra was in wonderful, mature voice that Sat.u.r.day, but the material was mainly unremarkable, with the mixed exception of Robert Mellin and Guy Wood's "My One and Only Love." It's a beautiful melody, but Frank can't quite find his way into the stilted lyric-and to make a song great, he always needed to live inside the words. (Oddly enough, two versions of the tune that have held up better are the glorious Johnny HartmanJohn Coltrane collaboration and Chet Baker's cracked and whispery rendition: in each of these cases, however, the singer is more instrument than interpreter.)What's most notable about the four tracks Sinatra and Riddle laid down is that they worked worked. The recordings weren't ecstatic, but the strings supported Sinatra's voice warmly and solidly-and never (as Stordahl's strings always threatened) soporifically. At times Riddle's fiddles lilted ever so slyly, giving promise of glories to come. The session was a n.o.ble effort and a good place holder. Nelson had labored heroically to make it simple and beautiful, but for the time being, simple and pretty would have to do.

Crooner Frank Sinatra arrived at London airport today and greeted his wife, Ava Gardner, in the privacy of the customs hall [the a.s.sociated Press reported on Monday, May 4]. "It is two months since we have seen each other-much too long," Sinatra said.They will leave this week end for Milan, where Sinatra will begin a three months' singing tour of the continent and Britain.

It sounded romantic and glamorous: Frank had told Ava it could be their second honeymoon, but the tour was also desperately practical. Working for over two months on From Here to Eternity From Here to Eternity for a sum total variously reported as $10,000, $8,000, or $5,000 (he didn't get a dime for the weeks of preparation and rehearsal) had put him in deeper hock than ever. His first Capitol single, "I'm Walking Behind You," with "Lean Baby" on the flip side, had come out on April 27; a week later it had reached the nether regions of the for a sum total variously reported as $10,000, $8,000, or $5,000 (he didn't get a dime for the weeks of preparation and rehearsal) had put him in deeper hock than ever. His first Capitol single, "I'm Walking Behind You," with "Lean Baby" on the flip side, had come out on April 27; a week later it had reached the nether regions of the Billboard Billboard chart-but troublingly, RCA Victor had released Eddie Fisher's version of "Walking" just a few days after Sinatra's, and by the time Frank left the country, Fisher's record was already starting to pull ahead. chart-but troublingly, RCA Victor had released Eddie Fisher's version of "Walking" just a few days after Sinatra's, and by the time Frank left the country, Fisher's record was already starting to pull ahead.

Lacking a radio or television show, domestic bookings, or any record royalties from Capitol, Sinatra was trying to drum up whatever cash he could. That spring, quietly, he had put his beloved Palm Springs house on the market. A wealthy widow, one Mrs. George Machris, scooped it up at a fire-sale price of $85,000-just a bit more than half of what it had cost Frank. The proceeds went straight to Nancy, who was still hanging on in the Holmby Hills house. The place was too big, too expensive to maintain, she worried; she and the children really should move someplace smaller (but this didn't happen until Nancy junior and Frankie left home, years later).

In the meantime, Nancy entertained regularly, giving her best impression of a merry divorcee. On slow news days, the columns liked linking her to one suitor or another. "Nancy Sinatra's steadfast date is Tom Drake...Barbara Stanwyck's is George Nader," wrote Winch.e.l.l. In fact, it was Stanwyck-whose marriage to Robert Taylor had been broken up by Ava Gardner-who was Nancy's steadfast companion. "Sob sisters," the two women sometimes liked to joke, clinking their c.o.c.ktail gla.s.ses. The truth was that finding another man was the last thing on Nancy's mind. Between the children, the church, the Barbatos, and her various causes, she had more than enough to occupy her. According to Frank's longtime valet, George Jacobs, "There was no way she would ever get remarried, or even go on a date." Nancy had her own explanation for this. "When you've been married to Frank Sinatra...," she liked to say in later years. You stay married to him You stay married to him. She even kept some of her wandering ex-husband's clothes in the closet and welcomed, in a complicated way, his periodic visits.1

At Heathrow, Ava fondled her husband's cheek, amazed all over again at his face. She was amazed, too, at how much she wanted him. She hadn't been especially good over the long weeks since she'd last seen him, but then, she hadn't been too bad, either. They stayed in each other's arms in the back of the big car that took them to her flat in Regent's Park; they stayed in bed for three days, until it was time to leave for Italy. And then, since the dreadful piece of trash in which she was currently acting wasn't in need of her services for a couple of weeks (Metro had tried but failed to argue her into taking horseback-riding lessons so she could more convincingly portray Guinevere), she and Frank-along with many pieces of luggage-got back in the car and headed for Heathrow.

The car blew a tire on the way to the airport (Frank gritted his teeth and drummed his fingers while the liveried chauffeur, apologizing constantly, put on the spare). When they finally arrived, their plane was taxiing out to the runway. A BEA gate agent patiently explained, as the couple goggled at him in disbelief, that Mr. and Mrs. Sinatra were simply too late.

Frank's face was dangerously flushed. "Too late late?"

Ava looked over the top of her sungla.s.ses. "What?"

The agent explained that the next flight to Milan wasn't leaving until tomorrow, but there was a flight to Rome leaving very shortly, if the lady and gentleman were willing to alter their plans.

Frank stared at the mild-mannered young man until he had to look away. Then he put his hands to his mouth; his big voice echoed through the waiting room. "This is the last time I'll ever fly BEA!" he called.

"I'd rather swim the Channel!" Ava shouted.

They and their seventeen bags got on the flight to Rome.

The term "paparazzo" wouldn't exist until Federico Fellini gave the name to a character in La Dolce Vita La Dolce Vita years later, but Rome was Rome, and the photographers were all over the famous couple as they walked across the tarmac. One in particular wouldn't let up, kept demanding Frank and Ava kiss for the camera. Just like that, Frank hauled off and socked the guy in the face. The photographer shook it off and went straight back at Frank. The carabinieri swiftly intervened. But the tone of the tour had been set. years later, but Rome was Rome, and the photographers were all over the famous couple as they walked across the tarmac. One in particular wouldn't let up, kept demanding Frank and Ava kiss for the camera. Just like that, Frank hauled off and socked the guy in the face. The photographer shook it off and went straight back at Frank. The carabinieri swiftly intervened. But the tone of the tour had been set.

The concert halls were only part full. England would always have a soft spot for him after the war, but his appeal hadn't completely translated to the rest of Europe. Ava Gardner, though, was another matter. Ava was a G.o.ddess, her dark beauty making perfect sense to Continental tastes, and Europe couldn't get enough of her. At the next stop, Naples, the promoter put Ava's name right on the bill with Frank's. This, of course, was a terrible mistake. Frank Sinatra had no intention of sharing the stage with anyone else, even his wife, and Ava had no intention of stepping out on a stage with Frank. She'd come close to trying that just once, for charity in London, and wisely changed her mind.

But when Sinatra got up onstage for a matinee in Naples without that gorgeous wife of his, the spotlight picked her out in the crowd, who booed and whistled and threw seat cushions. They had paid up to 3,000 to 4,500 lire each-the equivalent of $5 to $7, a fortune in postwar Italy-to see this G.o.ddess. They chanted her name-"Ah-va! Ah-va! Ah-va!"-and Frank stomped off the stage. Ava fled.

The crowd threatened to riot. The carabinieri cleared the theater. For the evening show the house was half-full. Ava had stayed at the hotel. Sinatra sang one number, looked at the empty seats, then shook his head and walked off once more. The audience began to stamp the floor. After much fevered back-and-forth between Frank, the promoter, and the chief of the Naples riot police, who had fifteen officers waiting in the hall, Sinatra understood he had two choices: he could go on with the evening show and collect two-thirds of his $2,400 fee ($800 had been slotted for Ava), or he could walk and get nothing. He went on with the show.

The worse Frank felt, the worse he sang. The concerts didn't improve. Naturally, he hadn't been able to afford to fly a full complement of musicians over from the States, so he'd brought Bill Miller along as an accompanist and musical director. They hired pickup bands for each leg of the tour, but the quality varied from fair to poor. Sometimes Frank thought bitterly, longingly, of Studio C at Capitol on the night of April 30. The combination of Sinatra, a Dutch band called the Skyliners, and an English conductor named Harold Collins was a disaster in Scandinavia. "Sinatra has been a flop in Denmark and Sweden," said the New Musical Express New Musical Express, the English counterpart of Billboard Billboard. On May 31 the a.s.sociated Press wrote that Frank had drawn boos during two concerts in southern Sweden. "Agence France Presse reported that Sinatra received an unenthusiastic reception from small audiences in Malmoe and Helsingborg," the dispatch continued.

AFP said the manager of the Helsingborg theater refused to pay Sinatra, claiming the singer spent more time backstage checking his boat schedule than entertaining the public.The manager also charged that Sinatra stopped his program after 32 minutes when the agreement called for 50 minutes.

Frank was looking for the exit. From performing, from Ava, from everything. Then he pulled the plug.

FRANK SINATRA.

HAS COLLAPSESTOCKHOLM, Sweden, June 1, UP-Crooner Frank Sinatra today was reported suffering from a severe case of "exhaustion" and/or bad press.His manager, John Harding, said Sinatra probably will call off his Swedish tour because he is "completely exhausted" and "needs going over very thoroughly."Harding admitted that the criticism in Sweden has been rough, but said Sinatra's real trouble is "complete exhaustion."

Ava was due back in England on June 7 to start shooting Knights of the Round Table Knights of the Round Table, at $17,500 a week. Frank's wallet was all but empty. It didn't improve matters between them.