Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [137]
Sinatra was conspicuously absent from the Flamingo’s opening ceremonies. Whatever Frank may have told Benny, the real reasons for his failure to show were complicated. As for the other absentees, maybe, as is so often the case with stars, the herd instinct had kicked in. And maybe, as has been rumored, William Randolph Hearst, who was so close to Louis B. Mayer, had put the kibosh on the event for MGM stars because Hearst suspected his mistress Marion Davies had slept with the handsome gangster. As for Frank: maybe Charlie Fischetti’s warning about Ben Siegel still echoed in his head.
It was Frank’s New Year’s Eve party to welcome in 1947. There was a stirring in the big living room as a latecomer arrived: the twenty-three-year-old Peter Lawford, dashing in his well-tailored tux. Handsome as he was, though, it was his date who was drawing all the stares. Dark haired, with dazzlingly high cheekbones, a white fur stole on her wide shoulders, she walked with the easy grace of a tigress; Ava Gardner was on the prowl. Until recently a nobody in Hollywood, Ava entered the room with confidence born of success and buoyed by alcohol. The Killers had put her on the A-list; Mayer himself had told her the world was her oyster. She had just turned twenty-four the week before, and she was ready for adventure.
She was more tired than ever of Howard Hughes. She still grudgingly accepted his gifts—the fur she was wearing; a Cadillac convertible. What was harder to take were the spies sent to monitor her comings and goings. It would have been annoying enough if she’d been his only girlfriend, but she happened to know that Hughes was also keeping tabs on Linda Darnell, Jean Peters, and Jane Russell. The man was insufferable. Lawford, on the other hand, was fun, and charmingly irreverent, and a girl couldn’t just sit at home on New Year’s Eve.
It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to be alone, nor was it simply that this was the party that night. She had to admit that she was increasingly curious about the man she kept running into everywhere. She was intrigued by how persistently gentlemanly he was, unlike almost every other male she encountered—and unlike his reputation. And while she knew he was married, and the father of two small children, and she had a strict policy against seeing married men, she was intrigued. All the more so when Lawford took her over to introduce her (he thought) to Sinatra, and she and Frank exchanged an amused glance. Over his shoulder, a few yards away, stood the wife, mousy cute, smiling at another couple. Ava looked at her for a second, then back at Frank, who was still grinning at her. No contest. She felt like a thief inside a bank vault.
Durante, Lawford, Sinatra. February 1947. (photo credit 19.2)
But the night was still young. From Sinatra’s, she would have Lawford take her to a party at Mel Tormé’s, and then home. By three-thirty the Englishman was done for the night, and she was still raring to go. She would wind up the evening gunning her dark green Cadillac convertible up the Coast Highway with the smitten twenty-one-year-old Tormé at her side, as her long hair blew in the wind and the sky turned baby pink in the East. She was quite sure it was going to be a spectacular year.
20
Louella Parsons and Frank sign autographs for servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen, August 1943. (photo credit 20.1)
Well, Frankie and I have buried the hatchet deep,” Louella Parsons wrote in her column of January 27, 1947. “He promised me he would not carry a gun, feed me poison, or otherwise harm a hair of my