Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [163]
Given the state of Sinatra’s movie career, MGM decided the safest thing would be to put him back together with Gene Kelly. The new vehicle was to be a lighthearted turn-of-the-century musical called Take Me Out to the Ball Game. But much as Frank loved Gene, he had his own plans for resuscitating his film fortunes: he lobbied hard that summer to be loaned out to Columbia for a serious role in a Bogart picture, Knock on Any Door. If he got the role, Sinatra would not only get to act opposite Bogart; he would play a young Italian-American murder suspect, a street guy—a part he felt he could really bring to life. The producers took one look at Frank’s hairline and hired twenty-two-year-old John Derek to play the role. Shooting on Take Me Out to the Ball Game began on July 28.
His memory for names and faces was phenomenal, as was his ability to hold on to grudges, slights, disappointments. Throughout the filming of Take Me Out to the Ball Game, as he danced and mugged for the camera, he couldn’t get the disappointment of Knock on Any Door off his mind. Frank took it out on Ball Game’s veteran director, Busby Berkeley, showing up late, muffing lines and dance sequences, wasting hours. Berkeley, on what would be his last picture, consoled himself with the bottle. Kelly and his young assistant Stanley Donen wound up directing much of the movie.
One day during lunch on the set, Frank got a call from Mayer’s office, saying his presence was requested. Expecting a rebuke, he was surprised to find the boss smiling thinly. He wanted to ask Frank a little favor.
The favor was to sing that evening at a Sacramento meeting of the National Conference of State Governors. Frank would be the only entertainer, the studio chief explained, and everything would be taken care of: Governor Warren would have Sinatra flown to and from the event on his private plane. The reward was implicit—at a moment when HUAC had established a Hollywood beachhead, doing this solid for Republicans Earl Warren and Louis B. Mayer would polish up Frank’s tarnished image a good bit.
Sinatra smiled. Of course, Louis.
Later that afternoon Jack Keller and Frank’s accompanist Dick Jones came to his dressing room to collect him. No Frank. The studio lot was searched: Frank’s car was in his parking spot, but he himself was nowhere to be found. Heart sinking, Keller phoned Mayer’s office and got the expected earful. Eventually, Mayer, furious and humiliated, had to wire the governor’s office that Sinatra had fallen ill.
And where was Frank? Home—having sneaked off the MGM lot under a pile of boxes on the back of a pickup truck.
A few days later, Sinatra’s agent Lew Wasserman got a message from Mayer’s office: as per Frank’s contract with MGM, the studio was once more exercising its yearly option to loan his services out to another studio. In November he would be reporting back to RKO, to film a quickie comedy called It’s Only Money with Jane Russell and Groucho Marx.
Sinatra’s theme that fall was escape. He was going to Palm Springs more and more often, not so much as a retreat from hard work, of which there wasn’t much in late 1948, as to get away from everyone and everything. One weekend in late September, batching it with Jimmy Van Heusen—his increasingly present Falstaff, pilot, pimp, and fixer—he stopped by a party at David O. Selznick’s place. Sipping a dry martini, Sinatra looked across the room and got a jolt more powerful than any gin could’ve given him: it was Ava, smiling at the tall, homely producer.
She felt Frank’s look, turned, and flashed him a dazzling smile. He raised his glass and walked over.
They greeted each other, and Ava introduced their host. Frank gave the man a curt nod—he knew that it had been Selznick who had landed John Derek, the producer’s protégé, the plum role in Knock on Any Door. Knowing that Sinatra knew, and glancing back and forth between the two of them, Selznick