Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [174]
And behind every move each of them made lay a fine and regal contempt for the banal established order of the world.
It was around then, Ava wrote, that Frank told her, “All my life, being a singer was the most important thing in the world. Now you’re all I want.”
For a man whose ambition had always preceded all else, this was an astonishing statement, even if he felt differently a few hours later. To the extent that he meant it (and to a great extent he did), it was as if his towering ambition had suddenly gone up in smoke. But their love was like a fire that flamed up and consumed them both. And since both were performers, exhibitionism was part of the kick—even at the very outset, there were amazed onlookers. Among them were Sinatra’s manager Bobby Burns and his wife, Betty, who tried to help the adulterous couple early in the affair. Betty Burns remembered:
Bobby and I had a house on the beach, and so Frank and Ava would be there all the time. We would be sitting in the living room and hear them upstairs in the bedroom quarreling and arguing. Ava would scream at Frank and he would slam the door and storm downstairs. Minutes later we’d smell a very sweet fragrance coming from the stairs. Ava had decided she wasn’t mad anymore, and so she sprayed the stairwell with her perfume. Frank would smell it and race back up to the bedroom. Then it would be hours before he’d come back down.
It’s like something out of Wild Kingdom.
“She was like a Svengali to him,” Skitch Henderson said. “She was an enigma. A mysterious presence. You didn’t quite know how she had done it to him, and I’m not sure I wanted to know. She was ruthless with him. And it used to affect his mood a great deal. It could be horrible to be with him then. Her acid tongue and her ability to just put you away. If ever I knew a tiger, or a panther … I’m trying to think of an animal that would describe her … To be honest—I didn’t let anyone on to this—but I did what I could to stay out of her way. I was scared to death of her.”
She was a pisser. She scared the shit outta me. Never knew what she’d hate that I’d do. Frank must have found the similarity to the first woman in his life unspeakably exciting. Some part of him was still that little boy, not knowing if he’d get a hug or a rap with the nightstick.
For all Ava’s autobiographical professions of eternal love, she had trouble with intimacy. When she got it—and she’d got plenty since she’d first arrived in Hollywood—she didn’t feel she was worthy of it. And so when a man fell in love with her, she reciprocated for a little while, then she began to torment him.
Jealousy was their emotional ammunition. They both understood it. Frank could trigger it in her literally with the blink of an eye, so conditioned was he to scanning any crowded restaurant or nightclub or party and possessing any beauty he saw.
His suspicions about Ava were better founded. She had it all worked out: if he wouldn’t leave his wife, she told him, she was free to do whatever she wanted. She toyed with her old flame Howard Duff, who was desperate for her. She teased Howard Hughes, who continued to have her followed. She stepped out with a minor gangster named Johnny Stompanato (who would meet his sad end, years later, at the hands of Lana Turner’s daughter). She had a little fling with her co-star in My Forbidden Past, Robert Mitchum. He went back to his wife, whose secret was: she always took him back.
The infidelities—if you could call them that—diverted her momentarily and had their desired effect on Sinatra, stoking his passions.