Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [177]
It was a very tall order, one that both Sinatra and Evans knew only Evans could handle. The publicist extended his hand, and Frank took it.
Nancy had first confronted Frank at Christmas. He denied nothing, but told his wife angrily that she was blowing the whole Ava business out of proportion. When she pursued the matter, he insisted he didn’t want to talk about it—and Nancy, for the sake of Christmas, let it go. She stewed through the holiday, though, and when Frank got back from New York in January (she suspected he had gone for another assignation), she let him have it.
Technically on solid ground—Ava had been in Los Angeles while he visited Evans—Frank defended himself angrily, but Nancy’s anger was white-hot: she opened his closet, grabbed a handful of his sports jackets, opened their bedroom window, and threw them out. By this time the noise had awakened the children and Little Nancy was pounding on the door. Frank’s wife stared at him in fury. Did he see what he was doing to the children? Did he see?
Frank opened the bedroom door, kissed his terrified daughter on the head, and, without looking back, walked out. The next morning, Sanicola and Al Silvani came and—apologizing fervently to Nancy—removed a carload of Frank’s clothing, shoes, and toiletries and took it to his office on South Robertson, where he had spent the night.
To put some money in the bank (so he could send it right out to the IRS), Sinatra was doing live appearances again, for the first time in two years. In December he had surprised himself and his agents by breaking records at the State Theater in Hartford, grossing $18,000 for two nights; now MCA had signed him for a similarly plush gig at a gigantic, brand-new hotel in Houston, the Shamrock. The place had been built by a legendary wildcatter named Glenn McCarthy, the model for the James Dean character in Giant: those were the days when Texas oilmen strode the earth, making big things happen. On Thursday the twenty-sixth, Frank and Van Heusen set out from Van Nuys Airport in Chester’s plane. When they landed to refuel in El Paso, an airport manager in a leather jacket ran out onto the tarmac and handed Frank a piece of paper bearing an urgent message: he must call George Evans’s office in New York at once.
A secretary answered the phone, her voice trembling. Evans was dead. He had stepped out of the shower that morning in his Bronx apartment, said he didn’t feel well, and collapsed of a heart attack. He was forty-eight. The rumor emerged that he had gotten into a loud argument with a reporter the night before, about Sinatra. It was easy to get into arguments about Sinatra, especially when you had to stick up for him relentlessly. Evans had had a long career of it—seven years, not counting their brief separation. But sticking up for Sinatra and Ava Gardner was another matter.
Devastated, Frank let the Shamrock know he was canceling and had Van Heusen fly him to New York for the funeral, even though he loathed funerals. Evans had meant more to Frank than any other man except Manie; he had been a friend and tireless champion, the architect of his career. “I’m quite sure that when Frank learned of his death, the first thought that swept through [his] mind was: ‘Thank God, we made up,’ ” Ed Sullivan wrote in his Little Old New York column, a few days later.
It’s pretty to think so. What feels more plausible is that Frank’s first thought was: My God, I killed him. Sinatra may have been incapable of apology, but guilt was a key part of his makeup. Money was usually the solution. The day after the funeral, Frank sent Evans’s widow the $14,000 that he owed the press agent. In the weeks to come, he would put Evans’s son Philip, who had recently made George a proud grandfather, on the Sinatra payroll for life.
The same issue of Billboard that announced George Evans’s death