Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [185]
In the meantime, Ava had finally heeded MGM’s importuning and flown with Bappie to London. For all the sweet sorrow of parting with Frank—they wept as they embraced—she felt nothing but relief as she boarded the BOAC Stratocruiser. She would be going to Europe for four months—four months without hate mail, American newspapers, the Legion of Decency. Whether she and Frank would be seeing each other during that time was left up in the air.
“Oh, God,” Ava wrote in her autobiography, “Frank Sinatra could be the sweetest, most charming man in the world when he was in the mood.”
But being with him, she thought, was what it must be like to have a particularly demanding child.
In addition to three shows a night at the Copa, five radio broadcasts a week, recording sessions, and the usual fun and games with the Varsity, toward the end of April Frank opened a one-week stand at the Capitol Theater, where he had drawn less than sensationally in 1947. This time there were even more empty seats. He had been in show business half his life, and he was tired: his eyes bloodshot, his face drawn and thin. The rumors that he was having voice problems persisted—he had a cold that wouldn’t go away. And now there was new gossip: Ava, shooting in Spain, had taken up with a bullfighter. Frank’s stomach hurt at the thought, but he knew just where to look for consolation: sweet Marilyn Maxwell was in town, glad to listen to his troubles and not as worried about being sloppy seconds as, perhaps, she should have been. Then there were the Copa Girls, four of them—imagine the possibilities. The long nights melted into blue dawns, then he slept a little and woke to the brazen light of Manhattan afternoons …
Coughing. He would light a cigarette before he got out of bed, and when he was through shaving, he would light another. Then whoever had shared his bed would have to get the hell out of there, because he had to get ready for the show.
Meanwhile, in Santa Monica on April 26, Nancy filed a suit for separate maintenance. Her lawyer was Gregson Edward Bautzer—Greg to his friends, of which he had many, mainly female. The dashing, hard-drinking Bautzer was renowned in Hollywood for having taken Lana Turner’s virginity (she didn’t seem to have enjoyed the experience very much), and his specialty was representing beautiful women in their divorce cases: Turner; Ginger Rogers; Ingrid Bergman. These days he was seeing Rogers, when he wasn’t seeing Joan Crawford. Maybe he was also seeing Nancy?
Her suit alleged that Frank had treated her with “extreme cruelty” and caused her “grievous mental suffering” without provocation on her part. “She estimated the crooner’s 1949 income at $934,740,” said the Associated Press, “and the value of their community property at $750,000.” She also asked for custody of their three children.
There was a crowd of reporters outside the courthouse: they wanted to know if the couple were getting a divorce. Nancy, dignified in a gray dress and the three-strand pearl necklace Frank had given her, said quietly that no divorce action was contemplated. Both she and her husband were Catholics, she said, and “neither of us wants one.”
Two days later, Frank was in the news again: MGM had let him go.
Frank Sinatra, cast loose romantically when sued for separate maintenance by his wife, Nancy, last week, was a free lance in his profession as well today.
Breaking another tie of years of standing, the singer asked for and was given a release from his $5,000-a-week contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Saturday.
The parting, effective immediately, was described as friendly.
A joint statement by the studio and Sinatra’s agent, Music Corporation of America, pointed out:
“As a free lance artist, Sinatra is now free to accept unlimited important personal appearances, radio and TV offers that have been made to him.”
His contract with MGM restricted him in all of those respects and particularly with regard to television. The studio does not permit its stars to work in that medium.
While it was true that Sinatra wanted to