Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [211]
And on the night they shot Danny Wilson’s penultimate scene, outdoors at Burbank Airport, the storm finally broke. “I can’t remember what started our vicious argument,” Winters recalled, “but the mildest things we called each other were ‘bow-legged bitch of a Brooklyn blonde,’ and ‘skinny, no-talent, stupid Hoboken bastard.’ ”
At about three in the morning Frank flew into a terrible rage at me, and despite my gorgeous hat and white gloves and beautiful elegant navy dress and stone martens, I screamed like a fishwife and I think I slugged him. For a second I thought Frank’s makeup man/bodyguard—who I suspected carried a gun—was going to shoot me. Contrary to other Italians I have known since, he didn’t hit me back—I guess I was lucky—he just slammed into his limousine and roared away. Maybe he went home and hit Ava Gardner.
The production head Leo Spitz pleaded with Winters to feel some empathy. “Mr. Sinatra is going through a terrible and troubled period of his life and career,” he told her. “He’s going against all his religious training and has periods when he loses his voice, and it terrifies him. And he is not famous as an actor but a singer … That’s no excuse for him behaving so outrageously, but you’re both liberals, and maybe with your ideals of brotherhood you can bring yourself to understand the reasons that are making him behave the way he did.”
Grumbling, Winters returned to the set—to endure Frank’s revenge. They rehearsed the final scene, in which, as Winters’s character lay in a hospital bed, Sinatra was to say to his romantic rival (Alex Nicol), “I’ll have a cup of coffee and leave you two lovebirds alone.” Once the camera was rolling, however, what Frank said was “I’ll go have a cup of Jack Daniel’s or I’m going to pull that blond broad’s hair out by its black roots.”
Winters hit him over the head with a bedpan, raged off the set, and went home. She stayed there for two days—until she got a tearful phone call from Nancy Sinatra. “Shelley, if Frank doesn’t get the twenty-five thousand dollars for the picture, the bank might foreclose the mortgage on the house,” Nancy said. “My children are going to be out in the street. Please finish the picture.”
Shelley finished the picture. When Meet Danny Wilson wrapped on July 31, all concerned breathed a huge sigh of relief. The film would go on to do just so-so box office. Yet considering the disastrous course of the production, the New York Times review is surprisingly positive, calling the film “pleasantly tune-filled and amiable,” and going on to praise the battling co-stars: “Frank Sinatra is charming, natural and casual as he breezily portrays the cocky Danny Wilson … Miss Winters is equally slick as that desired dame and she neatly adds to the performance in a snappy duet with Sinatra on ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find.’ ”
So much for the artistic benefits of peace and harmony. In truth, Frank was improving as a film actor, if anyone cared to pay attention.
The day after shooting ended on Meet Danny Wilson, Sinatra and Ava took off on what was meant to be a secret jaunt to Acapulco. From the beginning, the trip was snakebit: crowds of reporters and photographers turned out to see the pair off at the L.A. airport, taking note of the ungodly number of suitcases they had with them. Was this something more than a quick vacation? You could get a fast divorce in Mexico. You could get married there too.
The photographers clustered on the stairs that were pulled up to the plane, snapping away; the pilot was helpless to start the engines until they were cleared. Sinatra leaned out the door and gave it to them with both barrels: “GET THE FUCK OFF THE STEPS!”
“You shouldn’t act that way, Frankie,” one of the lensmen piped up. “The press made you what you are!”
“The press didn’t make me, it was my singing! You miserable crumbs!”
Reporters were alerted all