Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [221]
The press was waiting for them anyway. Frank stared incredulously as his car rolled up in front of Sacks’s big fieldstone house. He jumped out of the car while it was still rolling. “How did those creeps know where we were?” he asked nobody in particular as the photographers snapped. It was dusk; a cold drizzle was falling. “I don’t want no circus here!” he called to the press. “I’ll knock the first guy who attempts to get inside on his ass—and I mean it!”
While he sputtered, Ava grabbed his hand and dragged him indoors. But even the company of friends couldn’t cool his rage. “Frank was so angry, poor baby,” Ava remembered. “He spent the whole time at the window upstairs screaming at the press, ‘You lousy parasites, fuck off!’ at the top of his lungs. He was tempted—we had to hold him—to go out and fight with them. But we finally got him downstairs, got him in front of the preacher.”
It was a very small wedding, just twenty guests in all. Frank had his crew—Sanicola and Ben Barton and Stordahl and Jones and Manie (Van Heusen, who would remain allergic to marriage, except for writing songs about it, until his own at age fifty-six, was conspicuously absent)—but Ava only had Bappie, who was hoping that after Mickey and Artie (she’d attended both those weddings, too) the third time might be the charm.
But the portents weren’t favorable. When Dick Jones sat down at the grand piano in Lester Sacks’s living room and began to play Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, he discovered that like so many pianos in prosperous homes, this one hadn’t been tuned in ages. Jones tried a simpler number, “Here Comes the Bride.” It didn’t sound much better. Then, as Manie escorted Ava down the stairs, he tripped and they slipped three steps before regaining their balance.
The bride wore a slinky mauve cocktail dress by Howard Greer (“Wonderful designer,” Ava recalled, “but you couldn’t wear a stitch underneath”); the groom, a dark blue suit and a gray silk tie. The ceremony, conducted by the police court judge Joseph Sloane, was brief: the couple spoke their vows, slipped thin platinum rings on each other’s fingers. Then Frank turned to the guests, grinning, and said, “Well, we finally made it! We finally made it!”
As Stordahl filmed the proceedings with a home-movie camera, the guests toasted the couple with champagne; Ava embraced Dolly, who burst into tears and patted her new daughter-in-law lovingly on the arm, unable for the moment to think of a word to say. Then the bride cut into the seven-tiered cake and, to laughter and applause, messily fed Frank a piece. Dolly came up and pinched her son’s cheek. “This marriage is blessed with good luck,” she told the couple. “You got married at the seventh hour on the seventh day of the eleventh month. Seven, seven, eleven. You can’t miss.” Marty smiled.
There was a bustle in the foyer. A butler approached Frank and handed him a note—it was a formal request, from the photographers outside in the rain: Could the newlyweds possibly come to the front door for a picture?
Sinatra went to the door and threw it open. “Who sent this? Who sent this?” he called, pointing to the press corps. “Who? You? You? You’re not getting any pictures, understand? You’ll get shots from our photographer when he gets around to it.”
“My editor wants my pictures,” one of them called back.
“I’ll bet you fifty dollars you don’t get a picture,” Sinatra told him, “and another fifty dollars that if you even point your camera at me, I’ll knock you on your ear.”
He slammed the door and returned to the party, summoning back his smile.
After a while Ava went upstairs and changed into a brown Christian Dior travel suit and the mink stole Frank had given her as a wedding present. When she came back down, Manie took her aside, peering at her with his dark emotional eyes.
“Look after him, Ava. He’s had some hard knocks and he