Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [232]
“Ava had a reckless look about her,” Nancy junior wrote, remembering her first rapt impressions, as a twelve-year-old, of her father’s new wife:
She didn’t bother with her hair or makeup—it was sort of haphazard. No matter. Her hair was naturally curly. On my first weekend with them in Palm Springs she was wearing her hair short. She would dive into the pool, looking like a goddess on the diving board, swim a few lengths, throw on a terry robe, come inside, kneel down in front of the wall heater, turn on the fan, dry her hair with a shake and a few rubs with her fingers, and be a goddess again. No makeup, perfect skin, and a wonderful voice …
She had the magnetism that few stars possess … At last, in my preteenage wisdom, I had some understanding of why Daddy had left us.
This was what MGM was attempting to deal with. It was the quicksilver essence of stardom, all the more potent for its ambivalence.2 As for the studio’s lack of interest in her career, to a certain extent it was simply repaying her in kind. She had turned down work, disobeyed directives, been generally careless. And the movies were a tough business. In theory, MGM had every interest in furthering her career, but in those studio days, as now, good parts came along when they came along, and actors kept working if they wanted to keep getting paid. Metro had given her Show Boat—then it had given her Lone Star. With nothing else lying around, the studio had loaned her to Fox. What else was new? Bette Davis, whom Ava idolized, followed All About Eve with … Payment on Demand. An actor worked. And just then, Ava wasn’t working.
Frank was—barely. At the Chez Paree, which could seat 1,200, one night he drew 150 customers. At the Desert Inn, he sang to half-full houses of wildcatters and cattle ranchers, and suffered from Vegas Throat. Ava flew up on the weekends, and complained the whole time.
But then, as she’d predicted, Metro came crawling back. In truth, her agent Benton Cole saved her bacon, reasoning with Eddie Mannix: She was a big star. Metro was a big studio. They needed each other. For its part, the studio agreed to halt the suspension and reinstate her salary, effective immediately—she would even get back what she’d been docked. Furthermore, it was contract time, so MGM offered her a new seven-year, multipicture deal, with compensation graduating from $90,000 to $130,000 a film.
Her agent was happy. Ava wasn’t.
She wanted (or Frank wanted) a clause written into her contract stipulating that she and her husband could work together. The project they had in mind was an adaptation of a 1946 musical called St. Louis Woman, with a book co-written by Countee Cullen, music by Harold Arlen, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. The show had been a middling success on Broadway, but it had a great pedigree, and MGM wasn’t averse to it per se.
What it was averse to was Frank Sinatra.
The studio lawyers stroked their chins for a minute, and came back with a codicil titled “Services of Frank Sinatra”—or, as it came to be known around Metro, the Frank Sinatra Clause. It read:
a) Should we buy the rights to and produce a photoplay based on “St. Louis Woman,” we agree that she will be assigned to do this picture and we further agree that we will employ Frank Sinatra to appear in the photoplay.
b) Should we not acquire the rights to “St. Louis Woman” or produce a photoplay based on this property, then we agree that at some time prior to the expiration of her contract, we will do a picture with her in which Frank Sinatra will also appear.
The clause wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. It didn’t oblige MGM to make St. Louis Woman, and as for hiring Sinatra somewhere down the line, well—seven years was a long