Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [236]
The conflict in commitments had nothing to do with it. Ava could easily have gone to St. Louis for a week. Instead, she was back in Hollywood, doing the few things she had to do to prepare for Mogambo, but mostly going to parties, like Marion Davies’s giant soiree for Johnnie Ray, where Fernando Lamas looked deeply into her green eyes and she didn’t mind a bit …
Sinatra had been continuing his telegram barrage of the From Here to Eternity principals, but now that he was back in town, he decided to pursue the matter directly. He phoned Harry Cohn and invited him out to lunch.
It was important. Cohn wouldn’t be sorry.
Cohn, a petty tyrant who until World War II kept an autographed picture of Benito Mussolini on his desk (like the Italian dictator he had a firm jaw, a bald pate, and bulging emotional eyes), had started Columbia Pictures in the 1920s on a shoestring (and a Mob loan) and built it into a major studio. He was proud of his friendships with gangsters, proud of his reputation as a tough character. His actors jumped when he yelled; the riding crop he wielded to emphasize his points got their attention. He loved money, he loved the ladies, he loved horse racing, and he loved making movies. Cohn had first met Sinatra when Frank was still big and Columbia still smacked of Poverty Row. Even as late as 1949, Frank had been in a position to do Cohn a favor: at the studio chief’s request, Sinatra had arranged for a minor Columbia comedy, Miss Grant Takes Richmond, to premiere at the Capitol, where the singer was making a personal appearance. The picture did good business on the strength of Frank’s box office.
Now Columbia was one of the Big Five and Sinatra was on the skids. Tough luck. What could the singer possibly have to talk about that would be of interest? The studio chief accepted the invitation out of nostalgia and mild curiosity.
Once the waiter had taken their menus, Sinatra hunched down and fixed Cohn with those searchlight blue eyes. “Harry, I want to play Maggio.”
Cohn shook his head in exasperation. This was what was so important? He had read the first telegram, thrown the rest away. “You must be out of your fuckin’ mind,” he told Frank. “This is an actor’s part, not a crooner’s.”
“Harry, you’ve known me for a long time. This part was written about a guy like me. I’m an actor, Harry. Give me a chance to act.”
Cohn buttered a roll and munched on it, staring out the window.
Desperate to get Cohn’s attention back, Frank went to the one subject he knew would grab him. “About the money—” he began.
“Who’s talking money?” Cohn said. “But what about the money?”
“I’ve been getting a hundred fifty thousand a picture—”
“You used to get a hundred fifty thousand a picture.”
“I’ll do it for expenses,” Sinatra said. “You cover my expenses, you got your Maggio.”
“What are we talking about?”
“A grand a week. Seven-fifty. Come on, Harry—that’s nothin’.”
“You want it that much, Frank?”
“I told you, it was written for me. It is me.”
“Well, we’ll see, Frank. We’ll see. Let me think it over.”
Frank sat up straight, eyes wide. “You’re not turning me down, then?”
“I was, but let’s see, let’s see. It’s a pretty crazy idea.”
“You won’t regret this, Harry.”
In the afterglow of the lunch he went to Ava on bended knee, with flowers, and gifts he couldn’t afford, and they made up as they always did, and remembered.
Joan Cohn was staring at Ava Gardner’s feet. Ava, who loved to go barefoot, and removed her shoes at every possible opportunity, was resting her legs on the coffee table in the living room of Harry Cohn’s house, and Joan Cohn couldn’t get over how small and beautifully formed the actress’s feet were. Harry Cohn’s second wife had been a model before they met; she had a clinical eye for beauty, and was therefore all the more able to appreciate exactly how astounding a creature Ava Gardner was.
It was a slightly surreal moment. Joan Cohn had the flu. She had been lying