Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [250]
Frank opened at the French Casino on Wednesday night, November 26, and though it wasn’t the Copa, the house was full and he was in good voice—and good spirits, even when a heckler called out, “Where’s your wife?”
“Where’s your wife?” Frank shot back.
After the show, he strolled over to his favorite Manhattan restaurant, Patsy’s, on West Fifty-sixth Street, for a late dinner. It was a cozy Italian joint run by the Scognamillo family, unpretentious and fiercely loyal to Sinatra. “At the end of the meal,” the New York Times reported in 2003, “Sinatra asked the owner what he was serving for Thanksgiving, which was the next day. Aware that Sinatra had not seen the ‘closed for Thanksgiving’ sign on the door, the elder Mr. Scognamillo replied, ‘Whatever you like.’ After Sinatra left, the owner took down the sign and announced to the staff: ‘Tomorrow we are open. Everyone, please come, and bring your family. I don’t want Mr. Sinatra to eat alone.’ ”
That night Frank went straight back to work at the Casino. Between songs he schmoozed the audience, turning his ordeal at customs into an amusing anecdote (“A funny thing happened to me on the way here from Africa …”) and even essaying a couple of slightly nervous Mogambo jokes. On Gable’s marksmanship: “Is he good! In one week, he shot six natives!” And on Ava: “It’s pretty lonesome here without my wife. After all, you know the dangers she’ll face making a movie in Africa—lions, tigers, crocodiles; Clark Gable …”
Gable wasn’t the danger. In early December, Ava returned to the Mogambo camp and, as always, managed to stir up some action right away. When she wanted to go out into the bush and get up close to some wild animals, the handsome white hunter Bunny Allen was happy to oblige her. They soon found themselves in the midst of a herd of elephants, where Ava, suddenly startled by a fire-hose-like splashing very close at hand, grabbed Allen’s arm. “It’s all right,” the hunter whispered coolly. “Elephant’s just gone to the bathroom.” Ava’s loud laughter sent the herd thundering off—but there she was, still holding on to Bunny …
It wasn’t a grand affair, just a couple of nights, then sweet, dry-eyed good-byes. They were alike, the two of them: good-looking and easily bored.
“Ava couldn’t be alone,” the production coordinator Eva Monley said. “That was, I think, why she had so many affairs. She’d say, ‘Hey, come on, have a drink with me, I’m bored all by myself,’ and she’d bring back a prop man or whoever [to her tent].”
Back in New York, the French Casino was asking Frank to extend his stay, but, Earl Wilson wrote, “he has a prior commitment—Ava.” On Friday the twelfth, his thirty-seventh birthday (not his thirty-fifth, as he still led the world to believe, and as Wilson dutifully reported), he “was given a birthday cake by lady fans … [who] squealed just like they did at the Riobamba almost 10 years ago.”
Ten years … The girls were ladies now, and Frankie was verging on middle age. Many of the ladies were still willing to go to bed with him—and a few did—but road romance wasn’t the same as it had once been.
He really did miss his wife.
Frank arrived back on location the following week, bearing gifts for Ava’s big birthday, from himself and her family. Some accounts say he brought a diamond ring and a mink, the latter of which seems unlikely in darkest Africa, but then Sinatra and sensible gift giving never did go together. Ava is said to have made a scornful remark about who really paid for the gifts—but what of Billy Ruser’s layaway earrings? Reports are inconsistent. Ava insists it was a charmed period. “Frank came back to Africa in time for Christmas—and my thirtieth birthday—full of enthusiasm and joy,” she recalled.
But Frank wouldn’t know for weeks if he had clinched the Eternity role: Cohn was still