Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [273]
Frank’s face was dangerously flushed. “Too late?”
Ava looked over the top of her sunglasses. “What?”
The agent explained that the next flight to Milan wasn’t leaving until tomorrow, but there was a flight to Rome leaving very shortly, if the lady and gentleman were willing to alter their plans.
Frank stared at the mild-mannered young man until he had to look away. Then he put his hands to his mouth; his big voice echoed through the waiting room. “This is the last time I’ll ever fly BEA!” he called.
“I’d rather swim the Channel!” Ava shouted.
They and their seventeen bags got on the flight to Rome.
The term “paparazzo” wouldn’t exist until Federico Fellini gave the name to a character in La Dolce Vita years later, but Rome was Rome, and the photographers were all over the famous couple as they walked across the tarmac. One in particular wouldn’t let up, kept demanding Frank and Ava kiss for the camera. Just like that, Frank hauled off and socked the guy in the face. The photographer shook it off and went straight back at Frank. The carabinieri swiftly intervened. But the tone of the tour had been set.
The concert halls were only part full. England would always have a soft spot for him after the war, but his appeal hadn’t completely translated to the rest of Europe. Ava Gardner, though, was another matter. Ava was a goddess, her dark beauty making perfect sense to Continental tastes, and Europe couldn’t get enough of her. At the next stop, Naples, the promoter put Ava’s name right on the bill with Frank’s. This, of course, was a terrible mistake. Frank Sinatra had no intention of sharing the stage with anyone else, even his wife, and Ava had no intention of stepping out on a stage with Frank. She’d come close to trying that just once, for charity in London, and wisely changed her mind.
But when Sinatra got up onstage for a matinee in Naples without that gorgeous wife of his, the spotlight picked her out in the crowd, who booed and whistled and threw seat cushions. They had paid up to 3,000 to 4,500 lire each—the equivalent of $5 to $7, a fortune in postwar Italy—to see this goddess. They chanted her name—“Ah-va! Ah-va! Ah-va!”—and Frank stomped off the stage. Ava fled.
The crowd threatened to riot. The carabinieri cleared the theater. For the evening show the house was half-full. Ava had stayed at the hotel. Sinatra sang one number, looked at the empty seats, then shook his head and walked off once more. The audience began to stamp the floor. After much fevered back-and-forth between Frank, the promoter, and the chief of the Naples riot police, who had fifteen officers waiting in the hall, Sinatra understood he had two choices: he could go on with the evening show and collect two-thirds of his $2,400 fee ($800 had been slotted for Ava), or he could walk and get nothing. He went on with the show.
The worse Frank felt, the worse he sang. The concerts didn’t improve. Naturally, he hadn’t been able to afford to fly a full complement of musicians over from the States, so he’d brought Bill Miller along as an accompanist and musical director. They hired pickup bands for each leg of the tour, but the quality varied from fair to poor. Sometimes Frank thought bitterly, longingly, of Studio C at Capitol on the night of April 30. The combination of Sinatra, a Dutch band called the Skyliners, and an English conductor named Harold Collins was a disaster in Scandinavia. “Sinatra has been a flop in Denmark and Sweden,” said the New Musical Express, the English counterpart of Billboard. On May 31 the Associated Press wrote that Frank had drawn boos during two concerts in southern Sweden. “Agence France Presse reported that Sinatra received an unenthusiastic reception from small audiences in Malmoe and Helsingborg,” the dispatch continued.
AFP said the manager of the Helsingborg theater refused to pay Sinatra, claiming the singer spent more time backstage checking his boat schedule than entertaining the public.
The manager also charged that Sinatra stopped his program after 32 minutes