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By Root 2704 0

1953 was the closest she and Frank would ever come to working together. But having ground out a half-dozen pictures for 20th Century Fox over the past couple of years (most recently and unpleasantly, River of No Return and There’s No Business Like Show Business), at what she considered wage-slave pay and always in the formulaic role of the Dumb Blonde, Monroe had decided to dig in her heels on Pink Tights. Her fame was rising; she wanted more money and better roles. She had seen the script, a silly remake of a silly 1943 Betty Grable movie called Coney Island: Monroe would play a turn-of-the-century cabaret singer, and Sinatra, a smooth-talking con man. It was a lark, but the only thing in it for her was the usual pouting and eye widening. To compound the insult, Fox had signed Sinatra for $5,000 a week, more than three times her $1,500 weekly salary as a contract player.

She was due at the studio on December 15 for the commencement of principal photography. She stayed home. So did Frank. But in truth, he was in a hurry to get out of town.

In the meantime, it was Christmas shopping season, sunny and in the seventies in Beverly Hills, and Louella Parsons was gratified to note that Frank had been spotted making the rounds of local shops with thirteen-year-old Nancy Sandra—who, Earl Wilson noted with mild horror, already had beaux.

A few days later, Louella gushed: “It wouldn’t surprise me one mite if Frank Sinatra moved home. He’s there all the time to see the children and they are just crazy about him.”

She was in high officious-biddy mode, lobbying, as always, for uprightness and solid family values amid the swirling Gomorrah of Hollywood. Frank’s kids were lobbying too, fighting hard to hold on to him, since he was around anyway and Christmas was coming.

But the smile on Big Nancy’s face whenever he stopped by reminded him of that chick in the painting by da Vinci.

To try to calm down, he spent some money. He went into Teitelbaum’s on Rodeo Drive and bought a white mink coat to take with him to Rome. Three weeks on Pink Tights would pay for it. He had the furrier stitch the initials AGS into the lining.

Except Ava wasn’t going to be in Rome on Christmas. When he phoned her on Tuesday morning, the twenty-second (having gotten up at eleven—the crack of dawn, for him—to try to catch her before she headed out for cocktails at 8:00 p.m.), Ava informed him, somewhat testily, that she was going to Madrid for the holiday.

He responded just as testily. Who the fuck was in Madrid?

The Grants, if he must know. Frank and Doreen.

A long, pinging, staticky silence; the international operator straining to hear.

Ava finally spoke. She would be back in Rome on Saturday or Sunday.

He protested. But Christmas was Friday. Her birthday the day before.

She really had to get going.

United Press reached her the following morning to ask if she and Frank might be planning a holiday reconciliation.

She wasn’t sure if she would put it that way.

Had she spoken to him?

She had. She proceeded to recount the conversation, in slightly different form. It had been entirely amicable, and she had arranged to cut her visit to Madrid short so she could meet Frank in Rome on Saturday or Sunday.

The reporter was scrawling, fast, in his notebook. So we could still say a holiday reconciliation.

“I’ll be so happy to see him again,” Ava said.

Frank had left Tuesday night, checking the two huge white suitcases that he took everywhere, but carrying the presents—an armful, including the big white Teitelbaum’s box: he didn’t want to risk some baggage handler snatching that. It was an overnight flight from Los Angeles to New York, a three-hour layover, then another ten-hour leg from Idlewild to Heathrow. Another layover, then three hours to Rome. These were the pre-jet days, propellers droning on the big Constellation, bumping along with the weather in the lower stratosphere, four hundred miles an hour tops, even with a tailwind. A lot of time to read, to try to sleep, to smoke and drink and worry. He chewed gum, he stared out the window, he drummed