Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [299]
Was he going back to Rome with Ava?
He couldn’t say.
Did that mean Frank didn’t know, or he wouldn’t talk about it?
He couldn’t say.
So great was the strain that he came down with a miserable cold the next morning. And she, in her fury at him for descending on her, fell ill, too.
She shouted an obscenity, sneezing and smashing her fist into the pillow. Dominguín didn’t need a translation. And he understood when she explained she would have to go back to Rome with Sinatra. She would make sure he returned to America as soon as possible, then she would call for Luis Miguel to join her.
AVA GARDNER, SINATRA SILENT ON RECONCILIATION, read the December 30 wire-service headline, datelined Rome.
Actress Ava Gardner, in bed with the flu shortly after resuming housekeeping with husband Frank Sinatra, was reported “feeling much better today.”
A doctor said she probably would be able to leave her apartment to keep several appointments later today.
Miss Gardner went to bed yesterday several hours after she and Sinatra arrived in Rome from Madrid. He flew from the United States and followed her to Spain for Christmas, giving rise to reports of a reconciliation.
On arrival here, they went straight to the actress’ luxurious apartment on the fashionable Corso d’Italia, but neither would comment on whether she is abandoning her previously announced plans to get a divorce.
Reached by telephone, Sinatra gave no hint of love or romance. Asked about a reconciliation, he snapped:
“This doesn’t concern anyone but us. This is nobody’s business but our own.”
Twentieth Century Fox was frantically trying to keep Pink Tights alive. Monroe’s and Sinatra’s salaries were being paid week after week, but nothing was happening. Darryl F. Zanuck was struggling to keep the film on track, but both stars were out of town and preoccupied: Marilyn holed up in San Francisco with the man she was about to marry, Joe DiMaggio; Frank in Rome, “trying to work things out” with his wife, as he kept cabling Fox.
With the press camped outside, Frank and Ava spent three days sequestered in her apartment, drinking, talking, shouting (not quite as loudly as they used to), even taking a shot at making up, without much success. She told him apologetically that she still felt like shit—but they both knew her health had nothing to do with it.
Rome, December 29, 1953. Sick, miserable, and about to be a couple no more. (photo credit 38.2)
They threw a New Year’s Eve party—Ava’s idea—at the Via Veneto cabaret run by Cole Porter’s legendary muse Bricktop. Getting out of the apartment was a relief, as was being around other people—even if they barely knew the other guests: Eddie O’Brien and Rossano Brazzi plus some of the crew from her movie, dissolute Roman society nobs and equally dissolute expatriates and a few people from the embassy. Loud music, close quarters, lots of smoke; the usual requests for Frank to sing. He shook his head sadly. Sitting on his lap, Ava tried to cheer him up, amid the forced gaiety and phony sentimentality (1954! who knew what it would bring?). But when she and Frank kissed at the stroke of midnight, the tears running down her cheeks were quite real.
On Monday morning he sneaked off to the airport, leaving by a service entrance to avoid the reporters, and flew back to America alone.
39
Humphrey Bogart and Ava at a cocktail party for their film The Barefoot Contessa, Rome, early 1954. Frank was in Hollywood, 7,000 miles away, still pining for her. (photo credit 39.1)
While Frank was in the air, on Monday, January 4, Capitol released Songs for Young Lovers as a ten-inch LP, containing the eight songs from the November 5 and 6 sessions: “My Funny Valentine,” “The Girl Next Door,