Frank_ The Voice - James Kaplan [97]
Sinatra arrived for the secret screening with an entourage. This time Pasternak was the one who got furious. “I said just for you,” he told Frank. “Not for half a dozen.”
Frank announced, once again, that he was walking off the picture. Pasternak told him to go right ahead. Sinatra walked—then, not wanting to test his expendability, came back the next day.
But the pattern had been set. One afternoon, a United Press reporter who was on the set to interview the pianist José Iturbi got more than he bargained for: a choice outburst from a frustrated Sinatra. “Pictures stink and most of the people in them do too,” he told the writer. “Hollywood won’t believe I’m through, but they’ll find out I mean it.”
He had already pushed the limits by insisting on Cahn and Styne and upsetting the producer with his special needs. This blasphemous tantrum was the kind of thing that could get an actor, even a high-paid one, run out of town. Sinatra’s team quickly went into damage control. “It was the hottest day of the year,” his manager Al Levy told the press. “Naturally he was tired, but that crack was never intended for that fat fellow with the glasses [the reporter].” And Jack Keller quickly placed a statement by Sinatra (written by Keller) in the papers:
It’s easy for a guy to get hot under the collar, literally and figuratively, when he’s dressed in a hot suit of Navy blues and the temperature is a hundred and four degrees and he’s getting over a cold to boot.
I think I might have spoken too broadly about quitting pictures and about my feeling toward Hollywood.
To say the least. And while it could certainly get hot under the klieg lights of a soundstage, especially in those pre-air-conditioned days, the summer of 1944 was in fact a typically temperate one in Culver City. In fact, as the war raged across Europe and the Pacific, it was a lovely summer in Los Angeles—a city of low white and pastel buildings, smogless in those days, full of fragrant blossoms and, for every working actor and screenwriter, five unemployed ones. Frank knew this, even as the black headlines blared of invasions and battles. Hollywood had its charms, and Sinatra was not about to lose them. Despite the aggravation of working at MGM, there were too many compensations: One day when the gaffers had taken around an hour too long to light the set, Frank simply got up and walked off the soundstage, into the studio alley. Turning right, down another alley to another soundstage, he went through another heavy door, with its sign saying QUIET PLEASE, past gaping extras, and up to a petite blonde deliciously filling out a tight WAC uniform. Her back was to him, but when she saw the reaction of the assistant director she’d been speaking to, she turned: it was Lana. She was in the midst of shooting another service comedy, this one about the Women’s Army Corps and titled Keep Your Powder Dry. She was also in the midst of leaving her second husband for the second time (long story), and seeing Peter Lawford, Bob Stack, and the exotically handsome Turhan Bey. But her big grin at Sinatra said she wouldn’t mind seeing a lot more of him, soon. And quite soon, she was, he was, they were.
Even as he exhausted himself rehearsing dance sequences (and stepping out with Lana), Sinatra continued to do his radio shows that summer: it was important to maintain his multimedia presence. It was also expensive. Lucky Strike allowed him to broadcast his Your Hit Parade segments from the West Coast on the condition that the singer pay out of pocket for studio rental, Stordahl’s orchestra, and the AT&T phone feed to New York. The total was $4,800 per show, $2,000 more than his weekly salary.
Even Sinatra couldn’t be everywhere at once. In July, he had to cancel a scheduled return