His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [104]
His valet, George Jacobs, found him in a stupor. Jacobs immediately called Sanicola, who summoned a doctor to pump Frank’s stomach. The doctor, John Wesley Field, did not recognize Frank because he had recently grown a small mustache. Besides, as the doctor later told the sheriff, Frank identified himself as Henry Sanicola.
With George and Hank in the room, the doctor examined Frank’s heart and pulse, which were normal but slow, and prescribed salts to induce vomiting and a stimulant to counteract the sleeping pills. Then, as required by law, he reported the incident to the sheriff, who sent a deputy sheriff to investigate. Three days later, the incident became national news, but by the time reporters showed up to ask questions, Frank and Ava were reunited and sitting together holding hands.
“I did not try and commit suicide,” said Frank. “I just had a bellyache. Suicide is the farthest thought from my mind. What will you guys think of next to write about me?”
The reporters wrote what they were told: Frank didn’t feel well, so he took “a couple” of sleeping pills, which produced an allergic reaction. “That’s all there was to it—honest,” he said.
Years later, George Jacobs confirmed that Frank had indeed tried to commit suicide that night over Ava Gardner. “Thank God, I was there to save him,” he said. “Miss G. was the one great love of his life, and if he couldn’t have her, he didn’t want to live no more.”
Frank was beset by a wife who wouldn’t let go, children begging him to come home, and a lover angry about the bad publicity they were receiving and impatient to get married. In frustration, he lashed out at the press.
Ava, too, despised the press, but, understanding its power and influence, she always smiled for photographers and gave reporters some kind of a quotation. She insisted that Frank make an effort to get along with them, and he promised he would.
His reformation lasted only a few days. When his Nevada divorce became final a few weeks later, he became so enraged when he saw reporters waiting for him that he forgot his promise to Ava and called them all “newspaper bums.”
“Why should I give the newspapers anything? I ought to give a cocktail party for the press and put a Mickey Finn in every glass,” he said, prompting a headline that read: BELLIGERENT SINATRA GETS DIVORCE, SCORNS REPORTERS.
As soon as Frank was granted a Nevada divorce, Nancy filed legal papers objecting and refused to withdraw her objection until he agreed to pay her $40,000 in back alimony. Frank capitulated to every one of her financial demands, promising to pay her $65,000 immediately after she received a California divorce and $21,000 more by December 31, 1952, or she would have the right to take over the one asset he had left, the house in Palm Springs.
On October 31, 1951, Nancy was granted an interlocutory decree of divorce in Santa Monica after testifying to Frank’s many acts of mental cruelty. Fifteen minutes later, the rejected wife left the court a rich woman.
Within a day, Frank and Ava obtained a marriage license in Philadelphia and vowed to be married privately—no press—at the home of Isaac “Ike” Levy, one of the founders of CBS. Manie Sacks, who was also from Philadelphia, helped Frank make arrangements for the secret Monday evening nuptials. Levy locked the marriage license in his office safe, and Mrs. Levy hired one of the city’s best caterers and florists for the occasion. She told her decorator to get the Levys’ German-town mansion ready for twenty guests, and swore all the maids and butlers to secrecy.
On the Saturday night before the wedding, Frank and Ava invited Pamela and James Mason to a dinner celebration at The Colony in New York City. Later, they went to a Sugar Hill nightclub, where Ava soon decided that Frank was paying too much attention to a pretty woman sitting nearby. “It looks like I’m through with him,” she said to Mrs. Mason. “I can’t even trust him on the eve of our wedding.”
Blinded by jealousy, she screamed at Frank