His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [105]
Frank ran after her, but Ava had already disappeared to the nightspots of Harlem. By the time he got back to the Hampshire House, where they were staying, she had moved out. Frank started drinking and called Manie Sacks. “The wedding’s off,” he said, “and what was to have been a celebration is a shambles.” Sacks was now in the uncomfortable position of having to call Ike Levy. When talking to reporters later, Levy was exasperated.
“Make no mistake about it,” he said. “There will positively be no marriage here today! They’re like this war in Korea. They’re always battling and getting nowhere.”
It took the intercession of Axel Stordahl, James Mason, and Ava’s sister, Bappie, but by Monday afternoon Frank and Ava had made up. That night, they went to Hoboken for one of Dolly Sinatra’s famous Italian dinners.
“I don’t even know the names of some of the things we had—chicken like you’ve never tasted in your life, some wonderful little meat things rolled in dough, and just about every Italian goody you can imagine,” said Ava.
With the wedding on again, the secrecy was tightened, but reporters soon found out, by asking the city’s top caterer, that it was to take place in Philadelphia on Wednesday evening, November seventh. This time it was Manie Sacks’s brother, Lester, who volunteered his home for the event. That Wednesday, reporters in New York City waited outside the Hampshire House until Ava came out with Axel Stordahl, Frank’s best man, and got into a waiting limousine. A few minutes later, Frank came out with Axel’s wife, June Hutton, Ava’s matron of honor.
“No questions, no questions,” he said, brushing by the newsmen and putting his hand over the lens of a Movietone television camera just as the cameraman began filming the departure. The wedding party, which included Ben Barton, Frank’s music publishing partner, and Dick Jones, an ex-Dorsey arranger, left for Philadelphia, where it was raining. When the limousine pulled up in front of Lester Sachs’s fieldstone home, Frank saw the reporters standing in the drizzle.
“How did those creeps know where we were?” he yelled. “I don’t want no circus here. I’ll knock the first guy who attempts to get inside on his ass—and I mean it!”
Ava ran into the house, pulling Frank behind her. They were given a written request from photographers for pictures and a little cooperation. Frank ran back outside, shouting, “Okay, who sent the note? Which one?” He pointed from one photographer to the other. “Did you? Did you? You’re not going to get any pictures. You’ll get shots from the commercial photographer [Irving Haberman from CBS] when he gets around to it.”
“I’ll take my own pictures,” said the note-sender.
“I’ll betcha five hundred dollars you don’t,” yelled Frank. “If you do, I’ll knock you flat on your ass.”
An hour later, the twenty-nine-year-old bride walked down the steps on the arm of Manie Sacks. She wore a cocktail-length mauve and gray gown with a strapless top of pink taffeta.
“I was so nervous and excited,” she said. “When Manie and I started down the stairs, he slipped, and we slid about three stairs before we regained our footing. But we did make it down the rest of the way, and as soon as I saw Frank standing there, I wasn’t nervous anymore. He looked wonderful in his blue suit and gray tie and so composed. But he told me later he had the biggest lump in his throat. And all of a sudden I was in front of Judge Sloane.”
They exchanged thin platinum rings, and seconds after the magistrate pronounced them man and wife, the thirty-six-year-old groom kissed his bride. Turning to the twenty assembled guests, he broke into a big smile. “Well,” he said. “We finally made it. We finally made it.”
Ava raced across the room and threw her arms around her new mother-in-law. Dolly promptly burst into tears and patted Ava’s arm affectionately. She had favored the marriage