His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [114]
“ ‘God, Ava,’ I said. ‘You’re going to ruin your skin.’
“ ‘What the hell,’ she said.”
After taking a few sips, Ava came straight to the point. “Joan, I’ve come to ask you a big favor. I want you to get Harry to give Frank the Maggio role in From Here to Eternity. He wants that part more than anything in the world, and he’s got to have it, otherwise I’m afraid he’ll kill himself. Please, promise me that you’ll help. I’ll do anything. Just get him a test. Please, Joan. Just a test.”
Mrs. Cohn was stunned. It was absolutely unheard of for the wife of a star to come begging like this to the wife of a studio head, especially to the wife of Harry Cohn, who was renowned for being the nastiest man in Hollywood and who, until the war, had kept an autographed photo of Mussolini displayed in his office.
“Frank was at the bottom of the barrel then, and no one wanted him for anything, especially that role,” said Joan. “I knew that he’d been pleading with Harry for the part of Maggio, but Harry had completely dismissed him. He thought Frank was nothing but a washed-up song-and-dance man. A has-been crooner. It was pathetic, really. But I was so moved by Ava that night and her devotion to Frank that I promised to help her in any way I could. As soon as I got out of that sick bed, I went to work on Harry.”
14
Frank identified with Angelo Maggio, the tough little soldier in James Jones’s novel, From Here to Eternity, who grinned and boozed and fought his way through the pre-Pearl Harbor army. Ruled by violent pride, the gritty Italian-American GI dies rather than allow the brutality of the stockade to break his spirit. From the moment Frank came across the character in the book, he wanted the role. He knew that this was a once-in-a-lifetime part that could reignite his waning star.
“I just felt it—I just knew it,” he said, “and I just couldn’t get it out of my head.
“I knew that if a picture was ever made, I was the only actor to play Private Maggio, the funny and sour Italo-American. I knew Maggio. I went to school with him in Hoboken. I was beaten up with him. I might have been Maggio.… When I heard that Columbia bought the story, I got Harry Cohn on the phone and asked him for a date for lunch. After we ate, I said to him, ‘Harry, I’ve known you for a long time. You got something I want.’
“Harry said, ‘You want to play God?’ and I said, ‘No, not that. But I want to play Maggio.’ And then he looked at me funnylike and said, ‘Look, Frank, that’s an actor’s part, a stage actor’s part. You’re nothing but a fucking hoofer.’ ”
Frank pleaded with him for more than an hour, saying he could play Maggio better than he could sing and dance. But for Harry Cohn, the subject was closed. He remembered Frank’s nonsinging performance in The Miracle of the Bells, which was a box office failure for MGM, and he wanted no part of it.
“Please, Harry,” begged Frank. “I’ll pay you if you’ll let me play that role.”
“Sure, Frank,” said Cohn, who knew that Sinatra owed more than $109,000 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. “Sure.”
Frank’s dreams outran his deficits. “I’m serious about the money, Harry,” he said.
“Who mentioned money? But what about the money?”
“I get one hundred fifty thousand a film …”
“You got one hundred fifty thousand. Not anymore.”
“Right,” said Frank, “I used to get it, and I don’t want anything near that much for Maggio.”
“I’m not buying at any price,” said Cohn, “but just for the record, what’s yours?”
“I’ll play Maggio for a thousand a week.”
“Jesus, Frank, you want it that bad?” said Cohn. “Well, we’ll see. I have some other actors to test first.”
Frank called Abe Lastfogel and Sam Weisbrod, his new agents at the William Morris Agency, and told them about his talk with Cohn. He begged them to get him the role even if they had to sign him for fifty dollars a week.
“I’ll do it for nothing” he said. “For nothing. You’ve just got to get it for me.”
Since taking Frank on as a client, both agents had been doggedly trying to arouse interest in him, but everyone knew of his long