His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [123]
The film seemed to elevate everyone connected with it.
“There was something magic about that picture,” said Walter Shenson. “All of us went on to bigger and better things because of it. Frank’s career took off, and so did Donna Reed’s. Ernest Borgnine became a star; Dan Taradash became a producer at Columbia; our still photographer became a cinematographer, and I was made an executive. Harry Cohn felt that we were all a lucky bunch.”
The camaraderie among the cast and crew of From Here to Eternity made the wrap party memorable. “We gave a party for the cast when it was over,” said Joan Cohn Harvey, “and I still remember Frank sitting there telling everyone that in sixteen more hours he would be with Ava. ‘She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. You know that, don’t you?’ he’d say. ‘Yes, Frank, we all know how beautiful Ava is,’ I’d say. ‘She’s not just one of the most beautiful women in the world; she’s the most beautiful,’ he’d insist. He thought that he was married to the most exquisite creature on the face of the earth, and he was desperately in love with her. It was kind of sad because all the rest of us knew that the marriage was held together by mere threads at that point.”
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Frank acted as though once reunited with Ava they would live happily ever after. He phoned her in London, where she was to begin filming Knights of the Round Table for MGM, to say that he would be joining her in a few days. He wanted her to accompany him on singing engagements throughout Europe. He was in fine voice and looking forward to the trip. He promised her that it would be a second honeymoon for them and she accepted gleefully, once again defying the studio to take an unauthorized leave for three weeks to be with her husband.
Unfortunately, the second honeymoon turned out to be a disaster. They missed their London-to-Milan plane because their car broke down on the way to the London airport. Although they arrived with seven minutes to spare, and the British European Airways jet was still warming its engines, airport officials refused to let them board. Frank was enraged.
“I’ll never fly BEA again,” he yelled.
“I’d rather swim the channel,” said Ava.
Frank checked other airlines to find one that would get them anywhere near Milan. The only service available was a BEA flight to Rome, which they took grudgingly. Waiting for them to deplane was an Italian photographer, and Frank berated him severely. Police were summoned to hold the photographer until Frank and Ava had left.
In Naples, Frank was greeted by a half-filled house, and the audience booed him off the stage because Ava was not with him. During intermission, the theater manager refused to pay him, and Frank refused to resume singing. Impatient at being kept waiting, the audience booed and stamped and shouted. They were on the verge of rioting. The police were summoned, and the chief of Naples riot control visited Frank backstage accompanied by a platoon of fifteen policemen. They persuaded him to return to the stage.
“Ma vedere che passa,” Frank told his audience. (“Take it easy.”) “Ma vedere che passa.”
When he ended the show after an hour and a half, the audience refused to leave the theater. They had paid $7.40 to hear Frank sing, double what they would pay to hear their operatic idol, Beniamino Gigli, and they expected a three-hour concert. They began screaming, “Ruberia! Ruberia!” (“Robbery!”) Again police were summoned, this time to evacuate the theater.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, Frank couldn’t fill half the house. In Malmö, Sweden, where he was performing in an outdoor park, it started to rain and became so cold that he said he would get sick if he continued, and therefore cut short his appearance by twenty minutes. He refused to stage a press conference and snubbed newsmen and photographers. The next day, a Scandinavian newspaper ran a cartoon showing a stage set with a mike, a slouch-hatted bodyguard