His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [131]
“He never got her out of his system,” said Nick Sevano. “She had a hold over him no other woman ever had.”
His friends and associates agreed. Even the women he dated, most of whom were tall, thin, and brunette, knew that they had been chosen to be surrogates. Most did not mind.
“It was nightmare time after Ava,” said Norma Ebberhart, a beautiful actress with one blue eye and one green eye. “We spent a lot of nights together in Palm Springs trying to chase those nightmares away.”
Frank fell into many arms trying to recover from Ava, and reached out to every woman around him for comfort. He proposed to some but forgot most, running away as soon as they wanted more than he wanted to give.
“He was wonderful and I liked him very much,” said Vanessa Brown, “but I just didn’t want to marry him. He asked me several times, but I think he was looking for someone to take care of him—a basic, old-fashioned girl who would cook and clean and keep house. He needed that. It bothered him very much that I never had any food in the house. He said, ‘Can’t you make some pasta or something?’ ”
He swore to Mona Freeman that he didn’t care if he ever saw Ava again, and he said the same to Judy Garland, whom he dropped abruptly when she wanted to become the next Mrs. Sinatra. Elizabeth Taylor got the same treatment toward the end of her unhappy marriage to Michael Wilding when she found herself pregnant by Frank and wanted to marry him. He arranged an abortion for her instead.
No one woman seemed to be able to wipe away the scars of Ava Gardner.
“He always told me one of the things that fascinated him about Ava was that there was no conquest,” said comedian Shecky Greene. “He couldn’t conquer her. That is where the respect comes. He never got her. He couldn’t control her or dominate her. He’d get drinking and tell me how she always called him a goddamned hoodlum and a gangster. He’d never take that from anyone else but Ava. She was always a challenge to him, and he needs that. It’s a definite part of his personality.”
16
The night of March 25, 1954, Frank Sinatra walked into the Pantages Theater on Hollywood Boulevard with his thirteen-year-old daughter, Nancy, who was wearing a white ermine cape, and Frankie, Jr., ten, sporting a bow tie just like his father’s early trademark. Young Frank’s mimicry of his father had started when he was a year old, and by the time the boy was ten, Sinatra was to comment about his son, “He’s so like me it’s frightening.”
Big Nancy had remained at home with the youngest child, Christina, six. She had cooked a spaghetti dinner during which the children gave their father their own Academy Award, a St. Genesius medal bearing the inscription: “To Daddy—All our love from here to eternity.”
After Columbia Pictures removed Frank from the star line-up of Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, and Donna Reed, and reduced him to the rank of a supporting player, he became the odds-on favorite to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Also nominated were Eddie Albert (Roman Holiday); Brandon de Wilde (Snane); Jack Palance (Shane); and Robert Strauss (Stalag 17). Despite such formidable competition, reporters wrote about the awards as if Frank had already won.
“I ran into person after person who said, ‘He’s a so-and-so but I hope he gets it. He was great,’ ” said Louella Parsons. “So if Frank doesn’t step up to get his Oscar, he and the rest of the audience will be surprised numb.”
A week before the awards ceremony, Frank was eating dinner at La Scala in New York with Jimmy Van Heusen, Hank Sanicola, and music publisher Jackie Gale. As Frank left for the airport to fly to Los Angeles, the men raised their glasses. “Bring back that Oscar,” they said. “I’m gettin’ it,