His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [142]
Yet this man who could be so appallingly vulgar in public was also a man of taste with an extraordinary collection of Fabergé boxes, Steuben glass, and Indian crafts, as well as other American art and Impressionist paintings—including Pissarro, Dufy, Boudin, and Corot.
In Spain, Frank became agitated over an item in the New York Journal-American that cast an aspersion on Ava and her relationship with Sinatra. He was so determined to find our where the item had come from that he hired a private detective in New York.
“He called me in and said, ‘I have to find out who gave that item. That’s all there is to it,’ ” said Richard Condon. “Well, he did find out, and to have a rapprochement we arranged a dinner for Frank and Ava and two beards—myself and Otto Preminger. Throughout dinner, Frank and Ava never spoke to us—not one word. They were holding hands all night long and gazing sappily at each other, and when the last course was over, they stood up and left the room, leaving Otto and me with each other.”
The reconciliation with Ava lasted only one evening. Since there was no hope for a renewed marriage, Frank wanted to leave Spain as soon as possible. On July first, he refused to work unless Stanley Kramer would promise him that he would be finished on or before July 25, 1956. Kramer explained that he had done his best to revise the schedule but still needed him until August first. Frank stamped his foot and demanded that he be let go on July 28; Kramer said he would try. Frank said that wasn’t good enough; he was leaving July 28 whether Kramer was done shooting or not. The director reminded him of his contract, and Frank told him to sit on the contract; he was leaving on the twenty-eighth. This prompted a flurry of cables back and forth from the director to the production lawyers to Frank’s lawyers and to his William Morris agent, Burt Allenberg. Disregarding the threat of suspension, Frank left on July 28, and the picture was completed without him.
Despite the dissension making the film, Frank received good reviews for his performance. “As the virtual star, the cannon [the Spanish peasants transport the cannon to outside the walls of Avila to destroy a French-occupied fort] does nobly—if it doesn’t exactly out-act Sinatra, Grant, and Miss Loren, it is usually there, like Everest,” wrote Hollis Alpert in the Saturday Review. “While the gun deserves a special Academy Award, Mr. Sinatra must be commended for his restrained and appealing guérillero leader, Mr. Grant for his stalwart, understated British captain, and Miss Loren for her good looks.”
Time magazine applauded Frank “despite spit-curl bangs and a put-on accent.”
The accent was something he had worked on with a Spanish-speaking friend, who was a musician. “He had prepared for the part of the simple shoemaker’s son who leads the revolution against the French by having the script recorded by a heavily accented Spanish voice, which Frank memorized to get the speech exactly right,” said Richard Condon. “This was, unfortunately, recorded by an Argentinian who, among other things, pronounced yes as “jess,” making Frank sound, in the role, as if his dad had somehow scraped together enough, money to send his boy to a preparatory school in Buenos Aires circa 1801.”
Upon leaving Spain, Frank leaned out his hotel window and yelled, “Franco is a fink!” On the trip home with his publicist Warren Cowan, and his wife, Ronnie, Frank never stopped denigrating the Spanish dictator.