His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [208]
Frank’s involvement with a nineteen-year-old was a source of great amusement to many of his friends. “I’ve got Scotch older than Mia Farrow,” said Dean Martin.
“If Frank marries that girl, his kids are going to call her Mamma Mia,” said “Fat” Jack Leonard.
“Frank didn’t have to buy Mia a diamond ring,” said Eddie Fisher. “He gave her a teething ring.”
Although younger than two of Frank’s children, Mia dismissed the thirty years between them. “I know there’s a big age difference, but it doesn’t really matter to me,” she said. “Frank is exciting and fascinating. He’s the most captivating man I’ve ever known. I’ve never encountered anyone sweeter or more considerate. He is everything a girl could want.”
For his part, Frank said, “I really like this one.… I’m pushing Fifty, but what the hell? Let’s say I’ve got five good years left. Why don’t I enjoy them?”
Some friends observing the romance between the hipster and the hippie remembered how outraged Frank had been by the 1957 film Love in the Afternoon, starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn, and how he had scolded the director’s wife about what he thought was a degenerate story.
“He was quite vehement about it,” said director Billy Wilder. “So vehement that he made my wife cry. He said he didn’t like the picture because he thought it was immoral for an elderly man to make love in the afternoon to a young girl.”
In August 1965, Frank chartered the Southern Breeze, a one-hundred-sixty-eight-foot glistening white yacht with a crew of twenty-three, to cruise the waters off New England. At $2,000 a day, he paid $60,000 in advance for the month, and invited nine guests: Bill and Edie Goetz, the Freddie Brissons (Roz Russell), the Joel Pressmans (Claudette Colbert), Sears, Roebuck heir Armand Deutsch and his wife, Harriet, and Mia Farrow.
When the television starlet took leave of Peyton Place to make the trip, the screenwriters did not know whether she was going to get married, so they wrote her character into a four-week coma, figuring if she returned, the character could recover; if she married, the character would die. All this gave rise to speculation that the cruise would be a honeymoon for Frank and Mia, and reporters pursued them everywhere the yacht dropped anchor. Photographers snapped pictures of them shopping ashore hand in hand, eating clams together, laughing, whispering, and hugging as though oblivious to the headlines they were creating across the country.
Mia’s mother as well as Frank’s mother seemed incredulous, and when reporters asked whether marriage was in the offing, the mothers denied it.
“Marry Mia?” laughed Maureen O’Sullivan. “If Mr. Sinatra is going to marry anyone, he ought to marry me!”
“My son is just helping this girl become a star,” said Dolly Sinatra. “How many times has Frank helped somebody to the top? This is what he is doing now. He has done it before. He is doing it now. And he will do it again. This Mia, she’s a nice little girl, but that’s all. Remember, Frank’s children are older than this girl. I’m going to spend the next two days in New York City with-my son in his apartment. I’m sure I have some influence left with him. If there is any truth to these rumors—which I personally know there is not—I will use my influence to discourage any marriage.”
In 1962, Frank had broken his engagement to Juliet Prowse because she would not give up her career to be his wife. She had changed her mind later and telephoned Frank with the happy news, but, according to Nancy, Jr., “when Juliet called my father, he said, ‘Forget it, baby,’ and hung up.” He had sworn that he would never again share a wife with her acting career as he had done with Ava Gardner. He had recently told Mia the same thing, and repeated it in an interview with Life magazine in April 1965: “I don’t say marriage is impossible, but if I would marry, it would have to be somebody out of show business, or somebody who will