His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [214]
“Make all the arrangements,” he said, “because I’m leaving London tomorrow, and Mia and I are getting married.”
Then he called Mickey Rudin and told him to find his pilot, Don Lieto, to pick him up and fly him to New York. He called Bill and Edie Goetz in Los Angeles and told them they were to be best man and matron of honor in forty-eight hours. Then he called Mia and told her to fly from New York to California and from there to Las Vegas without saying a word to anyone, including her mother.
“I sat there as he made all these calls, wondering if he’d gone crazy,” said Dexter. “Since he just seemed to get madder and madder, I finally left and went to bed around five A.M. Frank flew out of London the next day, and Mia’s doom was sealed.”
Arriving in New York on July 18, Frank had dinner with his former girlfriend, Peggy Connolly, and hardly acted like a man about to be married. The next day, he flew to Las Vegas and arrived at the Sands accompanied by Mia, Bill and Edie Goetz, and his valet, George Jacobs. Judge William P. Comp-ton was waiting with a marriage license that had been witnessed by Harry Claiborne and Jack Entratter. Minutes before the ceremony, Frank took George Jacobs aside and said, “Call Miss G,” their code name for Ava Gardner. Jack Entratter tried to dissuade George from making the call, but George insisted.
“It’ll be my ass if I don’t get hold of that lady before someone else does, and I’ll find her if it’s the last thing I do,” he said, heading for the phone. “She’s the love of his life, and you know it!”
Ava’s comment on the nuptials was succinct and bitter. “Ha!” she said. “I always knew Frank would end up in bed with a little boy.” Later, she dismissed her former husband as “a scared monster. He was convinced there was no one in the world except him,” she said.
At five-thirty P.M. on July 19, 1966, Frank took Mia into Jack Entratter’s living room, where the strains of Frank’s new record, “Strangers in the Night,” were faintly audible over the hotel’s speaker system. The judge read a four-minute civil ceremony. Frank slipped a gold wedding band on Mia’s finger, kissed her three times, and the judge pronounced them husband and wife.
“Let’s break out the wine and caviar,” Frank said.
“I’ve never seen such anxiety before,” recalled Edie Goetz. “They were both so nervous you couldn’t believe it. Frank’s face was flushed and he twitched nervously as they repeated their vows.”
The twenty-one-year-old bride turned and hugged her sixty-six-year-old matron of honor, saying, “This is the happiest day of my life.”
Grinning, Frank led her from the air-conditioned room into the 107-degree heat to pose for wedding pictures on the patio of Entratter’s Oriental garden. Saluting reporters with his hand raised upward, he said, “My bride.”
“This is a big day, fellas. I can’t think of what to say. We just decided to get married last week. We were both out west, it seemed right, and we’re in love, and it was logical.”
“Will Mia accompany you to London?” asked a reporter.
“Oh, yes, by all means, yes,” said Frank.
After a quick glass of champagne, the couple was in a limousine en route to the airport to fly to Los Angeles.
“I gave a wedding dinner for eighteen [no members of Frank’s family among them] and they spent the night here with us so that no one would know where they were,” said Edie Goetz, who took credit for finally persuading Frank to get married. “Billy and I both said, ‘Oh, go ahead and do it. She’s crazy about you.’ ”
The news of the marriage stunned Frank, Jr., who was in Cocoa Beach, Florida, performing at the Koko Motel. “I think you got the wrong party, pal,” he said when asked how he felt to be one year older than his stepmother. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.” That night, before singing what he called his Sinatra Songs, he told his audience: