His Way_ The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra - Kitty Kelley [215]
Frank and Mia began their honeymoon a few days later in New York City, where Frank socked a photographer who was trying to take a picture of them entering the “21” club for a party hosted by the Bennett Cerfs. The next night, Frank and Mia went to Fort Lee, where Dolly Sinatra had been cooking for two days, preparing ravioli, scallopine, scungilli, stuffed green lasagne noodles, fettucine, corkscrew pasta, macaroni, spaghetti, and sausage gnocchi. She loaded her tables with cheese, cold cuts, and sweet sugary desserts. She’d done the same thing when Frank had brought Ava Gardner to Hoboken fifteen years before, but that had been an occasion to celebrate. Ava was a big movie star and one of the most beautiful women in the world. Mia Farrow was just a girl, younger than Frank’s two older children, and she’d never even been in a movie.
“Dolly, who always praised Ava Gardner, wasn’t impressed with Mia at all, but she was putting on a good show for Frank,” said Al Algiro, a close friend of Dolly and Marty who had helped with the dinner. “It was a great party. Toots Shor was there and that comedian Joe E. Lewis and Jilly Rizzo, of course. Nancy, Jr., [who was in New York at the time] came and so did Rosalind Russell and Freddie Brisson and Liza Minnelli, who smoked little cigars all night. Mia dressed kind of funny, with long white stockings like a nurse and a short little dress that almost came up to her hips, it was so short. She didn’t say much the whole evening. After everyone left, Dolly said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ I shrugged and said Frank was over twenty-one and could marry whomever he wanted. ‘Yeah, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But this one don’t talk. She don’t eat. What’s she do?’ Then she shook her head and said, ‘It won’t last long, so I guess it’s a good thing they weren’t married in the Church.…’ ”
26
The Sinatras continued their honeymoon in London in a penthouse apartment in Grosvenor Square while Frank worked on The Naked Runner. On weekends, he and Mia flew to the south of France and stayed in Jack Warner’s villa in Cap d’Antibes, but within three weeks he grew restless. Bored with the movie, he wanted to go home.
“We had a location shoot up the Thames River about eighteen to twenty minutes by helicopter from London,” said Brad Dexter. “I had made the run a couple of times with the chopper pilot to make sure he knew the route because Frank insisted on flying rather than driving to save time. He also expected everything to be run with military precision. The morning of the shoot, the British government summoned my pilot and gave me a substitute who had never flown the route before. We picked up Frank and took off just as the fog came in. Minutes later, the pilot lost his direction. Frank, who had barely spoken to me since returning to London, asked how long the flight was. I told him eighteen to twenty minutes, so he sat back, tight and taut, without saying a word. After eighteen minutes in the air, he said, ‘Well? Where’s the location?’ I couldn’t see a damn thing, so I asked the pilot and he admitted that he was lost.
“Frank went nuts. ‘I don’t stand for excuses, goddammit,’ he said. ‘I don’t work with incompetents. We should’ve been there by now. I don’t know why the hell I ever came to England. I hate this goddamn country. I don’t know why I’m making this lousy picture.’ He went on and on, building a huge resentment toward the movie.
“After forty-five minutes the pilot finally drops us down on the location spot, where the director, Sidney Furie, is waiting, ready to talk to Frank about his scene, but Frank jumped out of the chopper and said, ‘I don’t want to work. I don’t want to act. I’m sick and tired of this “mother” movie. I think we ought to dump the whole thing, change the location, and get the hell out of here. Let’s go back to Palm Springs and shoot it in the desert.’ With that, he walked off and stood under a tree, pouting. The director,