Frank: The Voice (59 page)

The LP was the brainchild of Columbia’s president, Ted Wallerstein, who had first conceived of it a decade earlier as the ideal medium for classical music. In addition to Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, one of the label’s first pressings was a ten-inch LP reissue of 1946’s
The Voice of Frank Sinatra
. The album sold well, but not nearly as well as the original: for one thing, few people had the equipment to play it. In October, Columbia brought out a Sinatra Christmas album that did a little better: it lasted a week on the charts, rising just to number 7.

His next hit album wouldn’t come for five years—an eternity.

Four months after the Simon interview, one week after Tina’s birth, Frank stood at the radio microphone at CBS and, with disbelief in his voice, introduced the latest addition to the hit parade: “The Woody Woodpecker Song.” As the show’s vocal group, the Hit Paraders, went into the supremely annoying number, which revolved around the cartoon character’s supremely annoying laugh, Frank could be heard in the background, telling the studio audience: “
I just couldn’t do it!”

Meaning, he couldn’t bring himself to sing it. That was June 26. On July 10, he no longer had any choice.

“Well, I guess I better keep my hat on, ’cause look who’s here in spot number one,” Sinatra told Mr. and Mrs. America—and then, as though he had lost a bet, unbelievably went into that Woody Woodpecker laugh: “Heh-heh-heh-
heh
-heh! Heh-heh-heh-
heh
-heh!”

It’s a perfectly ghastly sound. To call it a desecration of Frank Sinatra’s voice is no exaggeration. He got through the rest of the song as
quickly as possible. He tossed the thing off, as it should have been tossed off, but also because he felt deeply humiliated. It was only the beginning.

Given the state of Sinatra’s movie career, MGM decided the safest thing would be to put him back together with Gene Kelly. The new vehicle was to be a lighthearted turn-of-the-century musical called
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
. But much as Frank loved Gene, he had his own plans for resuscitating his film fortunes: he lobbied hard that summer to be loaned out to Columbia for a serious role in a Bogart picture,
Knock on Any Door
. If he got the role, Sinatra would not only get to act opposite Bogart; he would play a young Italian-American murder suspect, a street guy—a part he felt he could really bring to life. The producers took one look at Frank’s hairline and hired twenty-two-year-old John Derek to play the role. Shooting on
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
began on July 28.

His memory for names and faces was phenomenal, as was his ability to hold on to grudges, slights, disappointments. Throughout the filming of
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
, as he danced and mugged for the camera, he couldn’t get the disappointment of
Knock on Any Door
off his mind. Frank took it out on
Ball Game
’s veteran director, Busby Berkeley, showing up late, muffing lines and dance sequences, wasting hours. Berkeley, on what would be his last picture, consoled himself with the bottle. Kelly and his young assistant Stanley Donen wound up directing much of the movie.

One day during lunch on the set, Frank got a call from Mayer’s office, saying his presence was requested. Expecting a rebuke, he was surprised to find the boss smiling thinly. He wanted to ask Frank a little favor.

The favor was to sing that evening at a Sacramento meeting of the National Conference of State Governors. Frank would be the only
entertainer, the studio chief explained, and everything would be taken care of: Governor Warren would have Sinatra flown to and from the event on his private plane. The reward was implicit—at a moment when HUAC had established a Hollywood beachhead, doing this solid for Republicans Earl Warren and Louis B. Mayer would polish up Frank’s tarnished image a good bit.

Sinatra smiled. Of course, Louis.

Later that afternoon Jack Keller and Frank’s accompanist Dick Jones came to his dressing room to collect him. No Frank. The studio lot was searched: Frank’s car was in his parking spot, but he himself was nowhere to be found. Heart sinking, Keller phoned Mayer’s office and got the expected earful. Eventually, Mayer, furious and humiliated, had to wire the governor’s office that Sinatra had fallen ill.

And where was Frank? Home—having sneaked off the MGM lot under a pile of boxes on the back of a pickup truck.

A few days later, Sinatra’s agent Lew Wasserman got a message from Mayer’s office: as per Frank’s contract with MGM, the studio was once more exercising its yearly option to loan his services out to another studio. In November he would be reporting back to RKO, to film a quickie comedy called
It’s Only Money
with Jane Russell and Groucho Marx.

Sinatra’s theme that fall was escape. He was going to Palm Springs more and more often, not so much as a retreat from hard work, of which there wasn’t much in late 1948, as to get away from everyone and everything. One weekend in late September, batching it with Jimmy Van Heusen—his increasingly present Falstaff, pilot, pimp, and fixer—he stopped by a party at David O. Selznick’s place. Sipping a dry martini, Sinatra looked across the room and got a jolt more powerful than any gin could’ve given him: it was Ava, smiling at the tall, homely producer.

She felt Frank’s look, turned, and flashed him a dazzling smile. He raised his glass and walked over.

They greeted each other, and Ava introduced their host. Frank gave the man a curt nod—he knew that it had been Selznick who had landed John Derek, the producer’s protégé, the plum role in
Knock on Any Door
. Knowing that Sinatra knew, and glancing back and forth between the two of them, Selznick excused himself.

“
It’s been a long time,” Frank said, when they were alone.

“Sure has,” Ava said.

“I suppose we were rushing things a little the last time we met.”

“
You
were rushing things a little.”

“Let’s start again,” Frank said. “What are you doing now?”

“Making pictures as usual.” She had just finished shooting
The Bribe
, at Metro, with Bob Taylor. “How about you?”

“Trying to pick myself up off my ass.”

She nodded sympathetically. “Though I knew all about Frank’s problems,” Ava wrote years later, “I wasn’t about to ask him about them that night. And, honey, I didn’t bring up Nancy, either. This night was too special for that.”

They slipped easily back to their earlier, alcoholic mode. Both of them could hold a lot of liquor. After a couple of hours, they walked out in the crisp desert night, under an inky black sky strewn with more stars than either of them had ever seen.

He offered to take her home.

Ava smiled. It was very gallant of him, but she had to tell him that she wasn’t staying alone—she was renting a little place with her big sister Bappie.

Frank shrugged. Did she feel like taking a drive?

Her smile grew broader. Sure she did.

After he went back into the house and gave the bartender a $100 bill for a fifth of Beefeater, they got in his Cadillac and set off. The top was down, despite the evening chill, and they rode under the river of stars, her hair flowing in the wind. She shivered and clutched her mink stole around her bare shoulders. He passed her the bottle; she took a long drink and passed it back.

Frank navigated out to a two-lane blacktop, Palm Canyon Drive, that led out of town, and they drove southeast, through sleepy villages separated by long black stretches of nothing: Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, Indian Wells. Each of the towns had a few streetlights, a couple of stores, a blinking traffic signal. Then it was black again. Once they passed a little graveyard whose gates fronted onto the highway. She shivered.

After a half hour, another pocket of light approached. A city-limits sign read: Indio. The two of them were singing, loudly, as they headed into the darkened town. She had a nice, tuneful voice; she could even do harmony. Frank looked impressed. She sang pretty good!

The gin bottle had gone back and forth a number of times, and the Cadillac was weaving when Frank pulled off the road and into a Texaco station. The car fishtailed as he put on the brakes. He cut the engine. A blinking traffic light hanging over the main drag swayed in the wind. It was two thirty in the morning, and Indio was out cold.

Ava looked around. It sure was a one-horse town. But where the hell was the horse?

He laughed, then kissed her. They kissed for a long time. She was still holding the bottle.

Then he got an idea: how about they liven the goddamn place up?

Frank reached across her, almost falling in her lap, and, after fumbling with the latch for a second, opened the glove compartment. He handed her a dark, heavy metal thing that smelled of machine oil. Ava cradled it in her hand, looked at it in wonderment. It was a snub-barreled Smith & Wesson .38 Chief’s Special. Frank took out another pistol just like it and, squinting, aimed it at the traffic light.

An hour later, the phone rang in Jack Keller’s bedroom. Though he had been deeply asleep, Keller knew exactly who was on the other end before he picked it up.