hey internet connection, NO ONE LIKES IT WHEN YOU'RE SLOW.
The soundtrack to this post, which is to be a collection of pictures of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra accompanied by quotes and things I declare relevant, is the 1955 Frank Sinatra album In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning, which is melancholy and romantic, and, as the Sinatra biography I have in front of me declares, "Every song seems to include a reference to Frank and Ava." :'( It does not, however, include "I'm A Fool To Want You", which Frank Sinatra sorta-kinda wrote for Ava (he penned some but not all of the lyrics, not the melody), and so I uploaded that too.
SO ANYWAY: once upon a time, in the late 1940s, there was a married but philandering Hollywood playboy who unexpectedly met the love of his life in an on-the-rise pretty southern girl turned femme fatale.
We became lovers forever--eternally. Big words, I know. But I truly felt that no matter what happened we would always be in love... one or two people tried to warn me about him. Lana Turner was one. She had been one of Artie Shaw's wives, and she'd had a very serious affair with Frank a couple of years before me... Though he was shuttling backward and forward between her bedroom and Nancy's [Frank's wife], trying to equate obedience to Catholic doctrines with indulgence in his natural inclinations, divorce plans were all set up and wedding plans had been made.
Then Lana woke up one morning, picked up the newspaper, and red that Frank had changed his mind and gone back to Nancy for good. It was the old Catholic arrangement: wife and family come first...
...I told Lana gently that Frank and I were in love, and that this time he really was going to leave Nancy for good. If I'm in love, I want to get married: that's my fundamentalist Protestant background. If he wanted me, there could be no compromise on that issue.
...Now, nearly forty years later, I can be fairly rational about this, even smile ruefully at all the fuss. Then, however, I was deeply hurt and upset. All I had done was fall in love. It was, unfortunately, with a married Catholic man...
-- Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story.
LOL MOUSTACHE.
All was not well with Ava. Both of them were insecure, consumed with jealousy. Frank was run-down and drinking and smoking too much. “Every single night,” Ava recalled, “we would have three or four martinis, big ones in champagne glasses, then wine with dinner, then go to a nightclub and start drinking Scotch or bourbon. I don’t know how we did it.”
Ava’s jealousy and distrust added to their difficulties. Soon after their marriage, when Frank appeared at the Riviera nightclub on a night when Marilyn Maxwell was in the audience, Ava claimed that her husband was making “cute little gestures” toward her. She stormed out, flew to California, and returned her wedding ring to Frank by mail. He lost it.
Whether or not Frank was guilty of infidelity this early in the marriage, Ava was. “I hate cheating,” she told one interviewer years later. “I won’t put up with it. I don’t do it myself.” Yet in the late summer of 1952, while in Utah filming Ride, Vaquero!, she had an affair with the movie’s director, John Farrow. The source is Farrow’s daughter Mia, who would one day become Frank’s third wife.
-- "Sex, Sinatra and the women who fell for him", Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan
Oh, God, Frank Sinatra could be the sweetest, most charming man in the world when he was in the mood.
-- Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story.
She was a female Frank Sinatra and they just clashed at every turn - too stubborn and headstrong to live in harmony for long. It was such a very very bad time for him. He really took a dive over Ava. I mean emotionally he absolutely capsized over her. Then he lost his voice, his career went to ruins, and she was the one with the huge career and that had to bother him.
-- Kitty Kelley, Frank Sinatra... biographer?
Ava Gardner later remarked that the first anniversary of her 1951 wedding to Frank Sinatra "was quite an occasion for me. I had been married twice before, but never for a whole year."
Frank and Ava were notorious. She was the unbridled beauty who had lured him from his happy home. Or that was the way it played in public when Frank separated from Nancy. But to Frank, Ava wasn't the other woman. She was the only woman.
Today their condition could probably be diagnosed and treated, but in the late '40s, friends called them crazy and ducked. One night on the town they literally shot up the town Indio, Calif., where they let loose with two .38s, slightly injuring one citizen. Twice during their time together, Frank tried to commit suicide. But how serious was he about wanting to die? After all, he just could have let Ava kill him.
Their fights were phenomenal, taking place on both coasts and several continents. Ava later said that the good years were the years when Sinatra's career was in a slump. When he was dependent, she found, he was sweet-natured and she repeatedly moved to shore up his self-confidence. She went so far as to plead with Joan Cohn, the wife of Columbia Pictures despot Harry, to give Frank the role of Maggio in "From Here to Eternity."
But Frank's comeback seemed to bring out the worst in both of them. And their worst was really bad. In fact, they were almost evicted from their apartment. Frank came ahead home to the States and then learned of Ava's return from the newspapers. He was furious. Dolly effected a reconciliation one night, after which Ava returned to the hotel to wait for him following his show. Frank rolled in about 4 a.m. Ava was furious. Particularly when he told her not to crowd him.
During their final separation, Frank was on the phone to Louella Parsons begging Ava to come back, but she filed for divorce after she caught a newspaper photo of Frank with two showgirls. People said Frank's despair chased him through a lot of bars and into many willing arms. But those were places he would have ended up anyway. It does seem, though, that Frank had it bad for Ava, as bad as it gets.
-- "Frank Sinatra's love and marriages", Sherryl Connelly
After her death, one of Frank Sinatra's daughters found him slumped in his room, crying, and unable to speak. Gardner was not only the love of his life but also the inspiration for one of his most personal and magical songs, "I'm a Fool to Want You", recorded after their separation. Reportedly, a lone black limousine parked behind the crowd of 500 mourners at Ava's funeral. No one exited the vehicle, but it was assumed that the anonymous mourner was indeed Frank Sinatra. A floral arrangement at Gardner's graveside simply read: "With My Love, Francis".
-- WIKIPEDIA! My sources: so refined.
BUT THAT, MY FRIENDS, WAS A LOVE AFFAIR.
TO CONCLUDE, SOME RELATED ODDS AND ENDS:
- Ava's personal quotes on imdb are GOLD. She is sassy and witty and OH GOD ILHER.
- Short, soundless video footage of them being pretty?
- For the truly dedicated, this is the Ava Gardner biography I almost stole quotes from/have been using to feed my fixation, in incomplete ebook form.
And because I know it is unlikely I'll post before the 16th (and hey! It's already the 15th in London!), happy happy birthday to my old friend tashternal! And while I'm at it, happy belated, silverstars! FACT: October babies > all the other ones. I use both of you as proof of this.
Also, dear new friends, I'm sorry this incredibly random exercise in nostalgia is your introduction to me. I will commence polling and this-is-my-last.fm-ing at some to-be-determined date in the future. :D?