Living With Miss G (7 page)

She got a lot of very nasty letters. Most of them were unsigned. In one
respect, the scandal rebounded in her favor. Nancy hired a lawyer and in
spectacular manner announced that she had locked Frank out, which was really a
bit like locking the cage after the songbird had flown. She added that she had
been humiliated by the newspaper reports of Frank’s infidelity and would be
divorcing him for the sake of the children.
Nancy did not reveal one important bit of news about the divorce—how
soon? Three months later, that question had still not been answered. Vague
announcements were still leaking out suggesting that the attorneys were working
on it.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
was the brainchild of Albert Lewin, one
of MGM’s veteran and most respected producers. Miss G was penciled in to
play Pandora.

One could say this movie, followed by
Showboat
,
Snows of Kilimanjaro
,
and
Mogambo
, established Miss G firmly in the upper echelons of the film star
galaxy. Even mediocre movies like
Lone Star
,
Ride Vaquero,
and
Band Wagon
all had her working opposite famous leading men such as Clark Gable, Robert
Taylor, and Fred Astaire and, therefore, did her reputation no harm at all. The
fact that most of them showed her as the pretty floozy, or good-time girl, did her
no harm either. At least, in the minds of the movie public it didn’t. Beautiful,
naughty ladies are a real box-office attraction.

The costs of filming in Spain, where
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
was to be made, were about a hundred percent cheaper than in any other country
in the world. The Costa Brava, which stretches from the border of southern
France to within fifty miles of Barcelona, was chosen as the location. The
scenery was spectacular—high green mountains looking across wooded hills of
pine and cork trees to a coastline and golden beaches. Tiny, historic towns and a
blue, unpolluted Mediterranean were all bathed in brilliant sunshine, making the
territory a holiday paradise. The package tour industry was soon to discover its
beauty.

Bappie decided it was her turn to take a holiday as chaperone to her “dumb
kid sister.” Off they went to join James Mason and other talented British actors.
I stayed at home looking after Frank. He was finishing his last film for
MGM,
Meet Danny Wilson
. Co-starring with him was Shelley Winters. Frank
didn’t like the picture, and Shelley didn’t like it either. Shelley also didn’t like
Frank, and Frank didn’t like Shelley. The movie was based upon a scenario so
similar to the real life story of Frank Sinatra that the critics didn’t like it either.
As Shelley herself observed, as an experience it was best forgotten. As soon as it
was finished, Frank set off to take a holiday with Miss G, who was now busy
casting her spells amongst the poor mortals around Tossa de Mar, an exquisite
little town near the beach in a fabled setting. True, Pandora was a legendary
Greek goddess. Mind you, although the scenario was fascinating and scarcely
believable, the story behind the cameras was equally fascinating and totally
believable. It was, however, a bit complicated.
Even before she caught the plane, Miss G and I had done our homework
because we had never heard of Pandora and her magic box. Zeus, the legendary
god whom the Romans named Jupiter, was worshipped as the Supreme Being –
“in charge of all mortal things that live and move on earth.” Zeus was angry.
One of his subordinates, Prometheus, had stolen fire and passed it down for use
by those common creatures on Planet Earth. Something had to be done. They
had to be taught a lesson. He commanded power. He ordered Hephaestus, the
god who ran the workshop in that legendary homeland up in the clouds, to
design a beautiful young female to descend to earth and give a hard time to
those cheating mortals, especially those guys who lived around the Greek
Islands.
He designed a beautiful girl with a glorious voice and the ability to entice,
flatter and seduce the opposite sex. She was also endowed with a box, which
held all the evils or blessings known to mankind since the world began. Of
course, being female and nosy, Pandora opened the box to see what was inside,
whereupon all the virtues and evils escaped, flying out like a cloud of smoke. As
the story goes, they still torment or comfort us today. This was quite a part for
Miss G to handle, but with voice-over narration explaining all the difficult bits,
she got along.
Unfortunately, Albert had not been satisfied with simply using the Greek
legends. He had to have a male lead to match Pandora, so he introduced an old
ship-faring story, the legend of the Flying Dutchman, with James Mason playing
the role. The captain of The Flying Dutchman had returned home from a long
voyage to find his wife in the arms of a lover. In a mad rage, he killed her. To
expiate his crime, he was sentenced to sail the oceans of the world forever. Any
unlucky sailor sighting the phantom ship was doomed and probably his ship and
shipmates with him. The only hope of redemption given him was that if he could
find in these endless journeys a woman who could love him enough to die for
him. Then he could rest in a quiet Christian grave. Lo and behold there was our
Pandora ready for that very purpose before she slipped back up to tell Papa Zeus
what a lot of fun she had.
This was rather a large canvas to cover in a film running around two and a
half hours. I could imagine Mr. Louis B. Mayer glancing through the scenario,
sighing and saying, “Well Albert, do your best.”
To give Pandora the chance to get up to her naughty tricks, a row of
suitable young men had to be featured so that she could knock them off, which
she did very plausibly. First, there is Nigel Patrick, an unfortunate racing driver;
then playboy Marius Goring, who commits suicide because she won’t marry
him; then along comes the dramatic bullfighter Mario Cabre, who also falls in
love with her while she in turn with a slight of hand gets him impaled on a bull’s
horns.
Finally, there is the Flying Dutchman who does not arrive on his great,
white-winged sailing ship but on a super yacht which he anchors at Costa Brava.
Pandora swims out to it, and romance blossoms.
It is really very difficult to think of a decent finale for a film of this sort,
but Albert Lewin worked one out. After the usual plots and counter plots, an
enormous storm breaks loose with flashes of lightning matching the volume of
sound from a symphony orchestra. The yacht turns turtle, and the two lovers
disappear under the waves. I think James Mason summed it up when he said
many years later, “The only good things I can remember about the film are the
wonderful photography of Jack Cardiff and the great natural beauty of Ava
Gardner.”
Miss G adored everything about that journey—the enchanted, unspoiled
coastline, the endless wine and booze, the age-old flamenco dancing with feet
stamping and heels banging, voices echoing in raucous guitar-inspired melodies,
late nights in the dark and in smoky taverns. She had never dreamed such places
existed, and it opened a wonderful new playground for her.
She also enjoyed her role in the film. Pandora had to cloak her goddess
stature under the disguise of an ordinary mortal in order to succeed in her dirty
work of teaching males a lesson. She became Pandora Reynolds, a nightclub
singer. She even got to sing (with no one else’s voice dubbed over, for a change)
a soapy love song entitled, “How Am I To Know?”
She also met for the very first time a bullfighter. Admittedly, an exbullfighter, but nevertheless handsome, dramatic and after one look at Miss G
determined to die for her, not only in the film, but in real life if need be. He was
also a poet. Holy Moses, what more could she ask for – a handsome, poetical
bullfighter.
Of course, he did not speak much English, and Miss G did not understand
much Spanish poetry, though love does not bother about such elementary
differences. Miss G threw herself into the gaiety of Spanish holiday life with the
abandon of a high diver who has forgotten there is no water in the pool.
Foolishly, after one long night with a lot of champagne and red wine and
heavy foot stamping and heavier breathing, she woke up the next morning to
find that Mario Cabre had been her bedfellow for the night. There she was,
totally and obsessively in love with Francis Albert Sinatra, in bed with another
man, and plainly “it” had occurred. One of those evils she had released from her
box must have gotten its targets mixed up.
Frank was coming across after his adventures in
Meet Danny Wilson
and
would be arriving in a week or so. “Rene,” she confessed in one of our
subterranean-sounding telephone calls from six thousand miles away, “what the
hell am I going to do now?”
“Miss G,” I screamed so she would hear, “you say, ‘Mario…who? Never
heard of him.’ And when they say, ‘You know the one who’s in the film with
you,’ you say, ‘Oh, him.’ And excuse yourself as if it’s martini time.” I never
did get her reaction to that piece of Pandora double-talk since the phone
connection was unintelligible.
Mario, his great love now consummated, couldn’t talk about anything else.
Being a Spanish gentleman, he did not actually say that the deed had been done,
but he was pretty explicit that Signora Ava reciprocated his affections. He was
now pouring out poetry to his beloved with speed. Lots of reporters were eager
to listen, especially the ones who spoke Spanish. What a good story: beautiful,
sexy Ava Gardner falls for handsome Spanish bullfighter.
By now, Miss G’s common sense had shown her Mario was far more
concerned with his own macho image and in the personal publicity that he
adored. He appeared to think he had scored similar to the soccer player whose
goal wins the World Cup. Of course, he knew all about the American crooner
Frank Sinatra. If Mr. Sinatra thought he could win back Mario’s beloved—a
mere singer confronting a gallant (albeit retired) bullfighter—then it should be a
duel to the death. The European press thought this was a great idea. An oldfashioned confrontation with Miss G standing on the sidelines, one hand
clutched to her breast like a Victorian heroine.
However, there was no hope of seeing these two gladiators in the bullring.
Arriving in London on his way to Spain, Frank’s reaction to the press was,
“Never heard of the guy.” As Frank was noted for taking a swing at people who
offended him, he had to be believed.
The thought that Mario might skewer Frank on a bullfighter’s sword did
worry Miss G considerably. If Albert could get a story like
Pandora and the
Flying Dutchman
onto the screen and get away with it he must be able to solve
such a simple dilemma. And Albert did. He calmed her down.
“How long was Frank going to spend on the Costa Brava?” he asked.
“No more than three or four days,” Miss G told him. He had to speed back
to London to appear in the Royal Command performances at the Palladium
Theatre.
“No problem,” said Albert. There was lots of location work that needed
Mario’s presence, so he could be safely confined in front of a camera lens.
Mario enjoyed nothing more, remaining a safe distance from Tossa de Mar.
Frank arrived, possibly a little more perturbed than he had been in London
because of the persistent rumors, but Miss G, with a three-day holiday granted
by Albert, took Frank away to a secluded hide-away where they enjoyed a
blissful time together. They made arrangements for another romantic interlude
in London while Miss G was doing interiors for
Pandora
and Frank was singing
at the Palladium. It was then that Miss G received a special gift, a Welsh Corgi,
which she named Rags.
Much later Frank, just as suspicious as Miss G, tried to wheedle out of her
if there had been any truth in those rumors about Mario. At first she managed to
duck the question, but Frank with the natural cunning of the curious and
persistent male, and using the old ploy, “Gee honey, it’s long ago now. Who
cares? We all make little mistakes when we’ve had a few drinks,” pried it out of
her.
I said, “You should have kept that revelation in that Pandora’s box of
yours. Every woman needs one.”
Miss G answered sadly, “Dead right. You know, Rene honey, he never
forgave me – ever!”

I had just finished cleaning up in the kitchen and returned to the living
room to have a go at cleaning, only to find Miss G ending a conversation on the
telephone. She was saying, “Yes, darling. I’ll drive like hell. Yes, darling, I
know I drive like hell normally, but this time I’ll drive like hell cautiously.”

I often thought it was the Irish half of Miss G that made her frame
statements like that. She put down the receiver and looked up at me. “That was
Frank,” she explained, as if I didn’t know. “He’s speeding things up.”

Miss G pursed her lips and blew a ladylike raspberry. “No, Rene, honey,
the main thing, the divorce.”
As events now dictated, the divorce was going to be a long, drawn-out
affair which was not going to help the tempers of Frank and Miss G. And I
anticipated storms ahead. Frank had decided to get his own divorce in Reno,
Nevada. He needed six weeks’ residence, and then he could file papers. He had
already managed to get two singing engagements there at the Riverside Inn in
Reno and the Desert Inn in Las Vegas.
He had phoned to say he had rented a house on the hillside above Lake
Tahoe and the sooner we got there the better. I thought, Rene, fasten your
parachute harness.
In the early fifties America was not dissected by wide interstate highways.
The road up to Lake Tahoe and Reno pushed over high mountains and was
fringed with forests and precipitous drops on one side. It was about a nine hour
drive. In her Cadillac convertible, screeching around bends with gravel flying
like buckshot and getting up to ninety miles per hour on the straight bits, it
appeared we might do the trip in an hour and a half. Rags sat in my lap. He was
probably thinking he needed a parachute harness too.
“Miss G,” I said after the first hour, “if you keep going at this rate, we shall
arrive dead.”
“Can’t waste time,” said Miss G, ignoring me. “And besides, there is
nothing on the road.”
We sped closer to Carson City, which was close to our destination, and I
began to have hope that we might arrive only half dead from fright. Then, as it
grew darker, a deer jumped out from the trees. We hit something. I think it was a
rock or a branch, but not the deer. The windshield shattered, and Rags and I
were covered in crystal fragments. Rags looked up at me with sad eyes as I
brushed him clean. Miss G, afraid that she had hit the deer, leapt out of the car
and ran to look up the mountainside. She came back saying, “He’s okay. He’s
going up the mountainside like a rocket.”
“We’re not.” I said. I had not inspected the damage. We had hit a rock,
and the offside wheel looked as if it might never function again. Miss G made
several attempts to provoke movement. “I think we’ve bent something serious,”
she admitted, adding, “I think it’s time for a drink.” I uncorked the bottle of
brandy we always carried for emergencies – this was definitely an emergency.
I then made the original statement, “This must be a main road from
somewhere to somewhere, so a car must come along sometime.” Two hours
later it did, and we squeezed in. They gave us a lift to Carson City where we
rang the house at Lake Tahoe. Frank’s companion and gofer Hank Sanicola
came to pick us up and to arrange with a garage to rescue, repair and return our
car.
At the house, Hank stared at me with wide eyes and an idiot grin on his
face. “Why, Rene, what’s up? You’ve gone WHITE!” Hank laughed his head
off. I said primly, “Mr. Sanicola, you should try driving with Miss G through
the mountains when she’s in a hurry.”
Hank went on laughing. He had been in our lives since we first met Frank.
Hank and I spent a lot of time trying to anticipate the occurring permutations of
the volcanic eruptions between Frank and Miss G. That way, we could get a
little sleep at night. An angry voice from upstairs would send our eyebrows up.
The sound of a door slammed or a smashing of crockery would have us on our
feet ready for action. I learned about Hank from Miss G. Hank was a nice guy
with a nice wife and two kids.
“Frank was in his teens and living in Hoboken,” said Miss G, explaining
the circumstances of how Frank and Hank met. “Dying to sing; not in the bath,
but on the stage, on the radio, on the street, if necessary, but especially with a
big band. That was his main ambition.”
Frank couldn’t read music, and he couldn’t play the piano, so in order to
learn a song he’d go into a shop where they sold sheet music. Hank was the
piano player there. He was hired by the shop to play for the customers who
bought the sheet music. Frank got to know Hank as a buddy, and he’d go into
the shop to learn all the popular new melodies as Hank played them on the
piano.
When Frank started to rise to stardom, he took Hank with him and gave
him an assortment of jobs. Hank could more or less pick his own titles – piano
player, gofer, manager, etc. Hank was Italian. He was a big, easy-going guy who
laughed easily and loved Frank even though at times Frank didn’t treat him all
that well. Hank and I were co-conspirators on many occasions when the fur was
flying. He was the helmsman, in fact, on a never-to-be-forgotten shipwreck
episode.
Lake Tahoe must be one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, sitting as
it does in a bowl in the Sierra Madre Mountains. Its colors are transparent green,
deep amber and sapphire blue, and it is so deep that locals reckon it has no
bottom. Indian legend says the coffins of their ancestors lie down in its depths –
Gee!
On this particular fine day, Miss G, Frank, Hank and I were going to have
a picnic on the far side of the lake in a splendid launch that Frank had hired. The
picnic consisted mainly of two or three cases of French champagne which would
help us along with our sea shanties. Hank was appointed helmsman. My job, as
able sea woman, was to prevent Rags from falling overboard and to assist Miss
G with the champagne – a seagoing duty mainly consisting of drinking it.
We were cruising along the pretty shore when the row between Miss G and
Frank started. First, there were a few side remarks, then bickering, and then an
eruption into a full-scale shouting match. Thanks be to God, they never hit each
other—ever—but the verbal cannon balls were of battle intensity. Even though
Miss G’s language would have been admired by the foulest mouthed bosun in
the U.S. clipper fleet, she was quite happy and serene hurling filthy remarks at
Frank, who was getting very angry.
Hank looked at me and tossed back what was left of his champagne and
raised his eyes to heaven, held his glass out for a refill when there was a bang—
crash. The enemy hadn’t opened fire, but we had run aground onto a bit of cliff
sticking out into the lake. Water poured through a big hole in the bottom of the
boat. We were sinking. Frank was in the bow end of the boat and not really a
Johnny Weissmuller type and certainly no swimmer. He leapt ashore first. Rags,
a real coward at heart, hopped overboard and raced away along the shoreline as
if he were competing in the greyhound derby. As deckhand, I felt it my duty to
race after him. As Hank told me later, we had no distress rockets to fire. There
was only one realistic thing to do. We did it. We abandoned ship. We trudged
along in opposite directions to find a telephone and summon help.
Miss G, sloshed to the eyebrows, decided to take over the captaincy of the
ship. As she was a superb swimmer, she decided to stay with the sinking ship to
the very end. On shore, Frank was growing frantic yelling that if she didn’t get
off the ship, she’d drown. Miss G, who had spotted a more than adequate supply
of toilet paper rolls in the lavatory retaliated by throwing them at him. When her
ammunition ran out, she decided to gather up a couple of bottles of champagne,
go ashore and surrender to the enemy. When we all collected together again, I
think they were both ready to erect a wigwam and live there forever.
Later, we laughed our heads off over our adventure, but the episode we
were about to face was far more disturbing. We got the Cadillac back, repaired
and resplendent, but the atmosphere in the house was depressing. Miss G and I
had attended Frank’s nightly stints at the Desert Inn and at Reno, and it was after
one of these performances that a row started. You could hear them all over the
house.
I heard the front door slam behind her as Miss G abandoned the fight and
fled out into the night – the late, dark, dangerous night. Miss G, in tears and
distraught, was fast as a gazelle, but had no sense of direction. I set off in a
chase when I saw her heading down a steep forested slope which grew steeper as
it plunged downward to the lake. This habit of sudden flight could have gotten
her into life-threatening trouble on many occasions. As I raced down the slope
after Miss G, I had a terrible feeling that if I didn’t catch up with her quickly, I
would be attending a real post-mortem with a real coroner.
I glimpsed a flash of her white clothing ahead of me, accelerated and
grabbed her around the waist. She didn’t struggle, just collapsed into my arms
and sobbed. At moments like this, she was defenseless, vulnerable, totally
defeated. We sat down on the ground, close together. She sniffled a bit, clutched
my hand and stopped crying. I thought, this is ridiculous, sitting out here in the
darkness. Here they were, two of the luckiest people in the world, the gorgeous
Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra, the greatest popular singer ever. How could
they be torn apart by depression and despair?
I couldn’t blame Frank. He’d been king of his profession for so long he
really had taken it for granted. Professionally he was now locked in a battle
against defeat and depression that threatened to destroy him. Every night in the
Desert Inn he faced an audience that was tepid about his performance, even
though Miss G beat her hands together in applause until they almost fell off. I
knew Miss G was his only anchor, but that she herself on these occasions was as
vulnerable as he was. It was plain that these constant fights were solving nothing
and doing immense damage to their relationship. It was better that they parted
for a bit and took stock, thought things through.
“Miss G,” I said, “Let’s go home.”
She nodded, sniffed, stood up and pulled me up beside her. “Let’s go
home,” she repeated. We stumbled back up the slope, went into the house to
collect our bags and Rags, didn’t see or say goodbye to Frank or Hank. We got
into Miss G’s convertible and vroommm…. We scorched off as if we were
leading in the Indianapolis 500. The trees on either side were shooting past zipzip-zip, and I knew she was trying to drain out the bitterness left by her quarrel
with Frank. But for God’s sake, she was going to kill us in the process. Probably
for the first time in our driving history, I literally screamed at her.
“For Christ’s sake, Miss G, slow down – slow down!” She did, but not by
much. Maybe five minutes later a gust of wind took my spectacles off my nose.
I’d only just started wearing the things. I shouted, “My glasses have blown off!”
She heard me. “Where?”
I shouted, “God knows, maybe a mile or so back.”
For some reason, instead of turning the car around – admittedly, the road
wasn’t all that wide – Miss G decided to reverse. I’m kneeling on the seat
looking in the reverse direction trying to see the glint of my spectacles while
Miss G is reversing at about eighty miles an hour. God help us—He certainly
did that night. About three miles back I caught the gleam, and there were my
spectacles sitting in the middle of the road. We stopped, and I picked them up. I
thought, what the hell am I doing wearing spectacles when I can see them at
eighty miles an hour going backwards?
I said, “Hey, Miss G, there’s a stream here running along the side of the
road. Let’s take a break and cool our feet.” She agreed, so we took our shoes off
and sat on the bank. We were trying to get life back into perspective. It was
quiet. The water was warm and gurgled through our toes.
Miss G said, “I think we should have a drink.” We had a drink from the
usual reserve bottle of brandy. Then we had another drink. Stowing alcohol into
various compartments of our lives was a part of my life work. We passed the
bottle between us–nothing as ladylike as a glass–just swigging from the bottle.
After two or three swigs the eternal pain of life seemed to have eased, and we
got back into the car and sped off again. After a few brandies the eighty miles an
hour speed did not seem so relevant.
We were probably on the outskirts of Carson City when it became relevant
again. A young motorcycle cop pulled us over. By this time I had stuffed the
brandy bottle under the seat, and I was praying that the brandy fumes had blown
away with the wind. The policeman was young, good-looking, but very stern.
He did everything very slowly. He spoke very slowly.
“Miss, you were doing eighty miles an hour.”
“So what?” says Miss G, belligerently, and I could see that this was not
going to turn out very nicely.
“Miss, you were exceeding the speed limit.”
“Listen,” said Miss G, “there is nothing on the road; it’s early in the
morning, and it seems you must have got out of bed on the wrong side this
morning.”
I was now trying to sink myself into the pattern that matched the seat
covers. I’m black. In that part of the world in the 1950s, no civil rights
supporters had marched on my behalf. No laws had been passed giving black
girls the right to exist at all. Policemen were just as likely to hit you on the head
with a night stick and then say your head had somehow gotten in the way of
them doing their lawful duty. I cringed.
Miss G was really being very rude to the young policeman. His face got
very somber.
“I think, Miss,” he said with a flash in his eye, which meant trouble, “you
had better follow me down to the station. I’ll lead the way.”
If Miss G thought there was anything ominous about this request, she
didn’t show it. At a funeral pace, we drove to the police station and followed the
officer inside. We went into the front office. In the back, through the open door,
we could see a row of barred cells. They were full of prisoners. Another police
officer popped his head around from another door, looked at us, yawned and
closed the door again. The young policeman sat at a desk and looked at us. Was
it my imagination, or did a tiny glint of recognition appear in his eyes? I
thought, please Miss G, please be nice to him, because I knew that Miss G
could be very nice when she chose to be. Despite all the tears, all the dramas of
last night, despite the eighty miles an hour, Miss G looked gorgeous. Tarred and
feathered, I’m sure Miss G would have looked gorgeous.
The young officer stared more closely at her. Then he said, “Aren’t you an
actress? Aren’t you Ava Gardner?”