Hollywood stars don’t melt down like they used to. Sheen has nothing on Frank Sinatra.
But then again, a lot of guys don’t have anything on Frank Sinatra. There is a pervasive mist in the air whenever Sinatra’s name comes up in straight male company. There’s a myth, and more importantly, there’s an envy. Because apparently, every man in the world has gotten it in his head that Frank Sinatra answered to nobody.
You’ll find these men driving down Route 66, blasting “My Way” and lip-synching through a veil of tears. These guys can never do it their way.
But Frank wasn’t even Frank. Ava Gardner made a fool out of him.
Like many things in life, you have to be gay to see the other side of the mountain. You see, in 1952, Sinatra did a movie called “From Here to Eternity”. His co-star, Montgomery Clift, matinee idol, acting legend, private homosexual and a particular hobby of mine. Clift was a drinker (a self-destructive one), and he found quick companionship in Sinatra, also a drinker (arguably a non-self-destructive one). After every shooting day, Sinatra and Clift would sweep the leg Johnny and disappear into a hangover the next morning. Clift was knee-deep in depression at the time, and Sinatra was in the middle of being driven out of his fucking mind by Ava, so the drinking came naturally to them.
In multiple Clift biographies, it is noted that Sinatra would spend 40% of his day on set filming, 30% drinking and 30% making desperate, never-answered phone calls to some remote outpost in the Tropics, where Gardner was shooting a film. Ava and Frank were in love, but Ava (in my dubious professional opinion) dogged around on him (and Howard Hughes and a whole host of other poor saps) because she was beautiful and randy and (here’s my opinion) wanted to make a fool out of billionaires, mobbed-up singing legends and other men who ruled the world. I have no doubt that she got her fair share of backhands in her day, but she most certainly gave them back. The woman had undeniable sexual agency and, heartbreaking floozy as she might have been, the woman had the showiest manly men of all time around her finger.
Suzanne Vega has a sweet, poppy little song called “Frank and Ava,” about the passionate love affair the two had. Knowing what I’ve just told you, that song takes on a much cheekier light, no?
