Frank Sinatra lililfi
ly Peer kj. Oppotilieirnei
To talk to Ava Gardner, one oj screenland's most
beautiful and controversial stars, you have to be a
globetrotter. Ava's likely to be in Madrid, Mom
basa, or Melbourne at any given time any place
but Hollywood. So when our Hollywood corre
spondent, Peer J. Oppenheimer, wanted to get this
exclusive story about Ava, he had to travel more .
than 7,000 miles to Australia. He found distance
hasn't changed the glamorous woman he knew back
home: in the land down under, she was still turn
ing things upside down.
1 1 A va Gardner is as mucli in love with Frank
Sinatra as ever!"
That's the opinion of one of her closest friends.
It's also the opinion of this reporter after flying
all the way to Melbourne, Australia, where Ava is
co-starring with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, and
Tony Perkins in Nevil Shute's "On the Beach."
Ava won't even discuss Frank if questioned di
rectly. But when she talks to you in private, when
she lets her hair down and for a few brief mo
ments becomes Ava, the lonely girl from Smith
field, N. C, and forgets about being Ava, the movie
star, she still refers to Frank as "my old man."
And her tone of voice leaves no doubt in anyone's
mind that she's as deeply in love with him as ever.
It is even more apparent in her romances.
Ever since Ava moved to Spain, she has been
shopping openly for a man to take Frank's place.
Those who came closest were Spanish bullfighter
Luis Dominguin and Italian comedian Walter
Chiari, who followed her to Australia ostensibly
for an entertainment tour, which proved as much a
flop as his romance with Ava.
I had lunch with Walter in Melbourne, just be
fore he returned to Italy. Despite his disappoint
ment about Ava, he remained cheerful. Yet he was
obviously confused by her changing moods. Ava
wanted him to go home one minute, stay the next.
Unable to make up her mind, she finally sent him
away three weeks after he arrived.
Like his predecessor Dominguin, Chiari is a
pleasant, entertaining, tense young man who is
good for a lot of laughs. But he doesn't have the
strength, the manliness, the temper and temper
ament Ava needs in a man.
At the same time, it doesn't really matter to Ava
whether her present boy friend's name is Luis or
Walter or anything else, as long as he can make her
forget Sinatra, at least for a while.
Ava has no illusions that her relationship with
Sinatra could work out today any more than it
did during their hectic courtship and marriage,
although their arguments were generally the re
sult of silly little disagreements that any ordinary
couple could have solved without any trouble.
But even thinking about what might have been
is painful to Ava.
Is that why she has shunned Hollywood since
she left him in 1952?
At least partly but not entirely.
II You want to know why I've stayed away from
' Hollywood?" She repeated my question as just
the two of us settled down in her dressing room at
Ascot Vale, Melbourne's Fair Grounds, which producer-director
Stanley Kramer had taken over for
"On the Beach." "The answer is simple. I don't
like the place. I never did. The town is dull and
small-minded. It bores me. Besides, a girl can't
have any privacy there."
Then Ava promptly contradicted herself by ad
mitting she had even less privacy in Australia!
It started the moment she stepped off the plane
in Melbourne to be welcomed by a bigger crowd
than had greeted Queen Elizabeth, and with vir
tually the entire press corps on hand.
Unfortunately, the honeymoon didn't last. Next
day, one newspaper reported Ava as saying, "I
came to Melbourne to do a picture about the end
of the world, and this is a fine location for it."
"It was a lie," Ava insisted. "I would never say
anything like it!" Nevertheless the news spread all
over the continent.
A previously arranged press conference didn't
improve matters, either. The first three questions
put to her were, "Do you still love Frank Sinatra?"
"Is it true that he is coming here to see you?" and
"How soon will you reconcile?"
After that she had little to say to any member of
the press until I arrived. And then I wasn't sure
whether it was her able publicist's persuasion or
memories of the days when we worked together at
MGM that made Ava talk freely to me. Curiously
enough, although she antagonized many newsmen,
only one paper was outspokenly against her; but
all reported her actions in embarrassing detail.
Insisted Ava, "I couldn't step out of the house
without people rushing up to me. I don't mind that.
I don't mind signing autographs. But I don't like
having every move I make reported in the paper.
It got to the point where I took all my meals at
home. I wouldn't go out except to the studio."
Home, to. Ava in Australia, was a "dependence"
of the St. James Hotel, fairly well isolated from
the other hotel guests. .
'There's one important difference between Mel
bourne and Hollywood," she insisted. "I'm only
here to make one film. I would go to Hollywood to
make a picture, if the script were good enough,
but I couldn't take Hollywood as a steady diet. It's
different in Spain. An actress can have privacy
there. I can drive from Madrid to Seville without
being bothered. I can go to any night club or
restaurant, and be left alone. The press is, friendly.
They don't speculate. They don't fabricate. They
love me in Spain, and I love the Spanish people.
I may live there the rest of my life."
An almost complete lack of friends is another
reason Ava has stayed away from Hollywood.
Although she has no vast circle of friends in Spain,
she does have some who take her as she is, without
criticism, without wanting to change her. Among
them are Betty and Ricardo Secre, a Spanish im
porter and his American-born wife, whom Ava
sees almost every day. She is also on close terms
with author Robert Ruark and his wife. Many
visitors to her home outside Madrid are American
officers stationed at a nearby air base.
While ava insists Hollywood life is dull, accord
ing to what she told me, life in Spain isn't
much more exciting.
Ava lives in a newly built one-story house,
complete with pool, about eight miles from Madrid.
She isn't happy with it any more, because the
housing development for the nearby American Air
Force base is closing in on her.
"I just put my house on the market. As soon as
it's sold," she told me, "I am going to get an apart
ment in Madrid and a house at Costa Brava, a
bepch near Barcelona. It's beautiful there and
completely isolated "
Ava has a maid, a houseboy, and a cleaning
( Continued on page 16)
Family Weekly, May 31, J 959
7