Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1957)

want anyone to know, why did she cable Frank how good she thought his performance was? In 1955, in London, Ava started telling me these things about Frank and herself, and in particular her resentment that his turning down “Saint Louis Woman” left her stuck with that extra year on her M-G-M deal. Then, just as she was blasting away at Frank, calling him every name in the book and quite a few which are never printed, she suddenly stopped. So help me, she went over to the record player in her elaborate London flat, put a Sinatra disk on it, listened, drew a deep sigh and murmured: “Isn’t he the greatest? Isn’t he the living end?” Thus, seeing her in the Hilton bar, I had a hunch she was going to be just as outraged, if not more so. Ava’s outrage is constant, like her beauty, which is still the same breathtaking, dark, sultry beauty as always, only more lush, more dark, more compelling. Frankie isn’t everything that ails her, but he’s a good strong symbol of it. Ava is also in conflict about her work. Even when she was married to Mickey she talked about retiring. When she was married to Artie and was going to college at UCLA she went on and on about giving it all up and just having babies. And she said she’d adore having children when she was first married to Frankie. Then, there’s been resentment against her producers. When I talked to her in London a year ago, and again when we talked in Spain, she did nothing but blast M-G-M, to whom she has always been under contract, and who has given her nothing but fine pictures and an astronomical salary. “The Little Hut” was already prepared for her when I talked to her. I asked Ava if the idea of forty Dior outfits to wear in it excited her. She said no. I asked her if the picture itself excited her. She retorted that her part in the picture was lousy and David Niven and Stewart Granger had the really good roles. Before I could think of an answer to that Ava switched subjects and began talking about flamencos. Flamencos, as you probably know, are a kind of jam session of Spanish dancing. A flamenco may take one guitarist or ten to begin with, one dancer or two dozen to respond to their rhythm. They seldom start before midnight, seldom end before dawn. Ava’s flamencos, which go on virtually every night at her house, are the talk of Madrid. Often they go on until noon of the next day. Then she sleeps a whole day afterwards. The sleeping all day is nothing new for her. She slept all day long in London, too, while she was doing “Bhowani Junction,” except when she was actually working. In London, there was young Lord Jimmy Grenville, rich, titled, handsome, an ideal husband. He tagged around after Ava with the utmost devotion and she barely gave him the time of day. Maybe she wants only what she can’t get and doesn’t want what she can. Like bullfighters. In Spain they talk about Ava and the bullfighters, specifically a matador named Cesar Ginon and a novillero called Chamanco. Ginon is very old for a matador, being nearly thirty, but Chamanco, the novillero (which just means that he has never fought bulls in Madrid) is barely twenty. They do say, in Spain, that he ruined his career because of Ava — but she just clams up on the whole subject. While in Spain it’s bullfighters, in Italy it’s Walter Chiari, the handsome young Italian comedian. Ava is deeply attracted to Walter and he to her. He has said on more than one occasion that he’s going to marry her. Ava enjoys being pursued and admires persistence and it is altogether possible that she will one day say “yes” to Chiari. Her proposed trip to America, ostensibly to get her divorce from Sinatra, may be the tipoff to future plans. But in the meantime when, oh when, will Ava stop to think how magnificent life has been to her, giving her beauty, talent, wealth and opportunities? She seems to think that life, reporters and M-G-M are all trying to put something over on her, as, for instance, when the studio tried to talk her into making “Love Me or Leave Me.” She said they weren’t going to stick her with that one. You know what a hit that turned out to be — for Doris Day. It’s all such a shame. Ava has such warmth, when she wants to turn it on. There that night in the Hilton bar she was like a frightened child, acting full of courage, making believe nothing mattered to her, full of wild defiance. There I was, at her own request, ready and wanting to hear “her side of it.” But her mood had changed before I got there. Her almost morbid sense of personal privacy had taken over — and in a noisy, crowded, public bar, of all places. I thought, maybe, if I told her how beautiful she was in “Bhowani Junction” she might relax. She was very beautiful. But all she said was that she didn’t know why they didn’t take those startlingly lovely closeups of her at the beginning of the filming when she was fresh instead of at the end when she was tired. I tried again. I asked if it was true that when she found her house in Madrid she lay down on the living-room floor and said: “This is my home.” She laughed. She said she had bought the house because it was a shrewd buy. Then, without warning, her mood changed and she began to tell a story on herself. She had, she said, gone to her doctor’s the previous day. Her eyes and her ears had been troubling her, and a certain physician had been highly recommended. She looked him up in the phone book and started for his office. The only address she had was “Santa Barbara,” and in Madrid that could mean a plaza, a square or a street. So she headed for Santa Barbara street first, but that was incorrect. She went to the square next, or maybe it was the plaza. Either way, that wasn’t the right one either. However, a bunch of urchins came by and recognized her, greeting her with loud cries of “Ava, Ava,” giving it a very broad “a”. She explained her predicament, whereupon the kids ran in front, on the sides and behind her car, all the way to the right address. “That’s what I adore about Spain, people being that kind,” she said. “People are that kind in America,” I said. “Why don’t you come home? Aren’t you lonely here, particularly, if you don’t speak the language?” “I’m studying more important things,” she said loftily. “Socrates,” said one of her Spanish friends. “She’s studying Socrates.” I looked at Ava in amazement, but she nodded her agreement. Then she said: “One more year on my M-G-M contract and I’m free. Free to do exactly what I please, when I please and nothing else but.” She stood up, held out her hand. “Goodbye,” she said. “I hope you got a good story.” , I did, but not what Ava thought I had I’m sure. 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