Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
was initially unmoved by the prospect. But Gardner played a role in bringing
him around. “You know who’s right for that part of Maggio, don’t you?” she told
Cohn after finagling a dinner invitation with him. “That son‐of‐a‐bitch husband
of mine, that’s who. If you don’t give him this role, he’ll kill himself.” Cohn
reluctantly agreed to a screen test, and asked Sinatra to “call off the dogs, and
Ava too.” 34
He got the part in From Here to Eternity, which was released with great
fanfare generally and for Sinatra specifically in late 1953. It proved to be a
turning point, not only in Hollywood (where he won an Academy Award for
Best Supporting Actor in 1954), but also in the music industry, where he had
been wholly absent from the charts since 1951. From the mid‐fifties on, Sinatra
became a man “who took up permanent residence in his success,” in the
evocative words of John Lahr. 35 Occasionally, one could get glimpses of the
ravaged figure Sinatra had been at his nadir in films like Young At Heart (1954)
where he played a songwriter down on his luck, or in The Man with the Golden
Arm (1955), in which he played a heroin addict with almost harrowing
credibility. But for the most part, even that door would shut by the end of the
fifties, as his film work became ever more complacent, and his far more
interesting music took on a more aggressively masculine edge. “When he was
down and out, he was so sweet,” Gardner said toward the end of their
relationship. “But when he got back on top again, it was hell. Now that he’s
successful again, he’s become his old arrogant self. We were happier when he
was on the skids.” 36
33
Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story (New York: Bantam, 1992).
34
Nancy Sinatra, My Father, pp. 94-96; Taraborelli, p. 147
35
Lahr, p. 52.
36
Gardner quoted in Kelly, p. 225.
American History for Cynical Beginners
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