All you have to do is listen to Frank Sinatra‘s anguished vocals on his 1950 recording of “I’m a Fool to Want You” to know the torment of a blazing, all-consuming passion that burns brightly for a moment but ultimately reduces you to cinders. Sinatra fled the studio after recording that song in one agonizing take, his heart in knots over his on-again, off-again romance with actress Ava Gardner.
When they met as young contract players in the MGM stable in the late 1940s it was clear they came from different worlds. He was the Hoboken-born crooner who had taken bobby-soxers to new heights of hysteria; she was a starlet on the brink of huge stardom, an errant Southern belle whose glamour-girl exterior belied a tomboyish, rebellious streak within. They shared a love of late nights, hard liquor and fast living that united them in one of Hollywood’s most tumultuous affairs. The married singer, who had fooled around before but never once considered divorce from his high school sweetheart Nancy Barbato (mother of Nancy , Frank Jr and Tina), split up his mostly happy home to marry Ava, herself twice married (to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw), in 1951. Alas, their marriage was to last only six years.
From the beginning it was a rocky romance (she once petulantly chucked her six-carat engagement ring out a window), characterized by jealous public rows, hot-tempered breakups, impulsive dramatics (he once tore up her picture, then taped it back together, giving a gold watch to a delivery boy who found a missing piece) and even Sinatra’s several suicide attempts. Although Gardner, calling in favors at her studio, reportedly helped the singer get the Oscar-winning role in 1953’s From Here to Eternity that revived his then-flagging career, it wasn’t enough to keep them from splitting in 1957.
Nevertheless, each considered the other the true love of their lives. And while a few attempts at reconciliation never flowered, their mutual devotion bloomed eternal. Her photo never left his Palm Springs estate even after he remarried, and when Gardner died in 1990, it was Sinatra who closed her affairs and ensured she was laid to rest in her North Carolina family plot.
They may not have been able to always make beautiful music together, but their romance produced the tragic longing that permeates many of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ most enduring–and heart-wrenching–songs.
