Mr. S Read Free

had all the children he could barely handle, wanted least. Mr. S always had felt bad about his life as an absentee father, particularly after the nightmare of Frank Jr.’s. 1963 kidnapping. He surely didn’t want a new baby to feel bad about.
    Mia didn’t care what Frank thought. Motherhood was, only after stardom, the most powerful imperative for her. At times, she’d sit with me and go down her list of all the great and famous men she wanted to have children with after Frank. She knew the relationship would end sometime, but she assumed it would be at her time, and only after she had created one of what would be her master race of offspring. She was talking some major names, on her wish list: Leonard Bernstein, who was gay, Picasso, who was almost dead, J. D. Salinger, who had disappeared, and Bob Dylan, who was badly disabled from his motorcycle accident and underground. The girl thought big. She was that focused, and maybe if the Candy Store fiasco hadn’t occurred, Mia might have even gotten her way with Frank and stopped the divorce at the eleventh hour.
    But it did occur, and the rest is history and Woody Allen. Mr. S was down in Palm Springs. The tension in the Bel Air house had gotten so bad that even the big mansion was too small for him when Mia was there. Out in the 115-degree desert, he holed up watching television, which he never normally did, except for the old Friday night fights on the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports . Now he would watch Mod Squad, but without bothering to arrange to meet Peggy Lipton. He didn’t even want to dial up Jimmy Van Heusen’s endless parade of call girls. I knew the man was depressed, and I was worried about him.
    I had to stay in L.A., though, because Mr. S wanted me to look after Ava Gardner, who was coming into town from London, her new home after living in Spain for over a decade. In addition to this major relocation from the land of sun to the land of rain (“What does it matter?” Ava said. “I sleep all day anyway.” Like Frank.), Ava was coming off of a disastrous romance with George C. Scott, whom Frank hated, and an end of starring roles in her film career. She had just played second fiddle to Catherine Deneuve and Omar Sharif in the flop Mayerling. Getting older was a nightmare for a movie star, bad for Frank and far, far worse for someone like Ava who lived—and died—by her looks. Frank was worried about her and had always been protective. But he was in such a deep funk himself, he sent me in to sub for him.
    Ava was staying in a bungalow in the Beverly Hills Hotel. Some friends were taking her to a Count Basie concert that night. I was going to meet her after the show at the hotel and hang out. Ava and I had developed a real bond, which was easy to do considering she was the earthiest, and most down-to-earth, movie star you could ever imagine. She always told me she was part black, that “poor white trash,” the stock she came from in North Carolina, always had black blood in them. (Maybe that was why so many of them joined the Klan, going overboard to conceal their true roots.) Ava totally identified with her role as the mulatto in Show Boat, though she never forgave MGM for dubbing her songs. Like me, Ava was a frustrated singer. I knew that tonight I would go over to her bungalow, get plastered, and we would sing to each other until daylight.
    But first I had an evening to kill. It was a pretty dead weekday in Beverly Hills, which was never what anyone would call a party town. The stars had to get up too early to be on the sets to support a real nightlife. It was usually dinner, at Romanoff’s, Chasen’s, the Bistro, then home to bed. Still, there were a few hangouts, which is a few more than there are now, which is nothing but fancy designer chain stores catering to rich Asian tourists. First I stopped in at the Luau, which was a Trader Vic’s-style Polynesian fantasy right on Rodeo Drive, big banana trees and koi ponds and hurricane lamps and giant