As I slowly work my way through the magnificent Sinatra biography The Chairman, Ava Gardner is already gone by this second book. But there she is on practically every page. She haunts him. He spends fortunes to phone her across oceans. She drives him to great heights by laying his heart so low on The …
“Ava taught him how to sing a torch song. She taught him the hard way.” —Nelson Riddle The idea is that Frank Sinatra’s impossible, unresolvable romantic relationship with Ava Gardner—for whom he left his wife at a time (1950) when it simply wasn’t done; to whom he was married for a brief, tumultuous period (1951–53*); …