My volcanic affair with Sinatra: Red-hot passion one moment. Cutting her dead the next. LAUREN BACALL on the star who begged her to marry him - then publicly humiliated her

By Lauren Bacall For Daily Mail

Published: 16:41 EST, 18 August 2014 | Updated: 21:08 EST, 18 August 2014


It would have been the most sensational showbiz marriage of the era — the world’s greatest crooner Frank Sinatra actually  proposed to Hollywood legend Lauren Bacall and she accepted! But in this concluding part of the late star’s memoirs, she tells how it went horribly wrong...

When I think now of my hopeless, thrilling, far-from-perfect love affair with Frank Sinatra, I see how impossible it was from the start.

It began just weeks after the death of my husband, Humphrey Bogart, in 1957. At such an awful time for me, there was no way I could be thinking straight. Even then it might have worked if Frank had been more sure of himself . . . but he wasn’t.

When I first met him, Bogie was making a movie with Sinatra’s great lost love, Ava Gardner. I do believe it was the first and only time that any woman dumped Frank: he made damn sure that never happened again.

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Enlarge   Sinatra and Bacall: The singer dropped Lauren when his marriage proposal was leaked to the press - but Lauren said Frank did her a favour

Sinatra and Bacall: The singer dropped Lauren when his marriage proposal was leaked to the press - but Lauren said Frank did her a favour

Along with David and Hjordis Niven, Judy Garland, and Spencer Tracey, Bogie and I became part of Frank’s original ‘rat pack’. For my 32nd birthday, I flew to Vegas with the group, to see Frank open at the Sands Hotel. Bogie stayed home and went sailing with our son Steve instead.

Frank had a cake made, three-tiered and decorated with the words ‘Happy Birthday Den Mother’. He sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me from the stage.

By then, Bogie was very ill with cancer. I needed the noise, the extravagance and general insanity of Las Vegas, the feeling of no responsibility, the feeling that life was being lived. We all stayed up too late — Kim Novak was Frank’s date and we were all photographed cutting my cake.

We didn’t know it, but Bogie was dying. Frank started coming by the house almost nightly, and I remember my husband saying: ‘You don’t think he comes to see me, do you?’ Bogie was sure I was the attraction.

During the last few months of that terrible illness, I guess I began to depend on Frank’s presence. He represented physical health and vitality, and I needed that.

Part of me just needed a man to talk to, and Frank turned out to be that man. It wasn’t planned. It simply happened.

 

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The first time I went out in public after Bogie died, Frank took me to a cinema in Hollywood, and when we emerged there were photographers waiting. Those pictures ended up in newspapers around the world. It was the first time Frank and I were linked, even tentatively, in a romantic way.

A newspaper friend warned me: ‘You and Frank can’t go anywhere without causing a commotion. Individually you make news, but together it’s insane.’ The next eight months were to prove him right.

Frank and I became a steady pair. At all his small dinner parties I was the hostess. I sat in on some of his recording dates — I was the centre of his life at that moment. It seemed to everyone, his friends and mine, that we were crazy about each other.

I felt rather girlish and giddy. But I didn’t really know where I stood with Frank and I never understood the love games he played, adoring one day and remote the next.

I had been married to a grown-up. Bogie knew what he wanted; if a woman loved him, he felt stronger rather than threatened. Frank, on the other hand, advanced and then drew back, keeping me off balance.

As a couple we were combustible. Always when we entered a room the feeling was: Are they OK tonight? You could almost hear a sigh of relief when we were both smiling and relaxed.

Lauren said she never really knew where she stood with Frank, never understanding the love games he played - adoring one minute and remote the next

Lauren said she never really knew where she stood with Frank, never understanding the love games he played - adoring one minute and remote the next

He had many scars from past loves, and especially he was embittered by his failure with Ava. God knows how many times I heard him snap, ‘Don’t tell! Suggest!’ — he couldn’t stand being told what to do by anyone, but sometimes, if he was in the mood, he could accept a hint.

Despite it all, I loved being with him. I felt like a woman: no man had ever made me feel more wanted and more rejected.

I had many sagging moments, when a wave of heartache for Bogie would wash over me, but I tried to push that out of my mind and think of Frank instead. And I thought of him too much.

Now I can see that I was trying to erase Bogie’s death. The pain of that loss was so excruciating, I wanted to deny its existence. Had anyone suggested that my motive was to eliminate Bogie from my life, I would have lashed out, because understanding something that traumatic happens very slowly.

At New Year’s weekend 1958, I was to act as hostess at Frank’s party at Romanoff’s restaurant in Palm Springs. I heard him saying to everyone, ‘Doesn’t she look radiant?’

Then something in him went ‘click’. He stayed near the bar most of the night, and I didn’t dare go near him. It was a full disaster, a volcanic nightmare . . . and a chilling experience.

A few days later, I flew to New York to publicise a movie, and Frank was waiting for me when I got to the hotel bar. We talked like two friends who had insane electric currents running between them all the time.

He didn’t know how to apologise, but he was fairly contrite, at least for him. He said he had felt trapped, but now he could face it: ‘Will you marry me?’

Of course all my barriers fell. I must have hesitated for at least 30 seconds. I was ecstatic.

A young girl came over for autographs. Frank handed me the paper napkin and pen, and as I started to write, he said, ‘Put down your new name.’ So ‘Lauren Bacall’ was followed by ‘Betty Sinatra’ (because my real first names were Betty Joan). I often wondered what became of that paper napkin.

It was a hard secret to keep, and I was bursting for everyone to know. But I did manage to keep my mouth shut. One night at a theatre in LA, the gossip columnist Louella Parsons approached me, and asked me if Frank and I were going to get married. Being a lousy liar, I said, ‘Why don’t you ask him?’ and kept moving.

When Frank proposed, Lauren's barriers fell and the engagement became a hard secret to keep. The couple are pictured above in 1957 in Hollywood

When Frank proposed, Lauren's barriers fell and the engagement became a hard secret to keep. The couple are pictured above in 1957 in Hollywood

In next morning’s Examiner, I saw enormous black letters jumping out at me: SINATRA TO MARRY BACALL. I gasped — oh my God, how the hell did that happen? It turned out my that my agent had confirmed it.

I called Frank, and I must have sounded contrite though I had no cause to be. I was so insecure it was pathetic.

The following day, my friends started to call, but Frank didn’t. I told everyone, including my children, that I didn’t know what was going to happen between us. But somewhere in the back of my foolish head I think I’d worked it out.

Finally the phone did ring and Frank said, ‘Why did you do it?’ My heart was pounding as I pleaded to be forgiven for something that had not been my fault.

In a cold, remote voice, he told me: ‘I haven’t been able to leave my room for days. We’ll have to lay low, not see each other for a while.’

I didn’t know that this was to be my last phone call from Frank. I saw him at a party a month later, and he didn’t acknowledge my existence. He did not speak one word to me — if he looked in my direction, it was as though my chair were empty.

I was so humiliated, so embarrassed. I would have preferred him to spit in my face.


'I'd have preferred Frank to spit in my face than shun me'

Actually, Frank did me a great favour. He saved me from the disaster our marriage would have been. He behaved like a complete s***, but I’ll always have a special feeling for him. The good times we had were awfully good.

For Frank, the pain of losing Ava was always going to sour his feelings for me. In retrospect, I realise that throughout my life, almost every man I have been attracted to has belonged to someone else in some way.

Take Kirk Douglas, the first boy I ever fell for. And believe me, did I ever have a wild crush on him!

I had just turned 16, and was beginning the serious training for my life’s work. It was late 1940, and I was studying at the  American Academy of Dramatic Arts, next to New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Downstairs in our building there was a theatre called the Lyceum, where I first saw Kirk perform. He had blond hair, blue eyes, a cleft chin, and he was a marvellous actor. Before I ever spoke to him, he was my hero. And when he did walk over and say a few words, I started to tremble.

Finally he invited me out, and took me to a Chinese restaurant in Greenwich Village. He told me all about himself, how he was on a scholarship at the Academy with had no money at all, how once he spent a night in jail because he had no place to sleep.

‘Oh, how he has suffered!’ I thought.

I was such a child. I had never had a love affair. Nice Jewish girls stayed virgins until they were married, so necking in dark corners was about my limit.

Kirk came to my house, an apartment on 84th St off Broadway, where my grandmother would cook for him. I was her pet grandchild, and she made the most delicious cookies I’ve ever tasted, and stuffed cabbage and kreplach, which is dough filled with cheese. But Kirk didn’t pursue me, and when I became friendly with a slightly older girl at the Academy named Diana Dill, I realised why. She and Kirk had been going together rather steadily.

Jason Robards
Humphrey Bogart

Lookalike husbands: Jason Robards, left - 'dazzling and a little crazy', and Humphrey Bogart, right, who died before she and Frank became a couple. Everyone told Lauren the two men looked alike, but she never saw it 

That spelled the end of all my visions of domestic bliss with Kirk. I always fantasised, always magnified things out of proportion — and I was always disappointed. It took me a very long time to figure that out.

My history with married men is peculiar. Mentally I had it straight: I knew it was wrong to become involved with a man who belonged to somebody else. But with the exception of Frank, every man I was really attracted to had a wife — like Jason Robards.

Audrey Hepburn had told me before I ever met him that I’d like him. Everyone thought he looked like Bogie, but I never did and I still don’t. We were introduced at a party, and he was quite dazzling, and a little crazy.

He was remarkable actor, working in theatre at that time, and one day he picked me up after a show and took me to supper. By now I was living and working in New York. On that first date he was completely sober — rather shy, quiet, and very attractive. He told me he had three children, two of them within a year of my children’s ages, and one a good deal younger.

They were the result of his first marriage, and though he had married again, it wasn’t working.


Mentally, I knew it was wrong to become involved with a man who belonged to someone else. But, with the exception of Frank, every man I was really attracted to had a wife'

Jason was a drinker. My interpretation was that he drank out of unhappiness. Drink turned him, not into a fighter, but a singer of songs, a reciter of poetry.

In our wooing days the endless rounds of booze in Greenwich Village bars became something of a game to me. Though I drank enough to get me through an evening and into the wee small hours, I never fell into an alcohol problem myself. I never had the stomach for it — and I never wanted to cut out the world anyway.

I was in desperate need of someone to love, someone to belong to. As much as I loathed drunkenness, I found myself able to get through those times because of what Jason was when sober. He had an ingenuousness about him, tremendously warm and appealing.

Jason’s wife filed for divorce in October 1961, citing his adultery with me. She didn’t know the half of it: by the time the ‘quickie divorce’ papers were signed in Mexico six months later, I was pregnant.

At first Jason told me he didn’t want to get married again so soon, which stunned and scared me.  I was in a terrible mess: an abortion was too horrible to contemplate.

He flew to Europe, to shoot Tender Is The Night, and I joined him. We talked and talked, and in the end he agreed we should get married as soon as possible.

But that rushed decision became a dismal farce. In Vienna, the registrar refused to marry us unless I produced my husband’s death certificate . . . even though Bogie’s death had been headline news around the world.

So as soon as the movie was over, we flew to Las Vegas — and discovered that the law had changed and Mexican divorces were no longer recognised.

What a saga! I felt as if the whole world were against me. We couldn’t get married, even in Vegas! In the end, the ceremony happened in Mexico . . . in Spanish.

When our baby boy, Sam, was born, Jason showed up drunk to take me home from the hospital in a Rolls-Royce. I’d have preferred he was sober in a taxi. We were certainly not your average newly-weds starting a great life.

The only times when I ever knew for sure where Jason would be was when he was on stage. As an actor, he was a professional. But as a husband, he was erratic to say the least, and too often I’d be left looking after all six children.

We talked about his drinking, and he recognised it was a problem but refused to get help.

By the summer of 1964 life was becoming unbearable. Kate Hepburn came over one afternoon, took one look at me, and said, ‘You’re a wreck. This marriage is no good for you — get out, think of yourself. You’ve forgotten about living.’

I rented a house on the beach in Trancas, outside LA, for the summer, and lived there with my three children. I finally had to face some facts: that alcoholism destroyed families, that I would not be destroyed, and nor would I allow my children to be.

Finally, I understood the lesson that Bogie had always tried to instil in me. Terrible things may happen, but you can always hold true to your character . . . and take the straight road.

  • Extracted from By Myself And Then Some by Lauren Bacall, published by Headline Book Group, £9.99. By Myself © 1978 Caprigo Inc; And Then Some © 2005 Caprigo Inc. To order a copy (p&p free), visit mailbookshop.co.uk

 

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