Frank and Ava: She said he made love like a woman. He said she was a 'falling-down drunk'. She made him suicidal, he humiliated her...but an explosive new book reveals they never got over each other

• Frank still married to first wife Nancy when they began their relationship
• The romance became America's first reality show, with photographers and reporters pursuing them around the world 
• They married in 1951 when Frank was 35 and Ava 28, and if their courtship had been a reality show, the marriage was like a bad war movie
• In Frank's view, he was in charge, but Ava – nicknamed by the press 'Hurricane Ava' – thought differently, and did things her way 

By John Brady For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 17:08 EST, 3 October 2015 | Updated: 09:22 EST, 4 October 2015

They married in 1951 (pictured) when Frank was 35 and Ava 28, and if their courtship had been a reality show, the marriage was like a bad war movie

Ava Gardner eased her dark green Cadillac into the mid-morning traffic on Sunset Boulevard and headed for the studio. It was Thursday, February 10, 1949, a balmy day in the subtropical Los Angeles winter.

There was to be a luncheon on Soundstage 29, launching the silver anniversary of MGM, the studio that had 'more stars than there are in the heavens'. The event was being covered by Life magazine and highlights would be shown in cinemas around the world.

Suddenly, a black Cadillac sped past Ava, swung in front of her and slowed down so she had to pass it.

The car overtook her again, and repeated the manoeuvre. As she pulled alongside it, she could see the grinning driver raising his hat. It was Frank Sinatra. With a burst of speed, he zoomed off on his way to the same luncheon.

That Sinatra, thought Ava. He could even flirt in a car.

The pair had started a torrid affair that would lead to a tempestuous short-lived marriage characterised by feuds and faithlessness. Eventually, as both stars grew older, their passion would develop into a tender, if eccentric, love that would last a lifetime. But there was a lot of fighting to be done first.

They met in Hollywood in the mid-1940s, when, as Ava put it, 'everybody was ****ing everybody. Maybe it was the war'.

Frank was still married to his first wife Nancy when they began their relationship, and the romance became America's first reality show, with photographers and reporters pursuing them around the world.

They married in 1951 when Frank was 35 and Ava 28, and if their courtship had been a reality show, the marriage was like a bad war movie.

In Frank's view, he was in charge, but Ava – nicknamed by the press 'Hurricane Ava' – thought differently, and did things her way.

'If you have to go to war with a country, maybe you stand a chance of winning,' Frank told his friend Tony Consiglio. 'When you're at war with a woman, you don't have any chance. The best you can hope for is an occasional truce.'

Their initial truce didn't hold for long. After just a few months, Ava complained about her sex life to her ex-husband, the bandleader Artie Shaw. 'You, of all people, know I like it rough,' she told him. 'With Frank, it's impossible. It's like being in bed with a woman. He's so gentle. It's as if he thinks I'll break.'

Her apparent dissatisfaction did not stop her being jealous. In October 1952, Lana Turner, one of Frank's numerous exes and a friend of Ava's, asked if she could use Frank's Palm Springs house for a weekend. She'd had a bust-up with her boyfriend. Frank said fine.

When Ava heard, she and Frank had a heated discussion followed by a scorching fight. Frank took off in their car, screaming: 'I'm going to Palm Springs to **** Lana Turner.'

Ava went after him. When she reached the house, the curtains were drawn. Ava rang the doorbell. Ben Cole, business manager to both Ava and Lana, opened the door and there were Lana and Frank, sitting at the bar having a drink.

Ava looked at Frank and said: 'I thought you'd come down here to **** Lana.' That did it. Lana walked out. Frank was furious. The battle raged. Ava decided to take her stuff from the house.

'Frank grabbed it and threw everything into the driveway,' she said. 'Then he called the cops on me. Can you believe that?'

The battle made the papers. It was the beginning of the end of the marriage.

Torrid affair: Frank and Ava in 1951 at Reno's Riverside Hotel, when he was still married to his first wife 

In November, Ava began shooting Mogambo in Kenya. During filming she had a fling with the professional hunter advising on the animal scenes, and she became close to her co-star Grace Kelly.

Grace delighted in Ava's bawdiness. The movie featured Watusi warriors as extras. One day, Ava said to Grace: 'I wonder if [they] are as big as people say. 'Stop that, don't talk like that,' said Grace. Ava pulled up the loincloth of one of the Watusis. She turned to Grace. 'Frank's is bigger than that,' she said.

When the film wrapped, Ava went on holiday to Madrid, where she promptly started an affair with Luis Miguel Dominguín, the country's top matador. Frank, meanwhile, had been making his comeback film From Here To Eternity, which also starred Deborah Kerr.

When Frank and Ava were checking in at the Ritz in New York later in 1953, the elevator man said: 'Oh, Mr Sinatra, last time you were here it was with Miss Kerr.' Uh-oh, thought Ava, the co-stars have been here together. Relations worsened to the point where Frank called Ava one day announcing that he was in bed with another woman.

'I was deeply hurt. I knew then that we had reached a crossroads,' said Ava. 'Not because we had fallen out of love, but because our love had so battered and bruised us that we couldn't stand it any more.'

On October 23, the couple issued a statement saying that they were separating, 'having reluctantly exhausted every effort to reconcile their differences'. Sinatra was devastated.

He was staying with Jimmy Van Heusen in New York on November 18 when the songwriter returned to the apartment at 2am and found Frank sprawled on the floor with his left wrist slashed.

Frank spent two days in hospital, saying that there had been an accident with broken glass.

It was just one of several alleged suicide bids. Ava had once suggested that you needed a scorecard to keep track of Frank's suicide attempts. He yearned to rekindle their relationship.

Frank was still married to his first wife Nancy when they began their relationship, and the romance became America's first reality show, with photographers and reporters pursuing them around the world

In 1956, Frank filmed The Pride And The Passion, a drama about an episode in the Napoleonic Wars. Ava had been in the cast when he signed on and Frank thought that this was the opportunity for a reconciliation. But then Ava backed out.

Still, at least she was in Spain, where the shoot was. Frank arrived in the country with singer Peggy Connelly, whom he had been dating. Peggy was in his suite when Frank got a call from Ava. 'You going to see her?' Connelly asked. He was, and within hours Peggy left on a brief trip out of the country.

When she returned to the suite after her trip, Ava was sitting on the living room couch, wearing Frank's bathrobe, reading a newspaper.

'This is an uncomfortable situation, isn't it?' said Peggy. Ava looked daggers and said nothing.

The singer left to meet Frank for lunch on location. 'How were things at the hotel?' he asked.

'Crowded,' said Peggy.

'Oh, was she still there?' he asked.

Frank could not get out of Spain fast enough, returning to the States before his scenes were completed. They had to be shot with a stand-in.

The following year, Ava filed for divorce. It was granted on July 5.

But it was far from over between her and Frank.

According to Frank's daughter Tina, by the early 1960s 'Dad and Ava moved permanently from turbulent romance to entitled friendship, and no one had replaced her'. She left a void in his life.

He was at the height of his career, earning millions a year, but he was not happy.

Friends recall him sitting in P. J. Clarke's, a favourite New York bar, and staring gloomily into his glass of bourbon as the jukebox played Billie Holiday's version of the melancholic Fool To Want You, a song he'd recorded and into which he'd poured his grief over Ava. She was also suffering – and drinking heavily.

Peter Duchin, a young pianist, was one of the numerous lovers with whom she found ephemeral solace while living in Spain, where she had moved. 'The pain in her life had outweighed the joy, and she wasn't afraid to show it,' Duchin would recollect.

She asked Duchin to play songs that Frank had sung for her. When he played Lush Life, one of her favourites, she leaned on the piano, sang the lyrics softly and cried.

When Frank was filming Von Ryan's Express in Italy, the studio provided him with a villa outside Rome. Ava spent a few days with him and actor Brad Dexter joined them for dinner one evening.

'Frank was still trying to revive the relationship but it was painful for him to see the woman he adored destroying herself with booze,' Dexter said.

'She's the only woman I've ever been in love with in my whole life, and look at her,' said Frank after Ava staggered from the table. 'She's turned into a falling-down drunk.'

In Frank's view, he was in charge, but Ava – nicknamed by the press 'Hurricane Ava' – thought differently, and did things her way

In 1968, Ava received a cable from Frank: 'I need you. Come at once.' Frank was seriously ill, battling pneumonia. He was confined to bed in a Miami hotel suite, surrounded by his entourage. Ava arrived from London, jet-lagged and stressed. 'They told me you were dying, Francis,' she said. 'I've been travelling for 24 hours to get here.'

'You glad to see me, baby?' asked Frank. Ava got angry.

'Jesus Christ, you're not dying, are you?' she roared. 'Faking it again. Here we ****ing go. What the hell is really wrong with you? You got a cold or what? What am I doing here, anyway? Do you know what I had to go through to get here?'

'Hey, lady, I been sick. What you come here for if you're gonna give me a hard time? Scram.' Ava went back to her suite, packed, and returned to London.

In 1972 she moved there permanently, into a flat within walking distance of Harrods where she had an account that Frank reportedly tended to.

For her birthday each year he sent her a glorious floral bouquet, which she placed in her bedroom, where it bloomed, then faded, and remained until the next year, when a fresh bouquet arrived.

'We might have been in different cities, different countries, but we were never apart,' she said.

'And every once in a while, Frank would call me in Madrid, London, Rome, New York, wherever I happened to be, and say, 'Ava, let's try again.' And I'd say, 'OK!' and drop everything, sometimes even a part in a picture. And it would be heaven, but it wouldn't last more than 24 hours. We could never understand why it hadn't and couldn't work.'

The years of hard living had taken a toll on Ava's beauty. She decided to do her ageing in private and became very reclusive – keeping a framed photograph of herself with Frank in the early days on her bedside table.

'Sometimes she would lie in bed and take out the letters from Frank,' said her biographer Lee Server. 'She would take out each one and read it from start to finish, then put it back in the envelope and go on to the next one. She would read one and it would make her feel misty, then another that would have her laughing or cursing him on the page.'

In 1986, Ava had a stroke and spent two months in hospital. She refused visitors but whenever Frank called, the nurses would hold the phone to her ear.

'She tried to speak, but it was hard to make herself understood, and so she just listened to his voice,' said Server. ' 'I love you, baby,' he told her. 'It stinks, getting old.' '

Ava died, one month past her 67th birthday, on January 25, 1990. It was front-page news around the world, as was Frank's death in 1998 at the age of 82.

Frank and Ava were both deeply flawed, highly ambitious icons on a big stage in a business that, as the songwriters like to say, eats them up and spits them out.

As Hollywood endings go, theirs was tinged with sadness and pain. But in their later years they arrived at a deep friendship, like the special compassion of two people who, once, long ago, had been in a bad accident together and had survived.

© John Brady, 2015

Frank & Ava: In Love And War, by John Brady, is published by Thomas Dunne books and available from amazon.co.uk.

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