Strangers in the Night: A Novel of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra’s first meeting in 1946 lit a dual spark. He, already a singing sensation from New Jersey on his way to stardom in Hollywood, was married with two young children. Ava, a movie starlet under contract to MGM, was unusually beautiful, smart, and ambitious. After two marriages and divorces, she vowed to not take up with a married man. Yet each could not leave the other alone. This somewhat fictionalized treatment takes readers on a four-decade roller-coaster ride of their careers and tempestuous love affair. We journey with them from New York theatres to Hollywood studios and Las Vegas nightclubs, to cities in Europe and the lion country of Africa. The romance culminated in their marriage and nearly wrecked both careers, but also provided the love and support only they could give each other through the hardest times.
Author Webb grabs hold of the reader and does not let go. Told in intimate first-person chapters from both Ava’s and Frank’s viewpoints, their many spats, breakups, and reunions feel honest yet not overdone. Lana Turner, Howard Hughes, George C. Scott, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Mia Farrow, various studio heads, musicians, and publicists add context to the main story. Ava and Frank drank and smoked too much, loved many others too easily, craved stardom too strongly. They did crazy things, often drunk, just because they felt like it. But through the highs and rock-bottom lows, they remained soul-mates and cared about the other more than anyone else. One would fly halfway round the world when the other called. Altogether, a rousing and well-done, probably mostly true, romantic novel.
