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CBS News
CBS NEWS
me » The Early Show » Leisure » Books
'My Life With Frank Sinatra'
After Decades Of Silence, George Jacobs Writes About His Legendary Boss
NEW YORK, June 5, 2003
E-MAIL STORY
PRINT STORY
SPHERE
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(CBS/The Early Show)
RELATED
SPECIAL REPORT
In Print
Find out more about the latest books and what best-selling authors are working on.
SPECIAL REPORT
Summer By The Book
Having the time to catch up on your reading is just one of the many joys of the season. And if you need help picking a page turner, look no further.
(CBS) From the early '50s to late '60s, the best guy a person could know may have been Frank Sinatra, according to George Jacobs.
After almost 35 years of silence, Jacobs writes of the parties, the people, and the places he saw as personal valet and confidant to Sinatra in "Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra," which he wrote with William Stadiem.
In it, Jacobs provides a look at a womanizing Sinatra who pursued some of the most famous women of Hollywood - Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and actress Grace Kelly who was to become Princess Grace of Monaco.
Jacobs tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith his relationship with Sinatra was more like that of a father and son.
“He treated me more like family," Jacobs says. "I was not treated like a servant. He expected me to do everything. I was there for him. If the phone rang, he wouldn't answer the phone; I did. We got along very well. But if he got angry, he had the right to get angry. He would laugh at me and say something funny. Aggravate me, ‘What do you think you're doing? Hey, Spook, what do you think you're doing,” Jacobs says noting being called “Spook” “was like a joke. More like a compliment. It didn't bother me.”
Jacobs worked with Sinatra from ’58 to ’68 but his relationship with the "Chairman of the Board" ended when Jacobs was rumored to have had an affair with Sinatra's third wife, Mia Farrow.
Jacobs says, “I danced with Mia Farrow in a nightclub. He sent me from Palm Springs to L.A. to pick up Ava and take her to a concert at a restaurant. I stopped off to pick her up out of this little club and Mia was in there dancing. She was practically stumbling. She grabbed me and started dancing. Some little columnist, I think it was, was in the paper the next morning. He freaked."
And Jacobs was gone. He says, “When I got back to Palm Springs, he was screaming. I never thought he would do something like that.”
When asked what was the relationship like between Sinatra and Farrow, Jacobs says, “She was 19. I don't know; it wasn't a very close relationship. She was happy and in love. I don't know. It was very strange.”
The love of Sinatra’s life was Ava Gardner, the woman Sinatra left first wife Nancy Barbato for. Jacobs says, “He loved her until he died. He thought about it. Took care of her till she died.” But the marriage did not work out because he wanted a wife to stay at home and have kids. And Ava had a life of her own and wanted to keep living it."
Jacobs says, “Ava was a big star when he met her. He got a lot of breaks because Ava was out there working all the time. He wanted her to be closer. She couldn't handle that.”
Jacobs also writes about Sinatra’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe after her divorce from Joe Dimaggio. Jacobs says he doesn't know whether they two had an affair. The boss “dated quite a few of beautiful ladies. They were all treated very well. When he had company around, the children would never come and visit, when he had dates or anything. That was a no-no. The children, he saw them at their house and Nancy would cook two or three times a month for him. He'd go over and have a little party with their graduations and birthdays and stuff like that. And if he had guests in the house, no, the kids couldn't come down. But if they used the house, he would go somewhere else,” Jacobs says.
When asked if Sinatra had an affair with Princess Grace, Jacobs says, “He did a movie with her and he dated her, but I don't know.” Though Sinatra went to Monaco a couple of times, Jacobs says it was to support her charity work as Princess Grace of Monaco and noted, “Prince Ranier (Grace's husband) was a good friend of his.”
Jacobs describes Sinatra as “very serious, very well-read. When he had problems, he wouldn't say much of anything. He would sit and think a lot.” Jacobs says he does not think his boss was jealous of anybody.
CBS NEWS
me » The Early Show » Leisure » Books
'My Life With Frank Sinatra'
After Decades Of Silence, George Jacobs Writes About His Legendary Boss
NEW YORK, June 5, 2003
E-MAIL STORY
PRINT STORY
SPHERE
SHARE
TEXT SIZE: A A A
1 | 2
(CBS/The Early Show)
RELATED
SPECIAL REPORT
In Print
Find out more about the latest books and what best-selling authors are working on.
SPECIAL REPORT
Summer By The Book
Having the time to catch up on your reading is just one of the many joys of the season. And if you need help picking a page turner, look no further.
(CBS) From the early '50s to late '60s, the best guy a person could know may have been Frank Sinatra, according to George Jacobs.
After almost 35 years of silence, Jacobs writes of the parties, the people, and the places he saw as personal valet and confidant to Sinatra in "Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra," which he wrote with William Stadiem.
In it, Jacobs provides a look at a womanizing Sinatra who pursued some of the most famous women of Hollywood - Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner and actress Grace Kelly who was to become Princess Grace of Monaco.
Jacobs tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith his relationship with Sinatra was more like that of a father and son.
“He treated me more like family," Jacobs says. "I was not treated like a servant. He expected me to do everything. I was there for him. If the phone rang, he wouldn't answer the phone; I did. We got along very well. But if he got angry, he had the right to get angry. He would laugh at me and say something funny. Aggravate me, ‘What do you think you're doing? Hey, Spook, what do you think you're doing,” Jacobs says noting being called “Spook” “was like a joke. More like a compliment. It didn't bother me.”
Jacobs worked with Sinatra from ’58 to ’68 but his relationship with the "Chairman of the Board" ended when Jacobs was rumored to have had an affair with Sinatra's third wife, Mia Farrow.
Jacobs says, “I danced with Mia Farrow in a nightclub. He sent me from Palm Springs to L.A. to pick up Ava and take her to a concert at a restaurant. I stopped off to pick her up out of this little club and Mia was in there dancing. She was practically stumbling. She grabbed me and started dancing. Some little columnist, I think it was, was in the paper the next morning. He freaked."
And Jacobs was gone. He says, “When I got back to Palm Springs, he was screaming. I never thought he would do something like that.”
When asked what was the relationship like between Sinatra and Farrow, Jacobs says, “She was 19. I don't know; it wasn't a very close relationship. She was happy and in love. I don't know. It was very strange.”
The love of Sinatra’s life was Ava Gardner, the woman Sinatra left first wife Nancy Barbato for. Jacobs says, “He loved her until he died. He thought about it. Took care of her till she died.” But the marriage did not work out because he wanted a wife to stay at home and have kids. And Ava had a life of her own and wanted to keep living it."
Jacobs says, “Ava was a big star when he met her. He got a lot of breaks because Ava was out there working all the time. He wanted her to be closer. She couldn't handle that.”
Jacobs also writes about Sinatra’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe after her divorce from Joe Dimaggio. Jacobs says he doesn't know whether they two had an affair. The boss “dated quite a few of beautiful ladies. They were all treated very well. When he had company around, the children would never come and visit, when he had dates or anything. That was a no-no. The children, he saw them at their house and Nancy would cook two or three times a month for him. He'd go over and have a little party with their graduations and birthdays and stuff like that. And if he had guests in the house, no, the kids couldn't come down. But if they used the house, he would go somewhere else,” Jacobs says.
When asked if Sinatra had an affair with Princess Grace, Jacobs says, “He did a movie with her and he dated her, but I don't know.” Though Sinatra went to Monaco a couple of times, Jacobs says it was to support her charity work as Princess Grace of Monaco and noted, “Prince Ranier (Grace's husband) was a good friend of his.”
Jacobs describes Sinatra as “very serious, very well-read. When he had problems, he wouldn't say much of anything. He would sit and think a lot.” Jacobs says he does not think his boss was jealous of anybody.
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SP Times
va Gardner tops tobacco in N.C. town
Smithfield, N.C., is proud as can be of its home-grown movie star, who never forgot where she came from.
By ADRIAN and GEORGIANA HAVILL
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 28, 1999
SMITHFIELD, N.C. -- A few weeks after Frank Sinatra died last year, we went in search of the movie star the tabloids were calling "the love of his life." We knew exactly where to find her.
The woman for whom he left his childhood sweetheart, Nancy, was Ava Lavinia Gardner, and her history was located behind an outlet shopping mall, smack dab in the middle of North Carolina's tobacco country.
Johnston County, N.C., has about 86,000 acres of Bright Leaf fields divided by narrow, and not all paved, roads. Its claim to fame is that the movie star was born, bred and buried here, and the locals make the most of that. There is an Ava Gardner museum, an Ava Gardner birthplace, an Ava Gardner childhood home and an Ava Gardner grave site.
Many former U.S. presidents don't get this much attention or affection from their hometowns after death, but then none of them was as beautiful.
We headed for the museum first. It's in downtown Smithfield, the county seat.
In the window is a poster for one of Gardner's 60 films, The Barefoot Contessa. She was at the top of her four-decade career when it was released in 1954, and the press had dubbed her "the world's most beautiful woman.' The makers of the movie weren't satisfied with even that lofty title and had advanced the Hollywood hype, so the promotional poster was headlined "The World's Most Beautiful Animal."
The old red brick building that houses the Gardner memorabilia is next to the county's only movie theater and across the street from its only French restaurant. Gardner, who lived the last two decades of her 67 years in Europe, spending much of her time in the company of Spanish matadors, probably would have liked her tribute to be at this location.
Gardner's shrine is a chronicle of her early life in Johnston County, her movie career and her tempestuous personal life. The earthy actor married three times (Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Sinatra) and was said to have bested all of her husbands when it came to drinking, swearing, partying and smoking.
She was actually born 10 miles away, at a home, according to museum docent Ruth Linebrink, "on Grabtown Road, the morning of Christmas Eve 1922." She was the youngest of seven, the third daughter of a tobacco sharecropper. Her family struggled during most of her childhood years, moving when she was a toddler so her mother could manage a boarding house for female teachers nearby.
Her father briefly took the family to Newport News, Va., during the Depression when he found work in the shipyards, and he died there while Gardner was in her teens. She, her mother and her siblings came back to Johnston County.
When she was 18, Gardner took a year of secretarial training in an adjacent county, and after graduation she got to go to New York City to visit her married sister, Bappie. Bappie's husband ran a photography studio and snapped a chaste portrait of Ava. The picture wound up in his shop's window and was spotted by a passing MGM talent scout. Smitten, he reached Gardner by phone in Johnston County and offered her a Hollywood contract on the spot.
"I can stay here and be a secretary, or I can go to Hollywood and breathe the same air that Clark Gable breathes," Gardner is said to have told her mother. No contest. Five years later she played opposite Gable in The Hucksters.
Though her face and form were her fortune, her acting was decidedly underappreciated. She did eventually receive an Oscar nomination for her role as Honey Bear Kelly in Mogambo (another part opposite Gable). Her acting in classics such as On the Beach or the Ernest Hemingway adaptations of The Sun Also Rises and The Snows of Kilamanjaro was discussed far less than her stunning physical appearance.
Hollywood advertised her figure as 37-22-35, a statistic given out in those days by movie publicists as commonly as the color of a starlet's eyes. This seemed a bit extreme; she was only 5-foot-4 and said to weigh just 110 pounds. We asked docent Linebrink if she would measure one of Gardner's dresses for us. She immediately pulled out a tape measure and tugged it tight around the waist of one of the mannequins dressed in her movie costumes, this a strapless black taffeta sheath. (This is just one of the pleasures of small museums. Asking a Smithsonian guide to do this on, say, Jackie O's inaugural gown just wouldn't bring the same response.)
Linebrink's verdict came in at 37-25-35.
"They always exaggerated the waist," said our Johnston County expert.
The genesis of the Ava Gardner Museum actually began when Gardner was in her late teens. It seems that when she was attending her secretarial classes, she was regularly heckled and teased by a 10-year-old boy while waiting for her ride home from school. One day, fed up with the harassment, she ran after the youngster, caught him and then kissed the youth on the mouth in front of a crowd of his friends.
The boy, Tom Banks, never forgot the encounter, and a few years later, he saw the girl who gave him the smooch in a Hollywood movie with Mickey Rooney. That was the catalyst for Banks to begin collecting virtually everything Ava. In the 1980s, Banks and his wife donated his 42-year collection to the county, and it is now housed and maintained in Smithfield.
Nearly every native of Johnston County from her era has some sort of Ava Gardner tale. Unlike some other celebrities from rural areas, Gardner came home often to visit, sometimes shucking her shoes to wander the fields barefoot. On one such occasion in 1979, she took a dare from a local and climbed up the town's water tower, something she'd resisted doing as a kid.
Between her marriages, Gardner reveled in romance. She was linked to many stars of the day, dumping them before they tired of her. Always good for a quote, she ended her affair with the quirky Howard Hughes by telling the press, "He was only interested in two things, money and breasts."
Which brings us to Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was at the bottom of the show business pecking order in the early 1950s, his career all but over. Gardner, on the other hand, was one of Hollywood's more bankable screen stars when they met at an MGM party.
Still, it was lust, if not love, at first sight. Their six-year marriage was the stuff of tabloid headlines, with Sinatra leaving his first wife, Nancy, to marry her. At one point in the volatile union, Sinatra made headlines by firing a gun into their marriage bed and locking her out of the house.
"She never remarried after Sinatra," Linebrink told us. "And though she didn't think as much of Rooney and Shaw, each of whom she was married to for less than two years, she somehow stayed friends with all three of them."
Sinatra might have been a forgotten crooner when he died last year had it not been for Gardner. It was she who, after he was turned down for the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, went to Columbia Pictures' feared dictator, Harry Cohn, and begged the mogul to give Sinatra the role. Her clout and beauty eventually carried the day, getting the legendary singer the part and rescuing his career.
We thought of her relationship with Sinatra while driving out to nearby Sunset Park cemetery, to view her final resting place. Though Gardner died of pneumonia at her home in London on Jan. 25, 1990, she was brought back to Johnston County to be buried as she had always wanted to be, in her family's plot.
Gardner's graveside ceremony mirrored the final scene of The Barefoot Contessa: a driving rain failing on a vast canopy of umbrellas, with nearly 4,000 townspeople showing up to see her off. Flowers were everywhere, but the biggest floral tribute, lavender and white blossoms topped by a flock of carved white doves, dwarfed all the others.
It was signed, "With my love, Francis."
They say here that when the service was over and the final prayer was said, the rain stopped and the sun began shining brightly. It was the kind of ending, the locals will tell you, that usually only happens in the movies.
The Havills are freelance writers who live in Reston, Va.
If you go
GETTING THERE: Johnston County, N.C., is on Interstate 95, about halfway between St. Petersburg and New York City.
BEING THERE: The Ava Gardner Museum is at 205 S Third St. in downtown Smithfield. It's open daily from 1-5 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults; seniors and children 12 and up, $2. Call (919) 934-5830 or see the Web site at http://www.avagardner.org. Museum souvenirs range from mugs to movies on videotape to mousepads. The docent on duty will give you a map directing you to Gardner's birthplace, childhood home and grave site.
There are other things to see and do. At the I-95 exit is Factory Stores of America, a major outlet shopping center large enough to challenge anyone's wallet or walking power. A mobile cart meanders about the nearly 2-mile-long center to take people from one part to another.
Johnston County also has a NASCAR speedway that's open from April to October in nearby Kenly. For Civil War buffs, there are frequent re-enactments at Bentonville Battleground, where 80,000 Union and Confederate troops fought in one of the largest land battles of the South.
To fully understand the local land and its historic farm economy, do not miss the Tobacco Farm Life Museum in Kenly, 11/2 miles from Smithfield. Admission is $2 for adults; $1 for seniors and children.
Big doings: the Ham & Yam Festival in April, with a 5K run, live entertainment and cooking contests.
WHERE TO STAY: Most chain motels are right off I-95. There are independents such as Waverley's Bed & Breakfast, (919) 989-2161; the popular Becky's Log Cabin, which has tennis courts, (919) 934-1534; and the Village Motor Lodge. Our room there was not deluxe, but it was quite clean and delivered free cable, for $26.99 a night. A word of warning: Its 101 rooms were filled by 6:30. The Village's number is (800) 531-0063.
WHERE TO EAT: Across the street from the Ava Gardner Museum is the Cafe Monet, whose menu and decor looked very appealing, but our first stop had to be for genuine N.C. barbecue, which is roasted pork in a vinegary dressing (no tomato sauce). We went south from Smithfield on Bright Leaf Boulevard (Highway 301) to a highly recommended place called Holt Lake Bar-B-Que & Seafood. We stood in a line on hot black asphalt wondering if we had lost our minds in the heat, but the queue moved fast and businesslike. Inside, we sampled some of the best Carolina-style barbecue we've ever had. One "large" dinner cost $5.65. One of us had the fried chicken/barbecue combo for $5.15. The slaw and hushpuppies were super; only the steak fries were undistinguished. The fried seafood being served around us looked excellent.
Afterward, we searched for the Sel-Pine Ice Cream Shop (on A-70 a mile behind the Holiday Inn Express), which we heard made 52 types of milkshakes and had 40 flavors of ice cream. There we had a quite fine cone and a hot fudge sundae for a total bill of $2.67.
va Gardner tops tobacco in N.C. town
Smithfield, N.C., is proud as can be of its home-grown movie star, who never forgot where she came from.
By ADRIAN and GEORGIANA HAVILL
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 28, 1999
SMITHFIELD, N.C. -- A few weeks after Frank Sinatra died last year, we went in search of the movie star the tabloids were calling "the love of his life." We knew exactly where to find her.
The woman for whom he left his childhood sweetheart, Nancy, was Ava Lavinia Gardner, and her history was located behind an outlet shopping mall, smack dab in the middle of North Carolina's tobacco country.
Johnston County, N.C., has about 86,000 acres of Bright Leaf fields divided by narrow, and not all paved, roads. Its claim to fame is that the movie star was born, bred and buried here, and the locals make the most of that. There is an Ava Gardner museum, an Ava Gardner birthplace, an Ava Gardner childhood home and an Ava Gardner grave site.
Many former U.S. presidents don't get this much attention or affection from their hometowns after death, but then none of them was as beautiful.
We headed for the museum first. It's in downtown Smithfield, the county seat.
In the window is a poster for one of Gardner's 60 films, The Barefoot Contessa. She was at the top of her four-decade career when it was released in 1954, and the press had dubbed her "the world's most beautiful woman.' The makers of the movie weren't satisfied with even that lofty title and had advanced the Hollywood hype, so the promotional poster was headlined "The World's Most Beautiful Animal."
The old red brick building that houses the Gardner memorabilia is next to the county's only movie theater and across the street from its only French restaurant. Gardner, who lived the last two decades of her 67 years in Europe, spending much of her time in the company of Spanish matadors, probably would have liked her tribute to be at this location.
Gardner's shrine is a chronicle of her early life in Johnston County, her movie career and her tempestuous personal life. The earthy actor married three times (Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Sinatra) and was said to have bested all of her husbands when it came to drinking, swearing, partying and smoking.
She was actually born 10 miles away, at a home, according to museum docent Ruth Linebrink, "on Grabtown Road, the morning of Christmas Eve 1922." She was the youngest of seven, the third daughter of a tobacco sharecropper. Her family struggled during most of her childhood years, moving when she was a toddler so her mother could manage a boarding house for female teachers nearby.
Her father briefly took the family to Newport News, Va., during the Depression when he found work in the shipyards, and he died there while Gardner was in her teens. She, her mother and her siblings came back to Johnston County.
When she was 18, Gardner took a year of secretarial training in an adjacent county, and after graduation she got to go to New York City to visit her married sister, Bappie. Bappie's husband ran a photography studio and snapped a chaste portrait of Ava. The picture wound up in his shop's window and was spotted by a passing MGM talent scout. Smitten, he reached Gardner by phone in Johnston County and offered her a Hollywood contract on the spot.
"I can stay here and be a secretary, or I can go to Hollywood and breathe the same air that Clark Gable breathes," Gardner is said to have told her mother. No contest. Five years later she played opposite Gable in The Hucksters.
Though her face and form were her fortune, her acting was decidedly underappreciated. She did eventually receive an Oscar nomination for her role as Honey Bear Kelly in Mogambo (another part opposite Gable). Her acting in classics such as On the Beach or the Ernest Hemingway adaptations of The Sun Also Rises and The Snows of Kilamanjaro was discussed far less than her stunning physical appearance.
Hollywood advertised her figure as 37-22-35, a statistic given out in those days by movie publicists as commonly as the color of a starlet's eyes. This seemed a bit extreme; she was only 5-foot-4 and said to weigh just 110 pounds. We asked docent Linebrink if she would measure one of Gardner's dresses for us. She immediately pulled out a tape measure and tugged it tight around the waist of one of the mannequins dressed in her movie costumes, this a strapless black taffeta sheath. (This is just one of the pleasures of small museums. Asking a Smithsonian guide to do this on, say, Jackie O's inaugural gown just wouldn't bring the same response.)
Linebrink's verdict came in at 37-25-35.
"They always exaggerated the waist," said our Johnston County expert.
The genesis of the Ava Gardner Museum actually began when Gardner was in her late teens. It seems that when she was attending her secretarial classes, she was regularly heckled and teased by a 10-year-old boy while waiting for her ride home from school. One day, fed up with the harassment, she ran after the youngster, caught him and then kissed the youth on the mouth in front of a crowd of his friends.
The boy, Tom Banks, never forgot the encounter, and a few years later, he saw the girl who gave him the smooch in a Hollywood movie with Mickey Rooney. That was the catalyst for Banks to begin collecting virtually everything Ava. In the 1980s, Banks and his wife donated his 42-year collection to the county, and it is now housed and maintained in Smithfield.
Nearly every native of Johnston County from her era has some sort of Ava Gardner tale. Unlike some other celebrities from rural areas, Gardner came home often to visit, sometimes shucking her shoes to wander the fields barefoot. On one such occasion in 1979, she took a dare from a local and climbed up the town's water tower, something she'd resisted doing as a kid.
Between her marriages, Gardner reveled in romance. She was linked to many stars of the day, dumping them before they tired of her. Always good for a quote, she ended her affair with the quirky Howard Hughes by telling the press, "He was only interested in two things, money and breasts."
Which brings us to Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was at the bottom of the show business pecking order in the early 1950s, his career all but over. Gardner, on the other hand, was one of Hollywood's more bankable screen stars when they met at an MGM party.
Still, it was lust, if not love, at first sight. Their six-year marriage was the stuff of tabloid headlines, with Sinatra leaving his first wife, Nancy, to marry her. At one point in the volatile union, Sinatra made headlines by firing a gun into their marriage bed and locking her out of the house.
"She never remarried after Sinatra," Linebrink told us. "And though she didn't think as much of Rooney and Shaw, each of whom she was married to for less than two years, she somehow stayed friends with all three of them."
Sinatra might have been a forgotten crooner when he died last year had it not been for Gardner. It was she who, after he was turned down for the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, went to Columbia Pictures' feared dictator, Harry Cohn, and begged the mogul to give Sinatra the role. Her clout and beauty eventually carried the day, getting the legendary singer the part and rescuing his career.
We thought of her relationship with Sinatra while driving out to nearby Sunset Park cemetery, to view her final resting place. Though Gardner died of pneumonia at her home in London on Jan. 25, 1990, she was brought back to Johnston County to be buried as she had always wanted to be, in her family's plot.
Gardner's graveside ceremony mirrored the final scene of The Barefoot Contessa: a driving rain failing on a vast canopy of umbrellas, with nearly 4,000 townspeople showing up to see her off. Flowers were everywhere, but the biggest floral tribute, lavender and white blossoms topped by a flock of carved white doves, dwarfed all the others.
It was signed, "With my love, Francis."
They say here that when the service was over and the final prayer was said, the rain stopped and the sun began shining brightly. It was the kind of ending, the locals will tell you, that usually only happens in the movies.
The Havills are freelance writers who live in Reston, Va.
If you go
GETTING THERE: Johnston County, N.C., is on Interstate 95, about halfway between St. Petersburg and New York City.
BEING THERE: The Ava Gardner Museum is at 205 S Third St. in downtown Smithfield. It's open daily from 1-5 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults; seniors and children 12 and up, $2. Call (919) 934-5830 or see the Web site at http://www.avagardner.org. Museum souvenirs range from mugs to movies on videotape to mousepads. The docent on duty will give you a map directing you to Gardner's birthplace, childhood home and grave site.
There are other things to see and do. At the I-95 exit is Factory Stores of America, a major outlet shopping center large enough to challenge anyone's wallet or walking power. A mobile cart meanders about the nearly 2-mile-long center to take people from one part to another.
Johnston County also has a NASCAR speedway that's open from April to October in nearby Kenly. For Civil War buffs, there are frequent re-enactments at Bentonville Battleground, where 80,000 Union and Confederate troops fought in one of the largest land battles of the South.
To fully understand the local land and its historic farm economy, do not miss the Tobacco Farm Life Museum in Kenly, 11/2 miles from Smithfield. Admission is $2 for adults; $1 for seniors and children.
Big doings: the Ham & Yam Festival in April, with a 5K run, live entertainment and cooking contests.
WHERE TO STAY: Most chain motels are right off I-95. There are independents such as Waverley's Bed & Breakfast, (919) 989-2161; the popular Becky's Log Cabin, which has tennis courts, (919) 934-1534; and the Village Motor Lodge. Our room there was not deluxe, but it was quite clean and delivered free cable, for $26.99 a night. A word of warning: Its 101 rooms were filled by 6:30. The Village's number is (800) 531-0063.
WHERE TO EAT: Across the street from the Ava Gardner Museum is the Cafe Monet, whose menu and decor looked very appealing, but our first stop had to be for genuine N.C. barbecue, which is roasted pork in a vinegary dressing (no tomato sauce). We went south from Smithfield on Bright Leaf Boulevard (Highway 301) to a highly recommended place called Holt Lake Bar-B-Que & Seafood. We stood in a line on hot black asphalt wondering if we had lost our minds in the heat, but the queue moved fast and businesslike. Inside, we sampled some of the best Carolina-style barbecue we've ever had. One "large" dinner cost $5.65. One of us had the fried chicken/barbecue combo for $5.15. The slaw and hushpuppies were super; only the steak fries were undistinguished. The fried seafood being served around us looked excellent.
Afterward, we searched for the Sel-Pine Ice Cream Shop (on A-70 a mile behind the Holiday Inn Express), which we heard made 52 types of milkshakes and had 40 flavors of ice cream. There we had a quite fine cone and a hot fudge sundae for a total bill of $2.67.
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Ava in Knights of the Round Table
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLucHOLS_II youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLucHOLS_II youtube
scriptgirl
Active Member
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- Messages
- 12,226
- Reaction score
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Washington Post
Jazz Giant Artie Shaw Dies at Age 94
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 31, 2004; 5:24 PM
To England's Daily Mail, he spoke of Gardner this way: "Why did I marry her? Did you ever look at Ava Gardner? She was beautiful, that's the first thing I was attracted to. I didn't know it was the wrong reason. I remember we were sitting around in my house talking about Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' with some writer friends when she disappeared.
"I went out looking for her and she said: 'I got so sick of it, I didn't know what the hell they were talking about.' I offered her the book to read but she didn't want to. Ava wanted instant knowledge; for her it should have come in an envelope marked 'add water.' "
Jazz Giant Artie Shaw Dies at Age 94
By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 31, 2004; 5:24 PM
To England's Daily Mail, he spoke of Gardner this way: "Why did I marry her? Did you ever look at Ava Gardner? She was beautiful, that's the first thing I was attracted to. I didn't know it was the wrong reason. I remember we were sitting around in my house talking about Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' with some writer friends when she disappeared.
"I went out looking for her and she said: 'I got so sick of it, I didn't know what the hell they were talking about.' I offered her the book to read but she didn't want to. Ava wanted instant knowledge; for her it should have come in an envelope marked 'add water.' "
scriptgirl
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Winter Park Observer
Play On! - Louis Roney
Dec. 11, 2008
By Louis Roney
Miss Gray Matter
I had climbed up the side of Mt. Rainier about as far as I could go.
I was now far above the timberline.
The snow was deep around me in every direction.
I was breathing hard and my whole body suddenly felt exhausted.
I had about had it, I thought.
At any rate it seemed foolhardy to push myself any longer.
So I pulled the car over and climbed out onto the tarmac.
I strolled over to the big Lodge at Sunrise.
The headline of a newspaper on a rack outside the door grabbed my attention.
It was the latest dope from Atlantic City.
It seems that the "bathing beauties" who started it all may soon become as vestigial as the dinosaur.
The good news is that the bathing suit may be verboten from now on at the Miss America Pageant.
It's about time.
Oh, the shame of it through all the long years!
I think of the lost Septembers of my early life.
The newspaper pictures of those days, followed on their heels by the weekly newsreels at the Baby Grand Theater, depicted the "bevy of beautiful girls" whose annual parade on the Boardwalk brought the Atlantic City summer season to a close.
In scratchy black-wool bathing suits that did nothing to enhance nature, the "girls" pranced up and down, flashing their Pepsodent smiles.
The prettiest of the lot — according to the always-unseen judges — was named "Miss America" for that year.
Amazingly, the "girls" of those days were able to contain their embarrassment at exposing a bit of their bodies in flagrant betrayal of females everywhere.
Some of the contestants in those photos may have been able to play "The Minute Waltz" or "Für Elise" on the piano, to sing the "Habanera" from "Carmen," to twirl batons, or to clog dance.
No one will ever, ever know.
That was not the point of "Miss America" in those days so rife with then-timid sexism.
"Miss America" was a "beauty contest" pure and simple. In those days, what's now the "Pageant" lived up to its modest promise — and no more.
If you ask, "What's wrong with that?", I'll tell you.
Plenty — that's what!
Following the second World War, the U.S. entered a long period of scrupulous self-examination.
Today, if you go with the drift, you'll "Remember Pearl Harbor" with a culpable awareness that liberates us from our former misguided nationalism.
We World War II veterans of the South Pacific now understand that we were the ones responsible for Pearl Harbor and all the rest.
We are deeply grateful to well-financed Japanese PACs in Washington for having labored unselfishly to enlighten us.
In the same vein, why try to hide any longer the fact that there was a time when a young woman (a "girl"!) could become an American national idol only because she was pretty?
Clara Bow did it. So did Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, and many others.
Those comely movie stars never seemed ashamed to become rich and famous because people liked to look at them.
Some of them even became modestly adept at "acting" before a camera.
But they knew darned well that their "acting" alone could not have earned them the posh toys: the mink coats, the big cars, the beach houses at Malibu.
After many years, the "pretty girl" who entered beauty pageants found that she would have to "do something."
This requirement was labeled "Talent."
Also she would have to "open her mouth" (dangerous!) in the form of an "Interview."
In the interview she had better be prepared to tell the world that her looks were not really important to her.
The thing that properly concerned her most was to be of "service" to the world.
She was now righteously chafing at the bit to work for "world peace," "international understanding," "the ecology," "underprivileged children," "unspayed house pets," and "the elderly."
Before long, we hope, the Miss America contestants' evening dresses will follow their bathing suits to "Pageant Heaven."
After all, the evening dress has a tendency to focus upon a contestant's pulchritude — even her grace of movement.
Let's be honest about it: In an evening dress, a contestant's body is on display, and nobody who is truly aware could wish that to happen in this age of anti-sexist deliverance.
Liberating feminism must stamp out the last temptation for abused women to accept rewards for flaunting their physical differences from males.
Our country needs an unbiased and sexless Miss America Pageant with level playing fields, derrieres and bust lines.
Better that the young women not be seen by the judges at all.
The showing off of the young women's talent must, in time, be eliminated, as personal demonstration of talent cannot be other than subjective.
Judges are likely to be swayed by favoritism for certain performance media, musical selections, etc.
In the name of fairness, contestants' names should be replaced by numbers so that ethnic and nationalistic overtones of family names play no part.
The young women's high school SATs, and their college grades, should now be rated by a panel of judges, half female and half male — a panel selected by nationwide search (Ph.D.s preferred).
Contestants' interviews should be recorded, and delivered using a robotic "computer voice," so that no contestant's attractiveness as a communicator is used unfairly to her advantage.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the contestant's cerebrum will provide a tool for determining capacity for intelligence.
The above, revised format clearly obviates any need for the physical presence of the contestants.
The enormous sum of money saved through making the Miss America Pageant an electronic undertaking could best be expended on a worthwhile, sensible cause: e.g., "The Conversion of Las Vegas, Nev., into a Home for the Spotted Owl."
After all, if we are crassly looking for physical beauty, we can find it in an automobile or a dog — without making fools of ourselves.
Who says we aren't making important progress in the U.S. as this century progresses?
Play On! - Louis Roney
Dec. 11, 2008
By Louis Roney
Miss Gray Matter
I had climbed up the side of Mt. Rainier about as far as I could go.
I was now far above the timberline.
The snow was deep around me in every direction.
I was breathing hard and my whole body suddenly felt exhausted.
I had about had it, I thought.
At any rate it seemed foolhardy to push myself any longer.
So I pulled the car over and climbed out onto the tarmac.
I strolled over to the big Lodge at Sunrise.
The headline of a newspaper on a rack outside the door grabbed my attention.
It was the latest dope from Atlantic City.
It seems that the "bathing beauties" who started it all may soon become as vestigial as the dinosaur.
The good news is that the bathing suit may be verboten from now on at the Miss America Pageant.
It's about time.
Oh, the shame of it through all the long years!
I think of the lost Septembers of my early life.
The newspaper pictures of those days, followed on their heels by the weekly newsreels at the Baby Grand Theater, depicted the "bevy of beautiful girls" whose annual parade on the Boardwalk brought the Atlantic City summer season to a close.
In scratchy black-wool bathing suits that did nothing to enhance nature, the "girls" pranced up and down, flashing their Pepsodent smiles.
The prettiest of the lot — according to the always-unseen judges — was named "Miss America" for that year.
Amazingly, the "girls" of those days were able to contain their embarrassment at exposing a bit of their bodies in flagrant betrayal of females everywhere.
Some of the contestants in those photos may have been able to play "The Minute Waltz" or "Für Elise" on the piano, to sing the "Habanera" from "Carmen," to twirl batons, or to clog dance.
No one will ever, ever know.
That was not the point of "Miss America" in those days so rife with then-timid sexism.
"Miss America" was a "beauty contest" pure and simple. In those days, what's now the "Pageant" lived up to its modest promise — and no more.
If you ask, "What's wrong with that?", I'll tell you.
Plenty — that's what!
Following the second World War, the U.S. entered a long period of scrupulous self-examination.
Today, if you go with the drift, you'll "Remember Pearl Harbor" with a culpable awareness that liberates us from our former misguided nationalism.
We World War II veterans of the South Pacific now understand that we were the ones responsible for Pearl Harbor and all the rest.
We are deeply grateful to well-financed Japanese PACs in Washington for having labored unselfishly to enlighten us.
In the same vein, why try to hide any longer the fact that there was a time when a young woman (a "girl"!) could become an American national idol only because she was pretty?
Clara Bow did it. So did Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Lana Turner, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, and many others.
Those comely movie stars never seemed ashamed to become rich and famous because people liked to look at them.
Some of them even became modestly adept at "acting" before a camera.
But they knew darned well that their "acting" alone could not have earned them the posh toys: the mink coats, the big cars, the beach houses at Malibu.
After many years, the "pretty girl" who entered beauty pageants found that she would have to "do something."
This requirement was labeled "Talent."
Also she would have to "open her mouth" (dangerous!) in the form of an "Interview."
In the interview she had better be prepared to tell the world that her looks were not really important to her.
The thing that properly concerned her most was to be of "service" to the world.
She was now righteously chafing at the bit to work for "world peace," "international understanding," "the ecology," "underprivileged children," "unspayed house pets," and "the elderly."
Before long, we hope, the Miss America contestants' evening dresses will follow their bathing suits to "Pageant Heaven."
After all, the evening dress has a tendency to focus upon a contestant's pulchritude — even her grace of movement.
Let's be honest about it: In an evening dress, a contestant's body is on display, and nobody who is truly aware could wish that to happen in this age of anti-sexist deliverance.
Liberating feminism must stamp out the last temptation for abused women to accept rewards for flaunting their physical differences from males.
Our country needs an unbiased and sexless Miss America Pageant with level playing fields, derrieres and bust lines.
Better that the young women not be seen by the judges at all.
The showing off of the young women's talent must, in time, be eliminated, as personal demonstration of talent cannot be other than subjective.
Judges are likely to be swayed by favoritism for certain performance media, musical selections, etc.
In the name of fairness, contestants' names should be replaced by numbers so that ethnic and nationalistic overtones of family names play no part.
The young women's high school SATs, and their college grades, should now be rated by a panel of judges, half female and half male — a panel selected by nationwide search (Ph.D.s preferred).
Contestants' interviews should be recorded, and delivered using a robotic "computer voice," so that no contestant's attractiveness as a communicator is used unfairly to her advantage.
Magnetic resonance imaging of the contestant's cerebrum will provide a tool for determining capacity for intelligence.
The above, revised format clearly obviates any need for the physical presence of the contestants.
The enormous sum of money saved through making the Miss America Pageant an electronic undertaking could best be expended on a worthwhile, sensible cause: e.g., "The Conversion of Las Vegas, Nev., into a Home for the Spotted Owl."
After all, if we are crassly looking for physical beauty, we can find it in an automobile or a dog — without making fools of ourselves.
Who says we aren't making important progress in the U.S. as this century progresses?
scriptgirl
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Alfaqui
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