Frank Sinatra’s Second Wife Explained: Everything to Know About Ava Gardner
The intensity that drew Sinatra and Gardner together made daily domestic life impossible. Both possessed volcanic tempers, matched drink for drink, and harbored deep insecurities. Arguments routinely escalated into shattered glassware and theatrical threats. During one late-night dispute at the Hampshire House in New York, Sinatra discharged a firearm into a mattress out of desperation to keep Gardner in the room. Gardner responded by packing her bags and leaving.
Their professional imbalance also generated persistent friction. While Gardner worked long hours on film sets in Europe, Sinatra suspected her of affairs with co-stars and Spanish matadors like Luis Miguel Dominguín. In turn, Gardner mistrusted Sinatra's late-night carousing with old associates. Gardner became pregnant twice during the marriage, in 1952 and 1953, but chose to quietly terminate both pregnancies at private clinics in London. As she later admitted in her posthumous autobiography, Ava: My Story, she believed their home environment was too chaotic, competitive, and unstable to raise a child.
In October 1953, less than two years after their wedding, MGM issued an official announcement that the pair had agreed to separate. Though they attempted reconciliations over the next two years, the split became final when Gardner filed for divorce in Mexico in July 1957. The legal dissolution closed the chapter on paper, but it failed to extinguish their connection.
