Later, Humphrey Bogart fretted about his wife Lauren Bacall’s relationship with Frank. When Frank arranged a birthday party for Bacall in Las Vegas, in September 1956, her husband stayed away. He was “edgy and resentful” when she got home and she soon found out why. “He was somewhat jealous of Frank,” Bacall remembered, “. . . partly because he thought Frank was in love with me, partly because our physical life together, which has always ranked high, had less than flourished with his illness.”
After Bogart’s death, by the spring of 1957 Frank and Bacall were going out together. They were cruising off the coast of California aboard a rented yacht the day Frank’s divorce from Ava became final. At Christmas Frank asked Bacall to marry him but then, two days into the new year, he got drunk and behaved “like a maniac”. For more than a month the couple had no contact. In March Frank went to see her. He seemed contrite and proposed again. Bacall remembered: “ . . . he was very convincing . . . all my barriers fell . . . I said, ‘OK’.”
Just days later, on March 12, newspapers trumpeted: “Sinatra to Wed Lauren Bacall”. It was leaked either by the agent Swifty Lazar, or by Bacall herself. When a reporter got to Frank to ask if the marriage was on he got a brutal reply. “What for? Just so I have to come home earlier every night? Nuts!” Bacall had phoned Frank as soon as the story broke, and he had not seemed angry. Then, a few days later, Frank called accusing her of having leaked the proposal. Then he simply cut off all contact. Frank had behaved “like a complete shit”, Bacall remembered, and for years to come they did not speak at all.