Whether people will remember Frank Sinatra as The Voice, The King of Crooners, Ole Blue Eyes, The Chairman of the Board, or as the Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century, Ava fans will always remember him as the love of her life.

Of all the men with whom Ava was linked throughout her life, no man had a greater impact on her than Sinatra. Of the three entertainers she chose to marry, including Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw, Ava was married longest to Sinatra. The fact that Ava never married again after the couple divorced in July 1957 is further evidence of their love and passion for each other.

Sinatra first met Ava when she was better known as Mrs. Mickey Rooney. Ava and Mickey were at the Mocambo Club on the Sunset Strip where Frank was performing in 1942. After his performance was over, he quickly set his sights on Ava. He made his way to her through the audience, unveiled that big grin, and Ava was trying to play it cool.

"Hey, why didn't I meet you before Mickey? Then I could have married you myself," he said.

Ava was speechless. At the time, she had not yet become "Ava Gardner, the most beautiful animal in the world!" She was still just a contract player on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer back lot, and just a little over a year removed from rural North Carolina.

On the other hand, he was Frank Sinatra. Not yet the Chairman of the Board, but well on his way to superstar status. Legions of bobby-soxers across the nation had propelled him from a skinny little singer from New Jersey with the Harry James Orchestra to the top-selling crooner in the nation.

Their first meeting set the stage for their time together years later - eventful and rarely a dull moment.

Always the engaging flirt, Frank tried his luck at winning Ava's heart on other occasions after she had divorced Rooney. Ava, like hundreds of other young girls at the time, was intoxicated by Sinatra's distinctive voice. She always had a thing for musicians. Her next husband, band leader Artie Shaw, is a testament to that obsession.

By the end of World War II, Sinatra had a bachelor pad at the Sunset Towers, which literally towered over the small apartment house Ava was renting at the time. During the occasional party with friends, Sinatra would go out of the balcony and shout out to Ava with a boozy voice. Not the classic romantic tale you might expect, but it got Ava's attention.

One day outside her apartment, she finally accepted his invitation out to dinner. But dinner was all it was. He tried his hardest to charm her, but she was still able to resist him. Ava just couldn't bring herself to ignore the fact that Sinatra was a married man. Her upbringing was making it difficult for Ava to follow her heart - for the moment.

It wasn't until 1949 when Ava met Sinatra at a party in Palm Springs that he began to make any headway toward winning her heart. Ava fell head over heels for him that night, but otherwise his luck had already started to change.

Ava realized he was a married man, with three children, no less, but the gossip columns had reported he was leaving his wife Nancy for good. At the same time, he was losing his voice, hadn't had a Number 1 record in a while, and had even lost top billing to Gene Kelly in their MGM film "On the Town." He was also about to begin a disappointing career in television.

But at this point, Ava was completely under his spell. "Oh, God, Frank Sinatra could be the sweetest, most charming man in the world when he was in the mood," she recalled in her 1990 autobiography, "Ava: My Story" from Bantam Books.

Sinatra told Ava it had been over with him and Nancy for years, but his three children were another matter. He would stay committed to them for the remainder of his life. But Lana Turner warned Ava that he had told her the same thing a few years earlier.

"I really liked Lana. She was a nice girl, and she felt neither malice nor anger toward Frank and me," Ava recalled in her autobiography. "She just thought I ought to know. I told Lana gently that Frank and I were in love, and that this time he really was going to leave Nancy for good. If I'm in love, I want to get married: that's my fundamentalist Protestant background. If he wanted me, there could be no compromise on that issue."

Frank and Ava still had a number of other romances in their lives, but he especially found fault with eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who had become increasing obsessed with Ava over the years. Hughes himself didn't like Ava cavorting around with Howard Duff and Robert Taylor, much less Sinatra. Like Lana Turner, Hughes warned Ava about falling for the infamous womanizing Sinatra.

Frank and Ava tried to keep a low profile. As their love grew, the couple's hate for the media grew as well. They were the hot story, and the gossip columns were relentless in their pursuit. The press onslaught resulted in Nancy Sinatra officially separating from Frank on Valentine's Day in 1950.

Ava and Frank were married on November 7, 1951. She was bombarded with hate mail, but her film career never suffered. Their careers were headed in completely different directions now.

It was the 1950s, and many fans turned their back on Sinatra since the Catholic father of three had left his wife for a glamorous movie star. He soon found himself bankrupt and without a contract with MGM or Capitol Records. He was forced to borrow money from Ava to buy his children Christmas gifts. The proud Italian could not accept the fact that his wife was the bread winner. It was the 1950s after all.

During their tumultuous marriage, the reversal of fortune between their careers was becoming more and more apparent to the world. The publicity guys at MGM took a quote from Ernest Hemingway and had christened Ava "the most beautiful animal in the world." While Ava had become one of Hollywood's brightest stars, Sinatra found himself at the low point of his own career. It was not good for the marriage.

"She was a female Frank Sinatra and they just clashed at every turn - too stubborn and headstrong to live in harmony for long," according to Kitty Kelley, author of a hugely popular unauthorized Sinatra biography. "It was such a very very bad time for him. He really took a dive over Ava. I mean emotionally he absolutely capsized over her. Then he lost his voice, his career went to ruins, and she was the one with the huge career and that had to bother him."

Ava knew things wouldn't get better unless Frank could make a comeback. Columbia was developing a film version of "From Here To Eternity." Frank wanted the part of Maggio, a head-strong skinny Italian, he was born to play. It even required a death scene.

Ava lobbied the producers of the film to cast him in the role. The only problem was character actor Eli Wallach had already been cast in the role. The producers viewed a screen test Sinatra provided, a rarity in those days for a star of his stature, but he had taken a great fall. Columbia offered him the role for a measly $8,000. He took it.

The tables were slowly turning yet again for Ava and Frank. His portrayal of Maggio won him an Academy Award for Supporting Actor. He was back, but even this couldn't save their marriage.

Amazingly, their notorious public quarrels were never professional in nature. Both Ava and Frank, known for having a number of love interests, were constantly fighting about the other's wandering eyes. The media just fed the fire.

"It was another sort of jealousy that ate into our bones," Ava wrote in her autobiography. "Primitive, passionate, bitter, acrimonious, elemental, red-fanged romantic jealousy was our poison. Accusations and counteraccusations, that's what our quarrels were all about."

Their fiery temperaments were constantly at odds with each other. The couple divorced in 1957 though the marriage had been over years earlier. In the end they were too much alike to stay together. Years later, Ava confessed that despite the number of men she loved, Frank was by far the "love of her life."

An insatiable Italian thirst for passion fed Frank's desires for some of the world's most famous and beautiful women. Besides Ava, he has been linked with a laundry list of Hollywood's greatest actresses. There was Lauren Bacall, the widow of Frank's good friend Humphrey Bogart, who has reported that marriage plans were discussed. He also had romances with Judy Garland, Jackie Kennedy, Lana Turner, Angie Dickinson, Donna Reed, Kim Novak, Juliet Prowse, Marlene Dietrich, Jill St. John, and Marilyn Monroe.

On July 19, 1966, Mia Farrow became Mrs. Sinatra #3 during a private wedding in Las Vegas. She was in her 20s, and Frank was in his 50s. It was doomed from the start. After a year-long separation, they divorced in 1968.

Barbara Marx, a former Las Vegas show girl and former wife of Zeppo Marx became the fourth and final Mrs. Frank Sinatra on July 11, 1976.

Frank's popularity swung like a pendulum, reaching great heights and great lows during a career spanning half a century. Almost as famous for his run-ins with the press and as leader of the Rat Pack, Sinatra supposedly kept the company of organized criminals and presidents, both Democratic and Republican, through his eventful life.

Frank Sinatra will surely be remembered in many different ways by many people, but fans of Ava will always think of him as the love of her life.

  John Mark Ivey serves on the Board of Directors for the Ava Gardner Museum.