Ava Gardner

by Lee Server

Book Overview

"The most complete and engrossing biography yet of this exotic Southern girl...Excellent."--Liz Smith

She was the sex symbol who dazzled all the other sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento, and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him--but she knocked out his front teeth instead.

She...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312312105
• ISBN13: 9780312312107
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 560 Pages
• Weight: 1.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Wasted Talent

I read Ava's autiobiography when it came out shortly after her death and thought she was pretty honest about her life warts and all. Mr Server follows the same outline of her life but greatly expounds on the good and the bad that was so well documented in the news. Ava and Frank were the Brad and Angelina of the 50's and were hounded relentlesly by the then new phenomonon, the paparatazzi. There was well researched detail on things only lightly covered in Ava's book but who can blame her for leaving out what she did. One thing that came out of this book was the feeling she could have left a much richer body of work if only MGM had given her better parts and she had not had such a fondness for booze and partying all night ALL the time. She lived life on her own terms but should have taken better care of herself. I thought it was an excellent book and recommend it to anyone with a interest in Ava and Hollywood in the 40's and 50's.

Love May Have Been Nothing, But Boozing It Up Was

The most beautiful Ava Gardner - and that she was. She was a booze-hound, lush and nymphomaniac. There was not a martini left unturned when she was around. When she was drunk she was mean and naughty and sober she was sugar and spice. Her first husband was Mickey Rooney - married him after being in Hollywood 6 months. She was a virgin. Her second husband was Artie Shaw. Her third husband was Frank Sinatra and the love of her life. It was the most turbulent of relationships - jealousy being the worst of it. Ava had many, many, many lovers - men and women too, or so it was rumored. She lived in Spain for several years and liked to roam the country and dance with the gypsies - she loved to dance the flamenco. She only made movies for the money. Her heart was not in being an actress, but just being. She had several abortions although she kept saying she wanted children, I believe she was too selfish to be able to raise a child. She was the life of the party most of the time when she was not dead drunk. She could have been manic depressive, but just never diagnosed - she had unbelievable mood swings. She had a stroke that left her with a limp and her arm did not function as well as it should. She lived out her declining years in London and died of pneumonia. This is a powerful and excellent biography of one of the most beautiful women who ever lived - a must read. P.S. This is a very personal note, but I feel I must add it. After reading the last pages before and when she passed away I was in tears. I was deeply touched. Lee Server did such an excellent job of documenting her life at that time and I was able to feel her loneliness and pain and depression. I felt so sorry for her that she did not have Frank Sinatra in her last days.

Venus From Mount Vesuvius

Ava Gardner, under the mistaken belief that she was having a date with director Howard Hawks, soon learned that the tall, "rail thin" man with the "rawboned face of a cowboy" was none other than Texas entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Modestly amused by the mixup, Hughes asked Ava out again, and they soon began seeing each other "several times a week or more." But let there be no mixup about Lee Server's powerfully compelling portrait of Ava Gardner. The man, along with his international contacts and sources, has crafted a a complex portrait of a barefooted country girl whose photograph in the window of a portrait studio in New York ultimately captivated the world with her beauty and the antics of her personal life. Server's previous biography, Robert Mitchum, 'Baby I Don't Care' , showcased his expertise with all things film and noire, and AVA GARDNER allows him full venue to elaborate in this ode to the Barefoot Contessa of two continents. With a surplus of parentheticals and bottom-of-the-page addendum, Server leaves tidbits like Ava changed partners, always something new and savory demanding a change to the next blank page where something must be written. From Ava's best friend in high school, to her last, closest chums in London's high-brow Knightsbridge district, everyone had something to say about Gardner's extraordinary goddess-like beauty and her volatile personal landscape. This book reveals Gardner's inauspicious beginnings deep in the red-dirt heartland of North Carolina, and then provides the reader a world tour with the most enticing brunette of the forties and fifties as she emotes in private and on film. Hemingway, Sinatra, Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Howard Hughes, Robert Mitchum, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Esther Williams, Fidel Castro, Judy Garland, John Huston, and many others have their moments in the sol and sombra with Ava. Only MGM central casting would have difficulty finding all the extras for this moveable feast of a book. The baked Alaska is Gardner's jagged frankness and crisp retorts left unprintable in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, but poured out on Server's pages like so much tequila. The rise of the paparazzi, the inspiration for La Dolce Vita and the final cast for The Pink Panther all had something to do with Ava Gardner. There are sweet, candid remittances from BBC Television's Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous fame, who was a castmember of Roddy McDowall's first directorial effort, Tam Lin, which starred Gardner in her forty-seventh year. Server's sources also include past information from previously published show business biographies that has been tweaked and updated with scandal, certainty, and revelations from Ava's personal friends (Spoli Mills, Betty Sicre) and industry insiders like Gene Reynolds, producer of television's M*A*S*H*, Hemingway pal A.E. Hotchner, and Artie Shaw, Ava's second husband. But it was her third husband she had the most difficulty releasing. Server's depiction of Ava a