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Ava Gardner | ||
| Author: | Lee Server | ||
| ISBN: | 0312312091 | ||
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The dramatic life of the incomparably beautiful and swashbuckling Ava Gardner--one of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses and lover of many men, from bullfighters to Frank Sinatra--by The New York Times bestselling author of ROBERT MITCHUM: Baby, I Don't Care Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing" FROM OUR EDITORS Even Ava Gardner (1922-90) herself could not deny that her beauty and sex appeal dwarfed all her other talents: "After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled: 'She can't talk! She can't act! She's sensational!'" But the actress who refused to mythologize herself ("Deep down, I'm pretty superficial") rarely denied her audience their obsession. Over the years, she lured Ernest Hemingway, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, George C. Scott, Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and others into her orbit. Lee Server's 600-page life of the Hollywood legend will raise eyebrows and electricity bills. FROM THE CRITICS Peter Bogdanovich - The New York Times Sunday Book Review … Lee Server's enthralling new biography, Ava Gardner, could similarly be characterized as an extended toast to her. For no matter how objective Server tries to appear in detailing the highs and lows of her 67 years ? the three marriages, the numerous affairs, the binges, the nightlong cruising of low-life byways and bordellos, the mainly poor movies she was in ? he cannot really hide his essential fondness for her. It is the kind of affection virtually every one of the more than 100 people he interviewed felt and spoke of with enthusiasm, the kind a reader too will find hard to resist. Janet Maslin - The New York Times [Server] is well suited to writing about sultry, iconic movie mavericks like these two. He's not a voyeur or a bore. And as the author of a book about film noir, he understands cinematic idiom. Mr. Server refers to amnesia as "noir's version of the common cold." Kirkus Reviews Little falls on the cutting room floor is this full-dress biography of a screen icon. If a photo of a stunning beauty in a New York City photographer's window hadn't caught the eye of a passerby, Ava Gardner might have spent an uncomplicated life as a secretary and mother in North Carolina. Alas, the photo captured the attention of MGM, always eager to hang another star in the heavens. Hollywood historian Server (Robert Mitchum, 2001, etc.) covers-down to the last also-ran-the turbulent life and career that ensued. Clearly, the camera loved Ava, but that didn't mean she was a shallow stunner who couldn't act. George Cukor, directing her in Bhowani Junction, sensed in her work the power of Garbo. Her performance in Mogambo garnered an Oscar nomination, while critics and audiences lauded her for On the Beach and Seven Days in May. Dross along the way-55 Days in Peking and something called Tam Lin-mattered little to her: Love, sex and booze formed the core of her life. Relationships (with Howard Hughes, a matador, several leading men and many extras, including, perhaps, a few women) and marriages (to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra) were passionate, violent and beyond her control-she kept going back to lover George C. Scott, who kept knocking her around. Wounds were salved by drunken debauchery-the Ritz Hotel in Madrid banned her from the premises after she urinated in the lobby. Alone, but tranquil in her sad final days, she listened to Sinatra's recordings and leafed through a packet of his love letters. Overlong, yet never dull. Server writes with a contagious enthusiasm for his subject and a solid grasp of Hollywood history that Ava's fans and film buffs will enjoy.
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