VA CA R DNER
119.95
IN CANADA
$24.95
"If I don 't tell my side of the story, " Ava
Gardner said, "it'll be too late, and then some
self-appointed biographer will step in and add
to the inaccuracies, the inventions, and the
abysmal lies that already exist.
7 want to tell the truth. . . about the three
men I loved and married: Mickey Rooney,
Artie Shaw, and Francis Sinatra. I want to
write about the Hollywood 1 knew from the
early forties when I arrived wide-eyed from
the cotton and tobacco fields of North
Carolina, about the films I made, many in
exotic settings all over the world, and the real
behind-the-scenes stories, often a damn sight
more dramatic than the moms themselves.
7 want to remember it all, thegoodand
bad times, the late nights, the boozing, the
dancing into dawns, and all the great
and not-so-great people I met and loved in
those years...."
For more than two years Ava Gardner
sifted through her memories, filling ninety
tapes with reminiscences of her life as a
sharecropper's daughter turned legendary
screen star. She completed the last tape just a
few months before her sudden death in
January 1990. And now, here, as only Ava can
tell it, is her story— as straightforward,
irreverent, and exciting as the woman herself.
She was the seventh child of a kindly farmer
and his gregarious wife; a risk-taking tomboy
who was happiest running barefoot through
the fields; a pretty girl who knew what it was
like to be dirt poor. She was Ava Gardner, and
in 1940, at the age of eighteen, she was about
to be transformed overnight from North
Carolina hillbilly to MGM starlet. Within six
months she'd be socializing with stars such as
(Continued on back flap)
LIBRARY
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Gardner, Ava. «M MAR
: my story /
1992
AVA
MY STORY
MY STORY
AVA GARDNER
f
® A?
BANTAM BOOKS
New York * Toronto • London • Sydney • Auckland
AVA: MY STORY
A Bantam Book I November 1990
Cover photo courtesy of The Kobal Collection
Grateful acknowledgment is made to William Graves, the Robert Graves Copyright Trust, and St. John's
College, Oxford, for permission to use the poem "Not to Sleep, " which Robert Graves dedicated to Ava Gardner,
and for the four lines taken from "The Portrait" by Robert Graves, Collected Poems, © 1955 Doubleday & Co.,
Garden City, New York,
"Someone to Watch Over Me"
(George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin)
© 1926 (Renewed) WB Music Corp.
All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Back cover photographs clockwise from left: Starfile, Movie Still Archives,
Bettmann Archives, Movie Still Archives, The Kobal Collection, Keystone,
Wide World Photos, Bill Dudasl Motion Picture & Television Photo
Archives, The Kobal Collection. Center; The Kobal Collection.
The text was designed and the project was supervised by
M 'N 0 Production Services, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1990 by C & J Films, Inc.
Cover design copyright © 1990 by One Plus One Studio.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage ana retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
Library of Congress Catalog ing-in~Publication Data
Gardner, Ava.
Ava: my story I Ava Gardner.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-553-07134-3
1. Gardner, Ava, 1922-1990. 2. Motion picture actors and
actresses — United States — Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.G37A3 1990
791.43'02S'092-dc20
(Bl 90-1102
CIP
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
. Its
, . Patent
and Trademark Office and in other countries, Marco Registrada. Bantam Books, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York,
New York 10103
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.
trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Paten
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ONE
was born Ava Lavinia Gardner on Christmas
Eve 1922 in Grab town. North Carolina. Not
Brogden, not Smithfield, like so many of the
books say, but poor old Grabtown. God knows why it got that
name: there was no place to grab, and hardly any town at all
And wouldn't it just be my luck to be born a Capricorn. I've
often thought of it as the worst sign, but no matter. It wasn't my
style to let a little thing like the stars get in my way.
And speaking of luck, how about having to live through child-
hood with my birthday and Christmas Day being just about si-
multaneous celebrations? That meant I'd like as not be fobbed
off with one present instead of the two I just knew I deserved.
And the news got worse. It appeared that there was this whole
other person, Jesus Christ, whose birthday a lot of people tended
to confuse with mine. I was personally outraged. It was a long
time before I forgave the Lord for that.
I came into this world at ten o'clock at night, and I've often
thought that that was the reason I turned into such a nocturnal
creature. When the sun sets, honey, I feel more, oh, alert. More
alive. By midnight, I feel fantastic. Even when I was a little girl,
my father would shake his head and say, "Let's just hope you get
a job where you work nights." Little did he know what was in
store for me. It takes talent to live at night, and that was the one
ability I never doubted I had.
But that was all in the future. As a child, what I loved about
my birthday was the Christmas tree with lighted candles on it
AVA GARDNER
and the fact that all the relatives came to my party. My older
sisters and their husbands. Aunts and uncles. Lots and lots of
children. And even when we were too poor to have two presents,
Mama always made sure to bake two special cakes just for me.
One was chocolate, the other white coconut. Mama understood
how lonely just one present for Christmas and your birthday
could be.
I was my parent's seventh child, always treated like the baby of
the family and liking every bit of it. Two sons, Raymond and
Melvin, had come before me, and four daughters, Beatrice (nick-
named Bappie), Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra. At nineteen, Bappie
was the eldest and already married, but she had the same tomboy
nature as me. She'd climbed a peach tree during her pregnancy,
which probably wasn't a good idea in the first place. Then, with-
out stopping to think about it, she jumped down and suffered a
miscarriage.
Growing up, I adored Bappie's husband William. He was big
and strong and lots of fun. He'd hang me up by the back of my
dress on a coat hook behind a door and swing me backward and
forward like a pendulum. Or he'd take both my hands and swing
me around in circles that soared higher and higher, with my
small paws clinging to him like starfish. He was simply gorgeous.
Mama loved him, too. But then Mama loved all the husbands
and could be counted on to take their part whenever a squabble
broke out.
Mama was Mary Elizabeth Gardner, but everyone called her
Molly. Age 39 the year I was born, she was a real matriarch, a
warm and neighborly woman who loved her family. Her father,
Grandfather Baker, had been a feisty little redheaded Scotsman, a
great farmer who swore he couldn't die happy until he had
twenty children. Between Grandmother Baker and his second
wife, he got up to nineteen before he died. So despite wearing
those poor women out, I'm afraid Grandpa went to heaven bro-
kenhearted.
Mama cleaned every room every day as though she were ex-
pecting Sunday visitors. With one exception. That was the
kitchen, which always looked as though a hurricane had just
swept through it. But out of that mess came the most wonderful
food. When it came to hominy grits, nobody could touch Mama.
Even her fried eggs were better than anyone else's. Mama owned
AVA: MY STORY
only one cookbook, and even though it had the very distin-
guished title of The White House Cookbook, Fd be mighty sur-
prised if any presidents' wives had so much as looked at it. Still,
Mama swore by it, but her cooking was really the result of
knowledge handed down from mother to daughter for genera-
tions.
Mama took after Grandmother Baker, who was evidently a
very beautiful woman. Mama had dark brown eyes and magnifi-
cent creamy porcelain skin, which all we Gardner girls inherited.
She had long, dark, wavy hair which she wore in a bun at the
back. She was always a little chubby — great cooks usually are —
and the pounds crept up as she got older. Though quite short
(five foot three was as high as she got), Mama was very energetic
and totally gregarious. She loved to chat, and, unlike me, she
loved lots of people around her. And she was so kind, so inter-
ested in people and their problems. She encouraged everybody,
especially her children.
Mama was obviously a strong woman, but what my father
Jonas said was law. Mama loved him and would do anything he
said. I remember one time in particular when it had snowed so
heavily the night before that a huge pile of sawdust behind our
house, a pile into which I used to practice high dives, had sud-
denly turned into a snowy mountain as high as the Alps.
I just couldn't wait to get through Mama's ham and eggs, grits,
hot biscuits, and milk and start my glorious ascent. I had just
about reached the top when I noticed Daddy looking up at me
with a concerned look on his face.
"Daughter, come down from there at once," he said. "You'll
hurt yourself."
Though he called my sisters by their Christian names, Daddy
always called me "Daughter." But no matter what he called me, I
wasn't about to come down. So I pretended not to hear.
Once more, Daddy made his wishes known in a quiet, reason-
able voice, and once more I pretended not to hear. The next thing
I knew, Daddy had grabbed me, hauled me down, and delivered
two or three sharp smacks across my bottom. I was outraged.
Daddy had never, ever, spanked me before. His method had been
lots of good-advice lectures about what was right and what was
wrong. So I raced, yelling, for the comfort of Mama in the
kitchen.
AVA GARDNER
"Daddy spanked me!" I screamed, the outraged innocent.
"Daddy spanked me!"
If I expected Mama to enfold me in her arms and comfort me,
I was in for a shock. The family disciplinarian, she could restore
order with a quick cuff from either hand. Sure, she missed most
of the time, but that didn't stop her from making her point. Now
she turned from the stove and regarded me with cool eyes.
"Daddy's right," she said firmly. And I knew immediately that
that was one argument I was never going to win. So I drifted out
to play somewhere else, still turning this "Daddy's right" busi-
ness over in my mind. It wasn't until years later that I really
understood it fully, understood that right or wrong they backed
each other to the hilt. It made for strength in their relationship, a
strength I guess I was always looking for in mine.
I remember my father so well. He was tall and lean with soft
black hair. A cleft in his chin and the green eyes that I inherited.
But there was a sparkle in those eyes and a smile on his lips. He
treated life as it came, and when the work on the farm was going
well, he asked for nothing more.
On one level, there wasn't much to separate Daddy from the
other farmers in Johnston County, North Carolina. He wore
overalls hitched up over a plaid woolen shirt, with a short
chunky jacket added if the season demanded it. He would have
fit right in with those photos of pioneer farmers you see in every
state museum. The ones of lean, rugged men with determined
faces and weary, suspicious eyes. Eyes that had known hard
times before and would know them again. There was never much
happiness in those eyes, but, oh, God, they were indomitable.
Daddy, however, was different. There was enough of a streak
of the lyric and romantic Irish in him to let you know that he was
never ever going to make his fortune. I think that deep inside he
would have loved to have gotten an education, maybe even stud-
ied the few well-worn law books that for some reason were al-
ways around the house. But that wasn't in the cards for him.
Daddy sharecropped. He farmed the land, and the deal he
made was the traditional half and half. The landlord provided
seed and fertilizer and they shared the profits, when there were
any. Daddy was always a private man, shy and retiring to a large
degree, and I inherited that trait from him. Even as a little girl, I
could be pugnacious and combative on the outside, shy and ner-
vous of people on the inside.
AVA: MY STORY
Daddy did everything slowly and deliberately; there wasn't an
impulsive bone in his body. I can see him now, sitting at the
kitchen table, making us lemonade. He'd rub the lemons for
what seemed like hours so they'd be soft and the juice would
literally pour out of them. Our tongues would be hanging out by
the time that lemonade was made, but I've never tasted anything
like it. No booze, honey, was ever so good.
One thing Daddy was not given to was quick anger and violent
confrontations, no matter what the provocation. There was, for
instance, the time my brother Melvin — everybody called him
Jack, as they do with a name like that — stole into Daddy's to-
bacco barn to sneak a puff on a cigarette. Unfortunately, he
dropped the match, and before you knew it, an almighty con-
flagration consumed not only the barn but the cotton gin behind
it as well. In fact, one of my earliest memories is being held up to
the window of our house to watch them both burn down.
Jack tore into the house and dove under the bed, fearing that
Daddy's wrath would burst over him at any moment. But not
only didn't Daddy take any action, he hardly even made a com-
ment. He knew, of course, what Jack had done, but he also knew
it had not been done deliberately. It was an accident, pure and
simple, and you didn't brood over things like that. Punishing
Jack would not have restored the barn or the cotton gin.
Daddy had faced hard times before, and gotten over them, but
this was something else again. Since there was no insurance in
those days, the fire left us without the money to stay on, and we
moved out of our house and into a place called the Teacherage in
nearby Brogden. Sitting on a green lawn under shady trees, the
Teacherage was nothing more than a large clapboard house, with
more rooms than I'd ever imagined, that served as a boarding-
house for teachers.
You have to understand that in our part of North Carolina,
there was no such thing as motels (and the only small hotels were
in Smithfield, eight miles away), and respectability demanded
that the young lady teachers for Brogden's Johnston County
Grammar School be provided with room and board to suit their
status. And with her skill in the kitchen, my mother was the ideal
choice to run the place.
That grammar school, two stories high and made of red brick,
looked suspiciously like a factory to me. But it provided elemen-
tary education up to the seventh grade for close to two hundred
AVA GARDNER
children. In fact, during the school term, Brogden was just about
besieged by children. On foot, or bused from nearby farming
neighborhoods, they poured in like a flood of puppies and kit-
tens: girls and boys of all ages, jabbering, jostling, pushing, yell-
ing, and squabbling.
Growing up in a Teacherage, with everyone focused on educa-
tion, I sometimes wonder why I'm not a Greek scholar or some-
thing. What I did acquire, though, was an understanding of
discipline, of the importance of doing your work properly and
being clean and punctual. I got a good country education, and
there's nothing wrong with that. It set standards for the rest of
my life.
The only thing I didn't care for about school was having to
force my feet into those hated, confining things called shoes. In
those days, thousands of children throughout the South ran
around barefoot for half a year and more. Shoes were expensive.
Besides, I've always loved the feel of baked earth, green grass,
soft mud, and stream water under my feet. It was a special sort of
freedom, and to this day I try and recapture it every chance I get.
Sometimes, though, I felt a little left out of Brogden's comings
and goings. I yearned to arrive on a bus like everybody else. And,
my God, the status of showing up with your own box lunch. Part
of me knew that Mama's lunches were much better, but I desper-
ately wanted a lunch-box lunch. So I found friends who agreed to
share their horrible biscuits and big repulsive slabs of ham, half
an inch thick. That accomplished, I'd arrange to go home with
them and spend the night. Then I could scrunch up in bed with a
girlfriend and get the special joy of a bus ride there and back. I
thought I was pretty clever, but I guess Mama saw through all
my plots.
One adventure I had that even Mama didn't know about in-
volved Al Creech. Al was my five-year-old nephew, the son of my
older sister Elsie Mae and I was his self-appointed older and
wiser protector in a world of rough, tough kids. So it was natural
that I accompanied Al on his very first shopping expedition. We
crossed the dirt road and entered the cool, dark general store,
where, after proper deliberation, he walked away with his heart's
desire: a handful of brightly colored marbles.
And what did the poor fool do? He marched off to the play-
ground to join the big boys at marbles, eager to convince them
AVA: MY STORY
that he was all grown up. But though I was a master marble
flicker, Al was a total novice. The big guys took one look, recog-
nized a sucker, and cleaned him out.
Al didn't have to tell me what happened. The end-of-the-world
look on his face said it all. I was incensed. Al was my respon-
sibility. More than that, I was pretty sure the big guys hadn't
been above rearranging the rules to suit themselves. So I dragged
Al back to the scene of the crime. The crooks were still hanging
around, gloating. I stood over them and demanded, "You want
to play marbles?"
The silence was total. No, they didn't want to play.
"Well, you're going to play," I insisted fiercely. "You're going
to let me into this game ... or else." What "or else" meant, I
hadn't a clue, but it sure sounded threatening. And it had its
intended effect. In five minutes, I'd won all ATs marbles back,
and a few more for good measure.
I stood up and the marble gang stood up with me. This was
war.
"We won his marbles fair and square," someone piped up.
"And I won 'em back fair and square. So what are you going
to do about it? Want to fight? Who wants the first bloody nose?"
Nobody did. The triumph of virtue has never felt so sweet.
I certainly was a tomboy. I loved games, I loved action, and I
could match most of the boys. Run just as quick. Climb just as
high. Take as many risks. We played baseball with an improvised
ball made out of a piece of coal wrapped around with used to-
bacco twine. A piece of wood cut into shape served as the bat. I
played every position. I was inquisitive, adventurous — and occa-
sionally jealous.
It all started with my love of dancing. In the Teacherage we
had an old upright piano and I could swing around to any tune
that was played. So when I heard that Myra, my older sister, was
going to get piano lessons instead of me, my jealousy was over-
whelming. Especially as Mama took me along with Myra for the
weekly lesson at a place called Selma about five miles away.
The point was, I knew that Myra couldn't care less about hav-
ing piano lessons, but I wanted them, desperately. So Myra
would plunk away halfheartedly at her practice at the Teach-
erage, and when she was gone and nobody else was looking, I
tried to bite the piano keys off. Literally. The piano stayed intact,
AVA GARDNER
but years afterward you could still see the little teeth marks on
the innocent white keys.
From those moments on, music, especially movement to music,
became a great passion with me. One of my greatest joys was the
Holy Rollers. My parents' sedate form of religion didn't appeal
to me, but Elva Mae, the sweet little black girl who helped Mama
out in the kitchen, used to take me to the services at the Tee's
Chapel. And I just fell in love with the singing and the preaching
and all the rest of that good old-time religion.
It would start with everyone quiet and reverent. The preacher
would warm up with a few quotes from his Bible. Then, out of
nowhere, he'd catch fire and give everyone hell. I'm here to tell
you, there ain't much forgiveness in that old-time religion. That
particular savior was a mean son of a bitch. If you sinned, honey,
he was going to get you, no doubt about it. "All of you down
there in this congregation is sinners," the preacher would
thunder. "And no sinner's going to escape hellfire and damna-
tion. No sirree, no sirree."
Crouching down next to Elva Mae, I just knew I was one of
the real dyed-in-the-wool sinners. Sinning when I broke a school-
house window during the summer so that Al and my friends
could play in a classroom. Sinning when I hung out with Preston
Lee and his brothers, boys who knew all the best cuss words and
weren't afraid to teach me how to use them. Mama, though,
would have a fit if she caught me saying them, so I had to be
careful. Still, I got into the habit of using them, and they slip out
to this day. They sure do give a satisfying jolt to a sentence.
And most especially I was a sinner at watermelon harvest time,
when we raided our neighbors' fields. Not that we needed to. So
many watermelons were grown that lots were left to rot in the
fields. But we were thieves, we were excited by the dark notion of
going out and stealing somebody else's. And it was hard work,
too. When you're six or seven, the damn things weigh a ton —
you could barely struggle along with one in your arms. But it was
worth it when you got into the shade of a tree and started
munching.
My private catalogue of sins was invariably interrupted by a
"shouting." A woman in the congregation would suddenly leap
to her feet and scream, "Oh, my Lord! Oh, my Lord! I'm in the
arms of Jesus! I'm in the arms of Jesus! Let me pray in the arms
of Jesus!"
AVA: MY STORY
That kind of outburst was like a red flag to the rest of the
folks. All the sinners would go wild, shouting, praying, running
down the aisles, leaping in the air. I guess it helped to drive the
sinning out of them. I watched, holding my breath, my little eye-
balls out on stalks. Then the frenzy would ebb out of them, the
preacher would ease them back to normal, and we'd sing another
hymn or two. Those lovely, surging, soaring spirituals sung in
harmony and lifting the soul. Then we'd file out, peaceful and
purified. And I'd plod home with Elva Mae, making pious resolu-
tions about that watermelon-stealing stuff.
Though it didn't appeal to me, my parents' religion must have
helped them when it came to the real tragedies of their lives. But
even religion was not enough to help Mama get over something
that happened twelve years before I was born, something that I'm
sure left its tiny mark on me.
In those days, before electricity, everyone was up at first light.
On this particular day, Daddy, in fact, had been up before
daylight because he and some men were using dynamite to clear
rocks and tree stumps from one of his fields. The dynamite sticks
were ignited by firing caps, and those explosive caps and the dy-
namite had to be kept well apart.
The caps were kept in the house, in a drawer of the dining-
room dresser. It was an important drawer, because Daddy also
used it to store the money bag that contained the takings from
the country store he was operating at the time.
Now, as Daddy was handing out the caps to the work team,
one fell to the floor unnoticed. Mama came out of her kitchen a
little later and began tidying up the hearth as usual. She swept
odds and ends off the floor and into the fire, including, though no
one knew it, the explosive cap.
Little Raymond, Mama's firstborn son, was up early, too. He
had helped himself to one of her cheese biscuits and was standing
in front of the fire munching it when the explosion occurred. The
noise was horrific, and at first no one knew what had happened.
But with a terrible intuition Mama dashed back into the dining
room and found Raymond lying on the floor. She scooped him
up and dashed out to the back porch, where she tried to stand
him up on the ironing board to see the extent of his injury. Bap-
pie, racing behind her, never forgot the look of complete despair
on Mama's face. She clasped her small son in her arms and
turned to look for help. But nothing was available, only a slow
AVA GARDNER
horse-and-buggy ride to Smithfield eight miles away. Raymond
only lived until he reached the hospital there. He was two years,
two months, and fifteen days old when he died.
I knew, as I grew up, that Mama always held a deep ache in
her heart for Baby Raymond. And that ache helped forge the
strong bond that kept Mama and Daddy solidly together through
all those years. It was a bond that gave both their marriage and
their partnership a dimension of strength, certitude, and con-
tinuity that I've never been able to find. All things considered, I
think they were lucky. They belonged to a generation that made
their vows and kept them.
10
TWO
n Johnston County, North Carolina, you
couldn't be any kind of farmer at all without
a mule. I can't remember if ours had a name,
but I do remember that I loved him. And as much as he was
capable of love, I think he loved me in return. When I was tired, I
could hang onto his tail and he'd give me a tow. And though he
could be ornery if other folks came too near, he never ever kicked
out at me.
Our region was known as the Bright Leaf tobacco belt, a place
where that bright yellow tobacco had grown and thrived since
long before Columbus arrived. Ironically, Sir Walter Raleigh, the
man who introduced the leaf to the British Isles, is also credited
with bringing over the potato. And it was that crop's failure in
Ireland in the 1800s that brought my father's forebears across the
Atlantic and into the tobacco-growing business in North Car-
olina. But while Raleigh, the state capital, is named after that
sterling gentleman, it was a Frenchman, Jean Nicot, who in the
1500s sent a package of the famous weed to Catherine de Medi-
cis, the queen of France, and started the Western world on the
smoking habit.
I don't suppose anyone as regal as a queen puffed tobacco
through a clay pipe or wrapped it in a scrap of newspaper. But
when me and my small gang wanted to acquire the taste, that's
just what we did. We'd sneak into the barns where the tobacco
leaves were hung to dry, tear off a bit, wrap it in newspaper like
a cigar, and light up. Naturally, we got sick as dogs. That should
have cured us of the habit, but we were nothing if not game.
11
AVA GARDNER
Lesson two came when I was working in the fields toting water
for the workers. My brother Jack called out, "Hey, sugar, bring
the water across here and I'll give you a present." I did as I was
told and was handed a black wad of tobacco.
"You chew it," said Jack, grinning at my puzzled look.
An old black lady a few steps away joined in the laughter.
"You stick the plug in the back of your cheek, honey, and hold it
there," she said.
Sound advice, but I was too young to take it. I swallowed the
plug in one awful gulp and got sick all over again. Jack, being
Jack, laughed his head off. Still, as my only brother, I just adored
him and was proud to be his little servant, constantly cleaning his
shoes and ironing his shirts. As a result, to this day I'm one hell
of an ironer.
Jack, as you might suspect, was always getting into trouble.
One time he had a great idea for making a little money on the
side. He invested his wages in a load of fresh fish and traveled
around our neighborhood, bartering the fish for farm products
which he resold at a small profit. But on one trip, a smooth cus-
tomer bartered Jack's stock of fish for crocks of corn whiskey.
"You just pour the contents into screw-top fruit jars for easy han-
dling," he told Jack. "This'll give you a bigger profit than vegeta-
bles."
So Jack, knowing that Daddy's away for a few hours, sets up
this bar selling White Lightning at about five cents a shot. And
seeing as how North Carolina was dry as a bone, he did a roar-
ing business. Now corn whiskey is strong stuff, around one hun-
dred and sixty proof. And if it hasn't been distilled properly, it's
powerful enough to blind you or even kill you. So it's not surpris-
ing that when Daddy came home, he found fifteen of his friends
and neighbors stretched out around Jack's bar, dead drunk. If
Jack hadn't been too old to wallop, Daddy, who knew the dan-
gers of that stuff, would have made mincemeat out of him. But
he did close Jack's fish route and roadside bar. Permanently.
Ours was a neighborly and self-sufficient society. Families lived
in white-painted clapboard houses dotted among the fields, with
tobacco barns at the back and wicker rocking chairs on every
porch. Back then, people raised most of the food they ate. Hogs
were kept and the pork was home-cured. You'd go to the local
mill and grind your corn for the cornmeal. Every housewife also
12
AVA; MY STORY
had her stock of fruit and vegetable preserves. So if you ran short
of bottled tomatoes, you could swap your jars of peas and
peaches with a neighbor and get a fresh supply. And there were
small local stores scattered around, like one Daddy ran for a
while. They carried some canned goods, tobacco, sugar, season-
ings, a few sweets, kerosene, and hardware for the fields.
Smithfield, the nearest big town, was only eight miles away.
But because those eight miles were on narrow dirt lanes that fre-
quent rains turned into muddy disasters, Smithfield might as well
have been on some other planet. I mean, Smithfield had paved
roads and built-up sidewalks and even electricity, things that
didn't reach our neck of the woods until 1945 or 1946.
And Smithfield had one further attraction: an honest-to-God
movie house. And Mama, bless her, became addicted. Which
meant that if I had the pocket money for a ticket, I could always
get a ride into town. I sat up in the balcony, where the seats were
cheapest, and had as good a time as the law allowed. But if I ever
thought even for a minute that somebody like me could ever end
up up there, I surely don't recall it.
The best way I knew to earn that pocket money was to work
in the tobacco fields, where I surprised myself by becoming fasci-
nated by the intricacies of the growing cycle, a process that had
as many challenges, failures, and successes as anything I saw up
on that screen in Smithfield.
You'd start the tobacco off as early as the weather would al-
low, around January if possible. The seeds were real tiny so you
mixed them with sand and scattered them in a prepared bedding
plot. Then you put a big lightweight canvas over everything to
protect the seeds from the frost. Once the sun started to shine
regularly, you removed the canvas and watched the seeds sprout.
The second half of April, when the sprouts were a few inches
high and pretty sturdy, was the moment for replanting, or what
we called, "puttin'-in-tobacco time."
This was the occasion when our mule really was in his glory,
because the replanting was done with the aid of a muie-drawn
contraption that, I swear to God, must have been invented by
some demented genius way before the Civil War. The driver sat
up front on top of a barrel of water. Not that he was really driv-
ing— the mule knew as much about the process as any human
being, plodding slowly along the furrow until he reached the end.
13
AVA GARDNER
During that walk, the driver would release a gush of water. Not
much water, about a cupful. And the two planters, who'd be sit-
ting backward in the back of the contraption with a pile of to-
bacco plants on their laps, would reach down and plug a plant in
the wet spot. At least, that was the theory, though the process
never seemed to work quite that way whenever I tried my hand
at it
Every year at this time, regular as clockwork, Shine would ar-
rive. Shine was my black brother and dearest friend. Together
with Al Creech, we were a threesome united against the world.
Or at least against as much of the world as we could see. The
three of us laughed, worked, and played together endlessly.
Shine was tall, skinny as a rail, and real midnight black. As far
as I knew, he didn't know who his parents were, or where they
came from, or even where he came from. He didn't seem to know
exactly how old he was, either, but he knew he was very much in
this world and he was enjoying it. He stayed in the house with
us, ate with us, and was part of the family. And then one morn-
ing every fall, I'd wake up and Shine would be gone without a
good-bye. I'd always feel sad at his departure.
Then, when I was about ten or so and Shine maybe three or
four years older, Mama began to look at us with a sort of funny
look in her eyes. In the Deep South, Mamas get very thoughtful
about that sort of thing. All I knew was that the next "puttin'-in-
tobacco" time arrived and Shine did not show up with it. 1 never
saw him again, but I remember him and love him to this day.
By July, the leaves on the thick stalks would be turning yellow
from the bottom up. You'd crop off the yellow ones — what's
known as "ripe" tobacco — and come back in a week and keep
going up the stalk. Just break them off with your hands and stack
them up in your arms, that's the way I used to do it. Then I'd
carry iny stack to the nearest little truck that would be towed
between the rows by mules. In case you haven't gathered by now,
our Johnston County mules were very educated. You hardly
needed to tell them, "Get up" or "Whoa!" If you did, they'd look
at you as if you were out of your mind. They knew what it was
all about. In fact, I'm surprised they didn't have a mule union to
protect their interests.
Next, the bundles of leaves were strung up on tobacco sticks.
This was skilled, swift work, and the ladies of the household
14
AVA: MY STORY
would usually help out. At the end of the day, you'd take the
sticks to the tobacco barns, where the leaves would be hung up
to dry in the warm air that came off a wood-burning brick fur-
nace.
Getting the proper temperature for the inside of the barn was
the crux of the operation. At ninety to ninety-five degrees, you'd
begin to see the yellow color you wanted. Then you'd build the
temperature to about a hundred and twenty-five, at which point
the little veins in the leaves would begin to dry. But the thick
stems, the largest part of the leaf, would still have a lot of
moisture in them. So you would let the heat run up to about a
hundred and sixty to one hundred and eighty degrees to dry that
part out, too.
To get all this right, you had to literally live with the tobacco.
Night and day, you had to be there. I used to go and sleep nights
in the barn with Daddy, and he'd point his finger at the ther-
mometer and explain to me that if the temperature wasn't exactly
right, the crop would be ruined. I thought it was all terribly excit-
ing, and, what with the lamplight, the hot air and the sense of
being there when everything important was going on, I guess it
was.
Once the stem was dried and the tobacco cured — a process
that took about six days — the leaf would be almost stiff; we
called it "killed out." The next step was letting it come "into
order," which meant opening the bam doors and letting the night
air in to soften the leaf. That also needed a lot of experience,
because if the leaf got too brittle, it would crumble.
At this point, everything would be graded into different
classes, from the best to the worst. I can still see Aunt Ava, the
only aunt I knew from Daddy's side of the family, sitting at the
long grading bench, which was divided into little pens. She would
inspect each leaf as carefully as you'd examine material for a
fancy dress. The very finest leaf was first class, then came second
and third and down to what they called the trash.
Finally, in the latter part of August, the warehouse would open
up in Smithfield, and you'd start laying your tobacco out on the
floor for examination by the auctioneers representing the various
tobacco companies. It was a scary time, because the crop you had
worked so hard on for all those months was out there taking its
chances with everyone else's.
15
AVA GARDNER
When it came to prices, I think the best we ever did was about
twenty-five cents a pound, and that didn't last. I can remember
how Daddy's hand gripped harder and harder in mine as the
prices were called, and how the faces of some of the farmers were
gray with anxiety as they left the auction hall "Jesus Christ, all
they're offering is ten cents a pound," they'd say. "God almighty,
we were getting nine cents a pound when they first opened the
auction halls in 1898. How do they expect us to stay alive?"
I was seven years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. 1
didn't even know what a stock market was, let alone a Depres-
sion. All I was curious about was what my older sisters were up
to. Especially Bappie, who'd gotten fed up with William con-
stantly chasing girls and had decided to divorce him. And, honey,
was that ever a scandal There had never been a divorce in either
the Baker or the Gardner family, but Bappie just said, "Aw, what
the hell, there's gonna be one now."
Not only did she get that divorce, she sailed off to get a job in
New York City! She wrote regularly to Mama, though, and you
didn't have to read far between the lines to know that Bappie
was having a very hard time. She understood about the Depres-
sion, all right, even if I didn't. I had not even an inkling that
during the next few months my world was going to collapse
around me.
Daddy and Mama knew. Daddy knew because of falling prices
and what was happening in the countryside. Mama heard rumors
that soon became reality. The Brogden school authorities had to
make cuts in line with the faltering economy. The Teacherage
system was just too expensive. The seven teachers would have to
find other lodgings, pay for their own accommodations, do their
own cooking and cleaning, and drive or walk to school. So
Mama was out of a job, and Daddy's tenant farming was not
enough to make us a living.
But Mama had a good friend in Newport News, the huge ship-
building port and navy base up North on the Virginia coast. This
friend ran a boardinghouse that catered to shipyard workers, and
she knew of a similar place that Mama could take over. There
would be no shortage of boarders who were sure to love Mama's
cooking and care, and Daddy might be able to get a job up there
as well.
As if he could. Daddy was now fifty-five. He had been born in
16
AVA: MY STORY
the country and raised to be a farmer. He'd lived and toiled on
the land, loved its sunsets and sunrises and the friends it brought
him. It didn't seem possible that he could tear up these roots and
survive.
Mama, though, was different, and so was I. I really took it all
in my stride. Of course I was sorry to leave my friends and the
farm, but those twelve years of country life had left me with a
naive kind of spunky confidence. I'd have to go to a new school,
make new school friends . . . but so what.
What was more worrying was Daddy's cough. It had been per-
sistent for quite a while now, even growing worse despite all the
cough medicines Mama was always pouring down his throat.
After a while, I just got used to hearing it.
17
THREE
hen you are poor, dirt poor, and there
is no way of concealing it, life is hell In
the country, where there is work and
food and friends of the same age and background, you may never
know you're poor. But when you restart life in a big city, oh,
baby, does that condition begin to hurt.
When you are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and you have to go to
school every day in the same little green coat that Mama bought
at a cheap sale, and the one skirt and the same sweater that you
wash every other night and smooth out to dry, you know you are
poor. For four years, one coat, one sweater ... all I wanted to do
was die. You're an adolescent, you're pretty, oh, how you'd give
anything, hold your breath, for something pretty to wear.
I should have known that first day we set off in our old bor-
rowed car to drive to Newport News that things were going to be
difficult. It wasn't all that far — a hundred miles at the most — but
crammed into the backseat and holding onto my dog Prince for
dear life, it seemed like a thousand to me. Then, when we
stopped for gas at a filling station, Prince leapt out and took off. I
shouted after him but he didn't stop. We waited and waited but
he didn't come back. I pleaded with Mama and Daddy to wait
even longer, but they finally said, "Ava, honey, we've got to
move on. He might never come back." And he never did.
We reached Newport News. It was a real city, a hell of a lot
bigger than even Smithfield. Our boardinghouse stood on a side
street near the James River. It was a big, three-story clapboard
18
AVA: MY STORY
building, a bit run-down and in sore need of a coat of paint.
Mania not only kept it spotless, she also cooked three meals a
day for the dozen or more shipyard workers who were our
boarders. And there was none of this "just orange juice and cof-
fee" nonsense for these characters. They got bacon and eggs, grits
and hash and hot biscuits for breakfast, and meals just as big for
lunch and dinner. Once in a while, a marvelous black woman
named Virginia would come in to help, but basically Mama did it
all. She was so strong, and she worked so hard.
At my new school, I discovered soon enough that compared to
the upper-crust tones of Virginia, my North Carolina twang was
something fit only to be laughed at. On my very first day, the
lady teacher called me out to answer questions in front of the
whole class. After all, I was the new girl, this strange little hill-
billy.
"Your name?"
"Ava Gardner." The accent was pure Johnston County, died-
in-the-wool country. The teacher smiled, the other girls howled
with laughter.
"And what does your father do?"
"He's a farmer."
Even more laughter. Imagine a farmer in a shipbuilding town
like Newport News. I didn't think it was funny at all. In fact, my
blood still boils when I think of how that teacher went out of her
way to humiliate me. She could have taken me aside and asked
me the questions quietly and sympathetically, but she didn't. And
you never forget or forgive that kind of treatment.
One thing was true, though. There were no jobs for tobacco
farmers in Newport News. For some reason, maybe boredom,
maybe desperation, Daddy went off to spend some time with
Bappie in New York. He came back to Newport News with his
cough made worse by this terrible chest cold, and from then on,
poor darling, he never had another well day. Looking back now I
know that Daddy faced up to life and the bitter defeats it brought
with a quiet courage. They say that the last enemy is death, and
Daddy was facing him in his usual quiet, orderly way.
When he first got back, Daddy had to go into the hospital for a
week or two. The doctors said he had a streptococcal infection of
the bronchial tubes. There were no drugs for that sort of thing in
those days and we had no money for hospitals either. When
19
AVA GARDNER
Daddy came back home5 Mama arranged for all of us to sleep in
one little room about the size of a bathroom. For over a year, I
slept on a pallet on the floor, until Daddy got so sick that the
sound of his coughing kept us all awake. Then Mama had to take
one of the rooms just down the hall, which she could have rented
out to a shipyard worker, and moved Daddy in there.
I shall never forget Mama in those hard days. She'd given
Daddy a little bell that he could ring if he wanted anything, and
when that bell tinkled upstairs Mama would leave whatever she
was doing and race up the stairs and open his door with a smile
on her face. Not a fake smile, a real one.
I only saw my mother cry twice in her life. The first time was
back in Brogden, when Daddy had had one white lightning too
many the night before, and she probably figured that a few tears
wouldn't do any harm in bringing home the seriousness of the
offense. But the second time, in the kitchen in Newport News,
broke my heart.
She came in from the markets with her heavy shopping bags
and plonked them down on the floor. She sat at the table, put her
head in her hands, and began to cry. She wept uncontrollably;
her grief was endless. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know
what to say. She told me she was crying because her feet hurt,
but I knew it was because events had somehow overwhelmed her.
I went and put my arm around her, and eventually she stopped
crying, wiped her eyes, and smiled.
Mama had this lovely natural warmth, an enormous capacity
for love and fun. She even loved all those shipyard boarders — she
considered them all her children, just as all those young women
had been when she was running the Teacherage. Coming from a
household of nineteen, I guess having a large family was part of
her heart.
My own feelings were different. I know now that our boarders
were all hardworking folks, but at the time they seemed like terri-
bly revolting old men to me. I hated their scruffiness and their
newspapers all over the floor, and I hated their eyes as they
looked at me. They never touched me, but they tried to flirt, and
even though I was only thirteen years old, I instinctively knew
what was going on. I wasn't ashamed of my parents, but I was
ashamed of that house. I was ashamed of all those men who were
always sitting or lying around. I couldn't bring a girlfriend home,
20
AVA: MY STORY
and as for a boyfriend . . . that was potentially an even more
embarrassing situation.
I was growing into adolescence in Newport News, and I have
to say that Mama was not very helpful to a teenage girl. We may
not have been very deeply into religion, but into sex we were not
at all. Nothing was ever talked about; Mother never ever told me
anything. Even having had seven children made no difference.
The subject was forbidden. If it weren't for the older girlfriends I
made at Newport News High School, my ignorance in that area
would have been total.
In fact, I can clearly remember the moment when Mama finally
realized I was growing up. I was in the kitchen with her; she was
sassing me and I was sassing her right back. Now, Mama didn't
take kindly to her young 'un being cheeky in her own kitchen,
and she'd raised her hand to reestablish discipline. I was getting
ready to duck when she looked down at me and, I swear to God,
for the first time she noticed what was happening to my figure.
Well, she might not have blushed, but she sure was confused. She
had a young lady here, and you don't take swipes at young
ladies. Mama lowered her hand and covered her embarrassment
with a gruff, "And what's more 111 put a bra on you, young 'un."
After that, Mama never lifted a hand against me as long as she
lived. And Bappie intervened at some point and said, "Don't you
put a bra on that child until I bring a proper one down from New
York." In those years, breasts were considered slightly improper
and had to be flattened out, and Bappie wanted to spare me one
of the methods used in North Carolina: tying a baby's diaper
around them and fastening it tightly behind with a safety pin.
With all this going on, you can imagine just how terrified I was
on the morning of my first period. I knew you didn't talk about
those things, especially not to Mama. So I flew to Virginia, the
lovely fat lady who helped Mama out in the kitchen, whispering
desperately that I was bleeding to death. Virginia hugged me to
her and exclaimed at the top of her voice some of the most won-
derful words I've ever heard in my whole life:
"Oh, Lord, honeychile. Bless you, bless you. Honeychile,
you're a little woman now! A little woman!"
In a couple of sentences she'd restored my faith in the world,
but there was more trouble in store. I had to go to the drugstore
21
AVA GARDNER
to buy Kotex, the man behind the counter handing me the pack-
age with a grave face, an ordeal I remember to this day.
Next came my baptism. It was considered very fashionable by
all the girls at school; you simply had to do it. With my body
changing the way it was, I was worried about the ceremony, so I
went to see the parson. He wasn't in, so I confided my dilemma
to his wife, and she — and 111 never forgive her — said in a lordly
fashion, "Oh, don't worry, dear. God will take care of every-
thing."
And God didn't take care of anything.
Unlike North Carolina, where baptisms often took place in a
river near the chapel, our local Baptist church came complete
with a sort of deep concrete bath behind the pulpit. That location
meant, however, that everyone in the congregation could have a
super view of what was going on. I was put in a thin shift and
dunked deep under the water. When I came up, the fabric had
turned sheer and stuck to me in such a way that my whole body
was plainly revealed, and what seemed like a thousand shocked
eyes were staring at me.
I felt humiliated, totally shamed. It was the worst experience I
have ever had in my whole life. I hated religion for having ex-
posed me in this fashion. And when I went around to this same
preacher and asked shyly if he might perhaps come and talk to
Daddy, because he was very lonely, he never did. Maybe we
weren't good enough Christians for that.
So Daddy just lay there and slowly died. Daddy was never a
complainer, so you wouldn't have known whether he was in pain
or not, but I'm sure that racking cough must have been terrible.
As often as I could, I went up to his room and read the papers to
him. He loved hearing about politics, he adored President Roose-
velt, and just being near him gave me a sort of peace and reas-
surance. But when he'd fall asleep while I was reading, Pd get
angry, thinking: Why doesn't he stay awake and listen? But I
suppose that was just the unthinking selfishness of childhood.
Daddy died in the hospital in Newport News, but we took him
back to North Carolina and buried him in the graveyard where
generations of Gardners lay. At the time I thought, I'll survive. It
wasn't until much later that I found out how much I missed him,
found out that some part of me lay in that grave with him. Years
later, and another lifetime away, at Grace Kelly's wedding in
22
AVA: MY STORY
Monaco, I watched her strong, vibrant father walk her down the
aisle and I couldn't help but think, If only I had a father like him
to lean on. I still carry a deep sense of guilt because I feel I didn't
do enough to help Daddy in those last sad days. I torture myself
with having failed him, I truly do.
Whether I was prepared or not, though, my life was moving
on, and it was as a sophomore at Newport News High School
that I had my first date. And what girl ever forgets her first date!
His name was Dick Alerton. Not only was he a senior, but he
was handsome, a football player, and very bright to boot. He
was also, and this was one of the things that was made quite
clear in those days, from a different social class than me.
One of my girlfriends, who was also in his social class, brought
him over to meet me one morning, so I guess he'd checked me
out beforehand. I looked at him, and oh, my God, in one second,
I was in love. He asked me for a date, and I said yes. That after-
noon, I tried to tidy up the living room just in case I couldn't
intercept him at the front door and he had to come in. I tried so
hard. The shade over the front window, an old pull-down thing,
was in tatters, so I took a pair of scissors and trimmed off the
edges, but it still looked dreadful.
Dick had a car, a little Buick, and as soon as it pulled up I was
out the door so fast I don't even think Mama knew I was miss-
ing. We went to the movies, which is what a date meant in those
days, but I can't say as I remember the film. I felt so awfully shy I
was shaking inside. I didn't know what to say — I didn't have
anything to say. Afterward, we went to a little drive-in joint for
hamburgers, and as we drove along I read the neon signs as my
attempt at making conversation: "Gulf Oil ... Dairy Queen . . .
Joe's Burgers." I couldn't have been much more than fourteen
years old. If I hadn't been so shy and frightened, I'm sure Dick
would have been very friendly. As it was, he never asked me out
again.
The fact that I can't remember what film Dick and I saw tells
me a lot about how confused my state of mind must have been,
because at that time I adored films. And above all other actors, I
adored Clark Gable. I'd seen him in Red Dust with Jean Harlow.
I practically swooned when he took off his shirt in It Happened
One Night. I didn't even hold it against him when he let his eye
rove over those Tahitian girls in Mutiny on the Bounty. And the
23
AVA GARDNER
fact that most of the women in the civilized world felt the same
way I did meant nothing to me. I reserved to myself certain pro-
prietary rights. Clark, I was sure, would understand my adora-
tion.
And more than anything else, I wanted Clark Gable to play
Rhett Butler in the forthcoming version of Gone With the Wind.
Now novels, even big-selling ones, didn't usually find their way
into my life, but, in a burst of intuition, our English teacher had
announced it as the class literary project for the next semester.
We fell on the book like small wolves, devouring it. I read it all,
then I read it again. The image of Scarlett, Melanie and Ashley
lounging on the veranda of Tara was etched in my heart. I could
smell the perfume of the dogwood, see the blaze of lilac and
azaleas, not to mention those bright dark eyes and divine smile of
Mr. Butler. After all, the great plantation houses of Georgia had
been just down the road a piece from North Carolina. And all us
girls were Southern ladies at heart, just waiting for our own ver-
sion of Rhett Butler to appear from behind a cloud of cherry
blossoms. When Clark finally got the role, I felt that my fervent
wishes just must have played a part.
Unfortunately, no fictional heroes were around to solve the
problems facing Mama and me. And one fact was becoming in-
creasingly clear. The boardinghouse income was barely enough
to keep us going. We had no money. I had to go to work.
I approached Mama with my big decision. Pd leave school and
get a job somewhere. Mama just about had a fit.
"Now listen here, young 'un," she said. "The most important
thing that's happening to you now is your education. You're
going to keep going to school here ..." There was a momentary
hesitation, and I knew that Mama had something else on her
mind. She could no more conceal a secret than she could tell a lie.
"At least," she added finally, "until the end of this semester."
"And then what?"
"We might go back to North Carolina."
That was exciting news, all right. "Back to Brogden?" I asked.
"No, but to the same sort of job. And to Wilson County,
which is next door to Johnston. You've been to Wilson County.
The place is called Rock Ridge. But you finish out your semester
here first."
We did go back to North Carolina, as broke as when we left.
24
AVA: MY STORY
And when I returned to school there, I faced another dilemma.
Back in Newport News, since I was on a secretarial track, I'd
been allowed to bypass subjects like math, history, and French to
concentrate almost entirely on typing and shorthand. But the au-
thorities at the Rock Ridge Teacherage stated flatly that in order
to get my diploma, I had to find room in my schedule for most of
the subjects I'd abandoned in Newport News. Which meant I had
to compress two years of study into one. That was one damn
hard year, I can tell you.
But just when I felt I deserved a reward, my rascally brother
Jack, who had a good job by then, came up with a surprise.
"Ava, honey," he said in that laughing, cheerful voice of his.
"You're going to round off your education with a year at the
Atlantic Christian College in Wilson. And I'm going to pay for
it."
Atlantic Christian may not have been Harvard, but it was a
fine college, and it included all the odds and ends that go with a
college education: sororities, football and baseball teams, drama
and debating societies. Once again, I concentrated on shorthand
and typing. We still had no money, and I had to be driven in
every day by a girlfriend who lived nearby, and driven back every
evening.
And Mama, bless her, still ruled my private life with the strict-
ness of a mother superior in the Carmelite order. Oh, yes, I was
allowed a boyfriend, but hanky-panky of any sort was strictly
forbidden. We stole a kiss or two between hand-holding, but that
was it. I knew all the kids at school were necking like crazy in the
backseats of cars, but I never did. Things like that, I'd been told
in no uncertain terms, were beyond the bounds of propriety, and
I was too scared of Mama to disagree. Mama did not approve of
premarital sex at all. "If you know a man before you're mar-
ried," she'd say to me like she meant it, "I'll see you six feet
under the ground." My upbringing was totally Victorian; I grew
up an old-fashioned, God-fearing girl, taught that marriage and
motherhood were honorable achievements. And Mama was the
eternal watchdog, intent on seeing that I stayed honorable until
the bitter end.
I must have been seventeen. It was New Year's Eve and I had
gone to a dance with a neighborhood boy I liked very much and
had dated before. By the time we got back to the house and stood
25
AVA GARDNER
under the blazing porch light, it was one o'clock in the morning.
As we said good night at the door, he took me in his arms and
kissed me. It was a gentle kiss, not passionate, and I responded in
kind.
We hadn't been there for more than two seconds before Mama
crashed through that screen door like a bull out of a trap. Honest
to God, I thought she was going to kill us both. That boy was
scared shitless. She chased him back to his car and then came
back yelling at me, "It's disgraceful! How could you do it? I will
not have my youngest daughter behaving in such a wanton man-
ner." And that was the printable part. The rest of the things
Mama called me don't bear repeating. It's enough to say I never
was so mortified in my life. I remember going to my room and
scrubbing my face and hands over and over in an attempt to
wash off some of the dirt I was sure I had contracted from that
kiss.
Later on I thought: Gee, a kiss on the porch after a New Year's
dance? It wasn't like we'd been sneaking around in the bushes, or
even been necking in his car. But as I've said, Mama was pure
Victorian, and when you see some of what's going on these days,
maybe her ideas weren't all that bad.
26
FOUR
hen people ask me about how I got
into the damn picture business in the
first place, I just have to smile. Because
the truth is, if my sister Bappie hadn't decided on the spur of the
moment to drop into Tarr's photographic studio on the corner
of Fifth Avenue and Sixty-third Street in New York City, I proba-
bly would've ended up happy as a clam plugging away behind
a typewriter somewhere in North Carolina for the rest of my
days.
While Mama and I were doing the best we could back home,
Bappie had been making her way in the big city. She was work-
ing at I. Miller, running her own section in the handbag and ac-
cessories department, in fact. She had a Canadian boyfriend who
had gone back home for a short while to consider their future,
and he'd written to Bappie asking for a photo to keep him com-
pany.
There were Tarr photographic studios dotted all over New
York in those days, but the branch Bappie had chosen was run by
Larry Tarr, one of the founder's sons. Larry took one look at
Bappie, and she at him, and to hell with a photo to send to this
Canadian guy. Larry made a big pitch for Bappie right on the
spot, and they had a mad, whirlwind love affair and got married
almost before the news had time to reach home.
Mama and I got our first taste of Larry when we went up to
visit the newlyweds the first summer after their marriage. He
turned out to be rather short, but very dapper. Not particularly
27
AVA GARDNER
good-looking but brash, confident, irrepressible, and irresistible
in the way New Yorkers can sometimes be. He took a shine to me
at once, which was pretty fortunate considering that I came back
without Mama every summer afterward. A born promoter, Larry
loved staying up late as much as I did, and it gave him a kick
to take this impressionable kid to the kinds of nightspots that
featured a dozen beautiful girls all about ten feet tall wear-
ing nothing more than a handful of feathers. "Dollface," he liked
to say. "You think you're beautiful Look at that! Just look at
that!"
It was in New York that I saw my first film star. 1 was all of
sixteen, dressed just right by Bappie, carrying little white gloves
and a little bag. The three of us were at a club that featured a live
orchestra, and when I looked across the room, there was Henry
Fonda, chatting with this very attractive woman. "See who that
is?" I whispered excitedly to Bappie. "D'you think I could get his
autograph? D'you think he'd mind?"
Larry overheard this and said, "Of course he wouldn't mind.
Go on, Dollface, walk across and ask him." I approached very
timidly across the floor, never having worn white gloves before
and feeling handicapped by that little handbag. I got to the table,
looked into Mr. Fonda's face and, fumbling with my accessories,
dropped them all, one by one, onto the floor: first the pen, then
the paper, and finally the damn handbag.
Henry Fonda, bless him, saw my total confusion and helped
me pick everything up. Immediately knowing what I was after, he
signed my piece of paper. And his friend was so sweet — she even
asked me a few questions. Where was I from? Did I go to school?
And then she said something I've never forgotten: "Oh, you're a
lovely little girl. You should go to Hollywood."
I rushed back to tell Bappie what had happened, only to find
that Larry, whose promoting instincts never took a day off, had
been busy. Our table was close to the orchestra, and the band-
leader, having watched me walk across the floor, had engaged
Larry in conversation, something that was never hard to do. Big
bands were the hottest thing going in those days, and it seems
that the orchestra leader was eager to put one together and begin
his move toward stardom. Only he needed a pretty girl singer to
help him make the trip.
Isn't that a coincidence? says Larry. That little girl you've been
28
AVA: MY STORY
watching — a nightingale! Ella Fitzgerald, the Andrews Sisters,
might have had the same talent when they were young, but Larry
personally doubted it. The young bandleader was suitably im-
pressed. Could Larry see to it that she cut a disc of her voice? She
sure did have the looks, and if she had a voice to match, the sky
was the limit.
Now I have to admit that, like an awful lot of girls my age, the
hope of my life was to stand in front of a big-band orchestra and
have a crack at the microphone. Could I sing? Of course I could
sing. Mama could sing pretty as a blackbird. If you're half Scot-
tish and half Irish and you can't sing, there must be something
wrong with you. So I left that nightclub feeling that my dream
was about to be realized: I was going to become a singer. Ad-
dresses were exchanged. And within days Larry Tarr had found a
studio with a pianist where a 78 disc could be made and offered
to the band leader.
I told Larry that the only song I knew all the words to was
"Amapola." That didn't faze him either. Just sing the song, and
let's get the show on the road — that was Larry's philosophy.
Which is how I found myself in that recording studio all alone
with a pianist and a piano. Thank God he was a fairly under-
standing sort.
Where was my music sheet? he asked. Oh, dear, I didn't know
I had to have one. I knew there were songs on music sheets —
every piano top displayed them. But I hadn't brought one. Okay,
that didn't matter. What did I want to sing? Amapola. Okay.
What key?
That stumped me. Key? I didn't know what a key was. You
opened a door with a key. That was about as much as I knew
about music in those days. Somehow we got that worked out,
too, and I piped out my little song. Larry handed the disc over to
the bandleader. More addresses were exchanged. After he'd orga-
nized the band he was going to send me the lyrics to various
songs and we'd be set to go. Oh, my God, the thought of it went
to my head like the rarest champagne. Back at school, I shared
this sublime secret with my special friends, and when they oblig-
ingly leaked the news, baby, did that lift my status.
I must have gone to our country mailbox at least a thousand
times, but I received not a single note from that bandleader. Fi-
nally, the truth sank in. I was not going on tour. Period. Oddly
29
AVA GARDNER
enough, though, I did meet that bandleader one more time. He
was leading an orchestra at a club in Los Angeles about eight or
nine years later and I was already established in pictures. He was
most pleasant — most impressed, in fact, with what had happened
to me— and, I couldn't help but hope, torn with regret as well
about his unfortunate lack of faith in the songbird from North
Carolina.
Larry's next chance to exercise his entrepreneurial talents on
my behalf came when I was at Atlantic Christian College. This is
where a man named Barney Duhan, someone I only met once
and that years later, became a key player on the team that
launched me into the movies. Barney eventually became a New
York City cop, but at the time he was an errand boy working in
the law department of Loews, Inc. On his rounds, Barney often
passed by Larry Tarr's showcase on Fifth Avenue, where Larry
had put a picture of me. When he saw my face sitting under a
fetching hat, he knew just what to do.
Because it seems that Barney had his own method of getting
dates. Whenever he saw a pretty girl, he worked hard to get her
phone number. Then, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer being a part of
Loews, he would call up and drop the magic words "MGM Pic-
tures" in every second sentence, adding the vague suggestion
"talent scout" wherever possible. How about a cup of coffee or a
drink to talk things over? One has to admit that Barney in his
way was every bit as good an entrepreneur as Larry.
Barney breezed into Larry's second-floor reception office and
started his usual routine. "Gotta compliment you on that photo
of that very pretty young girl you show in your window."
The receptionist was an experienced lady, very wary of smart
young New York boys interested in pretty girls.
"Yes," she said coolly.
"You know MGM would be very interested in a girl with
those looks."
"Would they?"
"Sure would. Now if you can let me have her phone number, I
promise you it will get straight through to the right people. I have
connections there."
"I am afraid that would not be possible. We do not give per-
sonal details and phone numbers of our models and clients to the
general public."
30
AVA: MY STORY
"Oh," said Barney.
"But I will pass on your message to Mr. Larry Tarr when he
comes in, and no doubt he will take the necessary action."
Barney knew when he had blown it.
"Oh, sure. Yeah. Thanks."
Barney left, having made his sole contribution to the launching
of Ava Gardner into the film world. But without knowing it, he
had lit the fuse that led straight to Larry.
When Larry heard about Barney Duhan's visit, he immediately
got on the phone to Bappie, on fire with excitement.
"Gardner," he said, "do you know what's happened? MGM is
interested in Ava. MGM! When can you get her up here?"
"Don't be silly, Larry," Bappie said. "Ava's in school, and
Mama wouldn't hear about her doing such a thing."
Larry was undeterred. "Well, we've got to give them pictures,"
he said. "I'm blowing up everything that we've got of her. The
whole staff is going to work all night. I'll take them over to
MGM myself tomorrow morning."
It didn't take Larry long to discover that Barney Duhan was
not exactly a big name at MGM. But he left the photographs
anyway. Bappie telephoned me back in North Carolina to let me
know what was happening and, honest to God, I was not ex-
cited. A singer with a big swing band? Now that was an idea
with magic in it. But the thought of being a movie star? Sure,
I loved movies, but being an actress had never been on my
mind.
Larry must have been a hell of a photographer, because MGM
liked those pictures. They said they would like to see me the next
time I came to New York. I was to meet with a Mr. Marvin
Schenck, in charge of talent and one of the big noises in the
MGM outfit. So, on my next school break, Mama and I came up
to New York. Mama wasn't very well at all, though I didn't
know the whole story yet, so Bappie came with me on that first
interview.
Mr. Schenck's office was normal enough: the usual desk,
chairs, bookshelves, files. I sat down and he gave me some sort of
a script with a male and female part. He read for the man and I
was supposed to read for the woman. I'd never seen a script be-
fore, I'd never even read a scene before, but that was not my
main worry.
31
AVA GARDNER
I was terribly afraid that my North Carolina accent made me,
as Bappie put it, 'Very, very Southern." She herself had been
nicknamed "Dixie" when she first started working for I. Miller
on chic Fifth Avenue, and whenever I'd visit and chat with the
other salesgirls, I would see a great big smile creep across their
faces every time I opened my mouth. People used to say I
dropped my g's like magnolia blossoms, and I guess I did.
Mr. Marvin Schenck, however, was very sweet. He listened
attentively to the first few sentences I said, and a rather abstract
expression gradually drifted over his face. I don't think he
understood more than three words out of the twenty I'd spoken.
Finally, he gave up. "Well," he said, smiling, "I think a photo-
graphic test would be better. We'll arrange that for, say ... to-
morrow?'
The studio was quite a small place over on Ninth Avenue, and
it had a tin roof. It was a boiling hot, humid summer's day, the
kind New York seems to specialize in, but I didn't care. I sat in
that studio spellbound at what was going on.
MGM was testing three people that day: Vaughan Monroe, a
big-band singer who'd made himself famous with "Ghostriders in
the Sky"; Hazel Scott, a celebrated black singer and piano player;
and . . . me. I couldn't get over poor Vaughan Monroe. His ears
stuck out, so they'd glued them back against his head and held
them in place with a wire coathanger until they dried and stuck. I
wondered about all the bother. Didn't my idol Clark Gable have
ears that stuck out? He hadn't done so poorly, had he?
Those two were the important people they were testing, I was
just someone in between. I remember I wore a dress that had
cost Mama the enormous sum of sixteen dollars: a sort of green-
ish print, with a long, flared skirt. I wore a pair of Bappie's
high-heeled shoes, because all I had were white saddle shoes,
autographed all over by the kids back at Atlantic Christian Col-
lege, wishing me luck. They were the only pair I owned, and
since I'd had them for a long time, they were pretty turned up at
the toes.
I watched the makeup people plastering everyone with this
yellow pancake stuff. It was part of the procedure in those
days — something to do with the lighting, they said. But poor
Hazel Scott; it looked pretty horrible on her black skin. It took
half an hour to get Vaughan's ears glued into place, and probably
32
AVA.- MY STORY
the same time to fix up Hazel, and I had a very hard time keeping
my face straight during all this and not laughing out loud. When
a guy's sitting there with his head in a coathanger, it is pretty
hilarious.
Then it came my turn to go in front of the camera. They said,
"Sit down," so I sat down. They said, "Look right . . . good.
Now look left . . . good. Now stand up ... good. Now walk
across the room to that piano, pick up that vase of flowers, and
come back here and place it on the table . . . good."
I didn't think it was good at all. It seemed like a complete
waste of time and I hoped they knew what they were doing. Then
they recorded what they called an interview test.
"What is your name?" And out came that rolling Southern
accent, "Aa-vah Gahd-nuh."
"Are you at school?"
"Yes, I'm at the Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North
Carolina."
"What courses are you taking?"
"I'm taking a secretarial course in shorthand and typing."
A few more questions about my life and hobbies and that was
it, all delivered in my broad dialect. The last question was: "Now
we'll sign the contract, shall we?"
Once you'd had a test, baby, you got signed up. Immediately.
It gave you no privileges to speak of, but it held you in their
power. No other studio, hearing that someone promising had
been tested by MGM, could nip in and do a doublecross. Pay?
Fifty dollars a week for seven years. As an unemployed trainee
secretary it sounded like a lot of money, but they knew what they
were doing.
Because even if you were lucky enough to have the people in
Hollywood ask you to come out, you still had to pay for your
own food and shelter. And the first year of that seven years ran in
three-month periods, so if you didn't match up to the studio's
requirements by the end of the first three months, you were out
on a limb and broke, a sure candidate to be back on the next
train home.
The people in New York were shrewd; they sent a silent ver-
sion of my test back to MGM. George Sidney, who later directed
me in Show Boat, was in charge of selecting new talent, and he
liked what he saw. I don't know whether or not George used the
33
AVA GARDNER
famous line, "Tell New York to ship her out, she's a good piece
of merchandise,5' but that attitude was a good indication of the
kind of treatment I had in store for me.
Movies may not have been a dream of mine, but I will admit
straight away that when I compared the idea of a secretarial job
in Wilson, North Carolina, with the chance of going to Holly-
wood and breathing the same air as Clark Gable . . . Well, the
choice was not hard to make.
There were however, two grave difficulties in the way. Mama
ruled my life completely. Would she let me go? More impor-
tantly, Mama was very ill and getting sicker every day. Could I
leave her?
From the time we got back to North Carolina, I knew Mama
was sick. For one thing, she was swallowing aspirin all the time,
and I wondered what she was taking all that stuff for. Poor
Mama, she'd had her seven babies, but never any medical atten-
tion to speak of except for a midwife. But she wouldn't talk
about her pains to anybody. In those days you didn't talk about
such things. It was only when my second sister, Elsie Mae, came
down to visit us one weekend that Mama told her about the
bleeding, and even then they didn't tell me, I suppose Mama
thought I was too young to know about these women's com-
plaints. But it wasn't just a complaint, it was cancer — cancer of
the uterus, and it had been going on for three or four years.
Mama hadn't wanted to complain or be a nuisance, or inconve-
nience anybody, so she'd just gone on working, looking after
everybody else and hiding away her secret as so many women did
in those days. We finally got her to Raleigh to see a doctor, but
by then it was too late for her to have an operation. The cancer
had spread too far.
When I took my screen test, I still didn't know the extent of
Mama's illness. But Bappie did, and she remembers going with
Mama to view the film. Now, as I've said, Mama was a great
movie fan, and she fairly glowed when she saw her youngest up
on the screen. "My girl's a beauty," she said to Bappie, and she
smiled.
Now came the serious business. "I can't go with her," she told
Bappie. "But she can go if you go with her."
Bappie wasn't so easily convinced. After all, she had a good
job with I. Miller's; it had taken years for her to get to be head of
34
AVA: MY STORY
her department. But Mama's word was still law, and when she
said, again very quietly, "She can't go without you," that decided
it.
So it was arranged that Mama would go and live with Inez and
her husband in Raleigh. And Bappie and I would catch the Ex-
press to the West Coast and Hollywood. I had less than no expe-
rience, I didn't know anything about anything, but part of me
had no doubt I'd end up a movie queen. And even if I didn't, I
certainly didn't have a hell of a lot to lose.
35
MYRA GARDNER PEARCE
was seven years old when Ava was born, and
I remember it very well. It was Christmas
Eve and my brother Jack and I were sent
away from home for a little while. I still believed in Santa Glaus
back then, and I was worried, afraid he wouldn't come if we
weren't there. I guess that was kind of silly, but at that moment
Santa Glaus meant more to me. I probably didn't realize what
was going to happen.
We lived in Grabtown, right out in the country, and Ava was
born at home. My father, who had a little country store, also
owned a sawmill and sawed the lumber and built the house we
lived in. It was a very nice-looking house, with five bedrooms, a
living room, a dining room, and a little kitchen that came out
from the side of the house. We needed a lot of room because my
father's sister, Aunt Ava, who Ava was named for, lived with us
some of the time.
My mother was just a wonderful cook; in fact, she was noted
as the best cook in Johnston County. She made the best fried
chicken around, and every weekend she'd bake two or three
cakes, whip 'em up in no time. She was a very caring person, very
interested in her children, as my father was. My mother was a bit
more outgoing, and more of disciplinarian, and he was more
easygoing.
We were a very close family. I always thought we had a good
life. I didn't think of us as dirt poor, which has been written time
and time again, until we are all sick of reading it. I can tell you
36
AVA: MY STORY
now we were never dirt poor. We may have had some homemade
clothes, but we always had plenty of good food. On Sunday, if
we had company drop by, there was always enough food for
everybody. We had a wonderful vegetable garden and had our
own cow for milk. I know because I wanted to do the milking
one time and failed. That seemed to be my brother's job.
Because there were seven years between Ava and me, I guess a
baby was not expected when she came along. Because of that, she
was sort of special, and everybody did dote on her. She had natu-
rally curly hair that Mama had to brush every morning before
she'd go to school, and Ava always hated that. But in the first
year of her life, we thought she was never going to have any hair
at all. She was kind of a baldheaded baby; she didn't grow a lot
until she was about a year old.
Ava was sort of a tomboy, always climbing trees. When we
lived over at Brogden, she got halfway up to the top of the
town's water tank. Everybody was so frightened to see her up
there. Finally, someone went up and got her down.
Ava was a pretty little girl, too, and everybody thought she
was so cute and wonderful, but to me she was just my baby sis-
ter. We roomed together and we loved each other, but I never got
the impression that she wanted to be in the movies. Mama loved
to go to the movies, though, and she and some of the teachers
from the Teacherage would get together and go to Smithfield to
see one most every week. Mama especially liked Clark Gable. I
wish she could have lived long enough to know that Ava did a
movie with him.
37
FIVE
hen Bappie and I stepped off the train
at Union Station on the morning of
August 23, 1941, we were immediately
struck both physically and emotionally by Los Angeles' most en-
during product: sunshine. It seemed to radiate off everything,
even the sunglasses and smiling teeth of Mr. Milton Weiss. He
held out his hand and said, "Welcome to Hollywood and
MGM."
"Thank you very much," Bappie said. I said nothing. I was still
overwhelmed by what I'd seen during our train journey across
the country. I was green as a spring tobacco leaf, and trying to
hide my nervousness behind a fixed smile.
Mr. Weiss, from MGM's publicity department, was a thin,
sharp-featured young man. He wore a light gray tropical suit and
a neat-looking Borsalino of the sort favored by Humphrey
Bogart. With his pleasant, deep voice and his anxiousness to
please, he was to be our shepherd for the next few days, breaking
me into the system.
On the way to our hotel, in a company car, no less, I liked the
bits and pieces of L.A. I managed to see, the tall palm trees and
the beautiful houses surrounded by clipped green lawns. The
hotel, the Plaza on Vine Street, was right in the heart of old Hol-
lywood. Sunset, Hollywood, and Santa Monica boulevards were
only a few blocks away. The intersecting streets were quiet and
on the narrow side, shaded with trees and lined with small one-
or two-story houses. The traffic wasn't all that heavy, there was
38
AVA: MY STORY
no smog, only sunshine and clear nights full of stars. It was thrill-
ing.
The next day began with a tour of the MGM lot in Culver
City, a site that was definitely worth seeing. Twenty-three mod-
ern sound stages, great caverns of darkness as big as aircraft
hangers, were spread out over a huge expanse of real estate that
eventually grew to a hundred and eighty-seven acres. MGM had
the world's largest film lab; MGM had four thousand employees;
MGM had a railway station, a harbor, even a miniature jungle
ready and waiting for a director who might fancy it. But most of
all, MGM had stars. More Stars Than There Are in Heaven, one
studio ad claimed, and I sure as hell wasn't about to argue.
Other studios might have better directors, or better writers,
but MGM had the stars. Greta Garbo. My old heartthrob Clark
Gable. The Barrymores. Joan Crawford. Spencer Tracy. James
Stewart. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Greer Garson. You
name it, MGM had it. Louis B. Mayer, the man in charge, liked
to think of the studio as one big family. You can guess who was
the daddy, and who were the kids taking orders. A meeting with
L.B., I soon came to understand, was to be treated as kind of a
papal encounter.
In his own fashion, Mayer wanted to take care of his stars.
MGM films were always the glossiest, with the biggest budgets,
best technicians and glamour so thick you could spread it on a
plate. The bigger stars were well paid (Clark Gable got a re-
ported three hundred and fifty-seven thousand dollars in 1941),
and the studio tried its hardest to live up to Mayer's dictum:
"Make it good. . . . Make it big. . . . Give it class."
MGM succeeded often enough to make it the most famous —
and most successful, in terms of both profits and Oscars — studio
in Hollywood. In 1939, it had released my great favorite Gone
With the Wind, and in this my first year on the lot it would turn
out fifty-two films, potboilers like the Dr. Kildare, Tarzan, and
Andy Hardy series along with the usual component of class acts
like Spencer Tracy's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. If I was going to
be anywhere in Hollywood, this sure seemed like the place to be.
What I didn't, couldn't know at the time was that I was walk-
ing onto the MGM lot at the beginning of the end. Though she
was at the height of her career, Garbo never made another film
for MGM or anyone else after 1941's Two-Faced Woman. World
39
AVA GARDNER
War II, which we were to enter just a few months later after the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, was crippling the industry's Eu-
ropean markets. And something as funny-sounding as the con-
sent decree was in the process of splitting MGM off from the
hugely profitable Loews theater chain. I may have been taking
my first nervous steps in Hollywood, but the studio system was
about to totter onto its last legs.
While I didn't know any of that, I did know that I wasn't
making the kind of money Clark Gable was, or even the hundred
and twelve thousand that Deanna Durbin, just about my age,
was pulling in. I got fifty dollars a week, and, courtesy of a little
firecracker embedded in my contract, the studio had the right to
impose an annual twelve-week layoff period during which my
pay dropped to thirty-five dollars.
Clearly, on money like that Bappie and I were not long for the
Plaza. The desk clerk there helped us find an apartment on
nearby Wilcox Avenue: one room with a pull-down bed, a two-
ring cooker, and a microscopic bathroom. Nothing classy, but we
could afford it, especially after Bappie used an introduction from
her New York boss to get a job at I. Magnin.
That same clerk worked out my bus route to the studio. Let
me tell you, honey, you want to be a film star, youVe got to be
an early riser. I was stepping out into the cold dawn of Holly-
wood at five A.M. I walked to the bus terminal about three blocks
away and took the first bus out of there to Wilshire Boulevard. A
second bus took me close to Culver City and a third one dropped
me off in front of the studio.
The nice men on the gate, who had obviously seen a thousand
white-faced kids go through in their time, told me the way to
makeup. That was my first destination. I held a piece of paper
giving me my orders — the call sheet — which informed me that I
had to report to a stage where I'd be an extra dancing in a ball-
room scene. It sounded very pleasant. But first the makeup de-
partment. I was terrified.
As soon as I walked in through the white coats and the bustle
and announced shyly, "I'm Avah Gardnuh. I was told to come
here," I realized that my statement did not electrify anybody. No-
body had ever heard of Avah Gardnuh. Nobody cared if they
ever saw Avah Gardnuh again. Oh, they were busy all right, but
eventually Jack Dawn, who was head of makeup, was told of my
40
AVA: MY STOKY
arrival, and he came out to see why I was lost. He was very
brusque. "You are in the wrong department. You should be
down in the extras' makeup department." His tone indicated that
the extras' makeup department was a sort of leper colony re-
served for juveniles like me.
Confused, I held out my piece of paper and said plaintively,
"But they told me to come herel"
"Wrong place," insisted Jack. "Extras' makeup." Of course,
hindsight would later tell me that I should have told them I was
under contract, that magic little word that makes all the dif-
ference between officer class and the lesser ranks.
I think Jack Dawn decided to be nice, for he pulled out a piece
of paper and went on, "Now here's a list of the makeup you'll
need down there" making it sound like the last circle of Hell.
And, as my eyes popped out, he went on: "Pancake makeup."
What the hell was that? "Mascara." I'd never heard of it; it
sounded like a disease. "False eyelashes." I needed artificial eye-
lashes like I needed another head. Plus a lot of other things. I
stood looking down at the list thinking, "How am I going to
afford this on thirty-five bucks a week, plus fares, plus rent, plus
food . . ."
I went to the drugstore and used up all my money, except for
the three bus fares home. Bappie looked at my purchases very
suspiciously and made rude noises. Especially about the pancake
makeup. She was right. In those days it was terrible stuff, a
bright-yellowy-colored cream. You dabbed it on with a sponge.
When you smiled everything cracked. Even Garbo would've
looked like Mrs. Frankenstein.
As a matter of fact I didn't use any of it. Somewhere in
makeup they finally got the message that this kid was a contract
player, not an extra. The cosmetics were on the house, paid for
by Louis B. Mayer. And the next time I went in I was passed to
Charlie Schamm, who was a sweetheart and did my makeup for
years afterward. Only once did I have to put my small North
Carolina foot down. Over the eyebrows. They wanted to pluck
every one out! I said a loud "Nooo!" I would have added, "If
anyone tries it, I'll kick his teeth in," but I'd already made my
point.
In Hollywood in those days they either shaved off or plucked
out the eyebrows and replaced them with a thin pencil line. Lana
41
AVA GARDNER
Turner, poor darling, suffered from this because they plucked out
her eyebrows, shaped them, and waxed them until all she could
do afterward was use a pencil.
I did let them have their way with my lips, turning them into
sort of a huge Joan Crawford scarlet blur. In fact, when I looked
in the mirror afterward I had a hard time knowing if it was me.
But that was Hollywood's standard starlet treatment in those
days: orders were to turn out a series of look-alike china dolls,
and everybody followed orders.
One member of MGM's staff who was certainly not into that
assembly-line routine was Sydney Guilaroff. He was a master
hairstylist, but my first meeting with him was awful in a way I
don't think 111 ever forget.
I was crouched in the hairdressing chair in Sydney's salon,
waiting my turn for his attention with about three or four other
girls. We were only too happy to wait, because Sydney was an
artist. He had been Joan Crawford's hairdresser, Greta Garbo's
hairdresser, God knows who else's hairdresser. But that day he
was creating hairstyles for our group of starlets. All of us were
playing walk-on parts, but on different sets. Some needed an in-
town styling, others an office or courjtry look. And Sydney could
effortlessly handle them all.
What he couldn't handle, however, was the sound of someone
chewing gum. Now you have to understand that chewing and
cracking gum are like breathing in North Carolina, part of the
normal pattern of living. I was chewing away, trying to keep
calm, when, without thinking, I cracked my gum.
I paused, frozen, but it was too late. To Sydney, it had echoed
as loud as a pistol shot, and he reacted as if he'd been struck in
the neck by a pair of hot curling irons. His voice was loud, cold,
and clear.
"Who is the girl who is chewing gum in here? Take it out of
your mouth this minute."
Had I known about Sydney's diabolical hatred of chewing
gum, I never would have dared chew at all. But now it was too
late. I did the only thing I could: I swallowed it, cowering even
lower in rny chair, trying to cringe so far down that nobody
could possibly see me. My face could have been bright scarlet for
all I knew. And I couldn't say a word, not a single word.
Sydney stalked around, looking for his victim. All the girls
42
AVA: MY STORY
looked innocent. I looked like someone on the way to Death
Row. He paused behind my chair. Instinctively, he knew he was
right. But he'd made his point, and no more humiliation was nec-
essary. He did my hair beautifully and gave me a friendly pat on
the shoulder as I left. I'd survived, and at this stage of my career,
if you can call it that, survival was the best I could hope for at the
end of every day.
Because the truth was, even in those first days at MGM, even
when all I had to do was walk on the set and hide in a crowd of
extras, I was terrified. Then I discovered that on every set there
was someone called the prop man. And the prop man had every-
thing that might be needed in a film scene, and I mean
everything. Including all kinds of drinks: coffee, tea, soda, and
the real thing. All I'd have to do was sidle up and raise my eye-
brows, and something would be handed to me in a paper cup. I
never knew what it was, and I didn't care. I never liked the taste
of any booze, and I didn't start drinking seriously until I was in
my thirties. All I knew then was that with two big chugalugs
inside me, I could calm the rising panic.
Once I got used to things, I just loved working with the extras,
especially the dress extras. Oh, boy, they were quite a superior
class of folks. They provided their own evening clothes, which
meant tuxedos or white tie and tails for the men, a variety of
evening gowns for the ladies. And no matter how old or crippled
or gray they got, they were always buoyed up by enormous
hopes. One of these days, with just the right bit of luck, being in
the right place at the right time, the right word from the right
director, they would emerge like Cinderella, ready for stardom
and all its perks.
My ambitions were nowhere near as high. I spent an awful lot
of time in what was called the Picture Gallery, run by a great
portrait artist, Clarence Bull, and his team. But great portraits
weren't what they had in mind for me. My specialty was what
was called "leg art," publicity stills of the cheesecake variety in-
tended for use and reuse in newspapers and magazines around
the country. It was not my favorite activity.
I don't know — I don't think anyone knows — how many hun-
dreds of those shots I posed for. You could have carpeted Holly-
wood Boulevard from curb to curb with my pictures. I don't
remember how many swimsuits I wore out, without getting near
43
AVA GARDNER
the water, I shot enough sultry looks around the gallery to melt
the North Pole.
Often the idea was to get pictures to match holiday seasons: I
was always a smiling Easter bunny, or a roguish lady Father
Christmas or at least one of his reindeer. With other starlets, I
began to load hay, round up chickens. "And Ava! You mean if
we got a cow you could actually milk itl Come on. I don't be-
lieve it. Ava, I bet you don't know one end from the other. ..." I
think some of those' guys working for Clarence Bull thought that
milk came from some underground spring and was packed into
cartons at the source.
They produced a cow. Fortunately, someone knew the dif-
ference between a cow and a bull. It was a milking cow and I
milked her. MGM was overjoyed. They'd actually got a starlet
who could milk a cow. Even Mr. L. B. Mayer couldn't do that.
I especially remember a record heat day in Los Angeles when
somebody said, "Okay, let's get somebody who's got good legs
and knockers and put her in a bathing suit on top of this enor-
mous block of ice." And the block they got really was enormous;
it must have weighed a ton, A huge crane was needed to get it
into position outside the Picture Gallery. And who was chosen
for the honor? Ava G. I wore a red candy-striped bathing suit,
and they heaved me up to the top. I held an ice cream cone and
smiled happily as they turned on a fan so my hair blew in the
wind as my bottom froze. It made all the newspapers. No one
ever called it an intellectual profession.
There were also lessons in voice production, in elocution, in
drama. One thing I was very determined about. That North Car-
olina accent had to go. Not only because they laughed at me — I
was sick and tired of being teased about it, it made me shyer than
ever. If ever I was going to speak a single line in a movie (which I
doubted) a voice from the Deep South was not going to help.
Today, you can talk any damn way you like in pictures, but in
those days it was very important to speak the way they wanted.
The great Lillian Burns was the MGM drama coach in those
days. In principle, she was responsible for everyone and every-
thing, from starlets like myself to Lana Turner, but in practice
she worked with you only when you had a specific part to mas-
ter. Since I wasn't in that league yet, I was sent to Gertrude
Vogeler, the vocal coach, a woman I came to love very dearly.
44
AVA: MY STORY
She was a beautiful old lady, very old, very gray-haired, very
overweight, with a million cats — well, it seemed like a million
anyway — and an ancient Chinese cook who was funnier than
anything ever seen in the movies. Lillian Burns had this fabulous
office, but poor Gertrude was way off in the back of the lot. She
also worked out of her own house on Whittier Drive, a sort of
cottage where she adopted everything that moved. The cat union
was the first to discover this and move right in, but she also
adopted us kids — the starlets. A lot of them had less money than
I did and a lot of those were sending what they had home to
small towns in places like Idaho, Nebraska, and Louisiana. Ger-
trude would take in some of these, and she'd also smuggle in
other young kids who were trying to be actors. They'd bed down
somewhere, the cook would feed 'em, the cats would sit on 'em,
and Gertrude would teach 'em.
Gertrude had a hard time with me, but she was so loving and
skillful. I can remember her sitting opposite me, her motherly
bosom going up and down, trying to get my voice a couple of
octaves closer to my navel "Sit on it, Ava!" she'd say. "Sit on it,
my beauty! Make your voice come up from down there — down
there. That's good, that's good."
Gertrude had the most beautiful voice herself. And she was not
just a voice coach, she was an institution. She'd give you a page
of dialogue to work on, and if she hadn't enough time, you'd go
back to the cottage, and by God you'd find you were into yoga
exercises and breathing and all kinds of stuff. You were not going
to breathe just from the throat, you were going to speak from
down there — down there. Every time I went back to Los Angeles
for years after that — as I'm sure so many other of her pupils
did — I went back to kiss her on the cheek and say thank you.
One thing I wasn't thankful for, then or ever, was the god-
damn MGM contract I had to sign. I had to accept any and all
roles assigned to me. I had to make personal appearances for
publicity purposes, or for any other reason they could think up,
anywhere they chose. Travel anywhere MGM felt like sending
me. But I could not ever leave Los Angeles, even when I was on
vacation, without their permission.
And the standard morals clause. That was worth a few laughs.
I solemnly agreed to conduct myself "with due regard to public
conventions and morals" and not "do or commit any act or thing
45
AVA GARDNER
that will degrade her in society, or bring her into public hatred,
contempt, scorn, or ridicule, that will tend to shock, insult, or
offend the community or ridicule public morals or decency, or
prejudice the producer or the motion picture industry in gen-
eral." My God, if we so much as were photographed in a night-
club with a cigarette, the studio would insist that it be airbrushed
out.
I decided from the very first that the contract abused my sense
of personal human rights. We were told what to do, when to do
it and how, and we were paid very little. I used to joke that we
were the only kind of merchandise allowed to leave the store at
night, but it wasn't a very funny situation. And this particular
piece of merchandise was female, Southern female. I decided
from the first that I had the right to act according to my own
principles. And if mine clashed with theirs, and they didn't like it,
that was not going to be my problem.
46
SIX
t started on my very first day at MGM.
Milton Weiss was taking me around the lot
and I was making a great effort to keep my
mouth from dropping open. The final sound stage we visited was
full of music, noise, and bustle. "Babes on Broadway/9 Weiss
whispered to me. "Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland!"
I was trying to figure out an appropriate response when I saw
someone detach him or herself from a crowd and walk toward
us. Whatever it was, it looked an awful lot like Carmen Miranda,
the Brazilian firecracker who always seemed to be living through
a perpetual fiesta. It wore a bolero blouse, a long and colorful slit
skirt, enormous platform shoes, and the biggest fruit-laden hat
Fd ever seen. The mouth smeared with thick scarlet makeup
opened and a voice said, "Hello, I'm Mickey Rooney."
Thank God for Milton Weiss. "This is Miss Ava Gardner," he
said, giving me a minute to recover from the shock.
"Hello," I said. I may have managed a smile. What the film
was about I never discovered, but everybody in America knew
Mickey Rooney. Only two years older than me — and consider-
ably shorter — Mickey was the most popular star in America,
earning five thousand dollars a week, plus bonuses. Almost liter-
ally born in a trunk to a pair of vaudevillian parents, Joe Yule, Jr.
first toddled onstage at age fifteen months, made his film debut at
six (playing a midget!), and was so successful making some fifty
Mickey McGuire two-reel comedies that he changed his name to
his character's.
47
AVA GARDNER
When he was fourteen, Mickey changed it again, this time
to Rooney, and played the plum role of Puck in a glossy Holly-
wood version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, He shared a
special Oscar with Deanna Durbin in 1938 for "bringing to the
screen the spirit and personification of youth" and he'd made
a whole bunch of Andy Hardy movies, playing a peppy son
always in need of advice from Lewis Stone's kindly father.
No wonder these were Louis B. Mayer's favorite films. Mickey
had already been through it all, and I hadn't even begun my
career.
Not that that bothered Mickey. When Bappie and I returned to
the Plaza Hotel that night, the phone rang and a voice said,
"Hello, Miss Gardner, this is Mickey Rooney. What about dinner
tonight?"
I was flustered and I reacted instinctively. I played it like a little
lady, a little Southern lady.
<Tm busy," I told him. Busy! I didn't know a soul.
I soon found out that Mickey Rooney never took no for an
answer. Every night during those first two weeks in Hollywood
the telephone rang and it was Mickey Rooney, Sometimes Bappie
would answer and cheerfully make the excuse that I was out, or
I was tired and had gone to bed e$rly; sometimes I had to do
it myself. At eighteen, you obey the S.L.G, the Southern lady
conventions, and you don't go out at the drop of a hat when a
gentleman invites you to dinner. A Southef n lady has to be
courted, and a gentleman has to be gallant, chivalrous, and pa-
tient. After all, I hadn't read and reread Gone With the Wind for
nothing.
Bappie, however, thought I should give him a chance, that he
wasn't going to keep calling me fprever. But he did go on call-
ing—forever! At least it felt like forever to me* One evening,
when Pd used up my last excuse, I said in .exasperation, "Now
listen, Mickey, I've got my sister Bappie here, I just can't leave
her here by herself." Not missing a beat, Mickey made one of the
greatest sacrifices known to man and said, "Well, let's take her
out, too."
We went to Chasen's, one of Hollywood's landmark restau-
rants. Full of the people who made Hollywood spectacular, and
they all welcomed Mickey as if he owned the place. Taking me by
the hand, he towed me around from table to table, cracking gags
48
AVA: MY STORY
and introducing me. It was so swift and spontaneous I didn't
even have time to feel nervous. I had to say one thing for him: he
sure had energy.
After that, Mickey and I started going out on a regular basis.
At first Mickey's shortness kind of stunned me, but he was
charming, romantic, and great fun, and I began to miss him when
he wasn't around. I was reared in a Southern tempo, and Mickey
had so much speed it was dazzling. His kind of courtship was as
foreign to me as the caviar we had at Romanoff's or the zombies
we downed at Don the Beachcomber's.
And like those zombies, Mickey had a powerful effect. He was
the original laugh-a-minute boy, and even the second or third
time around his stories, jokes, and gags were funny. There wasn't
a minute when he wasn't onstage. He loved an audience, and I
tried to be as good a one as I knew how. Occasionally, a voice
would sound in my brain warning that maybe life with Mickey
would be like life on a sound stage. But whenever the warning
sounded, Mickey drowned it out with a new joke.
And those were not the only fears I had. Mickey was so dif-
ferent from me. He was enthusiastic, sure of himself, and good at
everything he tried, from acting to golf, tennis, and swimming. I
may have been close to my nineteenth birthday, but I hadn't
changed all that much from that tongue-tied country girl out on
her first date who had tried to fill in the silences by reciting the
names on the brightly lit signs as we drove by. I may have seemed
like a cool customer, but that was just the constant fear and
shyness I tried so hard to conceal, the front I put on when I was
terrified of things.
I loved our nights out, dancing at Giro's or the Trocadero,
eating at smart restaurants, and all the new acquaintances I made
through Mickey — people like Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Esther
Williams, Kathryn Grayson, Elizabeth Taylor, and a young
English actor, Peter Lawford, who remained a good friend for
years.
But no matter how much fun I was having, I was not going to
bed with any man until I was married to him. Sex before mar-
riage was definitely out; in Mama's terms, even a couple of kisses
before marriage were a kind of prostitution. I was a very old-
fashioned girl, as Mickey found out after a couple of wrestling
sessions in the back of his car.
49
AVA GARDNER
One night, Mickey said, "Let's get married. Now/' Just like
that.
Corny as it sounds, that took my breath away. But I reacted,
immediately and very loudly: "No!"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm too young and you're too young. No."
Mickey, as noted, did not understand the meaning of the
word. He thought I was being coy. I wasn't. He asked me every
night. Sometimes several times a night. "Please don't start that
again," I'd tell him. "You're crazy. I don't want to marry anyone
until I'm positive it will work out." But he kept persevering. First
he won over Bappie, who, like Mama, was always on the man's
side. Finally, I said yes as well, with one proviso: not until I'd
passed my nineteenth birthday.
"Great!" Mickey said. "We'll throw a birthday party for you
at Romanoff's on Christmas Eve and we'll announce our engage-
ment there."
Now came the next obstacle. "Ava, if we're going to get mar-
ried, you've got to meet Ma."
Meet my future mother-in-law? I had never even considered
that a mother-in-law came with the package, and the idea ter-
rified me. Mickey's mother was divorced from Joe Yule, remar-
ried, and living in a huge house in the San Fernando Valley.
"We'll just drop in and give the happy news," Mickey said, bub-
bling away.
Bappie took me down to I. Magnin and we bought a pretty
black dress and all the accessories. I sure hope we got a dis-
count.
Mickey picked the evening. He didn't telephone to break the
ice, or forewarn Ma. We just arrived. Me quaking.
We breezed into the house and Mickey marched me through to
the sitting room. There was Ma sitting cross-legged on this enor-
mous sofa. At that time a famous newspaper comic strip was
running called Maggie and Jiggs. Either Maggie had been based
on Ma or the other way round. She was a complete look-alike.
The size, the glasses, the mop of frizzed hair.
Ma, with her legs tucked up under her, was reading the Racing
Form with fierce intensity. At her elbow on a small table was a
tumbler half full of bourbon and a bottle behind the glass as
backup.
50
AVA: MY STORY
"Ma," said Mickey proudly, "I want you to meet Ava. We're
gonna get married."
I was standing there, feeling like a complete dummy. Ma
stopped reading the Racing Form, slightly adjusted her glasses,
and stared over the top of them. She took a few seconds to reach
her verdict.
"Well," she said slowly, "I guess he ain't been into your pants
yet."
I was mortified. The big occasion. A great moment in a girl's
life. How could she? At the time I didn't know whether to laugh
or cry. I was just dumbfounded. And that was my meeting with
Ma.
Since then I've laughed about that night hundreds of times.
And let me add I eventually got on marvelously with Mickey's
Ma, who knew more cuss words than my entire childhood gang
put together. In fact, I got along with the mothers of all the men I
married, all of them strong, assertive women. If only I'd gotten
along half as well with the husbands, I'd still be married to as
many of them as the law allows.
The next hurdle was a meeting with Louis B. Mayer. We had
to get his permission to get married. It was in the contract. Metro
owned both of us, and did not look kindly on any change in
Andy Hardy's status. We arrived at Mr. Mayer's office together,
but Mickey went in alone. He was weeping because he wanted to
get married, and Mr. Mayer was weeping because he didn't want
him to. Father and son stuff, just like in the movies. It must have
been a great scene, because Mr. Mayer and Mickey were rated
the best criers in Hollywood.
While all this weeping was going on, I waited in the outer
office with Mr. Mayer's elderly and very disapproving secretary.
When I'd had my screen test I'd been asked, "Which would be
more important to you — your career or love?" I said, "Oh, mah
cahreah, of cawse!" And then the first thing I'd done when I'd
gotten the damn contract was to marry Mickey Rooney. No
wonder that secretary was not at all pleased. She told me icily
that it was not possible for a leopard to change its spots. I was
quite hurt at the time, knowing it was a nasty statement but not
being sure exactly what the hell it meant. I found out soon
enough.
Mr. Mayer gave in; Mickey, as you may remember, was a very
51
AVA GARDNER
determined young man. The wedding would go on, but Metro
would set the rules. Les Petersen, Mickey's personal publicist at
the studio, was put in charge of all the details, and he sold
Mickey on MGM's plan for a nice quiet, unpublicized little cere-
mony. And, as a dutiful wife-to-be, I agreed with my future
husband, even though it ruined my dream of getting married
at a beautiful ceremony dressed in a white wedding gown. I
didn't mind missing out on the big wedding, but I did miss the
dress.
Mickey and I were married on January 10, 1942, in Ballard, a
town near Santa Barbara in the foothills of the Santa Ynez
Mountains. The wedding party consisted of the two of us and
five guests: Bappie, Mickey's father, Ma and her new husband —
and Les Petersen. An official photographer from MGM took pic-
tures. I wore a simple blue suit and a corsage of orchids, Mickey
a dark gray suit, a polka-dot tie, and a white carnation. Pres-
byterian minister Reverend Glenn H. Lutz (who later moved on
to bigger audiences in Las Vegas) conducted the services with a
beaming smile, and Mrs. Lutz banged out the wedding march
and "I Love You Truly." Mickey fumbled with the wedding ring,
inscribed "Love Forever," which was probably some kind of por-
tent, given that he racked up eight marriages altogether and I
managed another two. No one shed any tears.
The wedding over, the pictures taken, Mickey and I got into
the getaway car that was to whisk us to our intimate honeymoon
retreat near Monterey — and Les Petersen got in with us. What
the hell Les was doing with us only L. B, Mayer could possibly
know. Actually, I know exactly what he was doing there. He was
personally responsible to Mr. Mayer for keeping the name of
Andy Hardy pure and unsullied. And as Mickey loved booze,
betting, and girls, not necessarily in that order, that was quite a
job, and I have to add that I forgive dear Les completely for what
he had to do.
Our little place by the sea turned out to be the enormous Del
Monte Hotel near Carmel on the Monterey Peninsula. It is also
only a stone's throw from one of the most famous golf courses in
the world, Pebble Beach. And I was soon to find out that by some
strange coincidence Mickey had a completely new set of golf
clubs, his wedding gift to himself, in the trunk.
The suite in the hotel was great: huge fireplace, a lounge
52
AVA: MY STORY
that stretched for a mile, a big bedroom, champagne every-
where. But by now I was cooling very rapidly about this honey-
moon deal. I realized that it was a bit late for the bride to
default, but I wanted to keep the moment of truth off as long as
possible.
Drinking seemed to be the only way of doing that. "Les,
let's have another glass of champagne. Plenty left. Let's have
a party." Every glass delayed procedures. Invisible masculine
signals were now beginning to vibrate between Mickey and
Les. I couldn't care; no one felt less inclined to honeymoon ac-
tivity that night than I did. Nothing to do with Mickey. I loved
him, but I needed time to think this thing through. I had been
brought up by Mama, after all, and I had not been briefed about
this next bit. This business of sex was going to ruin the entire
marriage.
I clung to Les Petersen's arm as if he were the Rock of
Gibraltar and I was in danger of being swept away by a raging
sea. "My glass needs a refill, Les. We've got all night, haven't we?
What's the champagne there for, anyway? Bridal celebration!"
Les was shocked. Brides did not behave like this. Especially when
they had publicity men with them.
The male signals were now audible.
"Well, see ya, Les."
"Oh, sure, Mick, see ya, Mick."
"There's a lot of champagne left," I wailed, but I knew that
sooner or later Les was going to unhook my arm and abandon
me. Why wasn't it like the movies ... the embrace and kiss, the
slow fade, the dim lights, the soft music?
Let me say at this point that I approve highly of the physical
side of relationships between male and female. Not only does it
make the world go round, it's marvelous. In that respect all my
three marriages were perfect; I loved each one of my husbands
just as much when I left them as I did when I married them . . .
but that honeymoon night in the Del Monte Hotel I just wasn't
ready.
Oh, it worked all right, and I was agreeably surprised. Even
when next morning, damn near as soon as the sun came up,
Mickey was out of bed and heading for the golf course. He'd
got a game fixed up with three of his buddies. That was
Mickey. He spent most of our honeymoon on the golf course,
53
AVA GARDNER
leaving you know who to hold the bag. When you came down
to breakfast, he was there. When you had your dinner, he was
there. When you went to bed, he was damn near there as well.
Poor Les.
By this time, World War II was on in earnest and after only
a week of golf widowhood Mickey and I were put on a war
bond tour. We were to drive north to San Francisco, take a cross-
country train to appearances in Boston and New York, then go
down to Fort Bragg and finish up with a big show with a lot of
other stars for the President at the White House. And since
Mickey had just finished Life Begins for Andy Hardy, publicity
for that picture could be included in the tour. MGM never
missed a trick.
On the way to San Francisco we heard the tragic news about
Carole Lombard, Clark Gable's wife. Flying back to Los Angeles
after a war bond appearance in Fort Wayne, Indiana, her plane
had crashed near Las Vegas. There were no survivors. It horrified
us all. Poor Clark, I thought. Oh, God, poor Clark. And it drove
home the point: there was a war going on.
No one took much notice of me in San Francisco. We checked
into the Palace Hotel — and got the presidential suite. I don't
think anyone revealed until later that it was the suite that Presi-
dent Harding died in. Mickey was interviewed, and I was in-
cluded in some of the photographs. Me sitting in an armchair,
and Mickey smiling on the arm because of the height difference.
But Mickey was the lion. Who'd ever heard of me? I was just
another pretty girl.
Next morning we were off on the Union Pacific heading for
Chicago, an overnight stay at the Ambassador East, and Mickey
giving more interviews to promote his new picture. On again
then by Twentieth Century Limited to New York. This time we
stayed at the New Yorker, and Bappie came in from Los Angeles
to stay with me. It had been plain to Bappie, if not to me, that
her marriage to Larry Tarr had been rocky and on the point of
shipwreck for some time now. As I've said, Larry was lovable but
impossible.
Boston, where the mayor had laid on a luncheon in our honor,
was nerve-racking. It was a terribly elegant meal, in a terribly
elegant and beautiful old house, with a terribly elegant guest list.
Oh baby, this was the first time in my life I'd ever been to a real
54
AVA: MY STORY
banquet — even seen a table laid out for a banquet — and my
knees shook under the tablecloth. It was nothing like Mama's
boardinghouse. I can't tell you the size of the plates, and the sil-
ver lined up in rows on either side, and the crystal — all those
glasses — oh God5 which one did you use first? I really suffered
through that meal, and as a kid, I was not drinking. (We won't
go into the bridal night champagne; that was pure self-defense.)
If only Pd been older and more experienced and managed a cou-
ple of quick drinks I might have enjoyed it.
Next stop Fort Bragg, the huge North Carolina military estab-
lishment, where Mickey was again given the royal treatment.
And now, en route to Washington, we had a chance to take a
side trip to Raleigh, where Mama was being cared for by iny
sister Inez. There was a pleasant sun room where every afternoon
Mama rested on a little sofa. And Mama had made herself pretty.
She'd got herself dressed to the nines to meet her famous son-in-
law. We had all the aunts and uncles and cousins and kids, and
fried chicken, a real Southern feast. And the house was filled,
which couldn't have made Mama happier because she loved peo-
ple around her. And Mickey liked that sort of situation, too, and
in my terms gave the greatest and most heartwarming perfor-
mance of his life. He entertained Mama, he hugged her, he made
her laugh, he brought tears to her eyes. He did his impersona-
tions, he did his songs and dances — it was a wonderful, wonder-
ful occasion for Mama, who we all knew was slowly dying.
Although I had loved Mickey from the start, that show he put on
moved me beyond words.
So on again to Washington for a very special occasion. To ob-
serve the President's birthday he and Mrs. Roosevelt were meet-
ing a group of Hollywood stars and entertaining them at the
White House. And Mickey and I were to be part of the group.
I've still got the newspaper clipping and the picture of all the
stars: John Payne, Gene Raymond, Pat O'Brien, Jimmy Stewart,
Rosalind Russell, Edward Arnold, Gene Autry, Jackie Cooper,
Betty Grable, Douglas Fairbanks, Dorothy Lamour, William
Holden, and Mr. and Mrs. Mickey Rooney joining that world-
famous contingent. And I think because we were so young — and
I was certainly so shy it hurt — the President and Mrs. Roosevelt
singled us out for a little special attention. My thought was: six
months ago I was in Wilson, North Carolina, worrying about
55
AVA GARDNER
what sort of secretarial job I might get, and here I am in the
White House being introduced to the President of the United
States and the First Lady. It was unbelievable — absolutely unbe-
lievable!
When we returned to L.A. we moved into an apartment good
old Les Petersen had found for us in the Wilshire Palms near
Westwood. With two bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, and
bath, it was a great improvement over the room Bappie and I had
been sharing, though I can't say I was crazy about the way it was
decorated. White walls, white carpets, pieces of fake leather fur-
niture scattered around at random made it almost as inspiring as
the average hotel suite. Not that we were there that much: I don't
think Mickey and I had more than a dozen dinners at home dur-
ing our entire marriage.
Marriage. I'd wanted to get married, all right. I loved the idea
of being married. But, really, neither Mickey or I had so much as
a clue as to what that word really meant. We had no idea that
marriage involved a meeting of the minds. That it involved shar-
ing of problems, planning together, making a life together. Al-
though Mickey had been brought up in show business and was
very sophisticated in a way, he wasn't ready for it. He'd be the
first to admit that he looked on marriage as a small dictatorship,
with you know who as the one in charge.
But I really can't say our breaking up was Mickey's fault. He
was just made the way he was and I didn't find out until it was
too late that I wasn't the right girl for him. We weren't compati-
ble. For one thing, with my parents as an example, I'd been
brought up believing that marriage was a very sacred and final
thing. I like domesticity, and though it's out of fashion to say so,
I liked the idea of cooking for a husband who came home every
night.
Well, forget that to start with. Mickey wanted to be on the go
every minute of the day, with parties, clubs, and nightly dinners
out. I didn't mind going out — I loved it — but even for me there
were limits, like always having a bunch of Mickey's friends along
with us. And when we'd wake up in the morning, if Mickey
didn't have to be on the set at Metro at dawn, two or three guys
would arrive and off they'd go to the golf course. Mickey's role
in life was to amuse the world, and he tore himself apart doing it.
Mickey clearly thought, if he thought about it at all, that a
56
AVA: MY STORY
marriage could run concurrent with his normal lifestyle: boozing,
broads, bookmakers, golfing, and hangers-on, not to mention the
heavy involvement of studio work and publicity. Honey, let's
take bookmakers for a Start. Mickey was the guy they'd put a
telephone under ;the stage for so he could be in hourly contact
with his bookies, t&felly he lost far more than he'd won; that's
how bookies manage to spend winters in the Caribbean. Occa-
sionally he won a big lump of money from the track, and I'd get
a lovely present, usually jewelry. I especially remember a beau-
tiful ring, but, by God, Mickey wanted it back the next week to
pay off his gambling debts.
For a while I felt, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. If Mickey was
going to involve himself in a thousand activities, so would I. I
took golf lessons, I took tennis lessons, I took swimming lessons
from Esther Williams, a sweet girl in my starlet group and an
Olympic champion. What I finally couldn't take, though, was
Mickey's other girls. Talk about playing the field. Jesus Christ,
Mickey played all the fields known to man.
We'd been married about two months when I woke up in the
middle of the night with these awful pains in the stomach. They
were so excruciating that I was rushed to Hollywood Hospital,
where they found I had an inflamed appendix and operated at
once. Convalescing, I sat up in bed, looking pretty and receiving
guests. Mickey rushed in and out bearing gifts and books and
spraying kisses. Theft 1 came home, happy and contented and,
God almighty, it was clear to me he'd been entertaining girls in
my bathroom and bed. My bathroom! My bed!
I screamed to Bappie for help and she tried to console me. I
screamed at Mickey and he lied as only Mickey can. No, that's
not true. Two of my husbands were the best liars in the world.
They lied with a smile on their lips and a shine in their eyes.
I know that frien who've been married for five, ten, fifteen
years make the occasional slip — I suppose some of them make it
every five minutes. But when you're just married, and your wife
is young and beautiful, and she's been away in the hospital, to
behave that way in your own home and your own bed, that's
inexcusable. I did not believe in cheating. I don't cheat and I
don't want aiiybqdy dheating on me. Maybe I'm stupid because
I know every man in the world is going to do it. But in those days
I was more trusting.
57
AVA GARDNER
There was no competition between Mickey and me about our
careers. Mickey was at the top of his profession and I was doing
publicity photos for Metro and small walk-on parts in forgettable
films. I came home and cooked and cleaned and decorated the
house, and waited for Mickey. Besides golf he usually had "a
coupla things to do" and would be "a bit late" or "work out a
few things with the director" or "slip out to the track to back a
certain winner."
MGM decided that with the wedding an established fact, they
might as well cash in on reality, and made The Courtship of
Andy Hardy. But film romance with Andy Hardy and real ro-
mance with Mickey Rooney were miles apart. We had constant
rows and reconciliations. We moved to a larger house on Stone
Canyon Drive in Bel Air. And I suppose my spirit of indepen-
dence and confidence was increasing. The quarrels continued.
Eight months after we married and after a noisier row than most,
Mickey went home to Mom and I returned to the Westwood
apartment. Mickey was working on his new film, A Yank at
Eton, on location in faraway Connecticut. He called a lot of
times, and I decided we should try again.
It didn't work, and the main reason was Mickey's inevitable
philandering. Mr. Mayer's secretary was right after all — this
leopard couldn't change his spots. Finally, it was Peter Lawford
who revealed that Mickey in his golf cart, and some little babe in
hers, were having a series of secret rendezvous, which were not
secret at all but fairly common knowledge. Peter and I dated a
lot, and danced a lot, but we never had any sort of affair. A kiss
on the cheek, a hug, and lovely friends, that's all we ever were.
As I say, I never cheated on a marriage.
I remember that final night when it became clear that life with
Mickey would always be impossible. We were at the Ambassador
with a party of Mickey's cronies. The drinking got heavy, Mickey
got drunker, and the cronies began egging him into doing silly
things. "Come on, Mickey, where's your little book, with all the
babes' telephone numbers? Share it with your friends."
And Mickey, too drank to care, pulled out the little notebook
with his list of conquests and began to recite them right in front
of me.
I left. One year and five days after the ring marked "Love For-
ever" was slipped on my finger, the marriage was finished and
58
AVA: MY STORY
the lawyers took over. They came up with the usual grounds,
"grievous mental suffering" and "extreme mental cruelty," and I
had to testify in court that Mickey did not want a home life with
me and remained away for long periods of time. I paid my own
legal fees and waived the claim I had on half of Mickey's prop-
erty, settling for twenty-five thousand dollars. I didn't want his
money. We were babies, just children, and our lives were run by a
lot of other people. We hadn't had a chance.
The divorce decree was granted on May 21, 1943. A very sad
occasion made even sadder because Mama died on the same day.
We'd expected it, known it was going to happen, but that didn't
make it any easier. You can get over pain, loneliness, disappoint-
ment, and love, but you never get over grief. That lasts forever.
59
SEVEN
n the period between 1941, when I first ar-
rived in Hollywood, and 1946, when I did
Whistle Stop and The Killers, I appeared in
seventeen films. No one noticed. The films were barely memora-
ble and you'd need a magnifying glass to pick me out of them. I
was there all right, married to Mickey, arriving at the studio
every morning right on time, a face or figure in the crowd. I
might be swirling on a dance floor, joining a gang of kids outside
the drugstore, or splashing in the water on a crowded beach. In-
visible, but there.
While people have speculated that being married to Mickey
may have helped me get my first sequence of walk-on parts, the
plain facts are that being Mrs. Rooney never gave me a single
boost in the direction of stardom. Mickey never tried to make me
an actress, never taught me anything, and never got me an acting
job.
Not that I couldn't have used some help. I was greener than
grass about everything. I'd never acted or been photographed; I
was awkward and scared stupid. Half my time on the set I was
trying not to bawl because I didn't know how to do what they
wanted.
My very first feature came in 1942. We Were Dancing wasn't
memorable because of anything I did but because it was one of
the last films Norma Shearer appeared in at MGM. Once billed
as The First Lady of the Screen, she was a five-time Oscar-nomi-
nated actress who'd been married to Irving Thalberg, the studio's
60
AVA: MY STORY
boy genius. But after Thalberg died in 1936, Shearer's star
waned, as did her judgment — she turned down both Gone With
the Wind and Mrs. Miniver — and she ended up finishing her ca-
reer in my forgettable debut. You had to be pretty sharp-eyed to
spot my few seconds walking across a hotel lobby. Not sur-
prisingly, my name was not included in the credits. In fact, I
barely remember being in the damn thing at all.
That same year I appeared in a picture I won't ever forget.
It was Calling Dr. Gillespie, the umpteenth of a series starring
Lionel Barrymore as that lovable fussbudget of a doctor who
so captivated audiences that people actually wrote him letters
about their medical problems. The film was directed by Harold
Bucquet, but I think it was an assistant director who picked
me out of my usual crowd late one afternoon and said with
a grin, "Ava, this is your big chance. Eight words." The doctor
would say, "What is it, my dear?" I would respond with some-
thing like, "Doctor Gillespie, the other patient has just arrived,"
to which he would reply, "Just show him in, will you?" Not the
most deathless of exchanges, but I wasn't in a position to be
choosy.
The Dr. Gillespie films were quickies, filmed with a minimum
of fuss on the studio back lot. Mr. Barrymore was pretty old and
sick at the time, and because of that he'd been given a special
dispensation (which only he and Clark Gable received) to go
home when the clock struck five. It was about that hour when
the time for my big line came around, and who should come
trundling up, wheeling himself along in his wheelchair, but the
great man himself.
Someone said to him, "Oh, Mr. Barrymore, it's past five. I
believe you're supposed to be on your way home by now."
What did Mr. Barrymore do? He smiled across at me and
said, "Leave that young lady with no one to look at her, no
one to respond to her line? Of course not. That would be un-
kind."
And even though I was terrified at the idea of opening my
mouth and having to produce words, I thought, What a wonder-
ful old gentleman . . . and what lovely old-fashioned manners.
Mr. Barrymore taught me something I never forgot: he taught
me what "respond" really means to an actor. When you've got a
close-up to do or lines to speak, it's best if you can react to an-
61
AVA GARDNER
other performer, to his or her facial expression or voice. That
reaction helps you to play your own part. But it isn't absolutely
necessary that they stay— a script girl can read in the line for you
and her voice will be cut in the editing.
So a lot of actors don't stay; they go back to their dress-
ing rooms or wherever. But the good ones, the great ones are
always there, because they know what that support really means.
Clark Gable and Richard Burton were always there, and let me
tell you, if you're playing a scene it's a damn sight nicer having
Clark or Richard giving you the line, or the smile, or the scowl,
instead of some disinterested script girl who's filling in for them. I
was, and still am, so grateful to Mr. Barrymore for staying after
hours, grateful for the presence and support he gave me in my
first-ever spoken line in movies. It made all the difference in the
world.
In the next picture, Kid Glove Killer, directed by that very fa-
mous director of the future Fred Zinnemann, I played a carhop
with a screen time exposure of at least ten seconds. But that film
is important to me because I met another young actor, Van
Heflin, whose beautiful wife Frances remained a firm friend for
years afterward.
Many months later I played in another Dr. Gillespie film, and
this time I had more of a part. It was called Three Men in White,
a really silly story, but Hollywood was awash with quick, silly
stories in those war years. This time it was Lionel Barrymore's
mission to check out the credentials of his very promising intern,
Van Johnson. Could he really become a doctor of integrity and
character? Would he be able to resist the temptations of pretty
nurses and patients who would waste his time and drag him
away from the stethoscope and rigorous medical procedures? I'm
sure Dr. Gillespie's eyes were gleaming behind his glasses at the
idiocy of such a plot.
Marilyn Maxwell and I were chosen from the studio's starlet
pool as potential seductresses, primed to test Van Johnson's reso-
lution. These days, given a theme like that, the titillation factor
would certainly be emphasized. In those days, with the eyes
of the Hays office everywhere, we had to play it strictly for
laughs.
I remember in one scene I had to pretend to be a sexy cling-
ing lush who was still sober enough to make a pass at Van in
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AVA: MY STORY
the emergency room. The audience, of course, already knew
that I was really a sweet young thing supporting my invalid
mother.
Van Johnson — I hope to his intense regret — resisted all the
efforts of Marilyn and myself to drag him into bed. He proved
himself a worthy successor to Dr. Gillespie, and everyone lived
happily ever after.
And for the first time film critics became aware of my exis-
tence. The Hollywood Reporter decided that Marilyn Maxwell
and Ava Gardner, "two of the smoothest young sirens to be
found," were "superb, and should delight the studio with their
histrionic conduct here." This was the first film I received any
kind of critical notice in, and, believe me, it was nice to be no-
ticed for something besides being Mrs. Mickey Rooney.
Yes, I was still seeing Mickey from time to time. He was
certain that this divorce business was purely a temporary affair,
that we would soon be back together again. We were seen to-
gether at various clubs, and the columnists, helped by Mickey's
constant assertion that reconciliation was a sure thing, put two
and two together. And in truth, on several occasions during that
period Mickey and I did end up in bed together. But I made it
very clear to him that he was very much my ex-husband. "As a
husband, you were a pain in the ass," I told him, "and as a wife I
was probably a disaster. Two disasters don't make for a mar-
riage. It's over. Period." Mickey went on making sad noises
about us until almost the end of the war, when he bumped into
a beauty queen in Birmingham, Alabama, and made her wife
No. 2.
In between those two Dr. Gillespie epics, I made the only other
of my early films that made any kind of an impact on me, even if
it didn't do much for anyone else. Though my Metro salary had
by now risen to the great sum of one hundred dollars a week,
MGM had decided that they could recoup that hundred and
more by collecting a fee for loaning me out to another studio,
whether I wanted to be loaned out or not. I got sold like a prize
hog as often as the studio could manage it, and, honey, I hated
that from day one.
This first time, though, being loaned out did have some com-
pensations. I was shipped out to a Poverty Row company called
Monogram, and, playing a sweet young thing named Betty in
63
AVA GARDNER
Ghosts on the Loose, I got my very first credit in the billing. For
some obscure reason, Betty had been kidnapped by a gang of
villainous Nazi saboteurs led by that archfiend Bela Lugosi. In
real life, Bela was a gentle man who wouldn't frighten a nervous
kitten, but as Dracula, honey, he'd filled every movie house in the
country.
If you think the U.S. Cavalry rode to my rescue, you must
be in the wrong movie. It was Leo Gorcey and the intrepid East
Side Kids, a gang of slapstick teenagers who favored baggy pants
and big caps worn sideways, who saved me from Bela's clutches.
I remember in one scene everyone had swastikas painted all over
their faces, so they could say they had German measles: that
was our standard of comedy. I don't remember much else about
the film because it was shot at such enormous speed. We had one
film stage and it took one week. Action — film — print! Even the
little experience I'd had with Metro told me that this was not a
quality film. In one scene the hero accidentally stumbled over
a prop and fell. Nobody cared. No retake. Print it! All part of
the glorious fun. The film is still shown occasionally on televi-
sion, even these days, and I believe people still laugh at it. Ric
Vallin, the hero, took me out to dinner one night and I liked that.
We both knew we were not in the running for the Academy
Awards.
Ghosts on the Loose was a piece of sweet, unsophisticated
rubbish. But it did give me one sudden thrill that I've never for-
gotten. And although it's happened a hundred times since then,
the feeling of that first wonderful moment never returned.
Bappie and I were walking in an area of Los Angeles where the
theaters didn't show the best of movies. I don't think they even
showed B pictures — the movies they played were of the XYZ va-
riety. But suddenly Bappie gripped my arm and said excitedly,
"Ava! Look!"
High up, outside one of the movie houses, there was this huge
blazing sign in electric lights:
Ghosts on the Loose
With Ava Gardner
Oh, my God, I couldn't believe it. Who in the world had
decided to put those words up there I'll never know. Perhaps
64 -
AVA: MY STORY
it was because I'd been married to Mickey; I certainly didn't
have any star status of my own. But at that moment I didn't
really care about the hows or the whys. My name was up in
lights for the very first time in my life. I've got to say it was a
thrill. Then it wore off, and I've never had that feeling again.
Ever.
EIGHT
hat can I say about Howard Hughes? A
world-famous aviator, a multi-multi-
millionaire, a very complex man, cou-
rageous, bold, and inventive? You bet. But also painfully shy,
completely enigmatic and more eccentric, honey, than anyone I
ever met. For God's sake, he and I were born on the same day,
and if you think that Capricorns fall into the same category, you
know what that means. I was never in love with him, but he was
in and out of my life for something like twenty very remarkable
years.
One of the main reasons Howard and I got on for so long was
that Howard knew he could trust me. No matter what happened,
and boy, did a few things happen, he could be certain that what
went on between us was confidential. No gossip columnist or
newspaper would report a word of it.
A mania for secrecy was hardly Howard's only eccentricity.
His taste in food, for instance, was bizarre to the point of absur-
dity. I never saw him eat anything for dinner but a steak, green
peas, perhaps a few potatoes and a small salad, followed by ice
cream topped with caramel sauce. Night after night, year after
year.
And Howard was more than ultraconservative politically. I
would say he was a racist and a bigot. Only WASPs were on his
payroll; no Jews or blacks were allowed to work in his plants. He
once explained to me his attitude toward our political system: '"It
doesn't matter to me which party gets in. I contribute equally to
both of them. So whatever happens, I get what I want."
66
AVA: MY STORY
Money was the root of Howard's influence. His father, the
founder of Hughes Tool in Houston, Texas, had come up with a
shrewd redesign in the drill head used to burrow for oil. His new
tool went through layers of rock as if they were cheddar cheese.
As a result, when the old man died, Howard at eighteen or nine-
teen was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men on
earth. And for the rest of his life, he was enthusiastic about only
four things: money, movies, aircraft, and beautiful young women
with beautiful breasts. Which, obviously, is where I came in.
Howard first made his presence felt early in 1943, when I'd
separated from Mickey but still hadn't gotten my divorce. I was
pretty lonely, and when a neighbor I was friendly with said, "You
know, Ava, Howard Hughes is a friend of mine and he'd love to
meet you," I said, "Okay, invite him around to your house for a
drink and we'll see how we get on."
Now, for some inexplicable reason, though she had said
Howard Hughes, my mind slipped and thought she'd said
Howard Hawks, the famous film director. But neither Howard
arrived for that first meeting. Instead, a man named Johnny
Meyer did. He was fat and bald but personable and a nice guy; I
didn't find out until much later that one of his jobs for Howard
was sizing up potential girlfriends.
Meyer apologized for the absence of Hughes/Hawks. He'd
been called away on urgent business. Something to do with the
production of airplanes. Oh, I thought, he's making an airplane
picture. But he added, "I know that Howard is dying to meet
you. Can he call you and fix a date?"
I said, "Sure. I'm usually back from the Metro lot by six or
seven."
Next evening the phone rang and the voice said, "This is
Howard. I think you met my colleague Mr. Meyer last night — "
"Yes."
"Perhaps we could have a drink and talk?"
"When?"
"Now."
"Oh. All right. Why don't you come round here and have a
drink?"
Howard arrived on the front doorstep. He was well over six
feet tall but couldn't have weighed more than a hundred and fifty
pounds. Thin, bronzed, a small mustache. Eyes dark and search-
ing. A male man. Secure. Private. But a nice smile in a long, se-
67
AVA GARDNER
nous face. He reminded me a bit of my father. And I guessed he
was at least fifteen years older than I was.
We went out to dinner at a little place he knew and I went on
saying Mr. Hawks this, and Mr. Hawks that, as we chatted
about airplanes. I guessed if he was going to make an airplane
picture, we should be talking about it. Eventually he said, "You
know, iny name's not Hawks, it's Hughes."
"I thought you were making a picture about airplanes."
"I've made that one," he said.
"What's it called?"
"Hell's Angels"
That stopped me in my tracks. I knew about Hell's Angels.
The story of American pilots in World War I, it had taken almost
three years to make before its release in 1930 and it had cost
more than three and a half million dollars, a pretty colossal sum
in those days. It also nearly cost Howard his life. When his stunt
pilots said that some of his flying ideas verged on madness,
Howard went up to show them how it was done. The stunt pilots
were right: Howard crash-landed and had to be yanked out of
the debris unconscious and rushed to the hospital with multiple
injuries including a smashed cheekbone.
The upshot of it all was that I liked him, and within a week
Howard and I were good friends. He was a straightforward, no-
bull Texan, direct and terribly helpful in practically every way
you could imagine. As soon as he heard that Mama was very ill
with cancer, he told me he'd get the best cancer specialist in the
U.S.A. to visit her. And he kept his word. And when Mama died
and Bappie and I couldn't get on a flight home because of the
war, Howard threw a pair of desk-bound four-star generals off
the plane so that we could get to Mama's graveside. After all, he
did own TWA.
And for as long as Howard and I remained friends, he contin-
ued to make things easy for me when I wanted things easy. Let's
say I was in Palm Springs and I wanted to go shopping in Mexico
City. All I had to do was call Howard and within minutes a
chauffeur was waiting outside to take me to the airport. A plane
would be standing by just to take me, and once I arrived I was
met by another chauffeured limo and driven to the best hotel in
town, where a suite was waiting for me. If you wanted to be
quiet and left alone, no one could arrange it like Howard.
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AVA: MY STORY
Let me emphasize right here that friend is the word for our
relationship. Howard didn't make any extravagant passes, in fact
made no demands on me at all. A kiss on the cheek after about
our tenth dinner was as far as he went. He made it clear that he
was interested in me emotionally and romantically, but he was
prepared to be very patient. (For my part, sharing a bed with him
was always one length I couldn't imagine myself going to.)
Not that this, or for that matter anything else, deterred
Howard. When Howard Hughes wanted something, he went
after it with tunnel vision, and he saw no reason not to use the
same tactics on the gentlemanly seduction of me. He was, some-
one once said, like a spoiled child when he couldn't get what he
wanted, whining and wailing about it until he did. He could also
be determinedly vengeful if anyone crossed or opposed him.
Even in those early weeks I discovered just how private
Howard wanted to be. He didn't trust many places. One of the
ones he did was the Town House, where he could get his favorite
steak, and the Player's Club on Sunset Boulevard, run by the fa-
mous movie director Preston Sturges. Preston would keep it open
with an orchestra in attendance just for Howard and me. Because
Howard loved to dance. Unfortunately, Howard was a lousy
dancer. There are four sorts of dancers: the good dancers, and
the hoppers, jumpers, and pushers. And with the exception of
Mickey, I've never had a husband or boyfriend who was a good
dancer. Frank Sinatra and Artie Shaw were useless on the dance
floor. I have an idea that being musicians they were always a
fraction ahead of the beat, never quite right on it, so you fol-
lowed hopefully and got dragged along. And Howard clutched
you so hard it was like he was afraid he might lose you in the
crush. As we were all alone on the Player's Club dance floor, that
was always a bit odd. In fact, he nearly squashed me to death.
Being low profile also extended to Howard's ideas of appropri-
ate dress, which in practice meant looking very much like a
tramp. What other multimillionaire could get tossed off a yacht
he was about to buy when one of its officers came up and tersely
said, "Get ashore, bud. We've hired all the crew we need."
Clothes also figured in another one of Howard's spectacular
plane crashes. Bappie and I were staying at the Desert Inn in Las
Vegas with Howard when he decided to make a farewell test
flight over Lake Mead in his Sikorsky amphibian plane. The war
69
AVA GARDNER
was still going on, and naturally the Air Force wanted to requisi-
tion the thing and test it for themselves. Howard, however, being
Howard, was reluctant to part with one of his favorite planes
and asked for that one last flight.
With four government officials on board and Howard at the
controls, the plane clipped the water with a wing as it attempted
a landing and went straight into the lake. Two of the government
men were killed and Howard, copilot Glenn Odekirk, and the
other two were fished out just in time, escaping with little more
than bruises.
Howard, however, had lost almost all his clothes. The first
thing he did was borrow a tweed jacket from his copilot, which
was a mistake to begin with because Glen was a short, power-
fully built man and Howard was a six-foot-three beanpole. And
then he marched into the J. C. Penney store in Boulder City, Ne-
vada, and bought a pair of khaki trousers for around a dollar
ninety-eight, the cheapest pair he could find.
Fll never forget seeing Howard in that outfit, the pants starting
six inches above his ankles and the jacket sleeves starting six
inches above his wrists. It was no use telling him about it; to my
knowledge he wore that same outfit night and day for at least five
years. He was someone who would spend hundreds of thousands
of dollars dredging the amphibian from the bottom of the lake
but wouldn't go over a dollar ninety-eight for a pair of pants. Say
what you like about Howard, he was his own man.
One day, out of the blue, Howard suddenly suggested we
spend a few days together in San Francisco. Marvelous! I was
always happy to go anywhere with Howard. And Howard had
always been the gallant Texas gentleman, always responsive to a
lady's no. So how was I to know that Howard was in a rare Don
Juan mood, working on a plan called How to Seduce a Girl with
a Few Samples of Everything She Adores.
Bappie thought it was a great idea. Bappie was totally con-
vinced that any girl who had the chance to become the bride of
the "richest-man-in-the-world" was crazy to even think of taking
evasive action. I knew this because sometimes when I was away
Howard would come to the apartment and sit there talking with
Bappie for hour after hour, and his romantic intentions would
inevitably surface.
Anyway, I loved San Francisco: its up and downs, the Golden
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AVA: MY STORY
Gate Bridge, the clanking cable cars, the marvelous restaurants
and little clubs where you could dance the night away. And
Howard and I were going to be traveling on the Santa Fe first
class, two sleeping cabins, champagne, the lot. I decided to be at
my chicest, to bring the best and most expensive clothes I owned:
a navy blue outfit from Irene, one of the great designers at Metro,
a really smart tailored suit for traveling, very high heels, the per-
fect bag, just the right gloves. After all, Bappie worked at a store
that specialized in such items, so I could afford to be very high
class.
Howard was picking me up and driving us to the station, and
Bappie, who wasn't going with us, was looking out of the win-
dow waiting for him. I heard her murmur something and I hur-
ried across to see what'd happened outside, took one peek out
the window, and screamed, "In that? I'm not going in that!"
That was Howard's so-called car from which he was in the
process of emerging. I could bear the way he was dressed, in his
shiny blue serge suit, the trousers held up by a tie, the sort you
usually wear around your neck, the coat slung over his shoulder,
his shoelaces undone. Fd borne it for weeks. I'd even be willing
to bear it on the Santa Fe. But taking that car to the station? No
way!
Later I learned that it, the vehicle in question, belonged to
Howard's cook, Eddie. Howard had just borrowed it. It was not
a car, it was a wreck — battered, filthy, and worst of all, it had no
hood to conceal the nasty-looking engine. I'd never driven in a
car without a hood before and I wasn't eager to start.
I said, "Here I am dressed up like a thousand dollars and he
expects me to be driven to the station in an old jalopy without a
hood!"
"It's not far," said Bappie soothingly. I said, "I'm dressed
pretty, and I'm not about to sit in that wreck! We'll drive in my
car."
Bappie was disbelieving. "He's the richest man in the world,
and you're going to refuse to travel in his car?"
I said, "That's not a car, that's something from a wrecker's
yard."
Fd said over and over again to Howard, "Please get a new suit,
please get something. I'll even buy you one if you can't afford it."
And now I could see, piled in the back of that dreadful vehicle
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down below, Howard's usual assortment of custom-made white
cardboard boxes, all constructed to his specific instructions. One
held clean shirts, another had underclothes, a third toilet articles.
That was Howard's idea of luggage.
Howard arrived in the apartment and we discussed the whole
matter. Bappie was totally on Howard's side. She always was. I
don't blame her. Here was her daft kid sister who had a chance
of catching a tycoon as wealthy and powerful as Howard. Why
didn't we let her drive us to the station in her car if I didn't like
Howard's?
I said savagely, "Howard's probably entering his for the 'Heap
of the Year' award."
Howard wasn't put out. Didn't really know what the girls
were arguing about and what I was complaining about. By this
time we were approaching train departure time, and I had taken
alcoholic refuge in a couple of large drinks. So my better judg-
ment got fuzzy and, helped by the booze, I started to see the
funny side of the situation. I agreed to go in Howard's heap,
avoiding all the odd looks when we finally reached Union Sta-
tion. We were shown to our sleeping compartments, mine next
door to his, and the train began chugging up the California coast.
One little thing that happened soon after we started did sur-
prise me slightly. After I closed the door to my compartment,
without thinking about it I closed the latch. About three seconds
later there was a knock on the door, and a very sad-faced
Howard stood there saying quietly, "You didn't have to do that."
This was a man who supposedly had been deaf since he was a
kid, someone I'd seen hold a hearing aid in his hand and switch it
on and off when he felt like it. But before I could ask him how he
could possibly hear such a tiny click, he said, "Why don't you go
into the bar? You'll find a nice surprise there. I'll join you in a
few minutes."
Off I went. Those bar cars, with those magnificent black wait-
ers absolutely impeccable in their smart uniforms, made train
journeys in the forties a great experience. I sat alone at a small
table, conscious that everyone was eyeing me and wondering
who this unescorted young woman might be. I was ready to be
patient; when Howard said he would see you in a couple of sec-
onds, it could be a couple of years. Then one of the waiters
arrived bearing one of Howard's larger-sized white cardboard
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AVA: MY STORY
boxes and laboriously began to undo it. He extracted wads of
newspaper. Everyone in the car was enjoying Howard's surprise,
especially the newspaper wrapping. And out came a bottle of the
finest vintage champagne, perfectly chilled, perfectly wonderful.
Why the hell he couldn't have asked the waiter to bring it over to
me unwrapped, let me examine the label, and then hand it over
to the barman to serve, only Howard knew. Perhaps he thought
there was something magical in white cardboard boxes. I'd love
to have heard a psychiatrist on that subject.
The champagne certainly was magical Two glasses and I was
smiling at anybody who wanted to smile back. A third and I was
almost prepared for Howard. Almost
Through the doorway, almost mincing toward me, came
Howard. The rejuvenated Howard, the resplendent Howard,
pleased as a little boy exhibiting his first grownup suit. Except
that it wasn't a new suit; it was an ice-cream-colored affair that
he must have worn at some high school or college function about
twenty years before. Howard, the shy one, the invisible one, pir-
ouetting like a goddamn male mannequin, oblivious of the belt in
the back and pleats that must have gone out with dueling. As
usual the sleeves were four inches too short and the trouser legs
six inches above his socks, but he had put on a splendid white
shirt and a tie. Now I was getting it. This was the surprise. That
wreck of a car and those old clothes had all been a bluff. Emerg-
ing now was the dandy, the toast of Phi Beta Kappa, the sharp
dresser, the man who could impress Ava Gardner in the flash of
ice-cream-colored linen . . . and he was deadly serious. The in-
habitants of the club car were transfixed. Stunned into silence,
they could not believe the performance. I did my best to look
appreciative, choking back the words, "God almighty, Howard,
which trunk did you dig that out from?"
Thank God for the champagne. Howard chanced a glass and I
drank the rest, which made me glow and beam at Howard as if I
knew intuitively that he'd spent at least a week selecting this ele-
gant outfit at Brooks Brothers. By the time we puffed into San
Francisco the next day, Howard was looking as if he'd just won
an Oscar.
Our hotel, the Fairmount, sat magnificently on the top of Nob
Hill, and our suite was glorious.
I say our suite because Howard had allotted himself just a
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small room next door to my magnificent drawing room, bed-
room, and bathroom. There was however, a connecting door,
which I immediately locked to make certain there weren't going
to be any misunderstandings, whether Howard was sad-faced or
not.
More champagne was waiting in the drawing room, this time
in a silver bucket, thank God. But now Howard was in a hurry.
"Let's go shopping!" he said with a laugh and the knowing look
that a husband gives his wife when she knows this is an oppor-
tunity not to be missed. Trouble was, I must be one of the few
women in the world who could miss shopping without a single
regret. "Why don't we have cocktails, drink some more cham-
pagne, have a bath, think about dinner?" I said.
"Shopping first," replied Howard adamantly. "The rest is all
arranged."
A taxi was waiting and we were driven off to the town's best
department store. I didn't know a thing about San Francisco
shopping, but the place was huge, holding all the goodies in the
universe. We got out and Howard said, "Now, I want you to go
in there and buy whatever you want. I'll come back and pay for
it. Whatever you want — remember that."
On later reflection I suppose I should have come out bearing a
sable coat over one arm and wearing a diamond bracelet on each
wrist, or, if I was modest, at least a new toothbrush, as the offer
from the "richest-man-in-the-world" was plainly genuine. But all
I did was wander miserably around the store. I remember they
had some wonderful jade, which was fantastically expensive.
Now, I love jade, and occasionally these days I think: Why, oh,
why didn't I do as I was told? But I wasn't feeling that way then.
Naturally, no sign of Howard, and I got so bored in the store I
went and waited for him outside. I probably waited for forty-five
minutes, maybe an hour, and suddenly there comes Howard
walking down the street carrying — oh, God help me — another
white cardboard box. If I'd known what was in it I might have
dropped dead!
Back at the hotel I dressed for dinner in my chic cocktail dress,
not knowing quite where we were going because Howard was
being cagey about his plans. Knowing him, I knew we were just
as likely to end up in some greasy spoon where he could eat his
eternal steak and peas followed by ice cream and caramel sauce.
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And my expectations were not raised when I saw that Howard
had abandoned the vanilla suit for the original dark blue shiny
one. But I was wrong. Before we left, he presented me with an
exquisitely made gold ring set with sapphires, and for dinner and
dancing we went to a wonderful restaurant with a marvelous
band. Howard and I were on the floor within seconds, and Mr.
Bear-Hugger was holding me so tight that I sometimes wondered
if my feet were even managing to touch the floor.
More booze, a lot of laughter, and then on to a cabaret club
that was totally unlike anything Fd ever been in with Howard
before. This was a gay club, and though usually with Howard we
were tucked away in back, hidden from everybody's eyes, now
we had seats in the front row. The show was hilarious: all these
drag queens in wigs and gowns, lipsticked and mascaraed, a lot
of them looking like Dracula's mother, told absolutely out-
rageous jokes. It was so funny I was falling out of my seat, and
Howard was laughing, too.
It was very late when we left. In the hotel we were alone in the
elevator except for the piles of Sunday newspapers awaiting dis-
tribution later that morning. Casually I picked up the section
with the funnies. I was smiling at them even as Howard was un-
locking the door of our suite.
There was another bottle of champagne chilling in the ice
bucket, even a bottle in my bedroom awaiting attention if neces-
sary.
But the evening was over as far as I was concerned. Fd had a
gorgeous time and now I sat myself down to laugh at the funnies.
I didn't notice that Howard was growing colder by the minute.
Now — years later — I can understand his feelings. He had done
his best, thrown caution to the winds, exhibited this brand-new
free-wheeling, devil-may-care Howard, the snappy dresser, the
champagne drinker, the dancer, the man who could show a girl
like me a really good time. "Fm going to please this girl if it kills
me." If only he could have understood that Fm so much simpler
to please than that. Now, I can understand. The perfect woman
of Howard's dreams should have been falling into his arms at
that moment.
Howard opened a bottle — the pop didn't even disturb me —
and came across to me with a glass. I said, "No, thank you," and
chuckled at some dumb item I was reading.
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AVA GARDNER
Howard took the glass away, and came back and stood over
me. Then, suddenly, he swooped down, violently tore the paper
out of my hand, and threw it on the floor.
I couldn't believe it. I was outraged. A marvelous night like
this and he had to spoil it with one rude, dramatic gesture. I
kicked off my shoe so hard it left an imprint on the ceiling.
No screams of anger from me either. I was up and into my
bedroom within three seconds. Door shut, bang! Door locked,
click! Check that the connecting door between rooms is locked
and bolted. Good! I'm sure if I'd had a hammer and nails close at
hand I'd have nailed up the windows.
Then I sat on the bed. Totally miserable. What was the matter
with the man? What had I done wrong? And now what was I
going to do? How was I going to get out of there? I wanted to go
home. I wanted to be safe in my little apartment in Westwood.
What had started so well had turned into a terrible, terrible
night. Even when I pried open the champagne to see if that
would help, it didn't.
I must have fallen asleep, for I was awakened eventually by a
knocking on the door and a voice calling, "It's Bappie, it's Bap-
pie. Open up."
Bappie? I let her in and asked, "How the hell did you get from
L.A. to San Francisco so quick?"
"Howard rang me at dawn. Said there was a private plane
waiting for me at the airport, that I had to catch it — it was
urgent."
I told her, "What's urgent is getting me back to L.A."
Bappie led me back to the stupendous bed, propped me up
against the silken pillows, patted my hand, and tried to calm me
down. I could tell she was very excited about something. "He
gave you a gold ring last night?"
"Here it is. Give it back. He wants it back, I expect."
"Ava, are you out of your mind?"
I glared. She'd come all the way from Wilshire Boulevard to
tell me I was out of my mind? Yes, I was out of my mind to trust
Howard Hughes. "He's humiliated me ..." I began.
Bappie cut me off. "Ava, do you know what he's got in a card-
board box in there?"
"I couldn't care less."
Bappie's eyes and voice were bright with excitement. "It's full
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AVA: MY STORY
of the most wonderful jewelry I've ever seen. A million dollars'
worth. He bought it yesterday from Tiffany's or somewhere,"
I thought, so that's what he was doing when he left me ma-
rooned in that store.
Bappie was practically drooling. "I've been talking to him for
an hour. He's desperate. He's shown me some of the pieces. I've
just held in my hand a brooch — solid gold, encrusted with dia-
monds, emeralds, and rubies . . . God almighty, Ava, in all my
life, nowhere have I seen such jewelry. I'm going back to get you
a piece to look at — "
I said, "I don't want to see his goddamn jewelry, I want to go
home."
"Ava, you can't. Don't you understand this is his way of get-
ting engaged? For a whole seven days he is going to give you a
wonderful piece of jewelry before breakfast, before lunch, and
before dinner, each getting more and more beautiful and more
and more valuable. That gold ring last night was the first gift.
Now, shall I tell him you're sorry?"
"Sorry!" I yelled. "Tell him he can take the whole damned lot
and stick it up his ass!"
"Well, I'll say you're upset."
"Upset!" My dignity had been insulted and my voice was loud.
"Tell him I never want to see him again as long as I live. Do you
know what he did? I was humiliated ... I was frightened ... I
was . . ."
What else had he done? I couldn't think.
"All he did was knock a silly newspaper out of your hand."
Bappie was plainly on his side. "Is that so dreadful when he was
about to tell you of the wonderful surprise he had in store for
you? Think about it. I'll go back and talk to him. He's upset,
even if you're not."
Out she trotted across the drawing room, down the corridor
and round to Howard's tiny garret. As far as I was concerned
that was the only line of communication open between me and
the enemy. And this went on not for minutes but for hours. Poor
Bappie was acting as a Western Union messenger, shuttling be-
tween bedroom, drawing room, corridor, Howard's garret, and
back again. Howard surrendered. He was willing to compromise,
apologize, start over again as if nothing had happened. Let the
magic week continue — and the gifts be showered. According to
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AVA GARDNER
Bappie's breathless testimony, there were twenty-eight pieces of
glorious jewelry in that box. "God almighty, Ava, I've just held a
gold bracelet in my hand studded with diamonds that weighs a
ton. Not three pieces a day ... four! One before breakfast,
lunch, and dinner and 'one before she goes to sleep.' Isn't that
sweet? 'One before she goes to sleep.5"
"With him around 111 never go to sleep. Pve had no sleep all
night. I've been laughed at, hurt, and humiliated. You weren't
there when he came in in that goddamn ice-cream suit. Go in and
tell him that. No, not about the suit, about the humiliation."
Poor Bappie, she must have made twenty journeys. Like most
normal, well-adjusted women, she loved jewelry, and most
women would have given their souls for some of that stuff. I
admit it would have kept me for the rest of my life. But at that
moment, with my temper aroused, I just didn't care. I knew ex-
actly what I wanted and what I didn't, and what I did not want
was Howard. My final ultimatum was: "And if he thinks Fm
going back in that lousy train, he's got another think coining. If
he can spend a fortune flying you here in a private plane, he can
spend another fortune flying us back again."
And he did.
All I wanted to do was go home. I didn't want any of those
gems or any part of Howard, and I didn't want any more of San
Francisco, no matter how romantic it might be. Maybe I was a
fool, but never mind, that was the way I was. I wanted to be in
love, not bought for a damn box of jewelry.
Howard, however, saw things differently. I used to say that he
met every train, plane, and bus that passed through L.A., picked
out the prettiest ladies, put them under contract, and squirreled
them away in a house somewhere. Even MGM wasn't as single-
minded as Howard. He generally had five women at a time
stashed away in various corners of the city. As it turned out,
many of these girls never even met Howard — they were just part
of the general turnover. After all, even Casanova or the Sultan of
Zanzibar might have found keeping five women happy a tiring
occupation. And Howard was a very busy man besides, produc-
ing movies and airplanes and who knows what else. So I think a
lot of his affairs took place primarily in his mind: his sexual am-
bitions were always greater than his prowess.
It was through Charlie Guest that I found out so much about
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AVA: MY STORY
Howard's women. He was one of Howard's "associates" for
years, the man in charge of the housing situation for the young
ladies. Charlie had a quiet voice, a lined face, a wry twist to his
lips, and rather tired blue eyes. He was divorced and he drank
too much; life had defeated him and he managed to live with that
knowledge. Bappie met him and fell in love — after the antics of
Larry Tarr, he must have been a rest cure. Bappie and I had
moved into our first house, a small but pretty place we rented in
Nichols Canyon, and Charlie moved in with us. And he played a
part in an evening with Howard that set new standards, even for
us.
It started late one afternoon when the phone rang. It was
Johnny Meyer, Howard's aide-de-camp.
"Hi, Ava," he said cheerfully. "Howard's flying back to Los
Angeles this evening, and he wants you and me to go out to the
airport and meet him."
Now I had a date with Mickey that night. And I felt that
Howard just couldn't call up and expect me to run out to the
airport because he felt lonely on the tarmac.
"Sorry, Johnny," I answered. "I can't do that. I'm busy."
Johnny was much too clever to say, "Busy doing what?" He
said only, "Howard will be a bit upset."
"Well," I said, "he'll just have to be a bit upset." Though
Howard wasn't keeping me, he was always taking me out to din-
ner and dancing, not to mention paying for lessons in golf, ten-
nis, even skeet shooting. Given all that, I realized I wasn't being
very pleasant. He was playing a long waiting game for a pretty
Southern belle, a fact that I understood and appreciated. But I
was at no man's beck and call.
Anyway, I went out and had dinner with Mickey. He had an
early call, and I was a working girl, too, so we said good night
and I went home early to Nichols Canyon. I had a quick drink
with Bappie and Charlie and then went upstairs to bed.
It was quite late when I was awakened by the light being
switched on and there was Howard, standing in my bedroom.
Bappie and Charlie must have let him in. He came to the bed and
stood over me, and I could see he was very, very angry. With
natural female intuition, I knew that he'd arrived silently like
this, without even bothering to knock, because he thought he
would catch me in bed with Mickey. No doubt Howard's net-
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AVA GARDNER
work of spies had informed him that I was seeing Mickey again.
And why not? 1 was divorced. I was a free woman. I did not
belong to Howard Hughes. And now, his suspicions revealed, he
was at a disadvantage and looking rather foolish. I smiled at him
and said, "Why . . . Howard. Why don't you go downstairs? I'll
put on a robe and join you there."
So off he went, very red-faced, and a few minutes later I joined
him in the little bar. There were a couple of heavy hardwood
chairs in the room, a few odds and ends on the bar, and Howard
hanging around and looking as if he'd just been told he'd con-
tracted a severe form of leprosy.
And I was still smiling a superior smile, because I hate being
spied upon. Howard knew he was in the wrong, and suddenly, he
completely lost his temper, pushed me back into one of the
wooden chairs, held me down with one arm, and started hitting
me across the face with his open hand. Baby, I saw stars. And it
hurt — badly — and I could feel my face swelling and my eye clos-
ing. But most of all I felt anger, violent anger. I'd never been hit
like that before in my entire life — and all because of his goddamn
pride and jealousy. He walked away from me across the room,
and let me tell you, I was not going to hit back, I was going to
kill the bastard — stone dead! I groped around the bar for some-
thing to throw at him, the lamp, anything, and my hand closed
around the handle of a large heavy bronze bell — the sort town
criers use in England — and I threw it at him with all my strength.
He had just half-turned back toward me when it hit him, bang,
between the temple and cheek. He went over backward, with the
blood pouring out. And I was right after him. He wasn't dead
yet, and I was going to kill him. I grabbed a big hardwood
chair — God knows how I lifted it — and lurched over to smash
him to death.
All this must have made a lot of noise and alerted our elderly
black maid as well as Bappie and Charlie. Because as I was
poised with the chair above my head, ready to smash it down on
Howard, the maid banged open the door, saw me there, and
yelled, "Ava! Ava! Drop it! Drop it!" Her loud voice and the fact
that she called me "Ava" instead of "Miss Gardner" stopped me
dead in my tracks, and I stood back, trembling as my violent
anger began to ebb away. If she hadn't rushed in, God knows
what I might have done. I put the chair down and all hell broke
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AVA: MY STORY
loose. Not over me — over poor Howard lying on the floor and
bleeding everywhere.
"Quick, Charlie," Bappie said. "Get an ambulance, get a doc-
tor. Poor Howard, poor Howard!"
I said, "Fuck poor Howard," and went off to the bathroom to
examine the bruises on my face, and my huge black eye. I was
furious with Bappie and Charlie Guest. So Howard was Charlie's
boss? I couldn't have cared less. In my terms he was just a god-
damn woman beater.
Bappie outlined his injuries later. I had split his face open from
temple to mouth, knocked out two of his teeth, and loosened
others. I felt no remorse. In the hospital he had about five expen-
sive doctors sewing him up and putting him back together again.
All I had was our nice old black maid who fished a piece of raw
steak out of the icebox and placed it over my black eye to help
with the swelling.
One would have thought, one might even have been forgiven
for hoping, that after that debacle Howard's interest in me would
not only have waned, it would have disappeared altogether. But
oh, no. In Howard's terms, he'd just lost a round, and within
three or four weeks he was back in circulation, calling me up as if
nothing unusual had ever happened. It was hard for Howard to
take no for an answer, even when it was delivered in the shape of
a heavy bronze bell to the temple. What Howard wanted,
Howard was going to get. He hoped. The saga of him and me
was going to be one hell of a long running serial.
81
NINE
met Seymour Nebenzal one night in 1946
when I was dancing at the Mocambo Club.
Dim lights and soft music. Smoke^in the air
and smart-looking people. My companion was Frances Heflin,
Van Heflin's wife, a gorgeous redheaded Texan with a beautiful
body and what they call a great lust for life. Like me, she loved
late nights, clubs, and anyplace you could dance. Frances would
have loved to be in movies but nobody asked her and she didn't
push.
Seymour Nebenzal was a smart German producer working for
United Artists. He told us that in the first breath, not that it was
any big deal. Hell, in those days Hollywood was awash with
smart European film men who'd escaped from Nazi Europe with
the hope that our streets were paved with gold.
Short, dark, and intense, albeit a bit pudgy, with thick horn-
rimmed glasses that magnified his dark eyes, Nebenzal was a con-
vincing talker. He told me he'd purchased the rights to a best-
selling novel called Whistle Stop by Maritta Wolff. Because it
dealt with prostitution, not to mention brother-sister incest,
Whistle Stop had been quite a hot item a few years back, even
making it onto a list the Hays office kept of books that absolutely
positively could not be filmed.
But Nebenzal had a way around that. He'd keep the title, and
the notoriety that went with it, but he'd hired a man named Phi-
lip Yordan to totally rewrite the story so that any relation be-
tween it and the original book was purely coincidental. Mary, the
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AVA: MY STORY
female lead, still returns to a small Midwestern town after two
years in Chicago swathed in mink, but the furs are now vaguely
described as (ha-ha) "presents" and the lady no longer has a
brother.
For some reason I could never figure out, Mary is in love with
Kenny, a loutish type who considers drinking, card playing, and
womanizing a full-time career, and is eager to turn him into an
honest character. George Raft, who no one had ever accused of
serious acting, was to play Kenny in his usual cigar-store Indian
style, and Nebenzal wanted me to play the lady with the shady
past.
In truth, Nebenzal was just being polite in talking to me at all.
Or maybe he wanted to do his own personal screen test. Because
the facts were that MGM told me what roles I played and when
and where I played them. And what Nebenzal didn't tell me was
that he'd already sounded out Metro, who, not surprisingly, were
not unhappy with idea of renting out their now two-hundred-
dollar-a-week starlet for the far larger lump sum of five thousand
dollars.
A Frenchman, Leonide Moguy, whose command of English
was negligible, directed the film. He was a dear man whom I
liked very much, and although everybody in the film business
rated it as a piece of rubbish — a verdict I had to agree with — I
enjoyed it mainly because George Raft, great actor or not, was
such fun.
I had seen George Raft, with his lovely, slinky hair, playing
dark, debonair, and dangerous film roles since I was about eight
years old. In my terms he had now matured into a father figure.
In George's terms, not so. He was my lover in the film, and natu-
rally he thought it would be a good idea if he continued that role
outside the studio. I think George was always teasing a bit, too.
We went dancing on a couple of occasions — and George danced
like a dream — and though there was always a small wrestling
match when he dropped me off, our relationship remained stable,
"Ava, you're a grown woman now, and this should be our
great romantic love affair."
"George, we're in your front seat, not on the set. You don't
drink, you don't smoke, you're a serious Catholic, and married!
Plus you're old enough to be my father!"
"My thoughts aren't very fatherly."
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"You've made that clear, George, but all I can say Is I love
dancing with you, and I hope you take me dancing again very
soon."
A quick peck on the cheek, and as I was a very agile girl, I was
out of the car. George took it all with a smile, and we stayed
wonderful, laughing friends. Fve read all that stuff in the papers
about how George was supposed to be fronting for a Mafia gang.
I've heard that sort of nonsense about a lot of people in my time.
In my terms, the only way you know people is the way you know
them. And I know that in those days, George was one of the
sweetest, nicest men I've ever met. And he made Whistle Stop
worthwhile.
Despite its numerous shortcomings, including a bogus happy
ending that one critic accurately noted was "so patently phony
and out of keeping with the melodrama that has gone before, it
probably will send audiences out on a laugh," Whistle Stop was
my first leading role and as such finally did get me noticed. After
years as an MGM china doll, I had now broken the mold and,
though I didn't know it, I was about to form a new one.
The postwar boom was at its height in 1946, and both the
movie business in general and MGM in particular marked that as
the most profitable year in their entire history. Nobody dreamed
that they'd never see profits like that again, and when I was
loaned out again later that year, this time to Universal for some-
thing called The Killers, I didn't dream either that that picture
would forever change my career in movies.
The Killers was the first of three pictures I made based on Er-
nest Hemingway's writings, a happy situation that eventually led
to Papa and I becoming good chums. He always considered The
Killers the best of all the many films his work inspired, and after
Mark Hellinger, the producer, gave him a print of his own, he'd
invariably pull out a projector and show it to guests at Finca
Vigia, his place in Cuba. Of course, he'd usually fall asleep after
the first reel, which made sense, because that first reel was the
only part of the movie that was really taken from what he wrote.
Like The Snows of Kilimanjaro years later, The Killers came
from one of Papa's short stories. It was a very short story about
two big lugs. Max and Al, who come into a small-town
lunchroom and announce that as a favor to a friend they're going
to kill a Swede named Ole Andreson as soon as he comes in for
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dinner. The Swede never shows, the killers leave, and Nick
Adams (Papa as a boy) goes to warn the Swede. He, however,
says he's tired of running and refuses to leave town. End of story.
Which left the filmmakers with a number of problems. Even if
they filmed the story as written, which they pretty much did, even
using a lot of Papa's dialogue just the way he wrote it, they still
had about an hour and a half of screen time to fill and a lot of
problems to solve. First of all, they had to get the Swede killed,
something the story neglected to do, and then they had to figure
out the reason why someone had wanted him killed, the reason
why he'd refused to run, and a way for the audience to find all
those reasons out.
The screenwriters — Anthony Veiller, credited, and John Hus-
ton, uncredited — were up to the job. They created the role of
Riordan, a tough insurance investigator, who digs into the mur-
dered man's past and uncovers his story, which the audience sees
through a series of flashbacks. Turns out that the Swede was
once a promising boxer until he caught a glimpse of a swell-look-
ing babe named Kitty Collins wearing a drop-dead black dress
and singing "The More I Know of Love, the Less I Know" in a
husky, inviting voice.
Intoxicated by Kitty's beauty, the Swede takes a rap for her,
goes to prison and, still smitten when he comes out, joins her in a
gang plotting a payroll robbery. Thinking Kitty loves him, he
doublecrosses the gang, but Kitty has a triplecross up her sleeve.
By the time she says, "I'm poison to myself and everyone around
me," there's practically no one left alive to give her an argument.
Mark Hellinger had cast Edmond O'Brien as Riordan, and for
the Swede he went with an actor who'd never been on screen
before, a young man named Burt Lancaster. And having seen
Whistle Stop, he wanted me to play the deadly Kitty. I was very
excited at the opportunity. I liked the odd but interesting twists
of Kitty's character, the lack of emotional security she felt in her
early years, and the way this contributed to what she turned into
later. But there was a problem. Hellinger's deal was with Univer-
sal, and it looked for a while that Metro would refuse to lend me
out for the picture.
Which quite frankly surprised me, because, given Mr. Mayer's
idea that it was family-oriented, happily-ever-after Lassie and
Andy Hardy movies that attracted customers to the box office,
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the studio's interest in my movie career had been minimal. And,
sure enough, once enough money had been waved in Metro's
face, I got the job.
I liked Mark Hellinger at once, because I could tell he saw me
as an actress, not a sexpot. He trusted me from the beginning and
I trusted him. He even talked me into relaxing enough so I could
sing that sensual song in my own voice. And he gave me a feeling
of responsibility about being a movie star that I'd never for a
moment felt before. Until I played Kitty Collins, I'd never worked
very hard in pictures, never taken my career very seriously. I felt
no burning ambition to become a real actress. I was just a girl
who was lucky enough to have a job in pictures. Playing Kitty
changed that, showed me what it meant to try to act, and made
me feel that I might have a little talent in that area after all.
Director Robert Siodmak was equally helpful, but in a dif-
ferent way. A German-born director who was giving Alfred
Hitchcock a run for his money with suspenseful films like
Phantom Lady and The Spiral Staircase, he was an expert at this
kind of dark drama, filling the screen with deep, troubling shad-
ows and knowing just how he wanted me to look.
One day early in the filming, I saw him and his cameraman
looking at me very carefully. "What is that stuff all over your
face, please?" he said in his typically fractured English.
"Regulation MGM makeup."
'This is not MGM. Will you please go away and wash it all
off, please."
I did as I was told, and quite happily, in fact. My regulation
face was gone for good.
Siodmak also helped me with my toughest scene, the one at the
end of the movie where I scream, "Tell them 1 don't know any-
thing. Save me," over and over again to my dying partner in
crime. Siodmak made me play that scene so many times that I
truly became hysterical and gave a more convincing performance
than I thought I had in me.
One thing I especially liked about filming The Killers was that
Burt and Eddie and the rest of us were in the early stages of our
careers, fresh kids enjoying life. Burt had all the confidence in the
world. He'd never been in a movie before, but he seemed compe-
tent enough to take the whole thing over, and if Robert hadn't
been such a strong director, he might have.
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The publicity department set up a few beach scenes as gim-
micks to promote the movie, and I'll never forget giving Burt
piggybacks on my back instead of the other way around. But he
was such a marvelous athlete he seemed able to make himself
pounds lighter. Or maybe it was all those screams of laughter
that made everything seem so easy. All I know is that whenever I
hear the "dum-de-dum-dum" Dragnet theme, which was origi-
nally part of the score Miklos Rosza wrote for The Killers, it's
those moments I remember.
Although some critics sniffed and one called The Killers
"merely sensational, designed for no other purpose than to jangle
emotions and nerves," most of the reviews were excellent, and
for the first time in my life, I got some especially good notices as
well. A lot of people have told me through the years that it was
The Killers that set me on the road to stardom, that defined my
image as the slinky sexpot in the low-cut dress, leaning against a
piano and setting the world on fire. Maybe it did, maybe it
didn't, but at the time it was all happening, I couldn't have cared
less. And the reason was simple: I'd fallen in love.
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TEN
va," Frances Heflin said in her quiet,
dreamy way, "this is Artie Shaw. He's
just come back from the war. You've
heard of Artie and his music. I thought you two might get
along."
I caught the edge of mischief in her smile. I guessed that she
and Artie had had a little flirt going, but what the hell — that was
in the past. And here was Artie, grinning down at me. Oh, my
God, I thought, what a beautiful man! Artie was handsome,
bronzed, very sure of himself, and he never stopped talking. It
was a way of life with him. Artie could go on about every subject
in the world, and for that matter, a few that were outside it as
well. But he was full of such warmth and charm that I fell in love
with him, just like that. That's the way it always is with me,
immediate or never.
I suppose Artie was the first intelligent, intellectual male I'd
ever met, and he bowled me over. He was born in New York in
1910, the child of immigrants, and grew up in the city's crowded
tenements without the benefit of much formal education. He
didn't have much money either, but he did have a compelling
determination to succeed, not only as a musician but as an intel-
ligent, creative, pugnacious human being. In every area of knowl-
edge, Artie was thoroughly — and relentlessly — self-educated.
As a musician, Artie was a genius, brilliant at everything he
touched — playing, composing, conducting. He was always exper-
imenting, always looking at new forms of musical expression. At
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age fifteen, he was a professional. Ten years later, at a New York
swing concert, he was playing one of his own compositions ac-
companied by a string quartet, the first time that had been done
in jazz. By 1937, he'd formed his own big band, and in 1938 he
became internationally famous with his version of Cole Porter's
"Begin the Beguine." And though it sounds almost unbelievable,
he was the first jazz orchestra leader to include black musicians
and black vocalists (including Billie Holiday) in his band.
I'd grown up in the big-band era, adoring every sound the
great ones made, but Artie, strangely enough, never seemed to
care very much for his own profession. He was always giving it
up to spend months in Mexico or go into "retreat" somewhere.
But when he was on the job he was a great organizer and disci-
plinarian. No musician in his band could arrive late, or half-
pissed, or smoking pot. They had to play, and play right. His
recording sessions were absolute perfection, and they had to be.
In those days of 78s, there was no way of splitting notes and
doing all the funny things they do now with tape. It had to be
three minutes of perfection: piano, percussion, violins, trumpets,
saxes, trombones, clarinets — and, oh, God, Artie was such an
artist on a clarinet.
Anyhow, Artie and I started going out from that very first
night of our meeting. Not occasionally. Every night. I remember
that first time he took me to Lucy's, a little Italian restaurant
across from RKO studios. Small, intimate, piped in music, can-
dlelight, and wine, that sort of place. I was in a great glow about
the whole thing, and Artie looked across at me, and said, "Ava, I
think that physically, emotionally, and mentally you are the most
perfect woman I've ever met." His eyes never moved from mine
as he went on, "And what's more, I'd marry you tonight, except
for the fact that I've married too many wives already."
I mean, I do love the man, but that moment was pure Artie.
He didn't dream of saying, or implying, that he was asking me to
marry him. Artie took it for granted that everyone was panting to
marry Artie Shaw. And I guess that set the tone of our scenario
from then onward. We spent our first eight months or so dining,
dancing, and talking our heads off. No funny business. Hands
off. Then we decided that if we were going to have an affair we'd
better make it a real one, so I moved to Artie's huge mock-Tudor
house on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. He had very good taste,
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and had filled it with expensive Chippendale and Sheraton fur-
niture. He'd never gotten around to furnishing the dining room,
though: his last divorce had cropped up just as he was thinking
about it.
I adored my time with Artie before we got married. We trav-
eled all over California and went to Chicago and New York, with
Artie's band playing one-night stands while I sat backstage, sip-
ping bourbon, listening to the music, and having a ball. It was
during this period, however, that Artie's penchant for self-im-
provement— mine, not his — first surfaced and nearly frightened
me to death.
"Avala," he said one day, tacking his usual endearing Yiddish
tag onto my name, "I want you to sing with the band." Now I've
already described how my heart was half-broken at age sixteen
by that band leader who I never heard from again. This should
have been my great opportunity for triumph and revenge. But I
didn't see it that way. I was just too frightened.
"No need for that," Artie said, confident as ever. "Well re-
hearse as long as you want. I'll get you a singing coach, and a
backup group that's so good nobody will even hear you. Your
voice is good, you can learn, and you'll look absolutely gorgeous,
the most beautiful songbird in the business."
"Artie," I said, putting my foot down, "you're wrong. I'll
make mistakes because I'm scared." And I absolutely refused to
go on with it. Which was a pity. It would have been the thrill of
my life, but I just could not do it.
Artie and I were married on October 17, 1945, he for the third
time, me for the second. Frances Heflin, of course, was my
bridesmaid and Art Craft, one of Artie's oldest friends, was the
best man. I wore a blue tailored suit and a corsage of orchids, not
that different from the outfit I wore when I'd married Mickey not
so long before.
Artie and I honeymooned at Lake Tahoe for a week. We had
terrible fights but also a lot of romance. Because one thing is
certain: Artie and I never had any quarrels in bed. If only every-
thing else about the marriage had been as wonderful and easy as
that.
Marriage, if anything, increased Artie's determination to im-
prove me, something he had been set on doing from the first mo-
ment we met. I didn't mind at first, but unfortunately Artie had
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no intention of being subtle about the business. He had gotten his
education the hard way and, worse luck for me, he thought the
hard way was the only one worth pursuing.
The world Artie introduced me to, the world of music, art,
books, politics, and psychology, was more than a bit beyond my
experience, and unfortunately it showed. I'll never forget the time
I was sitting at his knee on the floor, a position, I might add,
Artie thought all women should adopt. "You know, Ava," he
said to me in a quiet, considerate voice, "I don't think I would
ever have fallen in love with you if you weren't so beautiful"
Though he had the good sense not to add, "Too bad I didn't
know you were just a dumb broad," that implication was clear to
me, and it wasn't the sort of remark guaranteed to instill con-
fidence in a young lady.
If I could ever be born again, an education is what Pd want.
My life would have been so different if I'd had one. You don't
know what it's like to be as young as I was then and know you're
uneducated, to be afraid to talk to people because you're afraid
even the questions you ask will be stupid. My shame at my igno-
rance had even caused me to lie to Artie about my age when we
first met. I thought if I shaved a year off, it would make it easier
for him to accept me as I was.
When Artie and I began going together, Gone With the Wind
was still the only book I'd ever read. Artie vowed to change all
that, deluging me with works by Sinclair Lewis, Dostoyevsky,
Thomas Mann. I read them all, or tried to. I'll never forget The
Magic Mountain; I thought I'd never finish that damn book.
Once, when we were in Chicago, Forever Amber had just come
out, so I bought a copy. He saw me with it and said, "If I'm in
charge of your education, you're not going to read rubbish like
that," and threw it across the room.
Artie had been released early from the navy after an illness in
which exhaustion from a tour through the Pacific theater had
combined with depression with devastating results. Psycho-
analysis had helped him enormously, so much so that when I
listened to Artie's soliloquies on the subject, he practically con-
vinced me that he'd invented the damn system himself. Under-
standing himself, self-exploration, was the basic drive in Artie's
life, and he seemed to live only for his sessions with May Romm,
his analyst. In fact, Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams was the
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AVA GARDNER
first book he ever gave me — pretty tough going for the average
Atlantic Christian College student.
May Romm struck me only as a rather skinny old lady, but
since she was high on Artie's list of priorities, I made her high on
mine. We even went to one of her Christmas parties, which was
filled almost entirely with psychiatrists, which I thought rather
strange given that Freud had said that doctors and patients
shouldn't mix socially. I felt about as much at home at that party
as a chicken at a fox convention. Artie was immediately off
somewhere else holding the floor on some minor topic that
would revolutionize the solar system, so I crept into a corner and
got into conversation with a nice little man who seemed to be
able to put up with me.
He was quietly dressed, a studious sort of character, looking
more like a stockbroker. But, naturally, he was a psychiatrist,
and, naturally, if I was to get even remotely into a discussion
with him, the only thing I could discuss was my own symptoms.
"You know," I said, "ever since I was a child, when I am faced
with any sort of emotional problem I seem to get this sort of
stomach cramp."
Now I know that this is not your standard cocktail party chat-
ter. But my new conversationalist brightened immediately.
"Really," he said. "What sort of childhood did you have?"
I gave him a short sharp fifty seconds on life in the tobacco
fields. It didn't sound half good enough to me. No brutal father.
No black dreams. No screams in the night. I thought he'd say,
"How interesting," and go in search of another dry martini. But
he didn't. He looked thoughtful and said, "Perhaps you'd better
come and see me in my professional capacity." His office was on
Bedford Drive, only a short distance from where we lived. I said I
would make an appointment, and I did. What the good doctor
didn't know was that I had my own secret and special reason for
making that appointment, something I'd been considering for
quite a long time, certainly ever since I met Artie.
In the quiet, reassuring confines of his office, I took a deep
breath and said, "Doctor, I think I should have an IQ test."
There was a long pause and he said, "You don't need an IQ
test"
I didn't pause. I said, "Oh, yes, I do."
He said, "You are so sure now that things aren't quite right
that you will without a doubt unconsciously score a low mark."
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1 said, "Doctor, I would like a test."
He said, "I don't think it's a wise idea."
I thought: He's got the same doubts that I do; and I repeated,
"Doctor, I would like a test."
So, finally, he set up an appointment with another doctor who
did this sort of thing. It took a hell of a long time, hours, because
once I got started I had to have every damn test known to man.
I was summoned to his consulting room for the big news.
"Well," he began. "You have an extremely high IQ." And then
he went on to explain that I had never really used, stretched, or
extended the brain that God, plus Mama, Papa and a healthy
upbringing, had endowed me with. I had never needed to use the
millions of brain cells that most human beings normally possess,
quite a common occurrence. That not only reassured me; it gave
me a certain impetus.
So now I was into analysis and I found it a great help. I still
do. When I get depressed or into a situation that is difficult, I can
reason myself out of it, make sense of it, know what the hell's
going on in my life at a particular juncture. I can get through a
depression, not fall into it and never come out.
With the confidence of that IQ test behind me, I decided to do
something about Artie's constant carping about my lack of edu-
cation: I looked into taking classes at my local institution of
higher learning, UCLA.
I had to be careful about this. Enrolling and physically attend-
ing classes might have put a strain on Metro's publicity implica-
tions that all its starlets were ladies of the highest intelligence and
accomplishments. So I took extension courses at home, signing
up for English literature and economics.
Artie grunted noncommittally, but I really studied and did
well. I can still remember showing my report card to everyone on
the set of The Killers and bragging about my B-pluses. The com-
pany didn't know whether to laugh or cry. I guess most people
making pictures are more satisfied with their level of education,
no matter what it is, than I was.
And then, of course, there was chess. Artie liked the game, and
one day he said to me, "Avala, why don't you learn to play
chess? We could have a game occasionally."
I said I'd be happy to try, and he offered to find someone to
give me lessons. But Artie, being Artie, didn't arrange for any old
teacher; he got hold of a Russian grandmaster to introduce me to
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AVA GARDNER
the game. Stepan Vronsky was, I guess, in his sixties, with thick
gray hair and blue eyes. He'd come to the house three or four
times a week, we'd sit together at a little chessboard in the living
room and he'd show me what it was all about. After I learned the
basics, we'd play games together, and he'd show me all kinds of
moves and countermoves. Sometimes he'd throw in a trick move
to see if I could block it, and then explain how I should have
counterattacked. Vronsky chuckled a lot, and seemed to enjoy
the process.
Finally the day came when Artie casually asked, "How about a
game?"
"Of course, Artie," I replied.
We sat down at the little table. We played for perhaps fifteen
or twenty minutes. We exchanged several pieces. Then, very
quietly, I said, "Checkmate." I'd won.
Artie never played chess with me again.
Now I can look back and understand that I was not Artie's
wife in any real sense of the word, only one of his pretty posses-
sions. I was charming as a girlfriend, but as a wife I became a
hindrance. Artie's natural tendency to be impatient and irascible
was intensified where I was concerned, and the increasingly hos-
tile way he put me down both at home and at parties wore my
nerves to shreds.
If I was quiet when friends were around he would say, "Why
don't you say something? Don't you have anything to add to the
conversation?" And if I did open my mouth he'd just say, "Shut
up." His open contempt in front of our friends was particularly
painful. He disregarded my smallest wish and humiliated me
every chance he got, until I was barely able to hold back my
tears. I worshiped the man, but that period was one of the worst
I ever endured.
It all came to a head very late one night. Artie and I had been
drinking old-fashioneds made with Wild Turkey bourbon, a
fairly potent drink. He began needling me and I just couldn't take
it anymore; I was at the point of hysteria. So I ran out of the
house, leapt into the car, and headed off into the night.
I went out of our driveway peeling rubber so loudly that any
cop could have heard it a mile away. And, sure enough, I was
spotted by a police patrol before I'd covered three hundred yards.
That didn't bother me in the slightest, because I knew where I
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was going, and I knew no one was going to stop me. I was going
to the Van Heflins', where I knew I would be sane and safe and
to hell with the cops.
It wasn't a reasonable way of thinking, but then I wasn't in a
reasonable mood.
So there I was cutting corners and weaving across roads in that
expensive neighborhood, engine roaring, police car on my tail,
lights flashing and siren screaming, like a maniac from one of
Hollywood's early thrillers. I was gonna reach the Van Heflins'
or die in the attempt — which didn't seem that unlikely.
I screeched to a halt outside the house. I grabbed the door
handle to make my escape, but I wasn't quick enough. Two
young cops, each with a big revolver in his hand, appeared on
either side. One pushed the barrel within four inches of my head
and growled, "Now where d'you think you're going in such a
hurry?" Which was reasonable, because I must have been a drug
addict or a lunatic as far as he was concerned. And I went on
behaving like one.
I pushed the gun barrel aside as if I were flicking away a fly,
and snapped, "How dare you!" Which was a silly thing to do
because he might have blown my head off, but maybe he was
young and romantic. I pushed past him and made a rush for
Heflins' door, with the other cop yelling, "Hey, Miss, you've got
to walk a straight line," but he was too late. Van must have
heard the noise of my arrival because he opened the door, and I
was through it and slamming it shut behind me before he could
utter a sound.
"God," I gasped, "the police are after me outside!" It was al-
most morning by now, Van was fully dressed and I saw he was
drinking that awful stuff that I hate — Fernet Branca — which is
suppose to cure hangovers. I must say he reacted like a champ.
He shoved the full glass into my hand and said, "For Christ's
sake, drink that." As it went down he popped a sweet-tasting pill
into my mouth, grinned, and said, "Now, let's go outside and
face them."
The two young cops hadn't even had time to knock, but they
were still there, looking very grim-faced.
I'm sure it was Van who spoke first, saying something like,
"Why, officers, I'm sure we can work this thing out. My young
friend here was just in a hurry to pay us a visit."
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AVA GARDNER
The two young cops were certainly aware of that; they must
have had at least a dozen traffic violations to bring me in on, not
to mention "resisting arrest" and interfering with an officer in the
line of duty — which could have been shooting me! But one
thought was uppermost in their minds: I was drunk. In those
days there were no breathalyzers; you walked a straight line. I
really don't know why they just didn't handcuff me and take me
straight to jail But they didn't. They just went on looking grim
and saying, "Now, Miss, will you please walk a straight line."
"Of course," I said, and I hope I gave them a sweet smile.
One thing about me, and it's been a gift straight from heaven,
or maybe it's from the other place, is that no matter how drunk I
get, I never stumble, never weave, and I never slur my speech,
qualities I put down to a good Irish-Scottish capacity to hold
strong drink. This time, however, with the dawn breaking and
the Fernet Branca in my stomach, I was as sober as one of the
little birds chirping in the palm fronds. And I guarantee I walked
the straightest line possible, far better than the two cops could
have done. And by this time I wasn't very nice to them either,
accusing them of "frightening me to death and making me go
faster than usual with all those lights flashing and sirens sound-
ing. I could have had a heart attack."
I think Van was more placatory, whispering things about
" "young actress, naturally highly strung, having trouble with her
husband, confused at this time in the morning, certainly never
touches alcohol — ever. No harm done, is there, officer? . . .
grateful for your cooperation."
The young officers were still grim-faced but they touched their
hats and drove off. I went in and had a large something with
Van, who abandoned Fernet Branca for the real thing and lis-
tened in fatherly fashion to my hesitant confession about life with
Artie.
I should have had my first clue that Artie was thinking about
ending our marriage when he suddenly decided he would sell the
palatial Bedford Drive house and move us to a much inferior
place in the San Fernando Valley. The thought of having to di-
vide the property between us, as California law mandated, must
have sent cold shivers down his back. I didn't like the house in
the Valley; I thought it was cheap and ratty. I was so upset with
all of this that I couldn't eat; I was just skin and bones; so I
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decided to literally save my life as well as my peace of mind by
finding somewhere else to live.
I moved in with Minna Wallis, sister of Hal Wallis, the pro-
ducer, and I was living there when I got a call from Artie. He said
he was in his office in Beverly Hills and asked if I could come
over as he had something important to tell me. Chivalry was not
in Artie's makeup, and the thought that it might have been more
gentlemanly for him to come to me did not cross his mind. But to
hell with all that. I was thrilled by the message. Maybe this was
the beginning of a reconciliation. Because in spite of all the trou-
bles and traumas, I still loved Artie dearly. Maybe we could
make it all work again.
So I dressed up real pretty, and went across to his office and
sat down in a chair that, naturally, Artie did not pull out for me.
And I waited while he smiled and looked across at me with his
dark eyes and did not even think of saying how nice I looked. He
just quietly went about knocking the bottom out of my world
when he said, "Would you object if I went off to Mexico and got
a quick divorce?"
There were all my hopes piled on the floor, as I heard my voice
coming out my mouth saying.
"Sure . . . fine."
So that was it. He got our divorce for us, and married, of all
people, Kathleen Winsor, the woman who'd written Forever Am-
her. I paid for my California divorce and asked for nothing in
settlement. We'd been married for one year and one week.
One thing I will say, given all the problems we ended up hav-
ing, was thank God we didn't have a child as I'd wanted to. But I
have to admit I still have thoughts about that, because I know we
could have produced a fabulous baby.
Still and all, Artie was one of the deep hurts of my life. I was
so much in love with the man, I adored and worshiped him, and I
don't think he ever really understood the damage he did by put-
ting me down all the time. On the other hand, Artie was not the
apologizing kind. To him I was sort of a pretty little pupil who
was just hanging around. I was never an equal, I was never given
the dignity of being a wife. Just like with Mickey, our interests
were poles apart. I thought at the time that love could cure any-
thing. I found out the hard way that it can't. You have to have
more in common than mad love for a marriage to work.
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AVA GARDNER
Yet Artie and I remained close for years, and I can't say any-
thing against him. He taught me to study, to think, to read.
Thanks to Artie, I read Death in the Afternoon, which meant I
had a little something to talk to Hemingway about, not to men-
tion having a leg up on the bullfighters who entered my life. Of
my three husbands, I had the most admiration for Artie. He's
impossible to live with, sometimes even to be friends with, but he
is a worthwhile human being, an extraordinary man.
I remember, for instance, a night in 1944. 1 was with Artie and
his band for a one-night stand in San Diego. The audience was
packed in and waiting but, for some reason, Roy Eldridge, Artie's
marvelous black trumpet player, didn't show up.
Artie was furious, so much so that he was still steaming when
we went out the stage door after the first set to enjoy a cigarette.
And there was Roy Eldridge, sitting in the gutter, holding his
trumpet and crying, the tears pouring down his cheeks. He
hadn't been allowed in the building. He'd been told: "A nigger
playing in a white man's band? Don't give us that crap. Get out
of here, nigger, if you know what's good for you."
Artie was often testy. This time he was not testy, he was vol-
canic with anger. The result: Roy Eldridge was allowed into the
building.
At that next set, Roy Eldridge blew his horn until the notes
shimmered off the rooftops. He played a tune called "Little
Jazz" — maybe Artie wrote it. In those days, when the kids really
liked a number, they stopped dancing and clustered around the
bandstand. This time they hemmed it in to listen to Roy's fan-
tastic rendering. I'll never forget that occasion. Roy stood there
blowing his heart out, tears streaming down his face. It was
heartbreaking. I wept with him.
Dear Artie. Wherever you are I wish you well, and thanks for
all the memories and the guidance. And I'll make one little wager
to myself. I bet you're still in analysis up to your eyebrows.
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ELEVEN
was twenty-four years old. It is not an age
when you pause to take a long and careful
look at yourself. There are too many other
things going on. But in passing I did do a little check.
I had now been through two marriages, each of which, in
terms of actual time elapsed, had lasted barely more than a
year.
I had left Mickey. Artie Shaw had discarded me. I was working
hard, MGM saw to that. I was dating quite a few men but jump-
ing into bed with none of them. I was not drinking seriously —
just a few in the evening. But I guess as a twice-divorced starlet,
there were a few predators around.
That's how I first met John Huston. I knew John's name be-
cause The Killers had been adapted from Hemingway's short
story by John along with Anthony Veiller. I'd also become friends
with Jules Buck, the film's assistant producer, and his wife Joyce.
They knew John well and they said to me, "Poor John. He's sit-
ting around alone and miserable in that big house out there in the
San Fernando Valley. Let's go and have drinks and dinner with
him. He'd love that."
Lonely and miserable my eye!
But as soon as I met John I liked what I saw. He was tall, thin,
and gangly. He had a long Irish face, a quick smile, a soft voice,
and a line of talk that could charm cows in from the pasture or
ducks off the pond. No doubt at all where his ancestors came
from.
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AVA GARDNER
John's place was about an hour's drive from Beverly Hills.
Quite lonely. A big ranch-style house on huge grounds with a
swimming pool into which you could dive from a board fixed on
a veranda about twelve feet above. We had a swim and drinks
around the pool; then we had a marvelous dinner and more
drinks, and then we went on drinking because John was more
than a great boozer, he was in the world heavyweight cham-
pionship class of boozers. And you've got to remember that the
standard greeting of this period, from the end of the Second
World War to well into the fifties, was "Let's have a drink." No
one talked about anything as tacky as alcoholism. Booze was the
essential part of the social scene.
During this drinking session, John said, "Tell you what, fellas,
what about if I try and hypnotize you lovely people? One at a
time — okay?"
What no one knew at the time was that naughty John knew an
awful lot about hypnotism. At the end of the war he'd been as-
signed by the army to make a documentary called Let There Be
Light in some hospital on the East Coast. Through it passed hun-
dreds of ex-soldiers still suffering from traumatic breakdowns
due to their combat experiences. The doctors, psychiatrists, psy-
chologist, and therapists found hypnosis a very useful aid. John
filmed it all, and in the process he learned a lot about that
unique, complex, and unusual remedial aid. He said, "What
about you, Jules, for a start? Gentleman first?"
They were old friends. Army friends. They'd been together in a
photographic unit in the Pacific war zone, and seen a lot of ac-
tion. But Jules didn't know what John had learned in that hospi-
tal on the East Coast.
"Okay," he said, fortified by dry martinis, wine, and a lot of
cognac. "How are you going to start? Shine a light in my eyes, or
wave a watch on a chain . . ."
"No film tricks. No rituals — those are for charlatans. You
are not under the power of the hypnotist. You cannot be forced
to do things against your will, The power of hypnosis lies in
the interpersonal cooperation between the patient and the hyp-
notist"
It was all slightly chilling. Jules was apparently an easy subject.
John took him back to those days in the Pacific, the cries of
wounded men in battle, the piles of casualties, the dead. Jules
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AVA: MY 5TOJRY
remembered it with clarity and related it all in a state close to
hysteria, his mind unburdening itself of those memories. It was
then I realized that John had a bit of a cruel streak in him, for he
seemed to enjoying his mastery over Jules.
He looked at me and smiled. "Your turn?"
"You won't put me under. I'll resist."
John grinned and said, "Ava, darlin', it's not a contest. It's
supposed to be a collaboration between hypnotist and hypno-
tized."
His voice was tranquillizing and relaxing. But I was not going
to reveal myself as Jules had been revealed.
John smiled happily and said, "Ava, love, let's all have another
drink."
(I thought Fd won. But, given how splendidly we got along
through the years, I'm not sure. I strongly suspect that that crafty
young man had hypnotized me after all.)
It was now getting very late — about two or three in the
morning — and Jules and Joyce said, "It's too late to drive home
now, and John's got plenty of spare bedrooms. You can put us
up for the night, can't you, John? We'll all drive home in the
morning."
"Sure," says John. "Take your choice."
So Jules and Joyce settled for a double room, and I took a
smaller room some distance away. I had just removed my shoes
and was thinking of undressing when — without word or knock
or even a gentle tap — the door opened and John was standing
there beaming at me. The situation was obvious to any lady over
the age of seventeen. John was about to make a pass. But I was
just as fast on my feet as he was. And as John approached, a
quick twist and sidestep put me through the door and down the
stairs heading for the open countryside. Fm barefoot, as usual, so
he would have to run pretty fast to catch me. And by God, he
really was after me! And just as fast and just as fit as I was! At
top speed I circled the pool and headed out through the bushes,
then started to zigzag between the trees, then came back again
and headed off on a second circuit. And then, as we headed back
toward the pool, I realized I had only one chance of a ladylike
escape. From the first floor of the house that diving board
stretched out over the pool. If I could take a header off that, John
would have to realize that I was a very reluctant seductee. And a
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AVA GARDNER
very wet one, too! I raced up the stairs, swung along the balcony,
out to the board, and splosh— down I went, fully clothed and
head first, into the pool.
Soaked to the skin, I scrambled out looking like a drowned
something, with John roaring with laughter. But I was furious. I
was not talking to him. I was getting Jules and Joyce out of their
bed and into their car and we were going home — now! I think
John had gone back to the bar to freshen his drink. At any rate
he was standing on the veranda holding it and waving us an alco-
holic good-bye as we drove into the sunrise — I must have seen
more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Holly-
wood— with Joyce still murmuring, "Poor John. He really is very
lonely, you know."
Lonely my ass! Within twenty-four hours all the Los Angeles
papers carried the story of how John Huston had just rushed off
to marry the actress Evelyn Keyes (who was later to become Artie
Shaw's eighth wife). I guess chasing me was just his way of keep-
ing in training.
I'd decided after the breakup with Artie to leave Bappie and
Charlie Guest to their privacy and move into my own small
apartment on Olympic Boulevard. And I had acquired a new
friend. Mearene Jordan (everyone called her Reenie) was sup-
posed to be my maid, but she was also as good a friend as I've
ever had. She was petite and pretty, with an infectious laugh and
a wonderful ability to cope with all of life's storms. We hit it off
from the start and we've spent more years as close companions
than I care to think about.
After my successes with both Whistle Stop and The Killers,
Metro finally woke up to the fact that there might be something
to be gained from my emerging as a sexy nightclub girl and cast
me opposite Clark Gable as Jean Ogilvie, a (what else but) sultry
singer, in The Hucksters. Having been in love with the man since
I was that little girl in North Carolina, I was thrilled, and the
icing on the cake was that Clark, who'd pushed for me for the
part, actually came to our modest apartment to talk to me, a
little nobody, about the role. But that was Clark: down-to-earth,
informal, liking people, helping them, and all done with style. He
was very sweet, and very big and masculine with lots of person-
ality. You can say he wasn't the greatest of actors, but my God,
he was more than that. He was a star.
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AVA: MY STORY
Clark didn't really have to encourage me to play Jean Ogilvie.
MGM had already marked me for it and MGM owned me body
and soul. I had to get permission from Mr. Louis B. Mayer for
everything I did; sometimes I felt I might have to get permission
to go to the bathroom. And since The Hucksters was a project
the studio was strongly committed to, even if I'd hated the idea I
would have had to go along.
The Hucksters started life as a novel by Frederic Wakeman. A
scathing attack on radio advertising, a kind of pretelevision
Network, it spent nearly a year on the top of the national best-
seller list, fully justifying the two hundred thousand dollars
Metro paid for it in a prepublication sale. When Gable read the
novel, he called it "filthy and not entertaining," but the studio
cleaned up the sex for the screenplay, making his lady love
(played by Deborah Kerr in her American debut) a war widow
instead of an unfaithful wife. As for my character, she was an old
flame of Clark's, sort of a bad smell if you know what I mean. I
did have an amusing scene, however, when my search for roman-
tic mood music for a home-cooked dinner with Clark was con-
stantly interrupted by the blare of mindless commercials. Sounds
familiar, doesn't it?
The man who must have had the most fun in the picture, how-
ever, was Sydney Greenstreet. He played Evan Llewellyn Evans,
the tyrannical manufacturer of Beautee Soap (a character appar-
ently based on George Washington Hill, the Lucky Strike king)
who wants his product to get attention and doesn't care how it's
done. "Repetition" is what he insists on in one of his juicy
tirades. "By repetition, by God, I mean until the public is so irri-
tated with it, they'll buy your brand because they bloody well
can't forget it."
Sydney, however, didn't get involved in love scenes with Mr.
Gable. And sometimes, I have to admit, kissing Clark with
twenty-five people looking on was not the answer to a school-
girl's dream. Not to mention that I'd have to be thinking about
whether my lipstick would smear, how long to hold the kiss
to conform to the Hays office guidelines, how I should act when
I came out of the clutch, whether I was holding my head right
for the camera, as well as trying to remember my dialogue. But,
in truth, there were those other times, when I would be playing
a scene with Clark, in his arms, perhaps, and suddenly the
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AVA GARDNER
thought would hit me, This is Clark Gable. This is Clark
Gable!
And my mind would be completely blown. Every line, every
word, every little nuance suggested by director Jack Conway,
it would all go right out of my head. But in some magical
Gable way Clark would understand that, bless him. He'd lean in
a bit, all those crow's feet at the corners of his eyes crinkling,
his face beaming, and he'd whisper, "Hey, kid, where are we?
You stuck? Let me give you a lead." He was always trying to
calm me down, always telling me, "You don't see yourself as an
actress and I don't see myself as an actor. That makes us even."
Right.
This was a big movie for Clark in more ways than one. Not
only was he in every scene but one, which meant he had to be
on the set every day, but it was also his first film in eighteen
months, a long break for MGM's king, which meant our set was
a mecca for a horde of visitors, everyone from Henry Ford II and
Sinclair Lewis to the president of the Canadian National Rail-
ways. But when it came to doing the right thing, Clark was never
too busy.
Take, for instance, the nightclub scene where I stand at the
piano and croon my love song, "Don't Tell Me." Even though
the version the audience was going to hear had already been pre-
recorded by someone else, to make the scene work I had to sing
my heart out and pretend it was the real thing.
Unfortunately, when the time came to film this sequence, it
was past five o'clock. All the stars had gone home, as well as all
the extras who'd previously filled the nightclub tables. And
Clark, I knew, walked off the set every day promptly at five.
Boom! — he was gone.
So there I was, standing in an empty nightclub with a full or-
chestra behind me, wearing a slinky black dress and trying to be
the hottest torch singer in the business, but with absolutely no
one to sing to except some prop man. If there's anything more
depressing than attempting to sing to an empty cabaret room, I
don't know what it is.
Then, just as we were ready to start, I saw this handsome man
carrying an old wooden kitchen chair onto the dance floor. He
placed the chair right in front of me, reversed it and sat down
with his arms folded across the back. It was Clark Gable, grin-
ning at me to begin.
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AVA; MY STORY
For God's sake, how could I help but adore the man? There
was never anything between us — ever. He'd lost his heart, and
almost the sense in his life, when Carole Lombard was killed in
that plane crash. I never met Carole, but Clark told me that at
times her language had the same — shall I say — forthrightness as
mine. And she loved playing practical jokes, though her last one
proved unexpectedly tragic. I had dinner with Clark occasionally
during that time, and he told me the whole story.
As she set out on her war bond tour, Carole decided to leave a
little surprise behind for Clark. So with the help of the studio
makeup and costume departments, as well as a convenient tai-
lor's dummy, she smuggled an exact replica of herself into their
bedroom. Carole never came back to that bedroom, but Clark
did, beside himself with grief when he heard of her death. Can
you imagine his shock when he thought he saw Carole in their
bed? That first agonized moment almost destroyed him. Poor
Carole's joke had misfired.
When The Hucksters finally came out, I received some of the
best notices of my career, with Newsweek insisting that "Ava
Gardner walks off with a good portion of the footage." And
Esquire, claiming I'd been "tough enough to be 'Miss Pig Iron of
1946' in The Killers," noted that in this picture I was "refined
enough to be 'Miss Stainless Steel of 1947.'" Furthermore, my
performance seemed "so serene and worldly-wise that it is hard
to recall her as a wife of Mickey Rooney. But maybe that's one of
the quickest ways to get worldly wisdom." I wasn't about to ar-
gue with that.
In that period of my life, however, both men in my life were
named Howard: Howard Hughes and Howard Duff. But the dif-
ference between them was immeasurable, and the difference in
my relationship with each of was equally immense. Hughes, nat-
urally, was on the phone to me the minute he knew that Artie
and I were splitting up. With his very own security and spy sys-
tem, he knew about it practically before I did. But that was
Howard for you: he could be cruel and ruthless, although with
me he was always gentle and concerned. His objective by now
was clearly marriage, and on a couple of occasions I gave that
offer a lot of careful thought. But I never loved Howard Hughes,
and after two failed marriages, I wasn't going to try again until I
was sure.
The other Howard was young, handsome, and athletic, with a
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AVA GARDNER
wonderful rich voice which he put to good use in his films and on
radio. And as one of my girlfriends said about him, "Howard
Duff's the kind of guy you could take home to mother and she
would adore him and say how lucky her daughter was."
I met Howard in Hollywood, at a party or a nightclub, I can't
remember which, and we hit it off at once. He was warm and
generous, fun to be with, and it wasn't long before we were shar-
ing the same bed. Not on a regular basis, but often enough. I
didn't find out until much later that Yvonne De Carlo, a lovely
girl, was his steady date at the time.
To tell the truth, though Howard said he was infatuated with
me, there were things about me that drove him around the bend.
Changing my mind every ten minutes, going one place and imme-
diately deciding I wanted to be somewhere else, that was not his
style. We were both night people, but Howard was very profes-
sional, and we went to bed early and not together when we had
to work the next morning. The idea of marriage? It came up
mainly from Howard. I loved him, but not deeply enough to start
down that route. Let's have fun, I said. And we sure did.
MGM, trying to capitalize on whatever fame I had, used to
send me off on publicity trips to various parts of the country. I
would be taken to the local radio station, where in addition to
the broadcast there would be reporters and photographers ready
to spread the gospel of the studio's future attractions. Howard
Duff came with me on several of these trips, including a particu-
larly memorable one to San Francisco, where I'd been inter-
viewed on radio by someone known locally as "the Walter
Winchell of San Francisco."
He took Howard and me to dinner at a superb restaurant, and
the conversation got around to the good — or bad — old days of
San Francisco, when the gold miners and the sailors from the
three-masted ships hit what was known as the Barbary Coast,
storming ashore looking for — hmm — well, looking.
Immediately I wanted to know where all the fun was today.
What about showing me some of it? Here I was with Howard as
my escort, ready and willing to swing the night away. Get
movin', fellas!
The local Walter Winchell cocked a knowing eye and said,
"Well, there are some interesting places still around."
I said, "Let's go."
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AVA: MY STORY
The local Winchell said, "Well, we could start off at undoubt-
edly the classiest bordello on the West Coast."
I had some idea what a bordello was, and I felt it was about
time my education was improved, so I spoke right up and said,
"Let's give it a try."
Who could refuse an offer like that? We all piled into a taxi
and headed up toward Nob Hill, which everyone knew was one
of the posh areas of the city. Our leader explained that the house
in question had once belonged to a famous actress of the twenties
whose hobby had been to relax in her enormous marble bath
filled with warm milk.
The house was very imposing. Nothing garish or cheap about
the heavy stone facade, and nothing to reveal that it concealed a
brothel. The doorman was in livery, and wore a top hat. His
eyebrows didn't move as he plainly recognized our local guide,
and he opened the stout oak door leading onto a long corridor.
The carpet was as deep and soft as a well-kept lawn, the mirrors
and antique furnishings were exquisite. But the most astonishing
thing about the place was that a series of corridors separated by
heavy doors ran on like a maze. Each door was attended by a
granite-faced flunky dressed in brilliant livery which would have
been envied by any royal court in Europe, and was opened only
by a special knock that passed you through to the next section.
Finally we reached the main salon. The door opened into one
of the most beautiful rooms I have ever seen: a huge marble fire-
place and a roaring fire, fine wallpaper, carpets, furniture, and
mirrors — oh, lots of mirrors.
And the madam — well, you could hardly call her that, she was
so elegant and welcoming, as if she were meeting her country-
house guests for an intimate weekend. She was beautifully
gowned, her coiffeured hair just touched with gray. Her voice
was upper-class English, and she took such a fancy to me that I
thought she might be trying to recruit me as one of her flock.
And she knew my name.
"Ah, Miss Gardner," she said as she steered me across to a
high-backed chair, "I want you to sit in this particular chair so
that you may see everything that is happening. ..."
I did a slight inward cough as I realized I had been placed
opposite a see-through mirror. Now what was I going to see?
Slightly relieved, I saw that the only view was of a beautiful
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AVA GARDNER
well-stocked bar with a handsome barman, and nobody else in
sight. I realized that at a ritzy joint like this there would be no
goings-on on the carpet.
Meanwhile the housemother was filling me in on the details,
"My girls are all dressed by Dior/' she whispered, and I won-
dered if Mr. Dior knew he had been quite so privileged. I also
wondered with all this total security how a gentleman and his
lady managed to get into each other's clutches. Plainly things had
altered from the old gold-rush days when the guy marched in,
hitting the spittoon and yelling, "Now where's my harpy for the
night?"
The housemother was also whispering, "In my house no two
gentlemen are ever allowed to meet each other; you could
imagine the complications that might cause." I really couldn't,
but my attention was now occupied by the beautiful young
woman — gowned magnificently, as advertised, by Dior — who
swayed into the bar without a trace of indelicacy. She stood there
looking like a million dollars and I was wondering why Mr. L. B.
Mayer hadn't got her under contract when an equally elegant
gentleman joined her. The housemother smiled at me to show
that I would understand that the preliminaries were now starting.
He shook hands politely. They both sat down. The barman
poured champagne from an expensive-looking bottle. It was also
plain that the conversation was polite, without any of those old
gold-rush realities of: "For Christ's sake — twenty dollars! You
must think I've hit the mother lode!"
The housemother went on whispering, "You see, when the
gentleman takes his leave he goes out through another exit so
that no one ever sees him come in or leave this building."
"Would you like to see the marble bath and the rest of the
house?" she asked. And off we went on another little tour. The
bath was impressive: a huge white marble piece with downward
flowing steps. It was now empty, so I knew that nothing very
interesting went on there. I gave the housemother another one of
my inquiring looks, which made her say, "Oh, I expect you'd like
to see the rooms where the girls, er — "
I smiled back encouragingly, and off we went down another
corridor.
And there the dream ended.
A room not much larger than a cubicle. No bathroom, just a
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AVA: MY STORY
basin in one corner. I've seen better rooms in second-class motels.
And the bed ... for God's sake, one would have expected a huge
four-poster with creamy sheets and lush bedspreads. What did
they get? A low, king-size square covered with a red drape. So
this was where lust was satisfied. If I'd been an old-time miner I'd
have asked for my gold nugget back.
109
ARLENE DAHL
first met Ava in 1948, when I was assigned a
dressing room right across from hers at
Metro. Sydney Guillaroff was a mutual
friend of both of ours — he would do our hair regularly when we
were working — and he said to me, "She really needs friends. She
has men friends, but she doesn't have many women friends." She
was too beautiful; she was considered a threat by the so-called
glamour girls at Metro.
Ava was not working at the time, but she usually preferred to
have her lunch brought into her dressing room because she was
really painfully shy. It was not a cover, not a pretense — she was
timid, she was afraid. So either I'd come to her dressing room or
she would come to mine. She told me she was very nervous about
entering a room, even the commissary. "I would just as soon
crawl under the carpet until I get to my seat," she said, "because
I hate to have people look at me."
"But, Ava, this is crazy," I said. "You are just fantastic-look-
ing. What happens when you're on the screen?"
"When I'm on the screen, Fm playing a role, I'm playing a
part," she said. "I am somebody else. I'm not me."
Yet she never thought of herself as a good actress; she just did
not believe in herself. Acting for her was like a child playing in
the garden or with her dolls. It was make-believe. It didn't have
any substance, and she was looking for substance in her life. Or
someone to share it with or give it to her.
At that time, I was also writing a beauty column for the Chi-
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AVA: MY STORY
cago Tribune/New York Daily News syndicate, and she was the
very first person I wanted to interview. "Ava," I said, "you are, if
not the most, one of the most beautiful women 1 have ever seen
in my life."
"Oh, come on, Arlene," she said. "You don't have to say that
to make me feel good. Why don't you interview Elizabeth Tay-
lor?"
I said 1 was determined to begin with her and added, "If you
put pate de foie gras under your eyes, my editor is going to love
it."
"No, I do nothing at all," she said. "I try to take my makeup
off when I come home from the studio. Sometimes I succeed,
sometimes I don't."
Gee, I thought, this is not going to be a very successful column
if I can't come up with anything. But Ava didn't have to wear
makeup. She had naturally beautiful skin, and great color to her
lips. She dressed very casually; she was never so happy as when
she wore slacks and a blouse. But the slacks were well tailored,
she was never sloppy, and she was very clean. She would wash
her hands at least three times during lunch. And there was no one
who could touch that posture, the way she walked and presented
herself. She was a sexy woman without trying. All she had to do
was walk into the room.
Metro in those days was just like being part of a very rich
family; you had everything at your disposal. If you went from
Stage 1 to Stage 9, you didn't walk, you took the limousine. If
you had to go to the dressing room, or to the loo, you took the
limousine. I mean you never walked anywhere. If you were going
out to a premiere or something, you could go to wardrobe and
take any clothes that would fit and sign them out for the evening.
It was just a fascinating life. You were pampered and spoiled.
Some actresses thought they deserved it, but I think because Ava
had been poor, she didn't know how long it was going to last.
She thought: One day, it's not going to be this way.
And L B. Mayer was the emperor. He'd call you to his office
either before, during, or after you were cast in a film, and he'd
want you to sit on his lap in front of a mirror while he taught
you how to act. It was really the Loretta Young School of Acting.
We'd complain to Lillian Burns, the dramatic coach, and she'd
say, "Well, Uncle Louie is Uncle Louie. Just put it in the back of
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your mind and don't pay any attention to it." Ava also thought it
was ridiculous, but she played that game. "You know/5 she said,
"there are certain games in life you have to play."
One thing she hated, though, was PR. She thought it was
phony and false, and she was against anything that was phony
and false. Not only was she a Capricorn, an earth sign, she was
really down to earth as well. But she did what she had to do in
order to make the money she wanted to make, and in order to
please Mayer and the powers that be. She would kick and scream
but finally, when it came right down to it, she did it. But she did
it with taste.
One game she did not play was the couch game. She never had
to and she never did. She was not promiscuous, she was true —
true blue. When she was married, she was married. She didn't
fool around; there was never any scandal about her. She was
exactly the opposite of the roles she played. She looked like a
femme fatale and she wasn't. She was really sweet and dear and
lovely, and, at the time that I knew her, she wanted a baby, a
child, more than anything in the world.
We often talked about the kind of man that we'd like to marry,
that would make us happy. "Oh, God," she said, "the thing I
dream about is having someone really love me for myself, for
what's inside of me, and not who I am on the screen or what they
think I am. The happiest time in my life would be finding the
right person and marrying him."
Ava was always looking for a father figure, I think. One of her
favorite songs, something she used to hum to herself, was "I'm a
little lamb who's lost in the wood, I know I could always be
good, to one who'll watch over me." And she had that quality of
bringing out a person's protectiveness. Men would like to protect
her. Sometimes they protected her too much.
Mickey Rooney was a protector up to a point. He was cocky.
Big star. Big talent. He could do anything — he could sing, he
could compose, he could play the piano, the drums. And he was
a fine actor. I don't think there was anything he couldn't do. But
he was cocky. And he rubbed people the wrong way. He had a
wicked sense of humor, you know. He could take you down with
one line.
But he never did that with Ava. He was very protective. In a
funny way, Mickey also had an inferiority complex. He wasn't
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tall, he wasn't handsome, he did not think too much of himself.
So they had a lot in common, these two, and they gravitated
toward each other because of that. Together, they were strong.
And she never complained about him. I mean, he was boastful,
he was this and he was that, but she'd just say, "Well, you know
Mickey." And he was always a good friend to her.
As for Howard Hughes, the main thing that threw her off, and
me, too, was his body odor. Howard never bathed, he never used
a deodorant. And I'm sure he never cleaned his clothes. They
were always dirty, and he never bothered to change. I remember
standing next to him at Giro's one night, and I smelled him be-
fore I knew who it was. I turned around and saw his shirt, he had
dirt on his collar and around his neck, and I had to excuse my-
self.
And here was Ava, washing her hands three times during the
course of lunch, very insistent on cleanliness. She told me
Howard was besieging her with calls and setting up traps for her,
and it was always a challenge to get out of those assignations.
She couldn't get past the body odor, and neither could I. We
laughed about that.
When Ava's marriages to Mickey and Artie Shaw didn't work
out, she said, "You know, I don't trust love anymore. It's led me
astray. If a man knows you love him, then he'll take advantage of
you and treat you badly." But part of her still believed that the
greatest day of her life would be when she could leave it all be-
hind and just live her life as she wanted to with someone that she
loved. That she was never allowed to do that was one of the
great tragedies of her life. And the fact that she didn't have the
children that she really wanted was a tragedy as well. She was
beautiful and famous and idolized and still was one of the most
unhappy women. She was an unfulfilled flower.
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TWELVE
ita Hayworth once said the problem with
her life was that the men in it fell in love
with Gilda, her most glamorous role, and
woke up the next morning with her. That's a sentiment I can
fully identify with. I've always felt a prisoner of my image, felt
that people preferred the myths and didn't want to hear about
the real me at all. Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren and
played all those sexy broads, people made the mistake of think-
ing I was like that off the screen. They couldn't have been more
wrong. Although no one believes it, I came to Hollywood almost
pathologically shy, a country girl with a country girl's simple,
ordinary values.
Hollywood, however, saw a lot of money in promoting me as
a goddess, and that process moved into high gear with One
Touch of Venus. Here I played literally the ancient goddess of
love, a naturally amorous type who comes to earth imprisoned in
a statue of the Anatolian Venus purchased by an art-loving de-
partment store owner. But when "a little old good-for-nothing
window trimmer" named Eddie Hatch, played by Robert Walker,
kisses me on the lips in a fit of inebriated passion, I climb down
off the pedestal and make everyone's life a comedic hell by falling
madly in love with him.
Venus started as a stage musical written by S. J. Perelman and
Ogden Nash, with music by the great Kurt Weill, but only two of
the original songs made it into the film. One of those, "Speak
Low," was nominally a duet between me and Dick Haymes, who
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played Eddie Hatch's best pal. But, as usual, another voice was
dubbed in instead of mine.
Before shooting could begin, however, a statue of me as the
Anatolian Venus had to be created. Sparing no expense. Universal
commissioned sculptor Joseph Nicolosi to do the job. And that's
where the crises began. Most Venuses I'd seen in art books were
nude or had a magically clinging drape low on the hips, and Mr.
Nicolosi clearly had the same idea. Because when I took off my
clothes behind a screen and appeared modestly clothed in a two-
piece bathing suit, he looked at me rather severely and gave a
sigh that could have been heard as far away as the Acropolis.
Nude? Me? Not even MGM had that in their contract. Bare
my breasts? What would Mania have thought? Jesus, I had a
hard enough time with two husbands and one boyfriend. No one
darted into bed faster than I did. I had a fine time with sex, but
the thought of exposing my body was something else again. I
guess my mother's puritanical zeal had left some marks on me
after all. Besides, it was February, and cold, and the sculptor's
wife had to supply a steady stream of hot drinks just to keep us
functioning.
The artist, however, prevailed. First he got me to change into a
more shapely bra, because the suit top had the unfortunate effect
of flattening the true line. But that didn't stop his numerous sighs
and hesitations, and after several more hot drinks, I knew I'd
have to make the supreme sacrifice.
"Would you like the bra off?" I asked cautiously.
Nicolosi smiled and nodded. "Your body is beautiful. It will
make all the difference." And do you know what? He was right.
Immodest as it may sound, I have to say that the final statue
looked very nice indeed. It was carted off to the studio, with
filming scheduled to begin in little more than a week.
Then came the explosion. A nude statue! Who said anything
about nudity? Tits! Didn't anyone tell you that tits aren't allowed
in a Hollywood film? It doesn't matter how beautiful they are,
it's immoral and indecent. Plus, the goddamn statue has to come
to life on screen. Do you want us to be accused of corrupting the
whole of America?
As the owner of the offending objects, I sat back and did not
say a word. After all, I'd done my bit for the arts. But the poor
sculptor, who'd poured his soul into this clay, was shattered. No
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one had told him they'd wanted a Venus dressed up like Queen
Victoria. Finally, another statue was made, this one with me
wearing the belted-at-the-waist off-the-shoulder gown that Orry
Kelly had designed for Venus, and America's morals survived to
fight another day.
One Touch of Venus ended with the inevitable Hollywood
fadeout, with everyone paired up with just the perfect person. It's
often struck me as sad that the actors and actresses involved in
these fantasies can't arrange the same kind of rapture for them-
selves. Because if anyone needed or deserved a happy ending,
poor Bob Walker certainly did.
While we were filming Venus, the rumor-mongering movie
magazines were all claiming that Bob and I were engaged in the
inevitable ecstatic affair that's supposed to go hand-in-hand with
moviemaking. And, I admit, sometimes it does. But not this time.
Bob Walker had been married to the beautiful Jennifer Jones.
Whether he was then into booze to the point of being an alco-
holic, I don't know. He sure was when I knew him. And his
agony was compounded by the fact that Gone With the Wind's
David O. Selznick was also intoxicated with Jennifer, and had
pursued her as only a determined producer can. When a girl is
young and beautiful and an ambitious actress, it's very hard to
resist that kind of attention.
The non-Hollywood ending to this story was that Jennifer di-
vorced Bob, David divorced his wife Irene, and the two of them
wed. Irene went to New York to become a very successful stage
producer, and only Bob was left to grieve. And grieve. And
grieve.
Poor baby. He tired so hard to stay off the drink. He actually
lived at Universal, in his dressing room, a sort of bungalow, with
a man who did exercises with him and was supposed to make
sure he didn't touch the stuff. No parties. No interruptions. No
hangovers.
It worked for the first part of the movie; then Bob's cronies
and hangers-on discovered what he was doing. They soon found
ways of sneaking into his company with the age-old come-on:
"One little drink won't do us any harm."
One night Bob rang me up and asked me out to a restaurant.
But by the time we had finished dinner, and Bob had finished
drowning his sorrows, he was in no state to go anywhere. I de-
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cided I would drive and said casually, "Bob, let's go home and
we can have a nightcap at my place — okay?"
By the time we got back to my apartment and Bob had had his
nightcap, Reenie and I were exchanging glances. Bob had as
much chance of reaching his bed by car as he had of swimming
across the Pacific.
He was quite agreeable when I said, "Bob, why don't you
spend the night here? I can move in with Reenie. Then we can
both arrive early at the studio tomorrow morning.95 Bob thought
that was a splendid idea. He staggered off to the bathroom, and
when he returned we poured him into bed. There were two single
beds in Reenie's room — evasion insurance against nights like this.
I went to sleep. Reenie, however, was kept awake for hours. As
she told me the next morning, "It was really pitiful listening to
Mr. Walker weeping all night long. Really sobbing and moaning,
moaning, 'Jenny, where are you, Jenny? Why don't you come
back to me, Jenny?' Honest to God, Miss G., he never stopped.
I've never known a man in such a state."
Reenie had gotten up early to get the coffee and get us off to
the studio. She went into the bathroom where she kept the clean-
ing materials, and opened the cupboard door. And what was on
the floor — a sort of harness. At first she didn't know what it
could be, and then she worked it out. Poor little Bob wore it
under his suit. A padded harness that gave him bigger shoulders,
bigger arms, bigger muscles, a bigger chest. Reenie didn't touch
it. Bob visited the bathroom and came out ready to go. And we
drove out to Universal to get on with One Touch of Venus. I
don't know if Bob ever got over his booze problem. I do know he
died at far too young an age: thirty-two — more I think from a
broken heart than from the alcohol he drank.
The next year, 1949, saw me costarring in The Bribe with an-
other Robert — Robert Taylor — with far more satisfying romantic
results. Not that the plot was much help. Set on some fictitious
island off the coast of Central America, which looked sus-
piciously like Mexico on MGM's all-purpose back lot, The Bribe
had me tangentially connected to a nasty plot to smuggle surplus
American aircraft engines into South America. I was excused
from my usual slinky black dress and put into Mexican
huaraches and fetching native blouses to match the climate. And
though I seemed to be happy singing and dancing at the local
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cantina, my main job was to take one quick look at Mr. Taylor, a
federal agent dead set on catching those smugglers, and fall into
his arms. This time, it not only happened on screen, it happened
for real.
There's no rhyme or reason about a love affair. In those days, I
was in constant proximity to some of the most handsome, ro-
mantic figures on earth, and they didn't move me the slightest bit.
Not that I didn't adore men. I did. I liked their strength, their
laughter, their vulnerability, and I liked them in bed! But I was a
one-man woman. I did not want a string of lovers. I had to like a
man one hell of a lot to let him disturb my sleep. But since
Howard Duff and I had split by that time, I was available. And
Bob Taylor surely fit the bill for me, and I did the same for Bob.
Bob was married to Barbara Stanwyck at the time, but the
marriage had been on the rocks for a long time and was soon to
end in divorce. For one thing, Bob had not endeared himself to
Barbara when he'd been surprised by a photographer outside a
whorehouse in Rome with a young lady who looked suspiciously
like one of its employees. Poor Bob, he never had much luck. The
story hit most of the papers back home, and Barbara was not
amused. What wife would be?
Bob thought The Bribe was one of the worst movies he'd ever
made, but then he always hated the parts that Metro inflicted on
him. It all started with Camille, the movie where he played Greta
Garbo's beautiful romantic lover and became a star. Women all
over the world swooned, and Bob was done for, typecast forever.
Metro had discovered a new romantic hero, the male equivalent
of that love goddess Fd just played, and the studio didn't like to
tamper with money in the bank, no matter what anyone's per-
sonal preferences were.
And Bob couldn't stand those parts. Sure, he made enough
money to buy a huge ranch, and the studio loaned him a plane
and a copilot to keep him happy, but he thought the parts he
played demeaned his manhood, and that ate away at his self-
respect. Because Bob wasn't some effeminate type trying to hide
reality under a macho exterior; he was an outdoor man. Bob
lived and worked on a ranch because he loved it. He rode,
worked horses, and handled cattle as well as any cowboy. He
hunted, fished, shot, and roamed the wild country as well as any
ranger. And he wanted parts that mirrored his real life. He
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wanted to be out there fighting against the toughies and shooting
the baddies. But his good looks mitigated against him: he was
always going to be slotted into the matinee-idol category. I think
that created a sense of disappointment in him, almost a sense of
failure.
I knew him as a warm, generous, intelligent human being. I
especially remember that though I smoked cigarettes in those
days, Bob Taylor left me miles behind. He was completely ad-
dicted: fifty to seventy a day before the cocktail hour, and God
knows how many after that. And he carried around this big ther-
mos of black coffee, even keeping it in his car. Cigarettes and
black coffee kept him going all day long.
Our love affair lasted three, maybe four months. A magical
little interlude. We hurt no one because no one knew — only Ree-
nie on my side, and no one on his. Fve never forgotten those few
hidden months. I made two more films with Bob, Ride, Vaquero!
and Knights of the Round Table, where he played Sir Lancelot (of
course!), but we never renewed our romance. And Bob, despite
all his efforts, couldn't break the mold of the beautiful lover. The
film world remembers him that way, and I have to say that I do,
too.
Yet another Bob, Bob Mitchum, came into my professional life
a couple of years later, and he was a different sort of character
altogether. And let me make a frank admission: if I could have
gotten him into bed, I would have. I think that every girl who
ever worked with Bob fell in love with him, and I was no excep-
tion.
The film in question, yet another loan-out, was called My For-
bidden Past. Someone once called it "a steamy tale of adultery,
notorious antecedents, a mysterious inheritance, and an impecu-
nious aristocratic family embroiled in strange goings-on beside
the bayous of New Orleans," which I guess is as good a descrip-
tion of that melodramatic mishmash as we're going to get. Al-
though I do not immediately ride off into the sunset with Bob at
the close, there is little doubt that I'm already saddling the
horses.
Bob had recently gotten out of jail after being set up for mari-
juana possession. He and another actor on My Forbidden Past
smoked pot, and one day Bob said to me, "Honey, have you ever
tried this stuff?"
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Actually I had. It started when I was in a jazz club in down-
town L.A. with Artie Shaw, listening to Count Basic and his or-
chestra. I knew musicians were supposed to smoke pot, and I
whispered to Artie, "Why don't I try it?" And Artie said very
severely, "You're not going to try it. I'm dead against drugs and
you are going to be against them, too." But I went on coaxing
him and complaining I was missing out on a vital experience. So
he broke down and got these four little funny-looking sticks of
the stuff and we took them home with us. Then I lost my nerve
and decided I didn't want to become a drug addict after all, so
Artie hid them so well I thought he'd thrown them away.
Then, months later, I was cleaning out the dressing room and I
came across these four little things lying there. So I called one of
my best girlfriends, Peggy Malley, who was into everything, and I
said in my most conspiratorial whisper, "Peggy, come on over.
We're going to smoke some pot."
So Peggy came over and we sat there very soberly and began to
puff on these little sticks, and I said, "I think you're supposed to
inhale very deeply." So we tried that, and we smoked all fucking
four of them, waiting for the skies to open, the roof to fall in,
waiting for something marvelous to happen. It didn't. I remem-
bered that music is supposed to enhance the high, so we put some
on. "Doesn't sound any different to me," I said. "Doesn't sound
any different to me either," Peggy said. And that was it. Nothing
happened, except that we wondered if Artie had been conned
into buying something that wasn't the real thing.
When I told all this to Bob, he said, as they always do, "Well,
maybe you didn't get the good stuff." So he got some of what he
considered "the good stuff" and both of us, his hairdresser and
that other actor climbed into his trailer and started puffing away
for all we were worth. And, Jesus, I still didn't feel anything at
all.
So on the way back home we stopped at a bar and I ordered a
martini. I was sitting on the stool and about to reach out for the
glass when everything started to feel sort of funny, in an unsta-
ble, uncomfortable sort of way. I almost lost my balance. I
couldn't even tell if I was really on that stool or not. The hell
with this, I thought. I like to know where Fm sitting and what
Fm reaching for and what it all feels like.
That one experience put me off pot for the rest of my life. It
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sure wasn't worth all the hassle. I just stuck to my normal drug,
alcohol. Booze was more reliable. And a lot easier to get. And the
truth is, I never considered myself to be the great boozer the press
made me out to be. I was never one of those solid, silent, day-in-
and-day-out drinkers. I did love parties and staying up late, and I
occasionally pretended to have a lot more than I actually did.
And when I did drink, it was only for the effect. As many drinks
as I've had, I can't remember enjoying one. The only reason I
drank was to get over my shyness.
But drunk or sober, I wasn't kidding when I said I really fell
for Bob Mitchum. A lot of girls did. I remember once chatting
with Shirley MacLaine, another member in good standing, about
this, and we both reached the same conclusion about Bob's eva-
sive tactics. As soon as he felt another woman's vibes reaching
out to entangle him, he'd look around with those soulful Irish
eyes of his and make a beeline for the phone. "Help," he'd yell,
and Dorothy, one of the most understanding wives I've ever met,
would be on the scene. Dear Bob. A lovely, lovely character, I
never pursued him. Didn't have the time. Frank Sinatra had now
entered my life.
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THIRTEEN
he first time I met Frank Sinatra, I was still
married to Mickey Rooney. We were out
at some Sunset Strip club, probably
Mocambo, and Frank was there. He knew Mickey pretty well—
who didn't? — and he stepped across to meet the new wife. And
being Frank he did the big grin and said, "Hey, why didn't I meet
you before Mickey? Then I could have married you myself."
That caught me off guard. I guess I smiled back uncertainly,
but I don't think I said a word. Because in those early days, I was
always feeling out of my depth. Even to meet Frank Sinatra was
exciting enough. To have him say a thing like that left me dumb-
founded.
But Frank was always like that, always the engaging flirt. I
remember being on my way to Metro's famous twenty-fifth-anni-
versary group portrait about five years later, an event that Red
Skelton broke up by walking in, raising both hands in the air,
and saying, "Okay, kids, the part's taken, you can go home
now." As I drove to the studio, a car sped past me, swung in
front, and slowed down so much I had to pass it myself. The car
overtook me again and repeated the process. Having done this
about three times, the car finally pulled alongside me, the grin-
ning driver raised his hat and sped away to that same photo ses-
sion. That was Frank. He could even flirt in a car.
I, however, was not about to flirt back that first night. Mr.
Frank Sinatra was a married man. Not a particularly faithful
married man, according to Hollywood gossip. But a married
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man — with children*. And I, a faithful, virtuous nineteen-year-old
bride, definitely did not flirt with married men. What would
Mama say?
This is not to say that I did not think, even then, that Frank
was one of the greatest singers of this century. He had a thing in
his voice I've only heard in two other people — Judy Garland and
Maria Callas. A quality that makes me want to cry for happiness,
like a beautiful sunset or a boys' choir singing Christmas carols.
And not only, like hundreds of other girls my age, was I intoxi-
cated by the distinctive sound of the big swing bands, but I've
always loved musicians. I'm absolutely intoxicated with them. All
I have to do is stand in front of a bandstand and I'm in love with
the whole band. It's not only the beautiful swell of music that
emerges from the group, it's the instruments, and the whole en-
semble look — I think it's sexy as hell. Some women fall for writ-
ers, some for sailors, some for fighters. I'm hooked on bands.
Despite this, it was quite some time before Frank and I hooked
up together. My next contact came when he maintained a bach-
elor pad at the Sunset Towers, a structure that literally towered
over the apartment house where Reenie and I shared a small
place. Frank knew I was there, and occasionally, when he and his
buddies were having a few drinks, we'd hear their boozy voices
shouting, "Ava, can you hear me, Ava? Ava Gardner, we know
you're down there. Hello, Ava, hello." It wasn't the most charm-
ing way to get acquainted, but Reenie and I always politely nod-
ded and smiled back.
Finally, after a few casual meetings outside our apartment
houses, Frank stopped me and said, "Ava, let's be friends. Why
don't we have drinks and dinner tonight?"
I looked at him. I damn well knew he was married, though the
gossip columns always had him leaving Nancy for good, and
married men were definitely not high on my hit parade. But he
was handsome, with his thin, boyish face, the bright blue eyes,
and this incredible grin. And he was so enthusiastic and invigo-
rated, clearly pleased with life in general, himself in particular,
and, at that moment, me.
"Okay," I said. "Sure." He sure was attractive. Very attractive.
What else could I do?
We drank quite a bit that night, had dinner, and ended up at
some place Frank owned, or had borrowed. It certainly wasn't
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the Sunset Towers, but it was very chic. I suppose you could say
it was the perfect place for seduction. And yes, we kissed, and
not just like good friends. But even if 1 had been the most willing
girl in the world, which I wasn't, I felt it was all wrong. Some-
how cheap and wrong. I was increasingly attracted to Frank, but
this just didn't feel like the time or the place to do something
about it. So I went home alone and, though it had in truth barely
began, I thought the chapter on Mr. Sinatra in my life had closed.
Then, sometime early in 1949, Bappie and I rented a house in
Palm Springs, a desert town that had become a favored holiday
retreat for Hollywood types. People were always giving parties
there, and Bappie and I were usually invited. These weren't nec-
essarily the most scintillating affairs, and at one of them Bappie
got so bored that she left after an hour. She took our car, know-
ing that I could easily get a ride home from one of the guests.
And who should arrive at my elbow, dry martini in hand, but
one of those guests. The blue eyes were inquisitive, the smile still
bright and audacious, the whole face even friendly and more ex-
pressive than I remembered. Oh, God, Frank Sinatra could be the
sweetest, most charming man in the world when he was in the
mood.
"Good to see you again," he said. "It's been a long time."
"Sure has," I answered, feeling better already.
"I suppose we were rushing things a little the last time we
met."
"You were rushing things a little."
"Let's start again," said Frank. "What are you doing now?"
"Making pictures as usual. How about you?"
"Trying to pick myself up off my ass."
I knew what that was all about. Everyone knew that Frank
was at one of the lowest points in his career. His golden voice
was letting him down, hitting the more than occasional clinker;
his marvelous phrasing was losing its smoothness. After years on
top, he'd fallen to number five on the Downbeat vocalist poll,
had gone quite a while without a bestselling record, and suffered
the humiliation of having Metro switch his billing from No. 1 to
No. 2 when On the Town with Gene Kelly was released.
But though I knew all about Frank's problems, I wasn't about
to ask him about them that night. And, honey, I didn't bring up
Nancy either. This night was too special for that. A lot of silly
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stories have been written about what happened to us in Palm
Springs, but the truth is both more and less exciting. We drank,
we laughed, we talked, and we fell in love. Frank gave me a lift
back to our rented house. We did not kiss or make dates, but we
knew, and I think it must have frightened both of us. I went in to
wake Bappie up, which didn't appeal to her much, but I had to
tell someone how much I liked Frank Sinatra. I just wasn't pre-
pared to say that what I really meant by like was love.
Back in Hollywood, Frank called me up. We met for dinner at
a quiet place, and we didn't do much drinking. This time I did
ask him about Nancy. He said he'd left her physically, emo-
tionally, and geographically years before, and there was no way
he was going back. The kids, however, were something else; he
was committed to them forever. I was to learn that that kind of
deep loyalty — not faithfulness, but loyalty — was a critical part of
his nature.
We didn't say much more. Love is a wordless communion be-
tween two people. That night we went back to that little yellow
house in Nichols Canyon and made love. And, oh, God, it was
magic. We became lovers forever — eternally. Big words, I know.
But 1 truly felt that no matter what happened we would always
be in love. And God almighty, things did happen.
Frank and I didn't hide ourselves away, but we kept, as they
say, a fairly low profile. Still, one or two people tried to warn me
about him. Lana Turner was one. She had been one of Artie
Shaw's wives, and she'd had a very serious affair with Frank a
couple of years before me. We met in the ladies' room during a
party, and she told me her story. She had been deeply in love
with Frank and, so she thought, Frank with her. Though he was
shuttling backward and forward between her bedroom and
Nancy's, trying to equate obedience to Catholic doctrines with
indulgence in his natural inclinations, divorce plans were all set
up and wedding plans had been made.
Then Lana woke up one morning, picked up the newspaper,
and read that Frank had changed his mind and gone back to
Nancy for good. It was the old Catholic arrangement: wife and
family come first. Nancy had almost made a theme song out of it:
"Frank always comes back to me."
I really liked Lana. She was a nice girl, and she felt neither
malice nor anger toward Frank and me. She just thought I ought
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AVA GARDNER
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 Protes-
tant background. If he wanted me, there could be no compromise
on that issue.
As much in love as we were, Frank and I didn't really care if,
sooner or later, people found out about us. But we thought it was
basically our private business, something between two people.
And those feelings led me, early in 1950, to make a very funda-
mental mistake.
One of Texas's gaudiest millionaires, the model in fact, for
the James Dean character in Giant, had built the enormous
Shamrock Hotel in Houston, and Frank had accepted a singing
engagement there. So I called Dick Jones, one of his best friends,
and said, "Let's go to Houston and surprise Frank."
I can still hear the doubt that crept into Dick's voice as he said,
"Ava, I don't think that's such a good idea."
That's all I needed to hear to make me even more determined
to go. uOf course it's a good idea to go," I insisted. "Frank will
love it. You're not going to back out on me, are you?"
So we went, and Frank did welcome me with appropriate hugs
and kisses. The trouble started when the mayor of Houston in-
vited us to dinner at one of the city's best Italian restaurants. In
the middle of the meal, a photographer from the Houston Post
arrived to commemorate the occasion with a bunch of pictures.
Frank reacted as if he'd found a live cobra in his salad. No
punches were exchanged, only a few angry words, before owner
Tony Vallone calmed everybody down.
No harm seemed to be done, but within twenty-four hours the
news that Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were honoring the new
Shamrock Hotel with their presence made headlines all over the
world. A press storm of major proportions broke over our heads,
dooming forever the "just good friends" line we'd been successful
with so far. Now, nearly forty years later, I can be fairly rational
about this, even smile ruefully at all the fuss. Then, however, I
was deeply hurt and upset. All I had done was fall in love. It was,
unfortunately, with a married Catholic man.
If the Shamrock mess had one positive result, it convinced
Nancy that this time Frank was for real. She picked Valentine's
Day 1950 to tell the world they'd separated. "Unfortunately, my
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AVA: MY STORY
married life with Frank has become most unhappy and almost
unbearable," her statement read. "We have therefore separated. I
have requested my attorney to attempt to work out a property
settlement, but I do not contemplate divorce proceedings in the
foreseeable future/9
Now the shit really hit the fan. In the next few weeks, I was
receiving scores of letters accusing me of being a scarlet woman,
a home wrecker, and worse. One correspondent addressed me as
"Bitch-Jezebel-Gardner," the Legion of Decency threatened to
ban my movies, and Catholic priests found the time to write me
accusatory letters. I even read where the Sisters of Mary and
Joseph asked their students at St. Paul the Apostle School in Los
Angeles to pray for Frank's poor wife.
1 didn't understand then and, frankly, I still don't understand
now why there should be this prurient mass hysteria about a
male and female climbing into bed and doing what comes natu-
rally. It's blessed in weddings, celebrated in honeymoons, but out
of wedlock it's condemned as the worst of sins. Maybe people
are paying too much attention to the "lock" part of wedlock.
And maybe, just maybe, there's a touch of jealousy somewhere.
As if all this press attention, the idea the world had that it was
entitled to know all about every minute of our lives, wasn't
enough to put strains on our love, neither one of us had exactly
what you could call a tranquil temperament. Both Frank and I
were high-strung people, possessive and jealous and liable to ex-
plode fast. When I lose my temper, honey, you can't find it any-
place. I've just got to let off steam, and he's the same way.
But, despite the different directions our careers seemed to be
moving in, we never fought about professional matters. It was
another sort of jealousy that ate into our bones. Primitive, pas-
sionate, bitter, acrimonious, elemental, red-fanged romantic jeal-
ousy was our poison. Accusations and counteraccusations, that's
what our quarrels were all about.
Frank hated two men in my life — one past, one still present.
Artie Shaw and Howard Hughes. Artie Shaw he could just about
stomach because we had been respectably married and that was
all over. Howard Hughes he saw red about. He refused to under-
stand or believe that I had never slept with or even had a necking
session with the man.
Howard Hughes was not helping things along either. His spies
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AVA GARDNER
had me watched from the very first time he met me. Spying was
one of Howard's continual preoccupations. He spied on and
learned things about people. That gave him power to exert lever-
age. At times, as I was to find out, Howard Hughes was not a
very nice man.
I never gave a hoot about his spies. I did my own thing. If he
found out — and Fin sure he did — that I was sleeping with
Mickey Rooney after our divorce, as well as making love with the
likes of Howard Duff, Robert Taylor, and Frank Sinatra, and he
didn't like it, he could go and jump in a cold shower.
But he went on about Frank over and over again. Maybe
Howard had thought that after two failed marriages the coast
was clear for him to press his case, and now this singer was get-
ting in the way. He first raised the subject at dinner one night.
"Ava," he said, "you should not be getting mixed up with this
"Mixed up with what man?"
"Frank Sinatra."
"What the hell's it got to do with you?"
"He's married. He'll never get a divorce. His constant affairs
with women are notorious. He's not good enough for you."
"Who is good enough for me? You?"
"He has woman after woman. You can't keep up with them."
Howard had forgotten that through Bappie and Charlie Guest
I knew all about the houses and the stashed-away babes. I began
to laugh. Howard didn't like that either. He began to fuss. I told
him to forget it. It was all over between us, even though I don't
think Frank ever believed it was.
In March of 1950, Frank was opening a new show at the
Copacabana in New York, a show that we both hoped would
end his career skid. Naturally, I wanted to be there with him, and
since the next film I'd be doing, Pandora and the flying
Dutchman, was about to begin shooting in Europe, stopping off
in New York on the way made perfect sense.
Frank was nervous before he went on, which was unlike him,
but he sang like an angel, especially "Nancy with the Laughing
Face," a song written about his daughter, not his wife. I've al-
ways thought it was a beautiful song, and contrary to what ev-
eryone seems to believe, it was never the reason for a single
quarrel between us. Unfortunately, we never had any trouble in-
venting other reasons to be at each other's throats.
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AVA: MY STORY
One evening, we escaped from our friends and went alone to a
restaurant. Restaurants were frequently where our quarrels be-
gan, and I have to confess I started a lot of them, sometimes
before the appetizer arrived. A pretty girl would pass and recog-
nize Frank. She'd smile. He'd nod and smile back. It would hap-
pen again. Frank would feel the temperature rising across the
table and try to escape with a sort of sickly look. I'd say some-
thing sweet and ladylike, such as, "I suppose you're sleeping with
all these broads," and we'd be off to the races.
The quarrel started on those lines that night. The claws of my
jealousy were showing. But had I known what the outcome of
that night would be, I would have stayed for the coffee, the
check, and the taxi ride home.
As it was, one second I was there and the next I'd scooped up
my handbag and was outside the door and hailing a taxi.
I was angry. I was angry with Frank, myself, and the whole
wide world.
In the Hampshire House, where we were staying, the three of
us occupied a large suite. There were two bedrooms, with Frank
using one and Bappie and I the other, both divided by a large
living room and kitchen.
Bappie was in our room asleep, so I sat in the living room
feeling lonely and miserable. I knew I couldn't go to bed — I
would have lain awake for hours.
So who could I talk to about my problems? I had to explain
things to someone. Here I was going off to Europe for months,
and Frank and I were having these constant dramas. Then an-
other thought hit me. Artie Shaw was in town. He had a small
apartment in New York. If he happened to be home he would
talk. Artie solved other people's problems in a couple of sen-
tences. I still met him occasionally, which, Frank being Frank,
made him jealous.
I phoned Artie. He was at home and his current girlfriend was
with him. I guess he could tell by my voice I was down, so he
said, "Tell you what, Ava. We're going to bed pretty soon, but
why don't you come by and have a nightcap before you turn in?"
I thought that was a good idea. And off I went leaving my
address book open to the page with Artie's phone number. I try
and tell myself I didn't do that deliberately, but it was a pretty
classic slip-up if I do say so myself.
Artie and his girlfriend were sitting there in their dressing
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AVA GARDNER
gowns when I arrived, but they said they were in no hurry to go
to bed. I was there maybe twenty minutes to half an hour before
the doorbell rang. Artie answered it, "Why, hello, Frank. Come
on in. Good to see you. Yeah, Ava's here. Do you know my
girlfriend?" A real smooth customer, Artie, and maybe he had to
be at that particular moment.
Frank came in. He had his buddy Hank Sanicola with him,
and Hank hung back a little embarrassed. Frank looked a bit
gray and haunted. I could see how he felt, sense his distress. We
were living together. I was his girl. We were in love. He had
followed the clue left open in my address book and he was ready
to do battle if necessary. Now I had made a fool of him. There
we were sitting around sipping drinks, Artie and his girlfriend in
their robes, a domestic idyll if ever there was one.
Artie knew the score and did his best to act as if this visit was
the most natural of social events.
"Frank, sit down and have a drink. You, too, Hank."
Frank shook his head. He turned, his head a bit low, his shoul-
ders hunched. He and Hank walked out the door together and
closed it behind them. There was not much we could say either. I
sipped at my drink and Artie went on making casual conversa-
tion. After a few more minutes, I thanked them for the drink and
made my way back to the Hampshire House.
By now, it was pretty late at night. I don't know how long I'd
been back in the suite when the phone rang. It was Frank, and I'll
never forget his voice. He said, "I can't stand it any longer. I'm
going to kill myself — now!"
Then there was this tremendous bang in my ear, and I knew it
was a revolver shot. My whole mind sort of exploded in a great
wave of panic, terror, and shocked disbelief. Oh, God! Oh, God!
I threw the phone down and raced across the living room and
into Frank's room. I didn't know what I expected to find — a
body? And there was a body lying on the bed. Oh, God, was he
dead? I threw myself on it saying, "Frank, Frank . . ." And the
face, with a rather pale little smile, turned toward me, and the
voice said, "Oh, hello."
The goddamn revolver was still smoking in his hand. He had
fired a single shot through a pillow and into the mattress. He'd
thought that a pillow and a mattress would muffle the sound of
the shot, and I would be the only one startled by its noise. He
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AVA: MY STORY
hadn't realized that half of New York had been sitting up, pencils
poised, waiting to include this moment in their memoirs. I re-
member my feelings very well. They were not of anger or frustra-
tion, they were of overwhelming relief. He was alive, thank God,
he was alive. I held him tightly to me. What would I have done if
he was dead? My mind could not comprehend that thought.
I didn't ask him why he'd done it. I knew that without asking.
But now reason had to take over. It had been one hell of a bang
and people would be asking questions. Frank got up and put on
his robe. The phone rang. It was the desk clerk. "Mr. Sinatra,
have you heard a gunshot from anywhere near your room?"
Gunshot? What gunshot? Frank's innocence could have won
him an Oscar nomination. But now we had to get rid of the evi-
dence. We called Hank Sanicola, who was down several floors
below us, and he was in the room within seconds. The hot gun
was stowed under Bappie's pillow — didn't all virtuous North
Carolina girls sleep with a gun under their heads? Hank took a
quick look outside at the empty corridor, grabbed the mattress
and made a run for the back stairs leading to his room. No one
who stayed at the Hampshire House would have been seen dead
on a back stairs.
I sat there in a chair, the shock now taking over, and trembled.
There was another knock at the door — one that we were expect-
ing— an(J two police officers introduced themselves. Frank in-
vited them into the living room. I was there fully dressed, Frank
was in his robe. "Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Sinatra, but there
seems- to have been a gunshot fired around this part of the hotel.
We're trying to find out what happened." Frank's innocence was
very convincing. Although I was trembling like jelly inside I was
probably convincing, too. The policemen left very politely, and
Frank and I never mentioned the incident again. Postmortems
were not our style, at least partly because we knew that if we
started going back over old arguments we'd probably end up re-
peating them. Besides, there were plenty of others waiting for us
in the future.
131
FOURTEEN
f all the damn films I made. Pandora and
the Flying Dutchman would probably
rank as one of the most obscure. Yet al-
most nothing I've done before or since had as much of an effect
on me. In fact, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say making it
changed my life forever. Because Pandora got me outside these
United States for the first time and introduced me to the two
countries, England and Spain, where I was to spend much of the
rest of my life. One trip abroad, honey, and I almost never
looked back.
With the crumbling of the studio system and the strength of
the dollar, it came to make more and more financial sense to
shoot films outside of Hollywood, especially since a lot of Amer-
ican film money was frozen overseas. Pandora, to be filmed in
Spain, was part of that trend. But England, where we had to stop
to fit costumes and take care of preproduction stuff, was actually
the first country outside the United States I ever saw. And
strangely enough, England proved to be very much like North
Carolina. The English use expressions I've never heard anyplace
else but back home, so I felt comfortable with them right away. If
Spain hadn't gotten in the way, I might have moved there first.
While I was in London, though, the minions of Metro
wouldn't rest until they involved me in one of their silly publicity
stunts. The bearskin-wearing Grenadier guardsmen who stand
watch over Buckingham Palace are known for their stone-faced
reaction to any kind of tourist provocation. So naturally, I was
132
A VA: MY STOjR Y
dispatched, with a photographer conveniently in tow, to make
one of them smile.
Well, the man in the red tunic would not grin no matter what I
did. The British press were not amused, one man writing rather
witheringly that "This is the kind of conduct we have to expect
of gawking tourists, but not of an important actress working in
and enjoying our country." And to tell you the truth, I thought it
was rather cheap myself and for a long time I was somewhat
ashamed of having harassed the poor man.
Many years later, however, I was passing through London's
Heathrow Airport when a girl at the airline desk smiled, asked
for my autograph, and said, "Miss Gardner, do you remember
how you tried to make that guardsman on sentry duty smile?"
"Of course I do," I said. "And I'm still ashamed of it."
"That was my grandfather — " she began.
"Well, apologize to him for me, will you?" I cut in. "It was the
silliest thing. I've ever done."
Then I saw that she was laughing.
"Apologize — why? Miss Gardner, that was the most exciting
thing that ever happened to him, and he's boasted about it ever
since. He'll go on telling that story down at the pub until the day
he dies."
I was pleased about that.
Much as I loved London, I was also dying to visit Paris, just
hours away. I had studied French in high school, my teacher was
adorable, and I'd loved her. "Do you understand . . . Parisl" I
just about screamed at Bappie, who had come over on the trip
with me. "I can use my French I"
Metro did have its uses in those days. They arranged for a
first-class trip to Paris and put Bappie and me up at the Hotel
Georges V, one of the classiest in town. And we were all set for a
classy dinner at the Tour d' Argent, the kind of restaurant that
made Paris Paris.
But was I satisfied? No, I was not. "Darling," I said to Bappie,
"I do not intend to go around Paris in a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Rolls-Royce with a uniformed chauffeur. I want to really experi-
ence this town. I want to speak French." It did cross my mind
that my Tobacco Road pronunciation might be a little difficult to
understand. But to hell with that. I knew about three sentences in
French, and I figured that should get us anywhere.
133
AVA GARDNER
In the ladies' room at the Tour, I gave Bappie the word, "This
is the breakaway point. We get rid of the Rolls, ditch the chauf-
feur and the Metro man who's looking after us, and off we go."
Bappie gave me one of those grim North Carolina looks, so
pained I might as well be offering her a tour of the Bronx.
"There's a very good bar at the hotel," she said. "Are you sure
this is a good idea?"
"Of course it's a good idea. This Tour d' Argent stuff is strictly
for tourists. I can speak French. What's to be afraid of?"
So, safely outside the restaurant, we stopped a real Paris taxi
driver. He was not likely to understand any language, especially
his own, coming out of the mouths of a couple of North Carolina
broads . . . but one thing he did understand was money, and we
were American so we had to have money.
So we start our tour with my French and his determination not
to understand it. I was trying to make it clear that as American
ladies we would like to see both Paris and real Parisians, and he
was "Je ne comprend pas"ing and waving his arms, while Bappie
was using her undertaker's voice to repeat, "Oh, for Christ's sake
let's go back to the Georges Cinq and have a drink." So we drove
around Paris for about forty-five minutes with me going on about
two women without a male escort wanting to see the real Paris,
and then suddenly something under that cloth cap clicked. A ray
of light penetrated. Two ladies alone . . . "Ah, Mademoiselle . . .
je comprend . . . oui." I sat back triumphant, saying, "You see,
Bappie, all it takes is a little patience," and Bappie was still going
on about the bar at the Georges Cinq.
So we drove up in front of this little joint that looked very
elegant. Lights above a striped red canopy, and neat little stairs
leading down to what looked like an underground cellar. All
done up in scarlet. Very chic. Very colorful. Very French. And I
could hear music!
"Who the hell wants to go back to the Georges Cinq when we
can find a real swinging place like this?" I hissed in Bappie's ear.
"We're gonna hear some wonderful jazz here, I can feel it in my
bones." Even the doorman in his uniform was a good-looking
guy. We walked in, and it was all extremely chic, with little tables
round the walls and a sprinkling of couples sitting at them, violin
players in full white tie and tails sawing away at violins, all the
waiters resplendent in tuxedoes. The headwaiter, another good-
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AVA: MY STORY
looking guy, smiled and showed us to a discreet little table. I
thought maybe he recognized me, but I couldn't have cared less,
because within seconds a magnum — not a bottle, mind you, a
magnum — of champagne had arrived and the maitre d' bent low
and whispered, "On the house, compliments of the management,
no charge," which was rather sweet music to start the night off
with.
The five violinists were now converging on us like a flock of
friendly vultures, all bright smiles and sawing violin bows. I'm
whispering triumphantly to Bappie, "What did I tell you? What's
the Georges Cinq bar got to compare with this? This is the real
Paris!"
At that moment Bappie seemed more interested in the cham-
pagne than in my little gloat, though I did notice that her bright
eyes were scrutinizing the joint with their usual sharpness. Then I
heard her say something, but I wasn't paying attention to any-
thing except the special attention we were getting. Then I caught
it.
"D'you notice, honey, there are no girls in this place?"
I didn't bother to look round. "So what?" I said. "Isn't that
lovely?"
Then I realized that was not what Bappie meant. So I put
down my glass and refocused my eyes just as I heard her say,
"Funny thing, none of these musicians need a shave."
I took a long peek.
"No, they don't need a shave. They're darling."
"Not a mustache or a beard among them," Bappie went on in
an increasingly sinister voice.
I got the essence of her conversation and had another look at
the smooth chins tucked under the singing violins. They were as
polished as peeled hard-boiled eggs. The maitre d* arrived back at
the same moment to do a little more pouring and establish that
there was a lot left in the magnum, and I looked straight into his
beautiful soulful eyes. Jesus! No! Her beautiful, soulful eyes.
I did a quick scrutiny of all the tables. They were all men. No,
they were not. They were all women dressed as men. The cus-
tomers, the orchestra, the maitre d' . . . I expect even the god-
damn doorman outside was a girll
"Ava," Bappie said in her dark-brown North Carolina Baptist
Belt voice that fortunately nobody understood except me, "we
135
AVA GARDNER
are in a House of Lesbians!" But she was kind enough not to
add, "So this is where your so-called command of the French
language has brought us."
I swallow my champagne very carefully, and smile as the
maitre d' gives me a refill I am twenty-seven years old, and I
know what lesbians are. I am not certain I know what they do,
but I am a big, five-foot-six healthy girl, and I am sure I can
defend us if necessary. Then common sense comes to my rescue.
All the girls have been welcoming, and charming. We will con-
duct ourselves like a couple of equally nice Southern ladies,
equally well behaved. After all, they may think well be back to-
morrow night to join the gang.
We do not stay much longer. We get up, we smile, we shake
hands, we say good-bye. There is no mention of a bill. Outside
there is a taxi, and the driver understands my hissed "Hotel
Georges Cinq" very easily.
Bappie only felt safe when we were inside its doors.
After an outing like that, Bappie and I were none too unhappy
to be leaving for Spain, where filming was to begin in the spring
of 1950. A car took us from the Barcelona airport on the bumpy
road north toward France and the Pyrenees, passing through
pine-clad green hills as we turned down toward the Mediterra-
nean and the ancient town of Tossa del Mar. The port slid into
view around a golden curve, an ancient castle dominating its en-
trance.
The streets of Tossa were narrow, opening into pleasant, shady
public squares, many with bubbling fountains. The markets
seemed everywhere, full of bright vegetables and gleaming wet
fish. There were few cars and even fewer gasoline pumps, and
package tours had not even been invented yet. Every night the
sky was filled with stars and the cellars and bars were filled with
flamenco songs and Gypsy dancing. Goddammit, the whole of
the Costa Brava was one long, continuous film set in those days.
I have to admit, I was fascinated by Spain from the first. I felt a
kinship with the flamenco; it was alive then, and pure. The bull-
fights made for beautiful, exciting pageants, as did the fiestas,
when everyone dressed up in those wonderful costumes. It was
all wonderful, and it went on all day and all night. I loved it.
I wasn't in Spain just to gawk, of course; I had a picture to
make, and one with a quite unusual plot. I played Pandora Rey-
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AVA: MY STORY
nolds, a 1930s play girl, loved by many but never touched by love
herself, driving men to distraction but a perfect stranger to per-
sonal happiness. During the course of the film, three very dif-
ferent men fall in love with her: a celebrated bullfighter; the
world's fastest racing car driver (who Pandora, in a typical whim,
refuses to consider marrying until he pushes the vehicle in ques-
tion off a goddamn cliff!); and a mysterious yachtsman,
Hendrick van der Zee (played by James Mason), who Pandora
stumbles upon during a nude midnight swim in the bay.
That yachtsman, it turns out, is the celebrated Flying
Dutchman, a sixteenth-century sea captain who got himself in big
trouble with the powers that be by first murdering his wife for
unfaithfulness without giving her so much as a chance to prove
her innocence, and then blaspheming against God for making
women so fair and so treacherous.
As punishment, he was doomed to live a ghostly existence,
sailing alone on the seas of the world. Every seven years he was
permitted to live among men for a short period of time, and if he
was able to find a woman who loved him enough to give up her
life for him, his punishment would end and he would be permit-
ted to die. Can the carefree Pandora Reynolds fall in love and
become unselfish enough to fill that rather tall order? Honey, do
you even have to ask?
The man who concocted this supernatural romance was one of
Hollywood's more curious writer-directors, Albert Lewin. An ex-
ecutive at Metro who'd been very close to wonder-boy produc-
tion chief Irving Thalberg, Lewin had directed a pair of fairly
arty films for the studio, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The
Moon and Sixpence. He knew that this particular tale was much
too noncommercial for MGM, so he left the studio to do it, ask-
ing that they loan me out to him as settlement of his contract.
Metro being Metro, they didn't hesitate for a minute.
Al was famous, if that is the right word, for asking for an
ungodly number of retakes. One story had it that on Dorian
Gray he asked for one hundred and ten retakes and ended up
using number four. He used the same technique on this picture,
and one day I had to say to him, "Al, do you think I could go to
the bathroom after the eighty-first take?"
Painstaking as he was, Al caused nowhere near the problems
for me that toreador-turned-actor Mario Cabre did. Mario
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AVA GARDNER
played Juan Montalvo, my bullfighter lover, in the picture, and
his ambition was to continue the role in real life. Unfortunately,
Mario got carried away confusing his onstage and offstage roles.
In every country in the world, you find men who are pains in the
ass. Mario was a Spanish pain in the ass, better at self-promotion
than either bullfighting or love.
Yes, Mario was handsome, and macho as only a Latin knows
how to be, but he was also brash, conceited, noisy, and totally
convinced that he was the only man in the world for me. Now,
everyone else in the world seemed to know that I was totally in
love with Frank Sinatra and no one else but Frank Sinatra. We
suffered agonies trying to tell each other how much we loved one
another during the first weeks of filming, what with the hours it
sometimes took for our transatlantic calls to come through, and
the faraway voice at the bottom of the bathtub once the connec-
tion was made. But Frank supplemented his affection with daily
letters and telegrams, and we had arranged before I left that he
would travel to Tossa for a two- or three-day visit.
This all sounds very reasonable, but reason didn't always rule
my actions in those days. I made a single mistake, and it turned
into a blunder of major proportions. Because after one of those
romantic, star-filled, dance-filled, booze-filled Spanish nights, I
woke up to find myself in bed with Mario Cabre.
That was the one and only time. Not that it mattered. Because
Mario was ready, willing, and all too able to broadcast his good
fortune to the entire free world. Someone had passed on to him
the concept that there is no such thing as bad publicity: if you
want to be famous you've got to get into the headlines. And what
greater opportunity could he have than an attempt to replace
Frank in my affections? His motivation was cynical self-interest.
His declamatory rhetoric about this great passion in his life, his
love for me and mine for him, made headlines in Spain, America,
all over the world, and that's all he cared about. He gave inter-
views saying I was "the woman I love with all the strength in my
soul," wrote the most idiotic love poems imaginable, and then
marched off to recite them at the American embassy in Madrid.
Initially, I suppose I thought this was vaguely amusing, and
since we played lovers in the same film, no one was exactly en-
couraging me to come out and publicly say he was a nuisance
and a jerk. But when he started to involve Frank in his she-
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AVA: MY STORY
nanigans, saying he would not leave Spain alive if he came on
that visit, Mario became a major pest.
As the guy hardly ever left my side and was constantly warning
me of his intentions, I took Mario's threat seriously. To him, my
feelings were of little consequence. He was sure a woman would
naturally fly into the arms of the stronger, dominant male, and
that he could believe that sort of crap was typical of the man.
Still, I think poor Al Lewin was a little nervous, too. Because
when Frank did fly in to see me in early May, Al saw to it that
Mario was involved in some second-unit shooting many miles
away in Gerona.
Though we were hounded as usual by the press, Frank and I
enjoyed our two days of romance in Tossa del Mar, and I looked
forward to more when I would be in London for exteriors on
Pandora and Frank would be in concert for a week or so at the
Palladium. But Mario had scenes in London, too, and he and his
cuadrilla, the four members of his ex-bullfighting team who were
part of his inevitable macho entourage, arrived soon after I did.
By this time, perhaps because he feared his fame might plum-
met as quickly as it had risen, Mario's demand for publicity had
ballooned beyond all reason. He went so far as refusing to go out
to the MGM studios for his scenes unless I was with him. I sput-
tered to Al Lewin, "But he wants me to go in the damn car with
him even on days when Fm not working*"
Al nodded, sighed, and patted my arm.
"Be a good girl, Ava. Go with him. Humor him. Let's get the
goddamn movie finished and then we can get rid of the son of a
bitch. Do it for me, Ava."
I did it for Al. And Mario was finally getting the message. His
English was negligible, and London did not smile on phony love-
sick matadors. He left London and, thank God, I never saw him
again. When I headed back to Hollywood, whatever regrets I had
about leaving Europe behind had absolutely nothing to do with
him.
139
FIFTEEN
he year 1950 was not a banner one as far
as Hollywood was concerned. On the one
hand, the Joe McCarthy— inspired black-
list was beginning to wreck people's lives and careers, and on the
other, the emergence of TV as a powerful entertainment medium
attacked the box office like a plague. Figures are not my strong
point, but I've read that from a high of ninety million in 1948,
movie theater admissions plummeted to seventy million in 1949
and dropped even further to sixty million in 1950, with the bot-
tom still nowhere in sight.
Not only was MGM, all those damn stars notwithstanding,
vulnerable to this slide, it suffered most of all in this period,
going through its worst years since the Depression. The studio
had only one film among the top twenty hits of the 1940s and
early 1950s, and that was the expensive costume drama Quo
Vadis. Partly as a result, the old lion himself, Mr. Louis B.
Mayer, resigned in 1951 in a dispute with the studio's new chief
of production, Dore Schary.
If there was a bright light for Metro during those days, it was
in the glorious Technicolor musicals turned out by the studio's
Arthur Freed unit. So when I was told that I was to have a key
part in producer Freed's latest opus, Show Boat, to begin shoot-
ing in mid-November 1950, I was certainly pleased. After all,
even I knew that this story of women who love well but not
wisely was one of the great musicals of the century.
Show Boat started out as an Edna Ferber novel dealing with
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AVA: MY STORY
three generations of the Hawks family, from Captain Andy to
daughter Magnolia to granddaughter Kim, all of whose lives re-
volve around a showboat cruising up and down the Mississippi
in the late nineteenth century. It was the great Flo Ziegfeld him-
self who saw the theatrical possibilities in the book, and who
convinced Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern (whose
daughter Elizabeth was an earlier wife of Artie Shaw's!) to do the
words and music.
The show opened on Broadway in late December 1927, and
with songs like "Bill," "Can't Help Loving That Man" and3 of
course, "OP Man River," proved a real Christmas present for
New Yorkers. It also established Helen Morgan as a star with her
performance as Julie Laverne, the singer with a touch of black
blood whose attempt to pass for white has the kind of tragic
consequences the poor South was famous for.
Even then, it didn't take Hollywood long to see the movie pos-
sibilities in this story. Universal did a version in 1929, but unfor-
tunately, with the film practically completed, sound came in and
gave everyone fits. The result was a half-sound, half-silent hybrid
that made nobody particularly happy.
Then, in 1936, James Whale, who'd made his reputation by
turning Boris Karloff into Frankenstein, surprised everyone, per-
haps even himself, by doing a very creditable version that gave
the peerless Paul Robeson a chance to sing an unforgettable "OP
Man River."
By the time MGM got hold of the property, they thought the
show's central story, a star-crossed love affair between Captain
Andy's daughter Magnolia and gambler/turned actor/turned
gambler Gaylord Ravenal, would be perfect for Nelson Eddy and
Jeanette MacDonald. That never worked out, however; the pro-
ject got postponed, and Freed and director George Sidney ended
up with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel in those roles. As for
Joe, the man who gets to sing "OP Man River," they cast Wil-
liam Warfield, someone who'd rarely attempted anything but
classical music before.
Freed, Sidney, and screenwriter John Lee Mahin also deter-
mined that a restructuring of the show's plot was in order. No
longer would Gaylord and Magnolia be separated for over
twenty years — movie audiences were deemed too impatient to
stand for that. And Julie Laverne, the beautiful half-caste, would
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AVA GARDNER
not only become a running character, helping to unify the
sprawling time frame, but also be instrumental in reuniting the
parted lovers.
All of which meant that the part of songstress Julie Laverne,
"the little sweetheart of the South," was going to be quite a
plum. Judy Garland, Metro's musical star, would have been ev-
eryone's first choice, but Judy's increasing health problems had
led the studio to scrap her contract. Dore Schary wanted Dinah
Shore, of all people, to play the role, while my own personal
choice would have been Lena Home. I've always thought that
she, along with Greta Garbo and Katharine Hepburn, was one of
the three most beautiful women in the world. She was really bom
for this part. She would have been perfect for it, and not only
that, she was a close friend and neighbor of mine in tree-shaded
Nichols Canyon.
George Sidney, however, wanted me. He'd been the MGM ex-
ecutive who'd viewed my first test and approved my being
shipped out from New York, and he saw qualities in me, includ-
ing the chance to use someone who was really from the South
and understood Julie's situation, that made me seem right for the
part. Not to mention the fact that I was getting increasingly pop-
ular. By the end of 1950, MGM's publicity department was send-
ing out black-and-white photos of me to the tune of three
thousand requests per week, a figure that only Esther Williams
bettered.
But if you think everybody jumped up and down at the chance
to use me this way, you'd better think again. The studio brass,
the gossip columnists, everyone thought giving me this kind of a
plum role was a mistake. However, George was determined, and
I got the part, which turned out to be one of the few I rather
liked.
Having cast me, George turned me over to his wife, Lillian
Burns, Metro's chief drama coach. A very important post because
you didn't have to know much more about acting than you did
about differential calculus to become a star at MGM. As I've said
before, you came under Lillian's purview only when you reached
the level of speaking parts, and as your roles grew more impor-
tant, so did your time with her.
Lillian was slender and dark and volatile. She loved teaching
and she loved talking about everything from actors and acting to
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AVA: MY STORY
jewelry to the whole business of moviemaking. And, Jesus, in
those days, I thought Lillian could play any part ten times better
than I could. She said she was struck by my beauty, and she's
said that it was "like a piece of Dresden, so fine and pure, it
struck you right in the heart." But to play Julie, more than
beauty was going to be needed.
While Lillian was working with me, Metro's ace production
people were seeing to the construction of the stern-wheeler
Cotton Blossom, which, at a cost of over one hundred thousand
dollars, was for quite a while the most expensive single prop ever
made. Originally, the film's exteriors were going to be shot on
location around Natchez and Vicksburg, but once it turned out
that the weather would be wrong, Metro opted to use its own
durable back lot instead. The ten-million-gallon Tarzan Jungle
Lake was drained and this enormous triple-decked, one-hundred-
seventy-one-foot-long, fifty-seven-foot-high boat was built on top
of metal pontoons, so it could actually float up and down the
back-lot version of the Mississippi.
During the shooting, Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, and I
got along with each other extremely well. After each day's shoot-
ing we would meet in one of the dressing rooms and, ignoring
one of Metro's cardinal rules, smuggle in enough tequila to send
us back home in the best of humor. Howard was young, hand-
some, and full of laughter. He had that wonderful rich voice, and
Kathryn matched him note for note. When it came to my own
singing, however, the studio ran me so ragged that I never did
forgive them.
Now, I can sing. I do not expect to be taken for Maria Callas,
Ella Fitzgerald, or Lena Home, but I can carry a tune well
enough for the likes of Artie Shaw to feel safe offering to put me
in front of his orchestra. But since Julie's two songs, "Bill" and
"Can't Help Loving That Man," are so beloved by everyone, I
decided to work as hard as I could to fit the bill. I even found this
marvelous teacher, who'd worked with both Lena and Dorothy
Dandridge, and we slaved away for several weeks and produced
a test record of those two songs.
Then, rather nervously, 1 took my life into my hands and gave
the record to Arthur Freed himself, God Almighty of musical
productions. I don't think the son of a bitch ever even listened to
it. He just put it on a shelf and delivered the usual studio ul-
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AVA GARDNER
timatum: "Now, listen, Ava, you can't sing and you're among
professional singers." So that settled that one.
Or did it? Because the singer they'd chosen to dub my singing
had a high, rather tiny voice, totally inappropriate when it was
paired with my own speaking voice. The studio spent thousands
and thousands of dollars and used the full MGM orchestra trying
to get this poor girl right. I mean, there was nothing wrong with
her in the first place, except for the obvious fact that she wasn't
me.
Finally, they got Annette Warren, this gal who used to do a lot
of my singing off-screen, and they substituted her voice for mine.
So my Southern twang suddenly stops talking and her soprano
starts singing — hell, what a mess.
When it came to the album version of the movie, things got
even worse. Being a great fan of Lena's, I had copied her phras-
ing, note for note, on my test record. So they took my record
imitating Lena and put earphones on her so she could sing the
songs copying me copying her.
But Metro soon found out that they couldn't legally release the
album with my name and image, as they called it, without my
voice being part of the package. So then I used earphones to try
to record my voice over her voice, which had been recorded over
my voice imitating her. I did it note for note, they wiped Lena's
voice off the album, and the record was a success. That's the way
they worked in those days. And I still get goddamn royalties on
the thing!
Considering all of this, my reviews on Show Boat were excel-
lent, really better than I expected, except for a busybody from
The New Yorker who said that I was "subjected to such close
scrutiny by the camera that [my] handsome face often takes on
the attributes of a relief map of Yugoslavia." But the success
aside, my anger about how callously Metro had treated me inten-
sified the fury I'd been feeling toward them throughout my ca-
reer.
Frankly, MGM was never the right studio for me. When I'd
done The Bribe, it was my first starring role in seven years there.
The studio never bothered to package me. They never bought a
property for me. In fact, they had so little interest in me they just
about never wanted me around. The idea was, "Toss her out,
lend her out, and give her away!"
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AVA: MY STORY
And, except for Lillian Burns from time to time, I only re-
member a single example of someone caring about the quality of
my work. In the breaks during the filming of The Bribe, Charles
Laughton, one of my costars, used to take me aside and read me
passages out of the Bible, then make me read them back with the
right cadences and stresses. He was a brilliant classical actor ab-
sorbed by his craft and loving it. And he was the only one in all
my film years who took the time and went out of his way to try
and make an actress out of me.
In fact, if Metro did anything, it was to stand in the way of my
learning anything. I remember Greg Peck asking me if I wanted
to do a part in a play they were doing in La Jolla, just to work
out, to learn. "Okay," I said, "if I can start with something very
small."
But before I could commit I had to ask Metro. "Small part?
Not the lead? Of course you can't do that,5' I was told. "You
either play the lead or nothing."
"But I can't possibly play the lead," I said. Little did they care.
And that was the last time I allowed myself to even think about
learning on the stage.
But it was those loan-outs to other studios that infuriated me
the most about my position at MGM. Even as my salary was
rising (I was getting around fifty thousand dollars a year at this
time, and it was to creep up higher) they lent me to other com-
panies at salaries five and six times better than I was getting —
and a percentage of the gross on top of that. They got well paid
for giving me to those other studios, but I wasn't allowed to
share in the wealth.
Plus the atmosphere at Metro was stifling, killing. When I ap-
peared for Henry Wallace when he ran for president in 1948, Mr.
Mayer called me in and told me I had to stop. He told me that
Katharine Hepburn had ruined her career doing things like that.
They liked to terrify you, to threaten that if you didn't do what
they said, they would ruin your career, too. And they could do it.
No one ever thanked me during all those years when I was the
good girl on the lot. I felt like I was in slavery. They may have
found me, but I came to feel I owed them, and the business they
represented, nothing at all.
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LENA HORNE
va was like my younger sister; she and I
were spiritually akin. The main thing is
that she was Southern. Though I was
born in the East, I was sent South when I was five years old and I
lived around the kind of people that she lived around. Ava was
not one of those la-di-da Southern ladies. She was of a breed
that, when they're wonderful, really are. She didn't feel she was
born to rule. She felt that life was crappy and that a lot of people
got mistreated for weird reasons, and she liked to see people like
each other. She was a real good dame.
Ava and I also liked the same men, musicians mostly, black
and white. We often had been hit on, or had hit the same guys.
We'd show up at parties on the other side of town, very crowded,
a lot of musicians and showgirls, not any MGM people. At one
of them, where we really got down to it, we both wound up
under the piano. We didn't talk about the business; we talked
about men. Like Artie Shaw and his mental domination, which
drove us both crazy. We laughed because he liked his women to
read a lot of books. And he'd pick the books, but she wasn't
ready for them. It's kind of like a child of nature being shut up in
a room to study.
We lived near each other in Nichols Canyon, and one day we
had a very long discussion about men. She was seeing someone,
and seeing someone else. And the someone else was a guy who
had a marvelous voice, Howard Duff. And the point being that
Howard was a fantastic lover. And though she liked the other
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AVA: MY STORY
person, we were both regretful that frequently the finest lovers
were not the ones you really loved.
People would say, "Oh, she drank so much whiskey." I don't
know about that. I think she drank as some women do. I think
she drank because she was bored with people often. I think it
upset her that men that she did like were not as strong as they
could have been. And she liked the ones who were not too intimi-
dated by her. She didn't emasculate anyone, but she was an equal
partner. And many men at that time didn't like that.
Another big problem was that both of us had to like who we
went to bed with. And when it came to the power people who
could have perhaps done tremendous favors for us, we thought
they were ugly and unlovable. She was just a wild, good-looking
girl that they wanted to harness, and dominate. "Well, she's a
kook," they said. "She's too dumb to know what she's missing."
But she knew what she was missing.
Because of her looks, Ava was awe-inspiring to the outside
world. She didn't consciously use herself, it was there. But it was
intimidating to other women. And she was not a girlie-girlie,
chummy, let's go house-hunting and decorating or have cocktails
with the girls type. She was an unfeminine, very feminine
woman.
And Ava had great inner warmth that, for instance, I never
saw in Lana. Lana was a little more aware of being a star. I don't
think Ava thought about it that way. She was down. She was
Ava, not Ava Gardner the star. She never believed that the image
that they saw was what she really was. And she resented that that
image made people expect something, when she wanted to be
herself.
But because of who she was, Ava could never get but so much
freedom. When I met Hedy Lamarr after one of my shows she
said, "Wasn't it wonderful at MGM? Our clothes were chosen,
we didn't have to think for ourselves, Howard Strickling took
care of everything we had to say." And I was sort of punchy
from that remark, because / knew that it was half-horrible.
You want to be able to think for yourself, and Ava always did.
She hated the fact that we were made to feel like we were being
possessed by somebody, or that we were owned body and soul if
we wanted to work. MGM created a certain name, but they
didn't prepare you for real life. I mean, what do you say when
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AVA GARDNER
Howard Strickling wasn't around and you had to get an abor-
tion?
We talked about the nonsense about Show Boat, the fact that
she was going to do it and I wanted it. "I'm sick of these ses-
sions," she'd say, "I don't know how to sing." The reasoning
behind it made her angry, for my sake. "Forget it," I said. We
knew, we understood why it happened. So there was no friction
about it. We were both very logical. It was a big laugh.
If Ava came to you, you couldn't help but like her, because she
wasn't competing with anybody. She walked a mile in every-
body's shoes. She really did.
148
SIXTEEN
fter Show Boat was finished, it began to
finally look like my own personal show
was about to go into production. On
May 29, 1951, Nancy Sinatra's attorneys made the announce-
ment Frank and I had been waiting for: she'd agreed to a divorce.
Hallelujah! Everything would be simple from here on in. Or so
we were in love enough to think. I just never seemed to learn that
nothing was ever going to be simple between Mr. Sinatra and
myself.
Take the time I said to him, "Honey, if we're going to get
married, don't you think it would be a good idea if I met your
parents?"
The blue eyes flashed in my direction.
"No," said Frank.
"Why not?"
"Out of the question."
"Why the fuck not?" I said, my temper heating up. After all,
I'd already taken Frank down to North Carolina to meet my
family, and that had gone very well.
"Because I haven't spoken to them for two years, and I don't
intend to start now."
"This is your own mother and father we're talking about?"
"Right."
Well, it didn't seem right to me.
The split between Frank and his parents had come about ap-
parently over a matter of finances. I didn't go into it. It was none
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AVA GARDNER
of my business. What was my business was meeting Marty and
Dolly Sinatra. In North Carolina, when you were contemplating
marriage, it was usual to meet the mother and father of the bride-
groom. That was a pleasure I didn't intend to miss if I could help
it. And naturally I thought I could.
I kept nibbling away at Frank, and the next time we were in
New York together I said, "Well, if you're not going to call your
parents, I am."
Frank didn't make a big protest so I called, and he said with a
certain grudging interest, "What did she say?55
I said, "We're invited to an Italian dinner in Hoboken tonight.
Okay?"
"Okay," said Frank.
Hoboken bears little resemblance to Beverly Hills. It sits on the
western banks of the Hudson River, directly across from Man-
hattan's spectacular skyline. When the Dutch and the British
showed up, it was nothing but Indians, green woods, and grass
sloping into clear water. Then God knows how many millions of
immigrants arrived, and the woods were turned into fine houses
for the first German merchants and later into crowded tenements
for the Irish and the Italians. It was a city of narrow streets, out-
door markets, small shops, and factories, a crowded, vigorous,
bustling place. The prevailing local philosophy was: If you make
the dough, get up and go.
Dolly Sinatra was a survivor. If you lived in Hoboken in the
twenties and thirties, as she had, you knew what hard times
meant. I took one look at Dolly and saw where Frank got it all
from: the blue eyes, the fair hair, the smile, the essential charm,
cockiness, and determination. She took one look and hugged me
like her own daughter. She always said I'd brought her son back
to her.
Frank had bought his parents a house; no one could call it
pretty but it was nice enough and Dolly was very proud of it.
Marty Sinatra, Frank's father, was quieter, withdrawn, with a
nice smile. Dolly set the pace; Marty nodded and followed.
Dolly showed me the house, every inch of it, and was it clean?
Oh, my God. I mean Frank was the cleanest man I ever knew,
forever changing his clothes and underwear, always showering
and washing. If I'd caught him washing the soap it wouldn't have
suprised me, and he inherited it all from his ma. Every room had
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AVA: MY STORY
a cross or a resident Jesus Christ; there seemed to be a cross on
everything, because Dolly was deeply into the Catholic faith. And
of course Dolly had to tell me all about Frank, with Frank
squirming at every word. First the photograph as a baby, naked,
weighing fifteen pounds. His grandmother took him under her
care when he was bom? because the doctor thought Dolly was
dying. Poor Frank had been dragged into the world with forceps
and apparently was almost given up for dead. Grandma, depend-
able as the Tuscan earth, grabbed him, washed him under the
tap, wrapped him in a blanket, and took care of him as only
grandmothers know how.
Frank was getting more and more furious as Dolly dragged out
album after album of cute pictures of Frank as a child, dressed up
in all kinds of little outfits. Sweet little photos that mothers trea-
sure and sons would like to stick up the chimney.
Both Dolly and Marty were great cooks, and one of the large
beds was covered by this starched, brilliantly white sheet, which
was covered in turn by dozens and dozens of these little pasta
shells, uncooked, the ones you crinkle up with your fingers and
put filling in. Dolly spoke about four or five Italian dialects, but
you wouldn't even guess that because there was no hint of an
accent in her voice. Frank, however, never spoke a word of Ital-
ian. In those days, Italian immigrants didn't want their children
to speak any language except English.
It was all so welcoming, such a great warm Italian household
with no holding back. They even had an old uncle, either her
brother or Marty's, living with them. I knew Frank had been
looking at me very carefully, trying to sense how it was going,
whether I was approving or not, his face reflecting that slight
worry you have when you want someone you love to love what
you love. But he didn't have to worry about me, because my
family was poor, too, and I could relate to his folks as if they
were my own. And I could see that Frank was getting into it as
well, relaxing and beginning to enjoy the intimacy created by
people who loved, really loved, with nothing held back.
Back in Los Angeles, Frank and I divided our time between an
apartment we had near the ocean in Pacific Palisades and Frank's
house in Palm Springs. We also vacillated between happiness at
our impending wedding and misery as Nancy took longer and
longer to actually file for that damn divorce. And I was still reel-
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ing from my first immersion in no-holds-barred journalistic cov-
erage. Nothing we did was too inconsequential for the ever-
present swarm of reporters and photographers to feed on like
bees at a honeypot. It's very easy to say that we should have
accepted this as the price of fame, but that turns out to be a hell
of a tall order to live up to when you practically can't go to the
bathroom without finding yourself on page one.
By the end of August, Nancy still hadn't filed, and we were
both nervous and on edge, desperately in need of a vacation. We
decided to get away to Mexico, which in those days was hardly
considered a prime holiday spot. We thought we could sneak in a
little bit of peace and quiet. Not a chance.
The chaos started at the Los Angeles airport, when reporters
and photographers filled the tarmac and even crowded onto the
steps of the plane, treating our departure like a goddamn presi-
dential visit. At El Paso, where we had a forty-five-minute stop-
over for refueling, reporters crowded onto the plane, bombarding
us with questions. Things were quieter in Mexico City, but the
press made the four days we spent at Acapulco not very pleasant.
Nothing anyone in their right mind would have identified as
peace and quiet.
A Mexican friend of Frank's, who'd made his money in Amer-
ican baseball, offered us the use of his private plane for the jour-
ney back to L.A. Since a car could be driven right onto the
runway in those days, we hoped to be able to avoid the press and
just drive home. Talk about naive!
It was dark when we arrived, but a horde of photographers
were gathered anyway, eager to pounce, and flashbulbs were
popping as we scrambled into the waiting car. Frank took the
wheel and, given that there was a crowd, he drove quite slowly.
Our windows were closed, and the chances of getting a decent
shot through the glass were negligible. One of the photographers
was quick-witted enough to realize that no photos meant no
story, no nothing. And as we drove past him, he leaned across
the fender and hood on my side, deliberately sliding along it and
throwing himself off. I was so indignant I rolled down the win-
dow and shouted, "I saw that, buster."
I thought what I saw with my own eyes would make a dif-
ference, but it didn't. The story went around the world that
Frank had driven straight for the photographers at high speed,
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taking special aim at my sliding friend. He, incidentally, was
quoted as saying that all he was after was respect for the press. I
love that line. It didn't seem to me that the press was doing a
whole hell of a lot to earn respect where Frank and I were con-
cerned.
Though I don't want to make those days seem worse than they
were, there will always be an edge, a margin of unhappiness, as-
sociated with them in my mind. We were desperately in love and,
what with drinks with friends and intimate dinners alone, we
tried so hard to make each other happy. But Frank's deep depres-
sion at being at a career low, and the realization that people he'd
once thought of as friends were pretty good at kicking him when
he was down there, was not good for us. And we both had a
terrible tendency to needle each other's weaknesses, a habit that
led to fallings out, like one that Labor Day weekend, that often
had melodramatic, not to say dangerous, consequences.
It all started innocently enough, with a phone call from Frank
saying that because he had a pair of singing engagements in the
area, he'd rented a house on Lake Tahoe, and why didn't I come
by and check it out. Delighted at the opportunity to spend time
with him in a secluded, romantic spot, I bundled Reenie into the
car with me and roared off down the road.
I admit I'm not the world's most careful driver. Going fast just
does something for me; and Fd already plowed through a snake
and a rabbit before I swerved to avoid a deer on a lonesome
stretch of road near Carson City. I hit something, maybe a boul-
der or a tree, but the windshield was smashed, the car wouldn't
start, and since all I knew about cars was that if you put gasoline
in them, they usually go, we were stuck there. It was dark, it was
lonely, there wasn't a phone booth for miles, and I couldn't re-
member the last time Fd seen another car.
"We did overtake an old jalopy a couple of hours ago/' Reenie
reminded me.
"Let's hope they arrive here sooner or later," I said.
They did. Two hours later. They towed us into Carson City,
where Hank Sanicola, Frank's man, came and picked us up and
drove us, at a much safer speed, to Lake Tahoe. Now at twenty-
two miles long and between eight and twelve miles wide, this was
no small lake. Too big, you might have thought, for anyone to
ever disturb its peace. And you would have been wrong.
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AVA GARDNER
That was the day we decided we would hire a boat and set off
for picnicking on the still waters. The boat was beautiful, long
and shining. Hank was deputized to handle the steering part of
the trip, as Frank and I were far too busy opening more than our
allotment of iced champagne and drinking it down. And before
we knew it, Frank and I were in a shouting match.
The cause, as usual, was jealousy. Frank had always allowed
thoughts of Howard Hughes and Artie Shaw to get to him, and
just to make him more miserable, Pd recently confessed about my
mindless night with Mario Cabre. Don't think I wanted to. I tried
to evade the question, change the subject and brush it aside, but
Frank suspected and he kept at me. There'd been too much gos-
sip for him not to suspect, and his persistence was unnerving.
Finally, he resorted to the oldest trick in the book. "Ava, honey,'*
he said. "It doesn't really matter to me. We've all fallen into the
wrong bed some time or other. Just tell me the truth and we'll
forget all about it."
That's a laugh. So I told him and he never forgave me. Ever.
Then that day on the lake, with the sun hot on our faces,
Frank decided to pick at me. "I suppose," he said with studied
casualness, "y°u wish you were out here with Howard Hughes."
I swallowed a whole lot of champagne in one gulp. "Why the
fuck should I wish I was out here with Howard Hughes?"
"Pll bet he's got a bigger boat than this, doesn't he? That guy's
got enough bucks to buy ten boats the size of this one."
"I don't care if he owns the fucking Queen Mary. I'm not
sorry I'm not with him. So shut up."
"Don't tell me to shut up."
"Then don't tell me Pm thinking about Howard Hughes when
I'm not thinking about Howard Hughes."
Oh, boy, what a battle. Screams, shouts, threats. The fact that
Reenie and Hank Sanicola were also on the boat didn't even slow
us down. Unfortunately, our shenanigans distracted Hank, who
probably wasn't much of a sailor in the first place, and he
promptly ran us aground near the shore, tearing a sizable hole in
the bottom of the boat in the process. Everyone immediately
waded ashore except me. For some alcohol-induced reason —
maybe I'd seen Captains Courageous one time too many — I'd
decided it was my duty to stay on board and bale the goddamn
thing out.
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AVA: MY STORY
By this time, Frank's temper had reached its limits. "Get off
that fucking boat while there's still time, you fucking fool," he
roared, shaking his fist in exasperation.
"Go fuck yourself," I replied, always the lady. "I'm staying
here."
It was about that time that I discovered that this fancy boat
was stocked with a monstrous amount of toilet paper. Why in
the name of God the owners had decided to store so much on
one boat Pll never know. But all the champagne Pd drunk con-
vinced me that this wealth must be shared with the world. So I
unwrapped roll after roll and floated them all off in the general
direction of Frank. His rage was now off the charts, and he
screamed a variety of curses in my direction that even I found
impressive, but nothing he said deterred me from my appointed
rounds.
Eventually, the boat began to sink in earnest, and I carefully
joined Frank on the shore, carrying with me, with perfect sur-
vivor's instincts, the last bottle of champagne and two glasses.
We managed to get the bottle open and sat down to regard the
scene. What was a little rumpus between lovers, anyway? We
clinked glasses, laughed and made up.
But battles that fierce never really go away. And just a few
nights later, when we both had drunk too much, Frank made an
offhanded remark that hurt me so deeply that I didn't stop to
argue or shout back, I just left. I ran out into the darkness, my
bare feet heading toward the lake. The slope was steep down to
the water and the trees were thick and solid. You've got to be
very drunk, very lucky, or very quick on your feet to miss them
all, and I was a combination of all three. Then I heard someone
running behind me, trying to catch up. It was Reenie.
I stopped and we both sat there in the darkness. We didn't say
anything. There was nothing to say. Finally, Reenie said in a
quiet, resigned voice, "Come on, Miss G., knock it off. Why
don't we just go home."
That was the best idea Pd heard in days. We climbed back up
the hill, got our bags packed and into the newly repaired car, and
set off for L.A. It was well after midnight, but we had a bottle of
sipping bourbon to keep us warm along those dark, lonely roads.
I'd been full of love and anticipation going up; now I was full of
155
AVA GARDNER
despair going back. I'd just left and probably lost the man I
loved.
Dawn was breaking across the ocean as we reached the house
in Pacific Palisades hours later. We were exhausted, hung over
and miserable. We stumbled toward our respective bedrooms,
hungry for sleep, when the telephone began to ring. I tottered
back and picked it up. I could tell by the sound of Hank
Sanicola's voice that this was for real. "Oh, my God, Ava. Hurry
back. Frank's taken an overdose!"
God almighty! In the Hampshire House in New York, all I'd
had to do was race through a couple of bedrooms. Now we faced
hours of driving back over those tortuous roads.
"Reenie," I yelled. "You won't believe this. We've got to go
back. Now!"
"We nearly killed ourselves driving there, and we did the same
driving back," Reenie said. "Third time might be unlucky!"
That made sense. "I'll call the airport," I said. "We'll catch the
next flight."
I have been exasperated with Francis Albert Sinatra many
times through the years, but never more so than on that morning
when I returned to his bedside at Lake Tahoe.
A car had rushed us to the L.A. airport. A car had rushed us
from the Nevada airport to the house at Lake Tahoe. Hank
Sanicola met me at the door. He looked as tired out and worn as
I felt. I had difficulty speaking.
"How is he?" I said.
"He's okay," said Hank.
I thought, Thank God! I ran through into the bedroom. I
looked down at Frank and he turned his sad blue eyes to look at
me.
"I thought you'd gone," he said weakly.
I wanted to punch him, I really did. I wanted to punch him as
much as I'd ever wanted to punch anybody. Frank had tricked
both Reenie and me back to his bedside. He'd had a fine rest,
doctors watching over him, feeling his pulse and all that sort of
crap. And they didn't even have to pump his stomach — he hadn't
taken enough phenobarbital tablets for that. Everybody had been
up all night except Frank! Hank had been signaling for help from
all over the U.S.A., Reenie and I had been charging back and
forth across the mountains like demented pigeons. And Frank
was just turning over, waking up, and saying, "Hi, kid."
156
The Larry Tan photo that started my movie career.
My acting debut in the Brogden
school's first-grade play,
A Rose Dream.
This was taken a dozen years before I was born. Mama in the center is flanked by Daddy
and his sister Ava. Left to right are my sisters Inez, Bappie (Beatrice) and Elsie Mae.
At age 16, with Bob Rose at
his college prom.
One of my very first pinup photos.
Mickey's and my wedding. That's his mother.
This is posed but Mickey really did
try to teach me to play.
After my operation for
appendicitis.
More dumb publicity shots. (Left)
Here I am on that block of ice.
(Below) With Gloria DeHaven
and some confused chickens.
Publicity shots with Burt Lancaster for
The Killers. Of course they had nothing to
do with the story.
A scene from The Hucksters with Clark Gable.
Howard Duff visits me on my set —
— and I visit Lana Turner on hers
Sculptor Joseph Nicolosi and
the second,, clothed statue
he did of me.
Relaxing with Robert Walker as
they set up a scene for
One Touch of Venus.
Robert Taylor.
A visit back home in 1949. I'm looking at the window of the room I was born in.
My sisters Elsie Mae Creech (left) and Inez Grimes during the same visit.
Frank escorted me to the
Show Boat premiere.
As Julie Laverne in Show Boat
My marriage to Frank, November 7, 1951.
Trying to make a Grenadier
guardsman smile, as a studio
publicity stunt.
Bappieandme, 1951.
Gable and Grace Kelly on
location in Africa for
Mogambo.
Grace and me.
Our three-hundred-tent encampment for Mogambo.
My character Victoria Jones
sure bad a bard time in
Bhowani Junction.
The rape scene is above.
It was my costars David Niven and Stewart Granger who had a tough time in
The Little Hut. That's Walter Chiari in the grass skirt.
My fall in 195 8.
With Gregory Peck in Australia for On the Beach.
With Richard Burton in
Night of the Iguana.
The notorious silver bullets John
Huston presented to members
of the company.
The Bible with George C. Scott (above); directed by John Huston (below).
rk £mpr«s EKwfc^ ^J Om^r Sharif played my son,
Prince Rudolf, in Mayerling.
Morgan and me, just before my stroke.
At home in London.
AVA: MY STORY
I could have killed him, but instead I forgave him in about
twenty-five seconds. We had no time for these nerve-destroying
incidents. I know now that Frank's mock suicidal dramas — his
desperate love signals to get me back to his side — were, at root,
cries for help. He was down, way down. His contracts were
being canceled. His wife's lawyers were intent on screwing every
possible dollar out of him, something that caused him to force a
laugh and say, "Ava, I won't have enough bucks to buy you a
pair of nylons once they're through with me." For Christ's sake,
he was a human being like the rest of us. He'd been the idol of
millions and now he was being taunted as a washed-up has-been.
And Frank Sinatra was nothing if not a proud man.
Our love was deep and true, even though the fact that we
couldn't live with each other any more than we couldn't live
without each other sometimes made it hard for outsiders to un-
derstand. All I know is that if Frank had lost me or I'd lost him
during those months, our worlds would have been shattered.
Finally, at the end of October 1951, Nancy's divorce was
granted. She took her pound of flesh from him, and then some,
but at the moment I didn't care. A week after the divorce, Frank
and I were ready to stand at the altar. Then a shadow fell over
our happiness. His name was — you guessed it — Howard Hughes.
SEVENTEEN
o say there was no love lost between
Frank and Howard Hughes is like saying
the North and the South didn't particu-
larly care for each other during the War Between the States. The
enmity was so thick you could cut it with a knife, and that knife
cut both ways.
Frank, for his part, always flew off the handle every time
Howard's name was so much as mentioned. Once, in one of my
many ineffective attempts to prove my absolute devotion to
Frank, I marched to a New York hotel room window, took off a
gorgeous solid gold bracelet and a matching necklace, which,
knowing Howard, probably cost a fortune and a half, and
dramatically tossed the damned things right out the window. I
hope whoever picked them up had better luck with them than
I did.
And if you think Howard was an innocent bystander in all of
this, you just don't know Howard. I'd made it crystal clear to
him that when I fall in love with a man as I had with Frank, it's
good-bye to everyone else, but Howard never took no for an
answer. What can you expect from someone who shrugged
off a brass bell tossed at the side of his head? Believe me, there
was something scary about Howard's stop-at-nothing determina-
tion.
One of Howard's least charming traits was the way he insisted
on scrutinizing everyone, putting a "watcher" on people he cared
about so he would know what was going on with those he
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AVA: MY STORY
considered his property. This time, he put a detective on Mr. Si-
natra. The idea? To discredit Frank in my eyes and prevent our
marriage. I mean, Howard needed his head examined if he
thought he could win my favor that way, but we already know
that, don't we?
The first time Howard tried that ploy, Frank was working at
the Copacabana in New York and I was staying at Frank's house
in Palm Springs. And Howard showed up there one day with that
sanctimonious look on his face which meant he thought he had
the ammunition to wipe Frank off the face of the earth.
There was a chorus girl in New York, he said piously; he had
her name, not to mention all the days and times and places where
they met, the whole routine. I guess he'd have offered photo-
graphic evidence if I'd been interested. And I hated him for it, I
really hated him, because I loved Frank so.
I called Frank immediately, and he said, "Untrue, untrue."
When I visited him in New York, he insisted on bringing this
little chorus girl over to meet me, together with the guy who ran
the joint, to convince me it wasn't true. Look at this poor girl,
they said, she still has pimples on her face, she's still a virgin.
"Virgin, my ass!" I said, right to her face. I was pretty rude. But I
was angry and I was deeply hurt.
Finally, however, I let it ride, and when I let Howard know
that this kind of shit cut no ice with me, I thought that would be
the last I'd ever hear of it.
Then came the night before the wedding. Bappie and I shared
one hotel suite, and nearby rooms held Frank and his entourage:
Hank Sanicola, Dick Jones, a great piano player, and Manie
Sachs, the former head of Frank's label, Columbia Records.
There was a lot of visiting between rooms; the atmosphere could
not have been more convivial and pleasant.
Until the letter arrived.
Apparently it had been given to the head bellman, and as it
was handwritten and addressed personally to me, it was brought
directly to our room. I opened it, I read it through, and I could
hardly go on breathing. It was from a woman who admitted she
was a whore and claimed she had been having an affair with
Frank. It was filthy, it gave details that I found convincing, and I
felt sick to my stomach. How could I go on with the wedding in
the face of a letter like this?
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AVA GARDNER
Bappie saw the look on my face and knew that it was serious.
"The wedding is off," I said. "Finished. Forget it!" I marched
into my bedroom. Locked myself in. The wedding was off as far
as I was concerned,
Now the bedlam began. Frank was going crazy. Bappie and
Manie Sachs, Hank Sanicola, and Dick Jones were all rushing
backward and forward between Frank's room and mine arguing,
wheedling, yelling, protesting. They told me no one could cancel
a wedding at this late date. It had all been prepared: the cars,
the catering, the minister, the flowers, the elegant house. I said
I was an important part of that wedding and I could damn well
cancel it.
I think it took most of that night with a lot of back and forth
before I agreed to change my mind. Thinking about it now, and
wondering who could be so malevolent as to arrange for that
letter to arrive at such a critical moment and drive me almost out
of my mind, the finger points in only one direction — Howard
Hughes. At the time, however, I didn't dream that Howard
would try and pull a trick like that.
Manie Sachs' brother Lester had generously offered us his
house in Philadelphia for the wedding, hoping against hope that
reporters would not find their way there. Of course they did.
Lester had to use a catering firm to arrange the reception and
they were certainly not above gossiping to reporters.
Frank shouted insults down at them from the Sachses' bed-
room window, and I tried to calm him down. My side of the
family was represented by Bappie, Frank's by his mother and fa-
ther and several of Frank's best friends: Hank Sanicola; Ben Bar-
ton, a partner of Frank's; his conductor, Axel Stordahl, and his
wife; and Dick Jones, whose fingers were poised above the key-
board of a grand piano.
I glided down the stairs in my mauve marquisette cocktail
dress, wearing a double strand of pearls, pearl and diamond
earrings, my finger itching to receive the narrow platinum wed-
ding ring that Frank and I had chosen. Dick Jones attempted
to strike up Mendelssohn's familiar wedding march. Only this
time it wasn't at all familiar. The piano hadn't been tuned for
ages. Dick gave up on his recital and joined the champagne
drinkers.
Lester Sachs had done a very good job. We stood at a specially
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AVA: MY STORY
erected altar and, on November 7, 1951, a judge named Sloane
made us man and wife. Then we moved to the bar and went over
plans for our escape,
Frank had hired a plane, a twin-engined Beechcraft, that he
couldn't really afford. But what the hell, he said, it is our honey-
moon. Fd changed into a blue traveling suit, and we hurried
down the stairs kissing and hugging our good-byes. The front
door was flung open and we sprinted through the photographers
to the car. It was all a confusing whirl, and it wasn't until I was
climbing the stairs into the plane to Miami that I realized that in
the rush I'd left the suitcase holding my honeymoon trousseau
behind. All I had with me was my handbag!
Well, there was no point in having a fit; it would rejoin me
sometime or other. But hell, I didn't even have the beautiful little
nightie I'd saved for our wedding night. I didn't have a bathing
suit. I'd didn't have anything to go to the beach in — nothing! So I
slept in Frank's pajamas, at least the top half of them, and the
next day we walked along the empty beach, me in the bottom
half of my travel suit and Frank's jacket. Naturally a photogra-
pher was lying in wait and snapped a shot of us, barefoot, hold-
ing hands. I've always thought it was a sad little photograph, a
sad little commentary on our lives then. We were simply two
young people so much in love, and the world wouldn't leave us
alone for a second. It seemed that everyone and everything was
against us, and all we asked for was a bit of peace and privacy.
We went on from Miami to Havana, where my luggage finally
caught up with us. Havana in those Batista days was an Amer-
ican playground, complete with gambling houses, whorehouses,
and brightly lit cafes, every other one boasting a live orchestra.
Traffic, lights, bustle, cigar smoke, pretty girls, balmy air, stars in
the sky, they all combined to form a Latin town that aimed to
please.
We drank a lot of Cuba libres and went out to the nightclubs
and the gambling joints. Fortunately, most of the paparazzi
seemed to have other things to do, so we were pretty much left
alone. I don't even know if I would have noticed if we weren't;
I was finally on my honeymoon with the man I loved. On one
of our last nights, I climbed up on one of the hotel's high arch-
ways, convincing Frank that I was going to throw myself off.
But I was just being mischievous, swinging along on rum and
161
AVA GARDNER
Coke with no intention of ending it all. I was having far too
much fun.
Once we got back to the States, however, our battling picked
up where we'd left off. Anything could get me going. I remember,
though I wish I didn't, one of Frank's performances in New York
when I somehow convinced myself he was singing especially for
an old flame, Marilyn Maxwell, who happened to be in the au-
dience. All these people there, and I believe that Frank is having a
little flirt with Marilyn. I mean, the ability to flirt with the entire
audience is one of Frank's primary gifts as a performer.
Naturally, a fight started back at the hotel after the perfor-
mance. I ran out the door and into a pouring rain that was
drenching the city's streets. It must have been two A.M.
Everything was dark, deserted. There I was, dressed to kill (re-
member, I'd been at that concert), bareheaded, barefoot, and
heartbroken, my tears mixing with the rain. I ran, God knows
how far. When I spotted a subway entrance, I went down. I had
no purse, but I did have enough loose change to buy a token.
I got on a train and I don't know how long I sat there.
Maybe forty minutes, maybe an hour. I reached the end of the
line. They told me there wouldn't be another train for a long
time. I walked out of the station and found myself in a sleazy,
dilapidated neighborhood on the fringes of the city. To this day,
I have no idea exactly where I was. I didn't know a thing about
New York.
It was still raining. A gray light was coming up behind the
rooftops and it was cold. I walked around for perhaps fifteen
minutes when a cruising taxi came along and I hailed it. The
driver was very suspicious at first, especially when I said,
"Hampshire House hotel, near Central Park." Then he caught
on. At least he thought he caught on. Clearly, I was a prostitute
out on a call! What else would a pretty, well-dressed young lady
be doing walking around at this time in the morning, and asking
to be taken to a posh New York hotel?
I caught his drift, but I wasn't going to argue for a single
second. Just get me to the Hampshire House, that's all I cared
about. Besides, how could I say, "No, I'm not a prostitute.
Pm Mrs. Frank Sinatra out for an early-morning walk in the
rain9'?
So I went along with the idea.
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AVA: MY STORY
And he was furious. Not at me. Prostitutes were part of every-
day life for a New York cabbie. But how dare that goddamn jerk
waiting in the Hampshire House get a nice girl like me out on the
streets at this time in the morning in this sort of weather? These
out-of-town pains-in-the-ass thought they could do whatever
they damn pleased in New York. "Now listen here, hon," the
cabbie said. "You make him pay for this. You hit him for plenty.
If he wants you at this time in the morning, then he's gotta spend
real bucks for the privilege. You got that, hon?"
"Hon," sitting in the back, got that loud and clear. I think
with a little encouragement the driver might have come into the
Hampshire House and punched my imaginary client in the nose.
He had a real chivalrous nature, this guy did.
We slid to a stop outside the Hampshire House. It was
daylight. New York was gently opening its eyes. The doorman
hurried across to let me out. His face and his voice did not
change but he recognized me immediately.
"Good morning, Mrs. Sinatra," he said politely.
Halfway through the door I glanced back at the taxi driver
leaning across his seat toward me. He caught the name and
the doorman's servility and his face became one of those frozen
movie frames: the mouth open, the eyes fixed, the brain
cells confused. Then he got his voice back and he was so apolo-
getic that I felt awfully sorry for him after all the help he'd
given me.
I stopped him in mid-confusion. "Please don't apologize. You
got me out of a lot of trouble, and I'll always be grateful to you."
I think a little smile may have strayed across my face. "And
thanks a lot for the advice."
I tugged the doorman's sleeve and whispered in his ear. "Can
you pay the fare and add on a ten-dollar tip?"
The doorman touched his hat and fished in his pocket. There
were still some gentlemen left in New York City.
Frank was still up when I reached our suite. I could tell by his
eyes that he was tired, but they lit up when I came through the
door. Any young husband tends to get worried when his young
wife goes tearing off into the wilds of New York in the middle of
the night. "Egg sandwich?" he said. Frank can make an egg sand-
wich like nobody else in the whole wide world. I can see him
doing it now. I didn't say a word, I don't think he did either. I
163
AVA GARDNER
watched him heating up the olive oil in the pan, and then putting
in the white bread — it's got to be white bread. Then he dropped
the egg into the hot olive oil, added salt and pepper, and did the
quick sandwich trick with the bread. He handed it to me and
gave me a glass of milk. Then he said he was glad I'd got home in
one piece.
I had my mouth full but I said I was, too.
164
EIGHTEEN
ilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain
19,710 feet high, and is said to be the
highest mountain in Africa. Its western
summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai,' the House of God.
Close to the western summit, there is the dried and frozen carcass
of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking
at that altitude."
That paragraph, one of the most famous Papa Hemingway
ever wrote, is also the first words you hear in the film version of
his short story that I starred in in 1952, a film that really pushed
me into international stardom. Yet if the filmmakers had been as
faithful to the whole story as they were to those few words, there
probably wouldn't have been enough of a part for me to play to
get any kind of recognition at all.
Papa's short story, set on an African safari, appeared in 1936
and was eventually bought up for seventy-five thousand dollars
by Darryl F. Zanuck, one of Hollywood's most powerful inde-
pendent producers, who pretty much ran his own little kingdom
at Twentieth Century— Fox. A big-game hunter himself, Zanuck
was eager to see Snows filmed, and he gave the project to veteran
screenwriter Casey Robinson to adapt.
Snows proved a tough nut to crack. First of all, like The Killers
before it, it was only a short story, and one with a confusing
stream-of-consciousness structure at that. It told of Harry, a suc-
cessful writer who reviews his unsatisfactory life as he lies dying
in the shadow of Africa's tallest mountain. Making things even
165
AVA GARDNER
harder was the fact that Papa, always the pessimist, has the
writer die at the close, and Zanuck was adamant that this film
have a happy ending.
Robinson came up with a solution that he called "one third
Hemingway, one third Zanuck, and one third myself." For
openers, he borrowed episodes so freely from Papa's novels that
the poor man complained, "I sold Fox a single story, not my
complete works. This movie has something from nearly every
story that I ever wrote in it." He switches scenes from Africa to
Michigan to Paris and Madrid until you think you're in a damn
travelogue. Harry still talks about how "dying a failure leaves a
bad taste in your mouth" and complains that, "I've lived, all
right, but where has it gotten me?" But the movie version allows
him to survive at the end, transformed by the love of his wealthy
but loving second wife Helen, who chases away an ornery hyena
and saves the day.
To fill out the story, Robinson also padded the stories of the
earlier women in Harry's life. Harry was played by my old pal
Greg Peck, and I was to play Cynthia, his first wife and true love,
though you wouldn't know that from the ads, where I'm de-
scribed as "a model from Montparnasse who lit a fire in him that
could only be quenched by the eternal Snaws of Kilimanjaro,"
whatever that means.
Harry runs into me during his early days as a struggling novel-
ist in Paris, and he's immediately attracted, not only because I've
got the kind of laugh strong men fight over but because, in a
town full of earnest artists, I was easygoing enough to be "the
only person in the whole darn place who's only trying to be
happy." And when I look him right in the eyes and say, "I'm my
own lady," I goddamn well make him and everyone in the the-
ater believe it.
We get married, I offer moral support as Harry becomes in-
creasingly successful as a writer, and I feel so happy "every bit of
me said 'This is all of it.'" But then we go to Africa, on Harry's
first safari, and I'm distressed at his wanderlust, not to mention
his blood lust as he mows down assorted wildlife. I've also got a
secret: I'm pregnant and I'm afraid to tell him.
Finally, fearing that a family would tie him down and ruin his
career, I deliberately fall down a pretty fearsome set of stairs and
miscarry. Then, to get me off his mind, I make him believe I've
166
AVA: MY STORY
fallen for a fairly sappy flamenco dancer. He remarries. I don't
reappear in his life until a decade later, when as an ambulance
driver in the Spanish Civil War, I just about die in his strong
arms.
Of all the parts I've played, Cynthia was probably the first one
I understood and felt comfortable with, the first role I truly
wanted to play. In fact, I did my biggest scene, the one in a Span-
ish nightclub where our marriage falls apart and I run away with
Mr. Flamenco, in a single take without closeups. This wasn't at
all like some of those other slinky-black-dress parts Fd had. This
girl wasn't a tramp or a bitch or a real smart cookie. She was a
good average girl with normal impulses. I didn't have to pretend.
And if I hadn't proved that I was my own lady with the kind of
life I'd led up to then, I hadn't proved anything at all.
My enthusiasm, however, apparently was not enough for Mr.
Zanuck. There were rumors that he thought I might not be able
to handle the role, though my work in Show Boat helped ease his
mind. I've also heard stories that Arlene Francis was his original
choice, but a key plot point is that Harry first meets second wife
Helen by mistaking her for Cynthia in front of the Ritz Hotel in
Paris, and I certainly fit that bill better than Arlene did.
One thing that turned out to be surprising about the film, once
Metro lent me out and I got the part, was that though it was set
in the four corners of the world, all the principal photography
was done in Hollywood on the Fox lot. All of Stage 8, in fact,
was turned into a massive African hunting camp courtesy of a
three-hundred-fifty-by-forty-foot cyclorama painting of snowy
Mt. Kilimanjaro itself. And some of the props they used, like an
elephant-foot stool, came direct from Zanuck's office.
If I didn't have any problems with the role of Cynthia, I did
have some difficulties with Frank. Shooting began just weeks
after our wedding, and he was really up against it at that time.
Unbeknownst to the public, he was having serious problems with
his voice, and his agents were having difficulty booking him into
top night spots. It seems hard to believe now, but he was having
to play saloons and dates that were way beneath him. And feel-
ing that way, it was really important to him that his wife be by
his side in New York.
I talked to Zanuck, to Casey Robinson, and to director Henry
King, and they rearranged the film's schedule so all my scenes
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could be shot in ten days. Frank agreed to let me go for that
period of time. But on the last day of shooting, when we had
hundreds of extras for one of our Spanish Civil War scenes,
things took longer than we anticipated. Since it would have been
too expensive to keep the extras late, it was decided that we'd
finish shooting on the eleventh day. I knew Frank would give me
holy hell about that, and he did.
A lot of silliness happened when the film was finally released,
with exhibitors complaining that people wouldn't go to a picture
whose name they can't pronounce, and Fox countersuggesting
that theaters sponsor essay contests of a hundred words or less
on what the hell the leopard was seeking at that altitude.
Though 1 got excellent reviews for my performance (Variety
said I made Cynthia "a warm, appealing, alluring standout"),
Papa was as unhappy with the film as Frank was. He took to
calling it The Snows ofZanuck and kept threatening to oil up his
old hunting rifle, return to the mountain, and go searching for
the producer's soul. "Ava," he told me once, "the only two good
things in it were you and the hyena." I never had the heart to tell
him that the hyena on the sound track was an expert imitation
provided by director King, an old Africa hand who everyone
agreed sounded better than the real thing.
168
NINETEEN
aybe it's the air, maybe it's the altitude,
maybe it's just the place's goddamn kar-
ma, but Frank's establishment in Palm
Springs, the only house we really could ever call our own, has
seen some pretty amazing occurrences. It was the site of probably
the most spectacular fight of our young married life, and honey,
don't think I don't know that's really saying something. And
even before that it provided me with a chance to spend some time
with the most reclusive of Hollywood legends, Greta Garbo.
When Artie Shaw and I were married, Garbo had lived right
next door on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, but in spite of peer-
ing over walls, through hedges, and over curtains I never caught
so much as a glimpse of her. So now, when my old friend Minna
Wallis called the house at Palm Springs and said she and Garbo
would like to spend the weekend there and didn't care if Bappie
and I stayed along for the ride, you better believe I was pleased at
the opportunity.
"We'd love to have her," I said, the Scarlett O'Hara of host-
esses. "When does she want to arrive?"
"In about five minutes."
"Oh, my God!"
It was midsummer in the desert, hot enough to fry an egg on
the sidewalk, but Bappie and I rushed around, arranging flowers
in Miss Garbo's bedroom and turning up the air-conditioning.
We'd barely had time to do anything before a taxi pulled up and
out she stepped, wearing not only the expected large sunglasses
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AVA GARDNER
and wide-brimmed hat but also, I swear to God, a wool tur-
tleneck sweater, this huge woolen scarf around her neck, and
quite a heavy coat on top of it all.
"Hello, Miss Garbo," I said, still the polite Southern miss.
"I'm Ava Gardner/'
Did I get a hello back? A handshake? The slightest sign of
recognition? No, I did not. Instead there was this sweeping move-
ment toward the house and a booming "Where is my roooom?",
the echoing vowels as broad as the great outdoors. And no
sooner were she and Minna settled in their rooms when word
came out that (a) Miss Garbo didn't like air-conditioning and (b)
if there was anything Miss Garbo liked less than air-conditioning,
it was flowers.
Bappie and I retreated to the pool, fortifying ourselves alco-
holically for what we were beginning to fear would be a grim
weekend. Then, about an hour later, Miss Garbo decided to join
us. She walked out to the pool and I really think she was the
most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. And I mean that
despite the fact that she wore a pair of men's baggy khaki shorts
that came down to her knees — and nothing else. Though she
must have been in her mid-forties, her breasts and shoulders were
glorious. Her face had just a touch of blue eye shadow, her lips a
trace of lipstick, and she had that wonderful hair that moved
from side to side as she turned her head. She was totally magnifi-
cent.
She was Greta now, all smiles, with the intention, she said, of
taking a little swim. She changed into a dress after that, accepted
our offer of vodka, and began a memorable weekend of drinking,
eating, laughing, and more eating. Because though she was in-
volved with nutritionist Gaylord Hauser and had the stock of
health foods and vitamins to prove it, Miss Garbo definitely had
a robust Swedish appetite.
The only time she brought up health was when she made the
rather enigmatic comment that "it was the 'kneeses' under the
table that gives us diseases." After a few more vodkas, Greta
made her point clear. You sat down to dine, your "kneeses" care-
fully placed under the table. You had a plate in front of you. You
filled it, stuffed yourself, got fat, and contracted one of the many
diseases associated with that condition. True enough, those
"kneeses under the table" had brought you to an untimely end.
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AVA: MY STORY
There were two other things I remember about Greta's conver-
sation. At one point she admired a small, inexpensive bracelet
that Frank had given me and said, rather sadly, "You know, I
love jewelry, and yet men have never given any to me. I don't
know why." And she also admitted that the only man she'd ever
really loved was John Gilbert, her romantic costar, but that he'd
"let me down" by having a surreptitious affair (is there any other
kind?) with a little extra during their last film together. She had
never forgiven him.
Brother, did I ever know about romantic battles. Or at least I
thought I did, because soon after the filming of The Snows of
Kilimanjaro was completed, Frank and I had a spectacular night
of ridiculous boozy drama in Palm Springs that even French farce
couldn't have competed with.
And the evening had started out so well. Frank and I had
driven over the hill to the San Fernando Valley to have dinner
with a couple of friends. Unfortunately, we drank quite a lot. I
never much cared about what I was drinking, only about the
effect it was having on me, and that night the effect wasn't very
good. I took offense at some remark and all hell started to break
loose. By the time we'd gotten home to Pacific Palisades, my
mood had taken on an icy, remote, to-hell-with-all-men tinge. To
emphasize the remoteness I felt, I retired to the solitude of my
bathroom. So there \ was, lying in my tub, soothing myself under
the bubbles, when Frank came breezing in, picking up the argu-
ment where it had left off.
I was furious. I hate intrusions when I have my clothes off. It's
a bred-in-the-bone shyness, some sort of deep insecurity which I
guess comes from my childhood. As I've said, with each of my
three husbands it took me several drinks and a lot of courage to
appear disrobed in front of them.
I reacted instinctively. "Get out of here!" I yelled.
Naturally, that gave my husband the feeling that he was not
truly loved.
Frank exploded. He yelled back, "For Christ's sake, aren't I
married to you?"
That cut no ice with me. I was still outraged.
"Go away!" I screamed.
Which paved the way for what I have to admit was a truly
memorable exit line. "Okay! Okay! If that's the way you want it.
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AVA GARDNER
Pm leaving. And if you want to know where I am, I'm in Palm
Springs fucking Lana Turner."
The bathroom door slammed. The front door slammed. I
heard the car roar away. My car. The only car!
So I got out of the bath. Thoughtfully. I got dressed and be-
came all the more thoughtful about what Frank had said. At first
it didn't bother me. But the more I thought about it the more it
did bother me.
What does a young, recently married wife do in a situation like
this? Hire a private detective? How the hell can I hire a private
eye at this time of night? Better handle it myself. Catch 'em in the
act! At that time Lana was staying at our Palm Springs house.
Frank had lent it to Lana and her business manager, Ben Cole,
for a few days. Ben was a nice guy. No romance between them.
I went to the telephone and called Bappie. Sometimes Bappie
has a hard time forgetting that she's not my mother, but she is a
good friend. It was past midnight and I could tell that, like me,
Bappie'd had a little to drink.
"Bappie," I said, "I haven't got a car. Pm going to call a taxi
and meet you in your car at the foot of Nichols Canyon. We're
going to Palm Springs."
Bappie reacted as if she'd been stuck with an electric prod.
"What?" she yelled. "Do you know what time it is?"
"Late," I said evasively. The hours after midnight had a habit
of slipping away very quickly in those days. "But we've got to go
to Palm Springs."
"What for?"
"Bappie, this is urgent. Pve got to catch Frank in the act."
"Okay," she said grudgingly, "I'll be there."
We arrived at Frank's house in Palm Springs and I faced my
first test. The gate was locked. I paused for thought. If I rang the
bell, which sounded in the kitchen, someone would press a but-
ton and the gate would open. But that was no good. I had to
remain invisible until the moment of discovery. "Well drive
around the back and get in that way," I said to Bappie.
"But that's all desert," Bappie wailed. "It's full of sidewin-
ders— and they're deadly."
What's a sidewinder compared to the chance of surprising
Frank Sinatra, I thought, and, headlights out, we headed for the
back, where the pool that Greta Garbo had so loved was sepa-
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AVA: MY STORY
rated from the desert by nothing more than a six-foot chain link
fence. Since climbing has never been a problem for me, I took off
my shoes and scampered over, leaving Bappie behind me to fuss
about those sidewinders.
I approached the house cautiously, and then realized I didn't
have to bother. The curtains on all the damn windows were
closed tight. That's something that never happens in detective
movies. How are you supposed to catch 'em in the act if you
can't see in?
I moved quietly from window to window, looking for even a
sliver of light. Finally I found one at the kitchen window, and I'd
just got my nose pressed against the glass when the back door
right next to me opened, Ben Cole poked his head out and said,
"Ava, is that you? Come on in, honey."
I went to rescue Bappie from the snakes and we went inside,
where Lana was looking as lovely as ever. I knew that at one
time she felt like she'd been on the verge of marrying Frank,
which certainly gave some impetus to my suspicions, but we'd
always been good, if not close, friends. And Fd always admired
her as a great movie star. I remembered when I first arrived in
Hollywood, a starlet green as a spring tobacco leaf. I'd glimpsed
Lana on a set one day, and I'd thought, Now, there's the real
thing. She had a canvas-backed chair inscribed with her name
and a stool next to it holding her things. What struck me was
that among them was a gleaming gold cigarette case and a gleam-
ing gold lighter. Without envy I'd thought, Now that's what a
real film star should look like. That's style.
What interested me at that moment, however, was that there
was no sign of Frank.
Nothing daunted, the four of us settled down to have a party.
The house had a big kitchen with a long bar and a row of stools.
Lana had her bottle of iced vodka, and Ben was serving the rest
of us drinks. I began to feel very happy, although I had a small
regret that my career as a private eye hadn't lasted very long.
It turned out to be the calm before the storm. Lana, mean-
while, passed on one other item of news: she was expecting her
current boyfriend down from Los Angeles, where he ran a club.
Once it closed, he was driving across to Palm Springs to spend
the night. Maybe, I thought, he'll arrive before Frank.
At that very moment the front door was thrown open. Frank
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AVA GARDNER
had arrived. Nothing subdued about that entrance. The door was
behind us so we all swung round on our bar stools, caught in the
middle of one of those inevitable pregnant pauses.
Then, aided by the booze, like a fool I tossed off one of those
throwaway lines that would have been better thrown away. "Ah,
Frank! I thought you were going to be down here fucking Lana."
That really got the blood flowing. Here I was mocking him
and having a great time. Without him! In his house!
Frank, completely flustered, responded with the first thought
that came into his mind and yelled, "I wouldn't touch that broad
if you paid me."
It was a cruel remark but Frank was angry at me, not at Lana.
She, however, immediately burst into tears and rushed away sob-
bing, "I'm leaving, I'm leaving!55 And off she went to get her
things. Ben Cole, who had been the complete gentleman through-
out, raised his eyes to heaven and went off to help her pack.
"Out of my house/' Frank was screaming. "Out, out, out!
Everybody out!"
I felt that was very unreasonable. After all we'd been married
for quite a few months and I thought it was my house, too. Also,
an awful lot of my clothes, books, records, and God-knows-what
shared the space with Frank's things.
I made that point clear. And though I hadn't had a whole lot
of experience in playing empresses, queens, countesses, duch-
esses, or any other aristocratic ladies, I managed to be pretty
damn regal and aloof at that moment.
"Okay," I said knowing that booze never affected my diction.
"I will go. But in my own rime. Taking my books and records
and personal belongings with me."
To make a start, I got a ladder — who knows from where — and
placed it against the highest bookshelf. Then I climbed to the
very top and began carefully picking out books and records and
dropping them all the way down on the carpet.
Frank seemed to approve of this idea. Furiously he scooped up
everything I'd thrown on the floor and heaved it all out the still-
open front door — he'd never bothered to close it — and onto the
pitch-dark driveway. Not to be outdone, I stalked across to the
bedroom and bathroom and started to pile my clothes, cosmetics,
and every other goddamn odd and end I had in a heap on the
floor. And Frank grabbed those as well, raced to the door, and
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A VA: MY STORY
tossed them out into the night to join the ever-growing mess in
the driveway.
It was at least three in the morning when Lana and Ben, God
bless them, departed to look for rooms somewhere, anywhere
else. By this time, nothing was separating Frank and me. I was
clinging to the nearest doorknob, holding on for dear life, and
Frank, with both his hands around my waist, was trying to phys-
ically pry me off so he could throw me out of the house and onto
the by now considerable pile in the driveway. Bappie, meanwhile,
was watching all this in a sort of a trance, trying without much
hope to make peace between us. "For God's sake, kids," she'd
say. "Will you please knock it off? This is disgraceful^
It sure was. But I wasn't giving up, and neither was Frank.
Finally, having failed to pry me off my doorknob, he tried an-
other tack. "The police," he yelled. "I'm going to call the police."
"Great idea," I said. "Call the police. Call the fucking police."
Frank rushed over to the phone. And right back into the mid-
dle of this, stepping gingerly over my personal effects, was poor
Ben Cole. Could he reclaim, he asked apologetically, the cold
chicken Lana had bought for a late supper between her, Ben, and
the boyfriend, not to mention the bottle of ice-cold vodka that
she had left behind? Would we mind if he took these things with
him?
Nobody minded. Nobody cared. Take the chicken, the vodka,
and the boyfriend out into the night and leave the ring free for
the main event.
Right on schedule, the police arrived. Police chief Gus Kett-
man, who happened to be a friend of Frank's, was in charge. He
had a worried frown on his face, but his manner was cool as you
please. He could see he had a delicate situation on his hands. He
struggled through our debris, came inside, and immediately fig-
ured out from his wide experience of life in Palm Springs that he
had a classic drunken brawl to deal with.
Since this whole ruckus had taken place on private property,
with no one hurt and nothing damaged except a few personal
feelings, the chief really couldn't do anything except try and calm
things down. He came closer and said, "Now listen, Frank. This
is absurd. This had got to stop."
Then, looking reproachfully at me, he added, "Ava, why don't
you calm down?"
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AVA GARDNER
"Calm down!" I replied with enviable dignity. "I am calm.
Can't you see how calm I am? I'm simply leaving this house, but
I'm taking my personal possessions with me."
Finally, the chief got Frank back to room temperature and
Bappie and I stepped haughtily over the garage sale in the drive-
way and made our way back to wherever we'd left the car. As
you might imagine, it took Frank and me a little time to make up
after that escapade.
The man who helped make it happen was, of all people, Adlai
Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for President. Both Frank
and I were firm Democrats in those days, and when Adlai's office
asked if we would turn up at a Hollywood for Stevenson rally at
the Palladium in Los Angeles, we said yes. Not that my support
was all that important. I just slid onto the stage in a strapless
gown of black silk with the mink stole Frank had given me as an
engagement present, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, I can't do
anything myself, but I can introduce a wonderful, wonderful
man. I'm a great fan of his myself. My husband, Frank Sinatra."
Frank then sang "The Birth of the Blues" and "The House I
Live In" and nearly brought the house down. That was the man I
loved.
176
TWENTY
rank Sinatra and I might well have had, as
one Hollywood wag put it, the most on-
again, off-again marriage of the century,
but it always struck me as fascinating the way our lives seemed to
double back and reconnect with each other. Just by chance, for
instance, the summer of 1952 saw us both beginning to get in-
volved in our most important film projects to date, me with
Mogambo and Frank with From Here to Eternity.
Frank had been wildly excited about James Jones's tough best-
selling novel about the dark side of army life in Hawaii on the
eve of World War II ever since it had come out in 1951. He fell in
love with the character of Angelo Maggio, the skinny Italian kid
from New Jersey who wouldn't play the patsy for anyone. He
knew that director Fred Zinnemann was planning a movie and he
became obsessed with playing Maggio, so much so that he was
prepared to do anything, even commit the ultimate Hollywood
sin of working for practically nothing, to get the role. I found this
strange, because Frank had never been that crazy about acting,
but he knew he was Maggio and besides, he was dying to do a
straight dramatic part and escape from the typecasting he'd been
subjected to in musicals. Not to mention that his career didn't
seem to be going anywhere else at that particular moment.
I decided to try and get into the act and influence the dread
Harry Cohn, who was the head of Columbia, the movie company
making From Here to Eternity. I knew Joan Cohn, Harry's wife,
reasonably well: I'd been to their house for a few parties, and
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AVA GARDNER
they lived quite close to us in Coldwater Canyon. We weren't
bosom friends, but I knew I could talk to Joan, that she would be
sympathetic. Through Joan I got to Harry, but he was dead set
against the idea.
"Just test Frank,55 I pleaded. "Just give him a test.55
"Why should I? The idea's ridiculous. Frank's a singer, not a
dramatic actor."
"Frank can act, and he knows he can play this part better than
anyone else.55
"It's too late. Fve already cast the role. Eli Wallach has got it
and I'm happy with him.5'
I went away but I wasn't finished. I knew Joan was on my
side; after all, all we were asking for was a test. So I niggled and
niggled at Harry Cohn, and I even said, "For God's sake, Harry,
I'll give you a free picture if you'll just test him."
Frank had made his own appeal, and offered to do the film for
a giveaway salary of a thousand dollars a week. A lot of other
people intervened, but director Fred Zinnemann wasn't con-
vinced. Still, as long as Eli Wallach wasn't signed, I felt Frank
had a chance.
Meanwhile, I was preparing to film Mogambo, a picture I felt
a special attachment to. After all, I still remembered sneaking
into the theater balcony in Smithfield, Virginia, in 1932 and
swooning as my hero Clark Gable tried to decide between Jean
Harlow and Mary Astor in Red Dust. And Mogambo, which,
depending on who you asked, apparently meant either "passion"
or "to speak" in Swahili, was nothing less than a bare-faced re-
make of Red Dust, with Gable repeating his gruff masculine role,
Grace Kelly taking the old Mary Astor part, and me sitting in for
poor Jean Harlow.
Instead of taking place, as Red Dust did, on a rubber planta-
tion in the Malay Peninsula, Mogambo was set among the white
hunters of Africa. And instead of being shot on the Metro back
lot, it was truly going to be photographed where it was supposed
to take place, or, as the ads later blared, "Actually filmed by
MGM on safari in Africa amid authentic scenes of unrivaled sav-
agery and awe-inspiring splendor." What that meant to me, how-
ever, was that I had to submit to a hellacious series of shots for
smallpox, yellow fever, cholera, typhus, typhoid, and God knows
what else.
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AVA: MY STORY
Since nothing seemed to be happening with Frank's From Here
to Eternity screen test, he decided he might as well go to Africa
with me, shots and all. So we flew into Nairobi, Kenya, right
around the time of our first wedding anniversary and joined up
with the fifty-plus trucks that were going to take us to Uganda,
the film's primary location, seven hundred miles away.
The whole damn trip was what the publicists liked to call the
greatest safari of modern times, and I wasn't about to argue. Not
only did it take eight genuine white hunters to get us in gear, but
once we settled our encampment was three hundred tents strong.
And if you think those were just for sleeping, think again. My
God, we had tents for every little thing you could think of: dining
tents, wardrobe tents with electric irons, a rec room tent with
darts for the Brits and table tennis for the Yanks, even a hospital
tent complete with X-ray machine, and a jail tent in case any-
body got a tiny bit too rowdy.
I really shouldn't joke about security, because there were gen-
uine worries for our safety in Africa. The movie company had its
own thirty-man police force, and when we first got to what was
then British East Africa we were under the protection of both the
Lancashire Fusiliers and the Queen's African Rifles. The Mau
Mau uprising was just getting started, and everyone in the cast
was issued a weapon. Clark, an experienced hunter, got a high-
powered hunting rifle, while they gave me a presumably more
ladylike .38 police special revolver.
That was just like Metro, thinking of everything. They brought
in three copies of everyone's costumes just in case and built an
eighteen-hundred-yard air strip in the middle of the jungle in a
whirlwind five days. Every day, supplies and mail were flown in
from Nairobi on sturdy old DC3s, and exposed film stock, care-
fully packed in dry ice, would be flown out. The film's expense
account even had a notation of five thousand African francs
(fourteen dollars and change in those days) written off as "gra-
tuities to witch doctors for favorable omens."
And, for once, as much attention had been paid to the John
Lee Mahin script as to the logistics. I don't know if I'd describe
the rivalry between Gracie and me quite the way the ads did —
"They fought like sleek jungle cats! A flaming love feud! The
jungle strips two civilized women of all but their most primeval
instincts!" — but we sure had fun battling it out.
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AVA GARDNER
The film starts without either of us on the scene, as the movie
introduces the virile white hunter Victor Marswell, played by
Clark, who hunts animals for zoos and is man enough to deck
insubordinates with one punch if they need that kind of treat-
ment. Which, the movies being the movies, they inevitably do.
Irked that a prize black leopard has gotten away, Vic returns
to the compound in a hell of a bad mood. His temper is not
improved when he spots first my luggage, then my clothes, and
finally my underwear strewn across his room. I'm out on the
back porch, making good use of a makeshift shower. "Eloise
Kelly," I say by way of introduction, "better known in the plea-
sure capitals of the world as Honey Bear."
Vic is less than impressed, and I am not any happier to learn
that Bunny, the maharaja I've flown all the way from New York
to accompany on safari, has had to make an emergency trip back
home* "This is going to be the gayest week of the season/' I say
with Honey Bear's usual dose of sarcasm. And, truth be told, Vic
is less than impressed with my kind of girl as well. "They cover
the world like a paint advertisement," he tells one of his white
hunter pals. "There's not an honest feeling from her kneecap to
her neck."
Needless to say, despite my brave warning of "Look, buster,
don't you get overstimulated with me," not much time is allowed
to pass before Vic and Honey Bear fall into each other's arms.
But though I start to get a little soft on the big lug, he is having
no such thoughts about me, and by the time the boat out shows
up, he insists that I be on it.
"Take it easy, Kelly," he says, patting my knee on the gang-
plank. "Drop me a line." Then he gives me money for plane fare
home and says, "I'll brain you if you don't take it. Call it a
ninety-nine-year loan." I snap back, just as romantically, "This is
one loan 111 pay back if I have to live ninety-nine years to do it."
Getting off the boat just as Fm getting on are British an-
thropologist Donald Nordley, played by Donald Sinden, and his
attractive young wife Linda, which is Gracie's part. Poor Donald
passes out with some mysterious jungle fever practically the min-
ute he steps ashore, which allows Vic to fall for Linda, a goody-
goody type who is prone to saying things like, "At certain times,
jokes are in very poor taste."
Then, like a bad penny, I show up again, courtesy of a boat
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AVA: MY STORY
that won't float. "The Return of Frankenstein," I announce
grandly at my reappearance. "Shipwrecked and me without a
desert island to my name." Vic, naturally, is not happy about my
arrival, and when he cautions me to have a little respect for
Linda's delicate sensibilities, I snap back that "I'll act like your
sister, down from Vassar for the holidays."
You can probably guess what happens from here on in. Vic
and Linda dance around, not being quite able to decide how se-
rious a play they should make for each other. Finally, when she
shoots Vic in the arm in a jealous fit after finding him flirting
with me, I reveal my true nobility by claiming she did it because
he'd made what they used to call unwelcome advances. Her mar-
riage is saved, good old Vic views me with new respect, and even
though I've gone on the record as saying, "The only lions I want
to see again are two in front of the Public Library," I end up
staying on in Africa with my guy.
For someone with my naturally irreverent temperament, play-
ing a sassy, tough-talking playgirl who whistles at men, drinks
whiskey straight from the bottle, and says about wine, "Any
year, any model, they all bring out my better nature" was a gift
from the gods. I never felt looser or more comfortable in a part
before or since, and I was even allowed to improvise some of my
dialogue. Yet if you would have told me that I'd feel this way
about a film directed by John Ford, I would have sent you
straight to Artie Shaw's psychiatrist.
John Ford, familiarly known as Jack, was one of the crustiest
sons of bitches ever to direct a film, and he directed plenty of
them. On the job since 1917, he'd turned out classics like The
Informer, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, and How Green
Was My Valley, winning four Oscars in the process. He liked to
say he was just a hard-nosed, hardworking, run-of-the-mill direc-
tor, but a lot of people around Hollywood considered him the
best in the business, and when he worked with actors like John
Wayne, he could do no wrong. He could also be the meanest man
on earth, thoroughly evil, but by the time the picture ended, I
adored him.
It turned out that Ford hadn't wanted me at all. He wanted
Maureen O'Hara, and he wasn't shy about letting that be
known. He adored Gracie, but he was very cold to me. He called
me in to see him before shooting began and he didn't even look
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at me. Ail he said was, "You're going to be overdressed." Just
cold, and that was all
So I went back to my room and talked it over with Frank. I
told him, "I'm going to talk to Ford." Then I stomped in and I
said, "I'm just as Irish and mean as you are. I'm not going to take
this.' I'm sorry if you don't like me— I'll go home."
He just looked up at me as if he didn't know what I was talk-
ing about and said, "I don't know what you mean. Who's been
rude to you?"
And when it came to the first day of shooting, I can safely say
that no picture in which I was ever involved got off to a worse
start. One of the first scenes called for a leopard to casually walk
through the flap of our tent while Clark and I were sitting on the
bed, holding hands. Why this was one of the first scenes to be
shot, 111 never know. Maybe the animal was on call somewhere
else 'and had to return to the wild in a hurry. At any rate, he
didn't seem to understand his cues. And the upshot was, the leop-
ard goofed, Clark goofed, I goofed, and the scene was terrible.
To make things worse, just as Ford snapped, "Print the last
take," the lighting man said apologetically, "I'm sorry, Mr. Ford,
but the key light went out in the middle of it."
As I got off the bed I said, quite casually, I thought, "Oh, boy,
that was a real fuckup. We goofed everything."
Not the most politic thing to say, especially on a Jack Ford set.
Because Jack thought the remark was directed at him. He decided
I had to be put firmly in my place.
"Oh, you're a director now," he said scornfully. "You know
so fucking much about directing. You're a lousy actress, but now
you're a director. Well, why don't you direct something? You go
sit in my chair, and I'll go and play your scene."
All this was said in a loud voice in front of the cast and the
crew and everybody. Every face was frozen, but nobody dared
say a word. And Ford wouldn't stop: he went on ranting like a
madman. The only thing that ended the whole charade was Mr.
Clark Gable. He put his arm around me, gave me a squeeze, and
walked off the set. And when Clark marched that was the end of
the scene, because as a man and an actor he wasn't known as
The King for nothing. His behavior on a set was always impecca-
ble.
Now Jack Ford was in such a fury that he didn't know what to
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do. The fact that the key light was out meant the scene had to be
reshot. So he closed down the whole set, and everybody left. I
went back to my tent and sat there thinking, What the hell have I
done wrong to incur this sort of fantastic fury? Then, about an
hour later, the assistant director arrived with a message. "Mr.
Ford says would you please come back on the set. They're ready
for another shot."
I said, "Sure," and went quietly back to the set. It went like a
dream. First take, no problems. Even the leopard behaved him-
self. He gave me a contemptuous look as he prowled through —
probably thought I was too skinny to bite — and that was that.
Jack and I took a little longer to make up. I had a hard few
days before he took me aside and said, "You're damn good. Just
take it easy." From that moment on, we got along fine. I guess
that's how he worked. He had to be top man — and why
shouldn't he be? He just wanted to make sure I knew it. He was
big. If he hated you, he let you know it and made you fight with
him. The only people I didn't like were the nitty ones who never
let you know. You could never fight with them.
It was great working with Clark again — he will always be my
Sir Galahad. But as far as romance went, Clark's eyes were quite
definitely on Gracie, and hers, for that matter, were on him. They
were both single at the time, and it's very normal for any woman
to be in love with Clark. But Gracie was a good Catholic girl,
and she was having a hard time feeling the way she did about
Clark. Not to mention that being in Africa, with exotic flora and
fauna all over the place, and Clark, strong and smiling and com-
pletely at home, made her love him more.
I remember on Gracie's birthday we got a bottle of champagne
from some bootlegger, and she and Clark and Jack Ford and I
had a little party out in the tent. Later, we did the same thing for
mine. And after that, no matter where in the world I was, every
year a birthday present would arrive from Grace. She never for-
got, and every year at Christmas she sent a handwritten card, not
left for a secretary to do. She was a great lady, and also great fun,
but she was never much of a drinker, though she tried hard. Her
little nose would get pink, she'd get sick, and we'd have to rescue
her. Or she'd get easily hurt and do my trick and run off into the
darkness.
Clark would catch on after a few seconds and say to me,
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AVA GARDNER
"Sugar, where's she gone? This is Africa; she can't just run off in
Africa." So Fd go off and find her and bring her back before the
lions ate her.
Thank God, everyone in the cast got along famously, because
filming in Africa was not exactly an experience I'd want to re-
peat. If nothing else there was the heat, so intense (anywhere
from one hundred and ten to one hundred and thirty degrees)
that the company used up literally gallons of cold cream to keep
everyone's complexion from burning up. And when it wasn't hot,
it rained, and in just a few hours everything turned to mud so
deep it was impossible to move cameras, trucks, or people. And
don't forget the wild animals. I had to hang a lantern in front of
my tent to discourage the local lions, and one day a trio of rhinos
ganged up on the camera car and nearly killed poor Bob Surtees,
the cameraman.
When it came to crises, however, I was soon face to face with
the most personal one of my life: I discovered I was pregnant. I
was only a week or so late, but all the signs were there and I just
knew. I also knew that if I was going to do anything about it, I
had to do it now. Frank had gone back to Hollywood — the invi-
tation to test for From Here to Eternity had finally come
through. I hadn't told him and I wasn't going to tell him. He had
enough troubles of his own. I sat in my tent and tried to think
about it rationally. And it was hard.
I had the strongest feelings about bringing a child into the
world. I felt that unless you were prepared to devote practically
all your time to your child in its early years it was unfair to the
baby. If a child is unwanted — and somehow they know that — it
is handicapped from the time it is born.
Not to mention the fact that MGM had all sorts of penalty
clauses about their stars having babies. If I had one, my salary
would be cut off. So how would I make a living? Frank was
absolutely broke and would probably continue to be (or so I
thought) for a long time. My future movies were going to take
me all over the world. I couldn't have a baby with that sort of
thing going on. Even in Mogambo, the fact that I was pregnant
would be showing quite plainly long before the picture was fin-
ished, so Jack Ford had to be told for starters. I felt the time just
wasn't right for me to have a child. With that decision made, the
most agonizing I'd ever had to face, I went to see my director.
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Jack Ford tried quite desperately to talk me out of it.
"Ava," he said, "you are married to a Catholic, and this is
going to hurt Frank tremendously when he finds out about it."
"He isn't going to find out about it, and if he does, it's my
decision."
"Ava, you're giving yourself too hard a time. I'll protect you if
the fact that you're having a baby starts to show. I'll arrange the
scenes, I'll arrange the shots. We'll wrap your part up as quickly
as we can. Nothing will show. Please go ahead and have the
child."
I said, "No, this is not the time, and I'm not ready." So, reluc-
tantly, John let me go to London in late November.
It was kept very hush-hush. I don't quite know who arranged
it all but I expect that MGM, with an awful lot of money at
stake, had a lot to do with it. One of the secretaries on the film
whom I'd known for several years came with me, as well as one
of MGM's publicity men. I went to this private clinic where they
put me to sleep and took me to the operating room. I woke up in
my room thinking that everything was all over, and the doctor
walked in and said, "Yes, Mrs. Sinatra, you are pregnant."
I said, "For God's sake, I knew that."
So the doctor went away, looking very serious, and in came
the psychiatrist. In those days, abortion was available in Britain
but it had to be performed for what the male sex thought were
the right reasons: their reasons. Even those very expensive
London clinics had to be careful with their procedures. And they
were not at all certain I was there for the right reasons.
Neither was the psychiatrist.
He began to lead me along the right lines, but I wasn't playing
the game. He asked me if I would throw myself out of the win-
dow if I had to have this baby, and I said, "Certainly not," which
floored him a bit. He kept on trying to lead me into confessing
my so-called suicidal intentions, but I wasn't buying that. He in-
sisted that I tell him that I would kill myself if I had to go
through with having a child, and I wouldn't, I said, as simply as I
could, "I don't think it's the sensible time for me to have a child.
If you bring a child into the world, it's got to have a stable back-
ground, loving parents who can give it time and attention. At
present my entire life is one mad whirl, and it is going to be like
that for a few years to come."
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They probably had to manipulate a few of my answers, but I
got the operation and went back to Africa.
Frank came back to Africa in time for Christmas— and my
thirtieth birthday— full of enthusiasm and joy. The test had been
successful and the part of Maggio was his, partly because Eli
Wallach simply looked too muscular for the role. Frank didn't
know about my trip to London, and those few weeks we had
together were easygoing and fun. He and one of the prop men
built me a shower, the two of us fooled around in the river until
a protective mother hippo chased us away, and he helped orga-
nize and conduct, despite local white supremacist sentiment, both
a black and a white Christmas choir.
And then, of course, the silliest, stupidest, and most natural
thing happened: I got pregnant again. Apparently, the reason
that I hadn't gotten pregnant with my first two husbands was
that something in the conception department was tilted the
wrong way. Becoming pregnant the first time had tilted it the
right way, and now I was highly fertile.
This time Frank did know, and he was delighted. I remember
bumping across the African plain with him one day in a jeep,
feeling sick as the devil. Right on the spot, for the first and only
time in our relationship, Frank decided to sing to me. I know
people must think that he did that sort of thing all the time, but
the man was a professional and the voice was saved for the right
occasions. This must have been one of them, because he sang to
me, oh so beautifully, that lovely song, "When You Awake." It
didn't stop me from feeling sick, but I've always remembered that
moment.
Yet, despite Frank's feelings, I reached the same decision about
my second pregnancy as I had about my first. As soon as we
finished Mogambo, MGM had me slotted into another film to be
made overseas, Knights of the Round Table, which meant that
Frank and I would be separated again for month after month.
And that situation brought to the surface all my old doubts about
having no right to produce a child unless you had a sane, solid
lifestyle in which he or she could be brought up. Frank and I had
no such thing. We didn't even possess the ability to live together
like any normal married couple. Frank would arrive home at
about four A.M. after a singing engagement at a nightclub or con-
cert. And I would have to leave the house at six-thirty A.M. or
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AVA: MY STORY
earlier to get to the studio on time. Not really much of a home
life there.
I think Frank, in his heart, knew what I was going to do. But it
was my decision, not his. I didn't think that that big expensive
clinic was prepared for a second round of someone responding to
their ever-so-correct questions with my incorrect answers, so I
was checked into a small nursing home near Wimbledon where
they didn't ask any questions at all. I knew Frank was coming
across to London to start a singing tour through Europe, but I
wasn't sure exactly when. But clearly someone told him about
what I was doing, because as long as I live I'll never forget wak-
ing up after the operation and seeing Frank sitting next to the
bed with tears in his eyes. But I think I was right. I still think I
was right.
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TWENTY-ONE
s far as my career as an actress went,
Mogambo was probably as close to a
pinnacle as anything I've done. I did get
nominated for an Academy Award for best actress (though I was
more relieved than upset when the Oscar eventually went to Au-
drey Hepburn in Roman Holiday) and I was told that I came
within one vote of winning the New York Film Critics award,
with even Bosley Crowther of the Times, who usually treated me
like a bad smell, fighting gallantly in my defense.
If you sense a little ambivalence in my thoughts about my abil-
ity as an actress, you're right. On one level, all I wanted to be
was an actress, and I often felt that if only I could act, everything
about my life and career would have been different. But I was
never an actress — none of us kids at Metro were. We were just
good to look at.
Making things worse was that I really didn't have the correct
emotional makeup for acting. If I'd had more drive, more inter-
est, maybe I could have done better, but I disliked the exhibi-
tionistic aspects of the business and the work was terribly
frightening to me. My mouth would always dry up so completely
when I was on the set that I had to keep lemon juice handy and
take a sip from time to time. I remember a cutter once saying,
"Pd like you to see what I have to take out of your scenes." He
ran them through for me and there were all these audible clicks
where my mouth had gone dry.
"I'm afraid there are two or three places where I just can't get
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AVA: MY STORY
the clicks out," he said. "Well have to redub." I told him that
even in redubbing I'd need a drop of Scotch or the clicks would
still be there.
Given all this, why did I keep doing it? The answer I usually
gave was, "For the loot, honey, always for the loot," and there
was more truth than poetry in that remark. I had to do some-
thing and I didn't know how to do anything else. I once thought
about becoming a nurse, but I knew I'd vomit every time a pa-
tient vomited and I wouldn't be much use. I could have been a
secretary again, brushed up on my Atlantic Christian College dic-
tation speed of a hundred and twenty words per minute. But I
knew that would make me really crazy.
The truth is that the only time I'm happy is when I'm doing
absolutely nothing. I don't understand people who like to work
and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing
nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, per-
fect.
My next film after Mogambo, Knights of the Round Table, did
nothing to make me change my mind about working. It was a
typical piece of historical foolishness, with folks in shining armor
like my old beau Robert Taylor dashing across the screen and
sticking each other in delicate places with horrible-looking pikes.
Costume dramas were never my favorite vehicles, and besides,
being married to Frank left little room in my life for drama of
any other kind.
Frank had scheduled a singing tour of Europe — Naples, Rome,
Milan, then Scandinavia — while I was in the early stages of film-
ing Knights and I took a leave to accompany him. It was nothing
that affected the shooting in any way: the director went right on
filming the horses charging and the swords flashing. I knew
MGM would look down their noses at this sort of behavior, and
that suspension time would be added to my contract. If you did
that often enough, you'd find yourself under contract to them for
the rest of your life. But this was going to be another "try-again"
situation for Frank and a second honeymoon. We never ever
counted the "honeymoons" we had, but we had plenty.
This time, however, it would have been far better sticking to
the battles coming from MGM's British studios, because our dif-
ferent sort of battles on that European journey were horrendous.
We started in Naples, Italy. The theater was packed with noisy
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AVA GARDNER
patrons. Somehow, wherever we went, the rumor had been
spread by an antagonistic press that Frank Sinatra was past his
peak, and that these concerts were simply a patronizing gesture
that insulted his fans. And Frank's constant clashes with press
and photographers were held up as proof of this.
Frank arrived onstage to sing his first song. The applause was
noisy but not necessarily polite. And, about halfway through it,
by a deliberate piece of stage managing that nobody warned us
about, a spotlight suddenly picked me out of the audience while
Frank was in the middle of a song.
Immediately the audience was on its feet going wild and yell-
ing, "Aval Ava! Aval" It was me they wanted, not Frank.
I don't think Frank has ever been more publicly humiliated in
his life. The noise was so great he stopped singing. The orchestra
stopped playing. Frank walked off. I got up, left the theater, and
went back to the hotel. After a pause Frank came back onstage
and finished the show.
Wherever Frank and I went, the press had a field day. They
loved printing the picture of the movie queen and the man who a
decade earlier had been the idol of screaming teenagers playing to
half-empty halls and jeering fans. They were right about one
thing: it was truly a sad situation.
And let me say right now that these episodes hurt and hurt and
hurt. Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless
criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned.
Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you
get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But
you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.
We came back to London under a terrible cloud. I had to finish
the picture and Frank returned to the States. As soon as I was
done, I moved heaven and earth to rejoin him. I'll always re-
member Clark Gable watching me pack and saying, "Ava, honey,
you do know what you're doing, don't you? You're packing up
and throwing away a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in those
suitcases." That's how much I was going to lose if I didn't stay
out of the country long enough to conform to those damn tax
codes. I couldn't have cared less. And besides, I now had a new
contract at Metro that gave me a hundred and thirty thousand
dollars per picture. Still not the top of the heap, and still less than
the studio got from loaning me out, but enough so that I didn't
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AVA: MY STORY
hesitate when I felt that returning home would help save our
marriage.
What a joke. Our marriage was past saving. Not even the great
success Frank had in From Here to Eternity, the part that eventu-
ally won him an Oscar and totally revived his career, could help
put us together again. Once things start to eat away at the facade
of the marriage — things like overhearing a hotel elevator boy tell
your husband, "Oh, Mr. Sinatra, last time you were here it was
with Miss X" — once you lose your faith in what the man you
love is telling you, there is nothing left to save.
I don't think I ever sat down and made a conscious decision
about leaving Frank; as usual I simply acted on impulse and al-
lowed events to sweep me along. But I remember exactly when I
made the decision to seek a divorce. It was the day the phone
rang and Frank was on the other end, announcing that he was in
bed with another woman. And he made it plain that if he was
going to be constantly accused of infidelity when he was inno-
cent, there had to come a time when he'd decide he might as well
be guilty. But for me, it was a chilling moment. I was deeply hurt.
I knew then that we had reached a crossroads. Not because we
had fallen out of love, but because our love had so battered and
bruised us that we couldn't stand it anymore.
When you have to face up to the fact that marriage to the man
you love is really over, that's very tough, sheer agony. In that
kind of harrowing situation, I always go away and cut myself off
from the world. Also, I sober up immediately when there is gen-
uine bad news in my life; I never face it with alcohol in my brain.
I rented a house in Palm Springs and sat there and just suffered
for a couple of weeks. I suffered there until I was strong enough
to face it.
I'm pretty sure it was Howard Strickling, Metro's legendary
publicity director, who on October 29, 1953, issued what I
thought was the most honest and sincere explanation for our im-
pending divorce: "Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra stated today
that having reluctantly exhausted every effort to reconcile their
differences, they could find no mutual basis on which to continue
their marriage. Both expressed deep regret and great respect for
each other. Their separation is final and Miss Gardner will seek a
divorce."
I guess that about covered it.
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AVA GARDNER
I'm not proud of my three matrimonial failures. What woman
would be? I know I loved each of my husbands sincerely and
deeply, but things like career crises, the nagging Hollywood spot-
light, all the criticism we took every time we turned around, got
in the way of our genuine feelings.
I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And
I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain
that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them
lasted more than a year or two.
I think the main reason my marriages failed is that I always
loved too well but never wisely. Fm terribly possessive about the
people I love and I probably smother them with love. Fm jealous
of every minute they spend away from me. I want to be with
them, to see them, to be able to touch them. Then, and only then,
am I happy. For instance, when I couldn't get Frank on the tele-
phone immediately, I wanted to kill myself. It was stupid, I sup-
pose, but it was me.
I knew that the men I married were very attractive to the op-
posite sex: the twenty marriages they had between them proves
that, if nothing else does. And I knew they had to face situations
where the ladies concerned were practically dragging them into
bed. I could rationalize those encounters, but I couldn't live with
them. Sex isn't all that important, but it is when you love some-
one very much.
Perhaps I expected too much from my husbands, and they in-
evitably disappointed me. God knows I've got so many frailties
myself, I ought to be able to understand and forgive them in oth-
ers. But I don't. If I was capable and wanted to give, then why
couldn't I expect the same thing in return? Maybe, in the final
analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn
them into something they could never be. I loved them all but
maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they under-
stood me.
I suppose one of the strangest things about my trio of failed
marriages — and in passing I would like to gently point out that
none of my three exes were asked to pay a penny in alimony —
was the fact that the marriage bond seemed to be a shackle that
manacled us together. Once divorced, we enjoyed each other and
retained a deep friendship. And more than anyone else, that was
true between Frank and me.
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AVA: MY STORY
Frank and I have the kind of friendship — relationship — where
you don't have to say, "I'm going to telephone you every day" or
"I'm going to write you every month, or every six months.'3
When you feel like talking, you talk, and when you feel like
seeing each other, you do that. There are no ties, no strings. And
there shouldn't be.
We might have been in different cities, different countries, but
we were never apart. And every once in a while, Frank would call
me in Madrid, London, Rome, New York, wherever I happened
to be, and say, "Ava, let's try again." And I'd say, "Okay!" and
drop everything, sometimes even a part in a picture. And it
would be heaven, but it wouldn't last more than twenty-four
hours. And I'd go running off again, literally running. We could
never quite understand why it hadn't and couldn't work out.
Our phone bills were astronomical, and when I found the let-
ters Frank wrote me the other day, the total could fill a suitcase.
Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the
world I was, I'd get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me
and missed me. He was a man who was desperate for compan-
ionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!
193
TWENTY-TWO
f all the pictures I've made, and honey,
you better believe I have no idea exactly
how much territory that covers, there's
no doubt that The Barefoot Contessa is the one that most people
identify me with. That damn advertising line, "The World's Most
Beautiful Animal," will probably follow me around until the end
of time.
The irony of all this is that not only didn't anyone initially
think of me for the part, but also that Metro, my always cooper-
ative studio, did its damnedest to try and keep me out of the
picture. The only reason I finally got in is that in Joseph L. Man-
kiewicz the studio ran up against someone who was just as stub-
born as it was.
When The Barefoot Contessa was first announced to the press
by United Artists in the middle of 1953, Joe Mankiewicz was the
hottest behind-the-camera talent in the business. Not only had he
just finished turning Marlon Brando into Mark Anthony in Julius
Caesar, but he'd also won Oscars for both writing and directing
on both of his previous two pictures, Letters to Three Wives and
All About Eve, Eve had taken home six Oscars that year, includ-
ing best picture, out of an all-time-record fourteen nominations.
So whatever Joe wanted, Joe usually got, and finally, after
thinking about everybody from Elizabeth Taylor to Joan Collins,
he decided that I was the best choice to play the woman who
began life as plain Maria Vargas and ended it as the Contessa
Torlato-Favrini.
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AVA: MY STORY
To get me, however, Joe had to deal with Metro, and the bad
blood between them was considerable. I heard he'd gotten into a
hellacious shouting match with Nick Schenck, the man who
pulled the financial strings at Metro, a silver-haired gentleman
who'd gotten so mad at Joe he actually uttered that famous line,
"You'll never work in this business again."
Even Schenck wasn't powerful enough to make that threat
stick, but he could make Mankiewicz's life a living hell when he
tried to procure my services. He had the nerve to insist on, and to
get, an exorbitant loanout fee of two hundred thousand dollars
plus ten percent of the gross over one million dollars. My God,
even Humphrey Bogart, my costar and one of the biggest names
in Hollywood, was only getting one hundred thousand. Of
course, when it came to my salary, Metro wasn't feeling so ex-
pansive. Even though the studio ended up making a million dol-
lars on the deal, all I got out of it was sixty thousand dollars.
God but those bastards could be stingy.
Contessa was to be Joe's first film as writer, director, and pro-
ducer, and he made damn sure he had a solid story to work with.
And though the presence of a Howard Hughes clone in the script
made some people think the film was based on my life, it actually
was much closer to the story of Rita Hayworth, who was dis-
covered as Margarita Cansino dancing in Mexico and ended up
married to Aly Khan.
The film opens in a hell of a way, at least from my point of
view. It's my funeral, and one of the mourners, whose voice-over
narrates the film, is Harry Dawes, a tough-talking film director
played by Bogart. He tells how, in the company of a womanizing
tycoon named Kirk Edwards and Kirk's fast-talking, sweaty, and
amoral press agent (a dead ringer, in Edmond O'Brien's Oscar-
winning performance, for Howard's main man Johnny Meyer),
he first meets Maria Vargas dancing in a sleazy Madrid cabaret.
Though they're never anything more than good friends, Harry
and Maria like each other immediately, and though she doesn't
trust Kirk any further than she can throw him, she agrees to go
to Hollywood for the inevitable screen test. Without saying good-
bye to a soul, without carrying so much as a suitcase, she walks
in her bare feet across the cobblestone street to the wailing taxi.
And then, as it only does in pictures, the incredible happens:
under the name of Maria D'Amata, Maria becomes a big, big
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star. But though she spends a lot of time In the company of very
rich, very arrogant men, first Kirk, then South American playboy
Alberto Bravano, she doesn't sleep with them and she makes it
clear that she belongs to no man. In fact, the only place she feels
safe looking for love is back in the gutter where she came from.
Then one night, in one of those glamorous European casinos,
she meets Count Vincenzo Torlato-Favrini. And what kind of a
guy is he? "He is a count, but among counts he is a king," says
one sad-faced onlooker, "just as among kings I am a clown."
Maria thinks this is the real thing, and marries the count in the
kind of ceremony I'd always dreamed of having myself.
Then comes the bad news. The count was in the wrong place
at the wrong time during the war and has to tell his bride that
"Almost the only uodestroyed part of me is my heart." Maria is
distraught, but thinks she knows a way out. She'll have an affair
with the count's conveniently available chauffeur, present her
husband with a much-wanted heir, and everyone will live happily
ever after. Unfortunately this count is very much the jealous type.
He kills both Maria and the chauffeur, and at the film's close he
is led, handcuffed, off to jail.
Though I loved the script, felt I understood the girl and even
thought my feet were pretty enough for the essential dance se-
quences, when I arrived in Rome early in 1954, 1 was nervous at
being in such high-toned company. And I have to say that Mr.
Bogart did not make my life any easier. He was always needling
me, calling me the Grabtown Gypsy, and complaining that he
needed a running start toward the set if he wasn't going to be
trampled by my entourage.
Not to mention that my usual stage fright wasn't helped any
when, on the very first day of shooting, he yelled at the director,
"Hey, Mankiewicz, can you tell this dame to speak up? I can't
hear a goddamn word she says." That did a lot for my con-
fidence. Bogart hated Italy and lived on ham and eggs and steak
whenever he could, but he certainly knew a lot more acting tricks
than I did, and he didn't hesitate to use them. But I have to admit
he probably forced me into a better performance than I could
have managed without him.
Getting along with Joe Mankiewicz was also problematical at
times. I respected him enormously, but though he was clearly the
cerebral type, I don't think he ever really understood me or my
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AVA: MY STORY
Insecurity about my work. One day, for Instance, Jack Cardiff,
our excellent cameraman, came up to me and said, "Ava, darling,
I want to do a close-close-close close-up of your face, and Yd
prefer to have you and not a stand-in for the preliminary work.
It'll take a little time, and you've got to sit on the edge of that
sofa. Do you mind?"
"No problem," I told him.
So I'm sitting there looking pensive, waiting for Jack Cardiff to
finish fiddling with his lens, when Mankiewicz spots me as he's
hurrying by and says, and not in the friendliest way either,
"You're the sittln'est goddamn actress I've ever worked with." 1
was so surprised I couldn't even get my mouth open in time to
say "Go fuck yourself" to his departing back. And the truth is I
was never able to give him my complete trust after that.
Some of the scenes in The Barefoot Contessa were among my
all-time personal favorites, especially the one where I had to per-
form a flamenco-style dance wearing a tight sweater and a cheap
satin skirt, enticing my partner, luring him closer, swirling out of
his grasp, taunting him with my body.
Not only was I getting personally more and more intoxicated
by the romantic rhythms of flamenco, but this was the first time
I'd ever danced in a film, so I practiced every night on those cold
Roman floors for three full weeks. We shot the scene in an olive
grove In Tivoli, outside Rome, with one hundred Gypsies beating
time to a photograph record. When the phonograph broke, they
kept right on beating, and that was the take we used.
When Contessa first came out, a lot of people thought it was
either too talky or, like the good folks in Tupelo, Mississippi,
who banned it from their town, too risque for public consump-
tion. These days, the film seems to be one of those late-night
classics; if you show anything enough times, it does become pop-
ular. The French, however, immediately took to it with both feet,
with people like Francois Truffaut calling me "Hollywood's most
exquisitely beautiful actress." If Mogambo was the best I ever did
as an actress, this was the apogee of my life as a so-called star.
Stardom. My name in a Cole Porter lyric, my footprints in
concrete at Grauman's Chinese. Voted the girl they'd most want
to measure for a new suit by the Custom Tailors Guild of Amer-
ica, the girl they'd most like to be stuck with at the top of the
Empire State Building by the United Elevator Operators. Edmond
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AVA GARDNER
O'Brien's Oscar Muldoon didn't know how right he was when
Joe's script has him say, "Whatever it is, whether you're born
with it, or catch it from a public drinking cup, she's got it and the
people with the money in their hands put her there." And as
someone who's been there and back, what I'd really like to say
about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.
What you have to understand about me, honey, is that I'm a
normal human being, just like any other. Sanity is more impor-
tant to me than celebrity any day of the week, and I consider my
personal life to be my own affair. If people like what I do on the
screen, they can come to the box office and pay their money. I
don't feel I have any responsibility beyond that.
Unfortunately, when your face and name are on posters all
over the world, you're treated like public property. I've tried to
tell myself it's ungrateful to complain, that you accept the money
and you should accept what goes with it: the loss of privacy, the
constant spotlight. But I never could get used to going out for an
evening and having everyone in the place watching to see
whether I took one drink or three before dinner. No one thinks I
have feelings. They'd read the magazines and think they knew all
about me.
It's no secret that I've had some terrible experiences with the
press. You can't understand what it's like without living it. Peo-
ple ask the most amazingly personal questions and get furious if
you don't answer. Then, when I did put my trust in some writers,
discussed all sorts of things, subjects I shouldn't have touched on,
everything I said was twisted or changed to infer things I didn't
mean or say at all.
In fact, it was The Barefoot Contessa that led to two of the
most infuriating encounters with the press I've ever had. I was
doing a publicity tour all over South America for the film, which
went fine until we got to Rio. United Artists had not put us into
the hotel I'd asked for, but rather into some hellhole that reeked
of stale tobacco and had more cigarette burns than the entire
state of North Carolina. So I very calmly moved out and went
directly to the one I preferred.
The newspapers the next morning, however, told an entirely
different story. I had arrived drunk, disorderly, and barefoot
(that much was true; my heel had broken off when I was mobbed
at the airport). I had gone on a rampage and the hotel manage-
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AVA: MY STORY
ment, all too eager to provide the photographs to prove their
point, had had no choice but to eject me.
What had really happened is that as a kind of revenge for what
they perceived as my slight, the management had sent in, within
an hour after we'd left, a real wrecking crew. They'd broken
every mirror, strewn whiskey bottles everywhere, destroyed fur-
niture, literally torn the place apart.
Never mind that if we'd been given axes and a week to try and
smash the place up we would never have made near the mess
they'd made, everyone believed the headlines. Not even the press
conference I held or an apology from the Brazilian government
could keep that lie from beating the truth all the way around the
world.
Then no sooner did I get back to New York after that tour
than I got a phone call from Sammy Davis, Jr. He had stood by
Frank at his darkest moments, and he had also taken the time —
which I thought was terribly sweet — to have little gold loop ear-
rings made for my wedding. They had "A.S." on them, too, for
Ava Sinatra.
So when Sammy called up and asked if I would do the Christ-
mas cover of Ebony, I felt I had to agree. He came in with a
whole troupe of photographers, and they made an awful mess
covering one whole wall of our hotel with a sheet of red paper. I
found a red dress somewhere, he put on a Santa Glaus beard and
a red suit, and we did the cover as well as some informal shots
for the inside of the magazine — Sammy sitting on the arm of my
chair with his hand around the back, stuff like that.
What I hear next is that somehow these pictures have gotten
into the hands of a trash publication called Confidential. Natu-
rally, it was Howard Hughes who broke the news to me in his
most serious voice. As a means of self-protection, he had planted
spies inside the publication, and he knew exactly what was coin-
ing out in every issue.
"Ava," he said, "they are going to do a devastating piece about
you and Sammy Davis, Jr., not implying but stating as truth that
you and he are lovers and have been for some time. They say that
red wall identifies his flat in Harlem and that you often go there
and spend hours with him."
So I went to Metro and the bigwigs called a meeting the size of
the League of Nations. The lawyers talked for hours about suing
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AVA GARDNER
this and suing that, but Howard Strickling, the head of publicity,
once again knew exactly what to say.
"I have to maintain," he said, very quietly, "that perhaps I am
better versed in these situations than most of us sitting around
the table. And really, this is my responsibility. This is a rag that is
published in a cellar somewhere [I made a mental note to get him
to say "sewer" next time] and has a circulation of nothing. If we
sue, it's going to be front-page news in newspapers and maga-
zines around the world, which is exactly what they want. And if
you win the case, on the back page of all the newspapers there
will be a little scribble that Ava Gardner won her suit. In the
meantime, the story is plastered all over the world. The best thing
to do is ignore it completely." Which is what we did.
What is so maddening about these things is that they take an
acorn, a little kernel of truth, and build an oak tree of lies. It
hurts every time it happens. You never get used to it. Never. And
it hurts to have to swallow it without answering. But it's best not
to.
Maybe I just didn't have the temperament for stardom. I'll
never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went
up to her and said, "Miss Davis, I'm Ava Gardner and I'm a
great fan of yours." And do you know, she behaved exactly as I
wanted her to behave. "Of course you are, my dear," she said.
"Of course you are." And she swept on. Now that's a star.
200
TWENTY-THREE
he first time I met Luis Miguel Domin-
guin, it was the same old story all over
again: I knew without a doubt that he
was for me. Luis was tall and graceful with piercing, watchful
dark eyes which he liked to move without turning his head. And
he had a slightly bemused expression that seemed to say, "The
American lady knows I am interested in her. I hope she is inter-
ested in me."
I damn sure was. And, frankly, who wouldn't be? Though four
years younger than me, Luis Miguel was universally acclaimed as
the best-paid, most-taiked-about, most-sought-after bullfighter in
the world. The son and brother of successful matadors, a great
athlete and a faultless technician, he had the ability to make an
exquisitely dangerous sport seem like child's play. To see pictures
of him poised gracefully as the huge horns of the bull slid just
inches past his heart, to see how with an arrogant arch of his
body and a sweep of the cape he would take charge again, was
breathtaking. Not to mention the fact that he was a cultivated
gentleman who, as someone once said, spoke four languages in a
field where some people could barely read and write. And he
numbered among his friends people like Picasso and Papa Hem-
ingway, who called him "a combination of Don Juan and
Hamlet.5'
When I met Luis Miguel at a Madrid party right around the
time Frank and I were breaking up, he was, having conquered all
the bullrings in the world, enjoying the pleasures of semiretire-
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AVA GARDNER
ment as well as recuperating from a near-fatal goring of a few
months before. He was the absolute idol of Spain, a country
whose unspoiled passion I was beginning to love more and more.
He smiled, bowed slightly, and said, "No English." I smiled back
and said, "No espanol," and that was pretty much the way we
operated for most of our relationship. But, as Papa Hemingway
liked to say, we communicated what counted.
If I was part of Luis Miguel's convalescence, he was part of
mine after the goring Frank and I had given each other. Exhila-
rated by flamenco music, we laughed, we drank, we went places.
I was his girlfriend, he was my guy; it was as simple as that. We
were good friends as well as good lovers, and we didn't demand
too much from each other. Luis Miguel was great fun and I loved
having him around. Quite frankly, I was intrigued by the fact
that he didn't seem to need me and he certainly wasn't looking
for publicity like so many of the European men who came my
way. ! guess I loved the easygoing way we could just hang out
together after all the fuss I'd aroused with Frank. We stayed in a
small hotel in Madrid after I finished filming Contessa, he and I
in one room and Bappie in another. I don't think we even dis-
cussed marriage; it never even came up. What was good at that
moment was good. I guess that means I was growing up. About
time, too.
The thing that always surprised me about Luis Miguel was his
sense of humor. It was more than outrageous, it was downright
wicked. Take, for instance, the way he'd act in one of his favorite
Madrid bars, the Cerveceria Alemana, a noisy place packed with
the whole goddamn bullfighting world: matadors, cuadrillas,
agents, hangers-on, groupies, the works. Even the Madrid gentry
would go there when they felt like slumming, and that's when
Luis Miguel would bait his trap.
Very carefully in his broken English he would explain to Bap-
pie what she should say in Spanish when she shook hands with
these dignified ladies and gentlemen. But what he was really in-
structing her in were the most diabolically obscene phrases he
could think of A gracious gentleman and his equally gracious
wife would sweep up, Luis Miguel would introduce me and then
Bappie, who would shake hands with the lady and say in her best
Spanish, "Good evening, you big fat cunt."
The sound level in the bar was so high that only Luis Miguel's
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AVA; MY STORY
intimates were close enough to get the joke and collapse in laugh-
ter. The lady's eyebrows would rocket up, putting an end to all
conversation. Bappie knew she'd dropped a bombshell, but Luis
Miguel would try to comfort her, insisting, "Just a little mis-
take." We were awful in those days.
The great thing about Luis Miguel was that he could also take
a joke on himself. I remember one day at his breeding farm when
he was testing young bulls for their potential courage in the ring.
I was given the job of kneeling down and holding one end of the
bullfighter's cape, while Luis Miguel stood up holding the other.
The calves would be let out one at a time and immediately charge
at the cape. But Luis Miguel would sort of shuffle his feet to
divert the charge and then move out of the way like a shadow.
And as long as I kept absolutely still, I was in no danger.
Luis Miguel had a cameraman photographing the action, and
when it was shown at the local cinema, he took me down to see
it. He was the hero to end all heroes in his hometown, but when
the audience saw the brave Ava Gardner on her knees as the bull
rushed past — because in the bullfight only the bravest matadors
get on their knees while facing a bull — they began to roar con-
tinual "Oles" for me, and loud shrieks of "Gilda" at Luis Mi-
guel. That name was a mocking reference to Rita Hayworth,
who'd just appeared in a very silly bullfighting movie, the im-
plication being that Luis Miguel had chickened out. It was all a
great joke and everyone enjoyed it, including Luis Miguel. When-
ever the crowd yelled out "Gilda," he would stand up and raise
his arm in salute.
Then, one night in April 1954, I was fast asleep in bed with
Luis Miguel when suddenly I was awakened by terrible, ex-
cruciating pains in the pit of my stomach. As I began to shout in
agony, he leapt out of bed and called a doctor, who guessed what
it was: I had a kidney stone passing through my gut, which is one
of the most totally painful experiences known to man. I was im-
mediately rushed to a hospital, which turned out to be staffed
entirely with nuns. Sweet, implacable ladies — their belief in God
was absolute, but about painkillers they were not so sure. Aspirin
was about as far as they would go.
My Spanish was awful, and Bappie's, you may remember, was
even worse. We had no way of communicating with anybody,
except through Luis Miguel, who somehow seemed to under-
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AVA GARDNER
stand everything I needed. So the hospital authorities did what
was normal in Spanish family situations: they put a camp bed in
my room and Luis Miguel stayed there twenty-four hours a day.
He talked to the doctors, held my hand when the pain got too
terrible, and tried to coax some nourishment down my throat.
And all this took place during the Festival of San Isidro, when, as
the bullfighter of his era, Luis Miguel would have been cheered
and saluted at the start of every day's events. But instead he was
at the hospital day and night, looking after me.
One night they decided they had to X-ray me, but the pain was
so awful I thought I was going to die and I frankly didn't care.
Those little black penguin nuns who crept in and out all night to
look at me were starting to get on my nerves. Jesus, I was a
wreck. And Luis Miguel, bless him, carried me to the X-ray
room, held me tight and calmed me down long enough for the
technician to take one quick picture and then brought me back.
Maybe I should have thought about marrying the guy after all.
Luis Miguel left the hospital only once during those two
weeks, and when he did he came back with Papa Hemingway,
who I'd never met until then. Though I obviously wasn't crazy
about the circumstances, I was delighted to meet Papa and abso-
lutely floored that he'd take the time to visit me in a hospital. I
just adored the man; I idolized him, in fact, and we became
friends from that moment on.
When the nuns finally turned me loose, I discovered that
Metro had put me on suspension for refusing to play the singer
Ruth Etting in Love Me or Leave Me, which I turned down be-
cause I was afraid it would be just another fairly standard biogra-
phy. Besides, my philosophy, for better or worse, has always
been, "If Fm in love or having an affair, I stop working." It
didn't happen an awful lot, but it did mean that I didn't rake in
the money I should have. So Luis Miguel put me on a plane to
Hollywood, and who should be literally waiting for me when it
arrived but Howard Hughes.
Howard Hughes knew all about the kidney stone. Howard
Hughes knew all about everything. The goddamn CIA could have
done worse than hire Howard to oversee its operations. If there
was anything to be discovered, Howard could ferret it out. And,
as Reenie used to say, the man knew how to throw a brick and
hide his hand.
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AVA: MY STORY
Howard had rented a large house on the banks of Lake Tahoe
for me to recuperate in, and Reenie and I moved in in June. Liv-
ing there also enabled me to establish a residence in Nevada,
which facilitated my filing for a divorce: if loving Luis Miguel
had shown me nothing else, it was that the marriage between
Frank and me was truly over.
If I'd thought — and I did — that old Howard had by now got-
ten used to the hands-off, no-pressure rules Pd imposed, I was
proved wrong once again. Mr. Hughes was plotting yet another
old-fashioned pincer movement against my determination to nei-
ther marry him nor climb into his bed.
It started, as many of these things do, with what would be an
innocent remark coming out of anyone's mouth but Howard's.
We were out on the lake in his boat one evening and I couldn't
help but notice that the color of the surface was an almost inde-
scribably lovely shimmering pale shade of sapphire.
Well, Howard had noticed it, too. "Ava," he said, his voice
dripping with choirboy innocence, "do you see this beautiful
shade of sapphire?"
"Yes," I said. What else could I say?
"It's perfect. More than that, it matches your perfection. I
think I'll try and find a sapphire to match it for you."
"Good luck," I said, trying not to pay attention. I wasn't try-
ing to mock Howard. He was a brilliant man, brilliant in a dozen
ways, with courage and self-confidence to burn. But he did
things, shall we say, differently, and that was hard to get used to.
Maybe it came from being one of the wealthiest men on the
planet.
Well, at dinner that night, Howard presented me with the per-
fect sapphire. All that preamble on the lake was his idea of a little
joke; he'd already brought the damn thing. And, set with two
magnificent diamonds, one on either side, it was beautiful enough
to take your breath away.
And, of course, it wouldn't have been Howard if he'd just sent
someone to Carrier to order up one nice blue sapphire and send
him the bill. Instead, he'd send his lieutenants scouring the world
to discover the perfect stone. Kashmiri sapphires are the very
best, their beauty legendary. And Howard had turned up the one
man in all Europe would could identify a real Kashmiri sapphire.
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AVA GARDNER
The one Howard gave me would probably be worth a million
bucks today, if I still had the damn thing.
That night, though, I flaunted the jewel a bit when Howard
and I went gambling at the local casino. Howard loved to gam-
ble, and he was lucky, too. Can you beat that? All that money
and a lucky streak to boot. Plus knowing that if he did chance to
lose too much, he could always buy up the casino and get his
money back.
Howard brought me home after the gambling was over, wait-
ing in the driveway for the dust to settle before he let me open
the door. Howard had an antipathy to dust for health reasons
that only Howard understood. When I looked at him, I noticed
with some surprise that he had tears in his eyes. He'd won a lot
at the tables, so I wondered what the hell he was up to now.
"Ava," he said, emotion in his voice, "I know you're not in
love with me. But you've already been married three times, so I
wonder if you could now consider me?"
Then he began to tell me how many millions and billions of
dollars he was worth until I got lost in the extent of his holdings
and properties and God-knows-what. Then he went into things
that were more my style.
"I used to own a yacht, with a captain and crew and a great
chef, and 111 buy another one. Well travel in style wherever you
want to go. If you want to keep working in movies, 111 buy you
the best properties available, the greatest directors, the best lead-
ing men. You won't have to worry about studios and contracts
and all that nonsense. You can have a wonderful life, and you
can enjoy every second of it. And you might, eventually, learn to
love me."
All that was delivered with all the sincerity that Howard could
muster, but I have to say that my first thought was: Goddammit,
Howard's trying to buy me. He wants to make me one of his
possessions, and that's something I never intend to let anyone do.
The dust had settled by now, and we could go in. I patted his
hand and said, "Howard, let me think about it." And I did think
about it, then and for all the years that followed. But I wasn't in
love with Howard, and I knew that no matter how hard I tried, I
never could be. But I have to confess it would be nice to be sitting
here in London thinking: Now how will I get away from this
cold winter while I still own TWA?
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AVA: MY STORY
I suppose I didn't do much for Howard's blood pressure when
I invited Luis Miguel to come visit me in July. But Howard
wasn't really in Tahoe all that much; he was always off on some
flying adventure or gigantic financial scheme or, for all I know,
tucking in some of the babes he had stashed around. Some hus-
band he would have made.
Howard returned soon after Luis Miguel arrived, and he was
the soul of politeness. True, it would have been hard for him to
play the part of the jealous lover, since lovers were the one thing
we'd never been. But on the other hand, Howard wasn't the type
to sit back and contemplate a situation like that for long, either.
If there ever was a time that called for throwing a brick and
hiding your hand, this was it.
It started one night when Luis Miguel and I returned from the
casino and had a fight. Unlike the fights between Frank and me,
they were very much the exception with Luis Miguel, but on this
night I stormed up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind
me. Now in the ordinary course of events I would have floated
downstairs next morning and we'd have made up and been lovers
again. But nothing was ever ordinary when Howard Hughes was
involved.
I didn't get all the details until much later, but Howard, who
had the habit I usually ignored of planting spies thinly disguised
as household help around me, was immediately told of our little
battle. Next thing you know, his number-one stooge and full-
time lago, Johnny Meyer, has just by chance dropped by to say
hello.
Now you have to understand that whatever else Luis Miguel
was, he was a very proud man, and my storming off like that
annoyed the hell out of him. And Johnny Meyer was primed to
sprinkle all the verbal poison he could, inflaming Luis Miguel's
natural indignation. "Why do you let these women run you
around?" he said. "Leave them alone for a while, teach them a
lesson."
Egged on by Johnny and his own anger, Luis Miguel said that
if it was up to him, he'd leave right that very minute, go back to
Spain and the hell with everybody else. Well, surprise, surprise —
it turned out that the ever-helpful friend in need Howard Hughes
had a small plane fueled up and ready at the airport to ferry Luis
Miguel direct to Los Angeles where he could make connections
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AVA GARDNER
with a TWA flight that could conveniently get him back to Eu-
rope in a wink. So when I came down the next morning, there
was no Lois Miguel You better believe I thought it was odd,
unlike him to let little storms permanently darken our horizon.
But he was gone, and dear sweet Howard was right there and
just itching to fly me and Reenie off to someplace exotic. So what
the hell.
We finally ended up in Miami on that trip, all three of us stay-
ing in a most beautiful luxury villa with wide lawns and palm
trees and a huge swimming pool We settled down to enjoy the
sunshine, but before long Reenie had a discussion with one of the
house's handymen, someone Fd see around the place occasion-
ally. You guessed it, he was one of Howard's men, but with an
assignment unlike any I'd come across before.
"For God's sake," he'd told Reenie, "can't you get that
woman of yours into bed with Mr. Hughes? Fve been here day
and night for ten days guarding this pearl-and-diamond necklace
that once belonged to the Czarina of Russia. It's so fucking valu-
able I have to sit there with a loaded pistol and not let it out of
my sight, even while I'm eating. If I leave it at all, I have to get a
replacement. I can't see a broad, I can't go to a bar, I can't even
have a drink. For Christ's sake, if you have any influence with
her, get her into bed with him so he can reward her with the
necklace and I can rejoin the human race."
We'd been in this villa for nearly two weeks, and we were
getting bored. Even the loveliest place can feel like a prison if the
circumstances are wrong, and this necklace business was the last
straw.
"Honey," I said to Reenie, "it's time to make a move."
Reenie glanced at her watch. "It's four o'clock in the morn-
ing."
"Good," I said. "Then we won't have to say good-bye."
"Where are we going?" A not unreasonable question.
"I don't know. We'll find a taxi on the main road and Fll think
of somewhere."
We packed our bags and crept down the stairs just as dawn
was breaking. We tiptoed across the hall toward the door, and
suddenly Howard appears, fully dressed, as if it's the most nor-
mal thing in the world to find his two female guests sneaking out
at dawn. The son of a bitch must have had our goddamn room
bugged.
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"Good morning," he said pleasantly. "What's this all about?"
"I'm leaving, Howard," I said with as much firmness as I could
muster. "I'm tired of this, Fm bored to death. And I'm going to
Havana." That was the first destination that flashed into my
head.
"You are?" he said, nice as you please. "I wish you wouldn't."
"I don't care what you wish," I said. "I've made up my mind
and I'm going."
With that, I pulled off my lovely sapphire ring and threw it at
him. I realize now that that was not the most charming exit move
a well-brought-up Southern lady could have made, not to men-
tion that it wasn't terribly sensible either. But in those days I did
whatever went through my mind, and my decisions were often
not all that sensible.
We didn't get to the airport until around nine in the morning,
with flights to Havana supposed to leave hourly. But what did we
hear every hour on the hour for the goddamn rest of the day:
"The flight to Havana has been canceled. The flight to Havana
has been canceled. The flight to Havana has been canceled." Not
a single flight left all day long. Now that couldn't have been an
accident; it had to be that goddamn son of a bitch Howard
Hughes. That's the kind of power that man had.
Finally, at eight P.M. that evening, the loudspeaker announced
that a flight to Havana was ready to depart. I guess Howard had
removed his ban. "Stubborn bitch," he probably thought. "Let
her go."
If you think all of that convinced Howard Hughes to get the
hell out of my life, you haven't been paying attention. No sooner
did we get back to California and into a house in Palm Springs
than who should come flying out of the sun but my old friend
Mr. Hughes. Of course, Howard being Howard, the sun was no-
where in sight when he flew in. And the Palm Springs airport,
with its small landing strip and no landing lights at all, suited his
style perfectly. He just made a phone call and twenty cars were
lined up at intervals along both sides of the runway with head-
lights shining when he came in for a landing.
For once, Howard had called me beforehand. "Can you meet
me when I land?" he asked. "I've got something very important
to show you and to talk about." Since I'd already turned down a
fortune in jewelry in San Francisco and thrown a priceless sap-
phire ring in his face and laughed at a Czarina's necklace in
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AVA GARDNER
Miami, I was naturally curious about what he could be up to
now.
The plane droned in and landed perfectly. It was a small one
this time, not the enormous four-engined monster he usually pi-
loted. Howard came down the steps holding tightly to yet an-
other one of his ridiculous cardboard boxes. He smiled as he
approached me, and removed the lid. Pieces of paper flew in all
directions, and he put the top back on. I noticed that the drivers
of those twenty cars seemed to go slightly berserk, chasing these
bits of paper as if they were thousand-dollar bills.
"What the hell are they, Howard?" I asked.
"Thousand-dollar bills."
"What the hell are you doing with them?"
"Giving them to you."
I began to say, "What the hell for?" before it struck me that
this was truly one of the more ridiculous moments in my life,
standing there next to a cardboard box full of thousand-dollar
bills that had started to blow away like so much confetti.
"Howard," I said. "We'd better go somewhere and talk."
We went somewhere and talked. Howard said, "Darryl F.
Zanuck and I want you to make a picture with us. You in the
lead?"
Howard was still clutching his box. I said, "Howard, how
much money is in that box?"
"A quarter of a million dollars in thousand-dollar bills." He
took the lid of the box to show me the tightly packed interior.
I thought: Well, I suppose there aren't many people in the
world who have ever seen a quarter of a million dollars all in one
piece.
"Howard," I said, "what's the film all about?"
"We haven't quite decided yet. But Darryl has some great
ideas."
"What about the script?"
"Well, that hasn't been done yet either."
"Howard, what's the quarter of a million dollars for?"
"It's for you. It's a bonus*"
"Howard," I said, getting a bit testy, "if you want to make a
film with me, you know what to do. You go to my agent and
discuss it. You don't come here in the dark offering me a quarter-
of-a-million-dollar bonus."
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AVA: MY STORY
Now, Howard was a very serious man. You did not insult him
if you could help it, or try and make a fool of him or laugh at
him. I never wanted to do any of that, so I pulled back and said,
"Anyway, it's nice to see you again, Howard. I've got to get back
now. You take care." After all, once you've resisted all the
jewelry in the world, what the hell difference does turning down
a quarter of a million dollars make? I would do the same thing
today ... I think.
211
TWENTY-FOUR
howani Junction was a film with a split per-
sonality as far as Metro was concerned. On
the one hand, as befitted the studio's biggest
production of 1956, they were happy to ballyhoo it as an epic,
with ads shouting, 'Two Years in Production! Thousands in the
Cast!" But on the other hand, it had me in it, didn't it? Which
meant lurid copy lines on the order of "Half-Caste Beauty and
Her Three Loves" and "Ava . . . enticing . . . primitive ... she
must choose . . . one world to live in ... one man to love!" Oh,
brother.
Actually, though you'd never know it from all that, Bhowani
Junction was one of my more serious films, one that allowed me
to get more emotionally involved in a part than I usually did.
Partly that's because George Cukor was the director. I'd known
George socially for years and had an enormous amount of re-
spect for his ability. After all, Bhowani Junction was his thirty-
eighth film in twenty-two years in Hollywood, and all that work
had gotten him a reputation as a superb director of actresses.
Bhowani, however, would be a different kind of test for him,
and for me. Based on a bestselling novel by English writer John
Masters, which Metro had snapped up for a very serious two
hundred thousand dollars, Bhowani was set in India in 1947,
with the country on the verge of independence from Britain.
Riots and mass demonstrations were commonplace, and George
would not only have to put me through my paces, he would have
to orchestrate explosive crowd scenes with thousands of extras
milling around.
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AVA: MY STORY
With the fight for India's soul between the peaceful Congress
party of Gandhi and the violent and provocative Communists as
background, the character I played, Victoria Jones, returns home
to the railway center of Bhowani Junction, a subaltern on leave
from the Women's Auxiliary Corps. I look the model of a British
maiden in my uniform, but I'm not. I'm an Anglo-Indian, a half-
breed or cheechee, in the local slang, someone who feels at home
in neither camp. I may call my English train-engineer father "pa-
ter," but no one treats me like the Queen of England. As a result,
says Colonel Rodney Savage, the man in charge, I had so many
chips on my shoulder you only had to cough politely to send
them flying.
Bhowani Junction is really the story of how my love for three
men mirrored India's struggle and helped me to find myself. First
on my list was fellow Anglo-Indian Patrick Taylor (played by six-
foot-four Bill Travers), the railways' local traffic superintendent.
However, I can't get used to Patrick's anti-Indian feeling, and
next I become involved with Ranjit Kasel, a Sikh who longs for a
fully independent India. I was always amused that with eight
hundred million Indians around, MGM went and employed a
goddamn Englishman, Francis Matthews, in that role. But he did
an excellent job, and, after all, they hadn't cast an Anglo-Indian
in my part, had they?
At any rate, Ranjit and his firebrand mother help me after I'm
forced to kill a British officer who tries to rape me, and I consider
marrying him, but it doesn't feel right. Only with the hard-nosed
Colonel Savage, of all people, a man I once called "a cruel
bully," do I find true love. But even though he offers to take me
back to England with him, I let him know that I belong to India,
"not as a phony Indian, not as a phony white, but as myself."
Playing Colonel Savage was an old pal of mine, Stewart
Granger, a British-born Hollywood star whose real name,
changed for obvious reasons, was Jimmy Stewart. Jimmy was
great fun: handsome, talkative, assertive, and a nice guy under it
all. He was married to Jean Simmons who, by an odd coinci-
dence, was simultaneously making Guys and Dolls with Frank.
Jimmy and I rendezvoused in Copenhagen on the way to our
location, and we decided to see what that city had to offer in
terms of night life. We got on like great pals, and sometime dur-
ing the small hours of the morning Jimmy volunteered that he
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AVA GARDNER
couldn't possibly be unfaithful to Jean. I smiled, patted his hand,
and said, "Honey, you've been reading the wrong press clips."
If the world were a logical place, the location Jimmy and I
were headed toward would have been India. But the Indians were
a bit resentful of the pro-British slant of the original novel and
were insisting that they had to see the script and approve it.
Metro was equally startled by the number of dollars the Indian
tax collectors was eager to levy, including one tax of twelve per-
cent of the net world profit on the picture. So when neighboring
Pakistan suggested Lahore as the location and offered to waive
all taxes, provide crowds as well as the use of the Northwestern
Railway and the officers and men of the 13th Battalion Frontier
Force Rifles, MGM had no problem accepting.
Lahore is an ancient city, so old that no one really knows
when it first came into existence. And, honey, I often felt that
some of the facilities we had to use were as old as the damn city
itself. Not only was the place hot, often up to one hundred and
thirty degrees, not to mention the backbreaking humidity, but the
only air-conditioning available was in the form of large and not
particularly active ceiling fans.
Outside, it was teeming, a potpourri of flies, smells, carts,
horses, and masses of humanity. Dogs howled all night long, I'm
sure from hunger, keeping me awake. I used to take food down
to them, but the crew would warn me, "Jesus, Ava, be careful.
Rabies is rampant in this part of the world." The food was not
trustworthy either, and ended up giving me a hellacious case of
amoebic dysentery, an illness I wouldn't wish on one of those
poor dogs. In person and on the screen, no one was going to
mistake this place for Metro's back lot, and I guess that was the
whole point.
Getting the material needed to make a movie into Lahore
turned out to be no mean feat. Almost every form of transporta-
tion known to man was used to get the hundreds of tons of gear
into the city. Among the stuff that had to be brought in was a
twenty-ton generator, brought from London, and more than ten
tripod studio cameras, some of which were mounted on auto-
mobiles, station wagons, and trucks. Someone with a lot of time
on his hands estimated that two hundred and fourteen thousand
man-hours were devoted to preparations for filming, and I wasn't
about to argue.
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AVA: MY STORY
During the four months Reenie and I were in the city, our hotel
was a two-story job with outdoor verandas running around each
level. We shared a small suite, though that is really too grand a
word for our rough square of rooms. But I have to confess that
we did have that ultimate luxury in that climate, a working re-
frigerator.
I had the most exciting evening of my entire stay in that damn
hotel suite, but unfortunately it wasn't a romantic encounter. I
had just finished a soothing soak in the bathtub and was standing
up, reaching for a towel, when I felt a sudden whoosh over my
head. People talk about "a bat out of hell," but this damn bat
came out of somewhere, apparently determined to nest in no-
where but my hair.
Oh, God, was I petrified! Stark naked, I ran out the bathroom
door and down the corridor of our suite, screaming at the top of
my lungs. The bat must have been some goddamn relative of
Count Dracula because it just kept after me. My only escape
route was through the door leading to the outdoor veranda. Ree-
nie, who'd been chasing the thing with a broom, saw that was
where I was headed, and she dropped the broom on the floor and
a large bath towel on me just as I reached the veranda. A hotel
servant in the vicinity, attracted by my unladylike screams,
chased the damn thing away with a loose tennis racket, appar-
ently the local weapon of choice in such encounters. And a good
thing, too. I might have run as far as the Lahore town hall in my
bare feet if he hadn't.
In circumstances like that, even the simplest shots and stunts
became difficult. One sequence, which had me falling off the
back of Bill Travers' motorcycle and into Jimmy Granger's arms,
took a bruising fourteen takes to get right. And just being on the
city's streets could be an adventure of sorts. I remember waiting
for my cue behind a dilapidated building one bakingly hot day
when I realized, never mind how, that I was standing literally on
the edge of an open sewer. The sun was pouring down, the heat
was unbearable, the flies were everywhere, and the smell — honey,
don't even ask about the smell. What the hell am I doing here,
why the hell am I trying to be an actress? I thought to myself.
God almighty, I felt so sick, I was sure if they didn't call for me in
another ten seconds, I'd die. Finally, the cue came, and though I
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AVA GARDNER
managed to get through the scene, I swear my face must have
been green. And definitely not with envy.
Still, I don't want to give the impression that everything in
Lahore was dreadful We filmed in the legendary Shalimar gar-
dens, which were supposed to give a hint of the beauties of para-
dise and the world to come, and the government also agreed to
reopen an exquisite Sikh temple for the first time since the Mus-
lims had taken over Pakistan. The government even allowed
some one hundred Sikhs to cross the border and participate in
the filmed ceremony in which Victoria and Ranjit were to be re-
ceived into the Sikh faith. People told us it was probably the first
time in history that the temple had been opened to non-Sikhs. To
get in, everyone had to be shoeless, which was definitely not a
problem as far as I was concerned.
Though he'd never been known for directing crowd scenes,
you wouldn't have known it from watching George Cukor inter-
act with the extras. George was a tiger, a determined perfec-
tionist totally possessed by a single thought — the film. He was
always yelling and screaming to get the damn thing right. He
never carried the whole script with him, just the half dozen pages
or whatever for that day's shooting, and he'd hit people with
them if he got mad or just to emphasize his point. One time he
got so angry with this enormous, unruly mob of extras that
wasn't doing what he'd told them to that he simply waded into
the throng with that rolled-up script, a little guy yelling and
screaming his lungs out and hitting them as if he were leading a
battalion of armed Sikhs instead of being all by his lonesome.
They could have torn him to pieces, and I nervously turned to
Jimmy Granger and said, "Jesus, they'll kill him." Jimmy told me
not to worry. "Ava," he said, "they like George." And he was
right.
I can understand why. I liked George enormously myself. He
was attentive to detail, he really cared, and he knew how to pull
the kind of performance he wanted out of me. One afternoon, for
instance, he was having trouble getting me to be angry enough
for one of the many quarrels I had with the men in my life. Be-
fore shooting started, I'd told George about the particularly irri-
tating lunch Pd had with a prying journalist. "Ava," he said to
me now, "why don't you get mad the way you did this afternoon
with that columnist?"
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AVA: MY STORY
"You son of a bitch/' I said to him. *T11 never tell you any-
thing that happens to me off the set again." But of course, that
piece of direction was exactly the key I needed to successfully
unlock that scene.
Bad as conditions were in Pakistan, however, it turned out that
my worst scene, the one that was so awful and horrific that it
gave me nightmares, was shot not there but in a studio back in
England. In it, Lionel Jeffries plays Lt. Graham McDaniel, a Brit-
ish officer who's always eyed me and, in Colonel Savage's words,
"operated as if his duties were at the bottom of a sewer." And on
this particular night, he follows me home and attempts to rape
me.
I can still remember every moment of that scene. McDaniel
springs at me and knocks me down. We scramble and fight in the
mud. He rips off my uniform, my blouse, he's got my hair pain-
fully twisted in his hands. I felt I was losing the struggle, being
defeated by his strength and determination. Oh, my God, Lionel
was serious . . . this was rape. And while I understood
theoretically that you can't act a rape scene without it being bru-
tal, angry, and terrifying, experiencing it was something else
again. I felt terrified, hopelessly vulnerable, spitting and scratch-
ing like a cat. Defeated. I was almost out of my mind at the awful
violence, the awful reality.
And, of course, the worst thing I had to do in that scene was
kill my attacker. I somehow get an arm free, and my hand
touches a piece of iron railing from the nearby railway track. It's
heavy and lethal, and I raise it high and hit McDaniel as hard as I
can on the head. You hear this crash. And I've killed a man.
I left that scene without speaking and went immediately back
to my trailer. Trembling and shaking, I swallowed an enormous
whiskey. At that moment, I felt sick with fright, as if Fd been
literally fighting for my life. I'd known Lionel for weeks now; he
was a sweet man and I adored him, but I knew that if I didn't see
him quickly, that scene was going to stick in my mind forever
and I'd hate his guts.
George knocked and came in to see if I was all right.
"George," I said, "for God's sake, please get Lionel over here —
now I Because unless I see him and give him a big hug, I'll never
speak to him as long as I live."
Of course Lionel hurried over, I gave him my hug, and things
217
AVA GARDNER — — — —
were all right between us. No film scene had ever affected me so
deeply before, had left me with such a nightmare sense of terror,
and no scene would ever do so again. For which absence I am
profoundly grateful.
I don't think anybody bothered to mention that rape scene
when the reviews for Bbowani Junction came out. Though my
performance got respectful attention — Newsweek called me "sur-
prisingly effective"— most of the critics felt the film didn't quite
hit the mark. 'The piece goes off in so many directions, and with
such an enormous racket" said The New Yorker rather snidely,
"that one longs for a quiet room and a copy of 'Kim.'"
What those know-it-all critics didn't know was that George's
film had been seriously damaged, oversimplified, and oversenti-
mentalized, by recutting after preview audiences didn't respond
to Victoria's life and loves quite the way the studio thought they
should. For instance, a nicely flirtatious scene between Victoria
and Colonel Savage, where I borrow his toothbrush after first
dipping it in Scotch, was cut, and the whole movie was rear-
ranged and an extensive voiceover by the Colonel added on to
explain over and over again that the sad plight of the Anglo-
Indians was responsible for my passionate behavior. As if any
damn excuses were necessary in the first place.
Whatever the final shape of the film, it didn't affect my feelings
for George Cukor, or his for me. In fact it was George who said
the nicest thing that's ever been said about me. "Ava," he told an
interviewer, "is a gentleman." A gentleman. I like that.
218
TWENTY-FIVE
n December of 1955, just short of my thirty-
third birthday, I did something I'd been
threatening to do for a long time, something
that no one really believed Pd ever manage. No, it wasn't leaving
the picture business, but it was close. I left the United States for
good and all and settled in Spain.
Why did I go? For one thing, for as long as I lived there, Fd
never liked Hollywood. It wasn't my favorite place, to put it
mildly; I found it provincial and superficial by turns. I just didn't
fit in with the way things were done in the movie capital, and it
was becoming more and more impossible to have any privacy
there. I couldn't walk my dog, go to an airport or a restaurant, I
couldn't even go to the ladies' room without somebody around
watching me, reporting on me, spying on me. I felt imprisoned by
the lifestyle of a movie star and I just couldn't live with that
anymore.
And if I hadn't cared for Hollywood in its heyday, it certainly
had less attractions for me now that things seemed to be falling
apart. The film business was becoming increasingly fragmented:
more productions were basing in Europe for tax reasons, my old
buddy Howard Hughes had actually gone and sold RKO, and
television, growing like Topsy, was robbing the movies of much
of its audience.
And then there was Spain. I don't know whether it was the
weather, the people, or the music, but I'd fallen head over heels
in love with the place from the first moment I'd arrived years
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AVA GARDNER
before. It was so unspoiled in those days, so dramatic, so his-
toric— and so goddamn cheap to live in that it was almost unbe-
lievable. Combined with the fact that living abroad exempted me
from paying domestic income tax, the whole package definitely
appealed to the frugal side of my nature.
But there was more than dollars and sense involved in my deci-
sion. I fell in love with classic Castilian — when you hear it spo-
ken and can understand it, it's so pure and musical that it's a
delight to the senses. And I felt emotionally close to Spain— who
can really say why? — and the Spanish people responded in kind,
accepting me without question. Which couldn't have been easy
for them. After all, I represented everything they disapproved of.
I was a woman, living alone, divorced, a non-Catholic, and an
actress.
The Spanish really did more than accept me; they seemed to be
positively delighted that I had chosen to make my life among
them. 1 had barely arrived when I was offered a fortune to do a
soap commercial. A fortune. I said, "Not unless you give me a
Rolls-Royce, too." Finally they came back. "Okay," they said.
"Well give you a Rolls-Royce as well." Still, I said no. Wasn't
that crazy?
I bought a house in La Moraleja, a suburb just minutes from
the center of Madrid. It was a low, sprawling, ranch-style red-
brick building, nicknamed La Bruja, the witch, because just such
a creature, complete with broomstick, was doing duty as the
weathervane. Set on two acres of green lawn with magnificent
weeping willows and a fine view of the distant hills, it was built
for comfort, not for show, which was fine with me. It was also
unfurnished, and Reenie and I rushed around Madrid buying ev-
erything in sight, especially furniture. The only necessities I
couldn't seem to get — Hershey bars, Kleenex, and Jack Daniel's
whiskey — were replenished by visiting friends. I filled La Bruja
with books and records and, for the first time since I'd left North
Carolina, I felt I was home.
I took Spanish lessons and worked very hard at them because I
was determined to fit in. To hell with being a tourist; I wanted to
experience the Spanish lifestyle. My teacher was an elderly gen-
tleman, tall and graying with a commanding manner. He would
walk in the door and say with a wave of his hand, "No English
today! Solamente espanol."
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AVA: MY STORY
I would nod and say, "Si." And then, being polite and hospita-
ble, I would ask in my best Spanish, "^Quieres una copita?"
"Would you like a drink?" and he would beam and say, "SI, si,
senorita. Una martini, por favor." Before we knew it, we'd
downed a pitcher of Reenie's knockout concoctions and could
have been speaking Hindustani for all that it mattered.
Despite diversions like Mr. Martini, my Spanish did improve.
It turned out that my accent was very good — we worked hard on
it, so it damn well better have been — and I had a good ear for
colloquial phrases. But even though I ended up reading and writ-
ing very well, my spoken Spanish was never quite what it should
have been because my innate shyness got in the way.
When it came to going out and seeing the country, however, I
certainly wasn't about to let any shyness stop me. Reenie and I
often drove off on trips all across Spain, for instance visiting the
Gypsies in Granada and having them plop their babies on my lap
to hold during flamenco dances. Another time we stopped for
coffee at a tiny roadside cafe and when we asked for milk, the
old Spaniard who ran the place immediately put his hands on his
nanny goat. Thanks, we said, but no thanks.
One thing Spain didn't do for me was improve my driving,
which, you may remember, was not exactly a model of safety. It
had even caused daredevil Howard Hughes to say to me, with
typical Howard logic, "Ava, you drive too fast. If I were you Fd
always drive in the middle of the road. That way, if anything
happens, you've got room on both sides." And now I was in a
country that had some very original thoughts indeed about
speeding. The police once pulled a friend of mine over and when
she protested, "But there aren't any speed limits in this country,"
they calmly replied, "That doesn't matter. You were going faster
than anybody else, so we're going to give you a ticket."
The worst time I ever had with a car was on a tranquil road
outside Madrid with very little traffic in either direction. I was on
my way to the airport in a big, powerful Mercedes, and even
though I was only meeting an MGM producer, I was late and I
just hate being late. The end result was that I hit this sharp curve
in the road way too fast, soared up the side of a grassy embank-
ment, and completely lost control. The car did two full rolls and
another half one for good measure and finally came to rest with
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AVA GARDNER
its wheels in the air and me sitting upside down in the driver's
seat, wondering what the hell had happened.
The windshield and side windows were smashed, there was
glass everywhere, but the Mercedes' solid steel framework hadn't
buckled and that's what saved my life. Spanish workers harvest-
ing in nearby fields came to my rescue, hauling me out of the car
and brushing the glass splinters off my clothes. And who should
come by to rescue me but Ben Cole, Lana Turner's manager, who
was helping me settle into Spain and had just made a great deal
to sell the Mercedes to a gentleman in Switzerland.
"Well," I said, "you better call back and tell him you can let
him have it a bit cheaper because it's not in the mint condition he
expected."
I didn't seem to have any serious injuries, at least none that a
couple of decent-sized drinks wouldn't fix, but within a few days
I realized that when the steering wheel had hit my thigh with a
tremendous bang, it had raised a huge bruise that seemed to be
turning into a sort of a dent.
So later, when I was in London on some business, I reported
the bruise to my doctor. He examined it, made a noncommittal
"Hmm," and suggested I get in touch with Sir Archibald Mcln-
doe, a well-known British plastic surgeon who had spent most of
the war years attending to the broken bones and terrible burns
suffered by Royal Air Force fliers.
Archie, as I soon began to call him, turned out to be a com-
fortably built man with a round face, wise old eyes, and a kindly
smile. He was a New Zealander, but without any trace of the
accent, and within minutes we were friends.
"Ava," he said, "take a bucket and drop in a couple of tins of
tomatoes. Leave the tomatoes in the tins, dear, because it's the
weight you need. Then put your foot through the handle and just
lift the bucket and return it to the ground. Lift and return, lift
and return, over and over again as many times as you can. That
muscle has been very badly bruised and indented, and that exer-
cise will give it strength and help it to rebuild."
Archie was dead right. For a Harley Street specialist, I thought
he made a lot of horse sense, and though I hoped I'd never need
him again, I didn't forget his kindness.
One of the ironic things about my living in Spain was that now
that I was established in Luis Miguel's country, my relationship
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AVA: MY STORY
with him had come to an end. We had started to break up slowly
and regretfully after he'd let Howard Hughes's people talk him
onto that plane in Lake Tahoe. We said it didn't make any dif-
ference between us, but it did. And the months I was in Pakistan
making Bhowani Junction were not the best thing for a shaky
relationship.
Also, Luis Miguel was anxious to settle down, get married,
and raise a family, and I knew that I was not ready for that sort
of domesticity. And since we were great friends as well as lovers,
and since I'd never been as jealous of him as I was of Frank, I
was genuinely happy for Luis Miguel when he told me that he
was going to marry the Italian actress Lucia Bose.
The funny thing was, the next man in my life turned out to be
an old flame of Lucia Bose's, the Italian actor Walter Chiari.
Though not terribly well known outside his homeland, Walter
had some forty films to his credit and was considered a kind of
Italian Danny Kaye. I'd first met him in Rome during the making
of Barefoot Contessa. He had been flirting with me almost from
the first day we met, but you expect that from Italian males: if
they're not chasing someone, their lives aren't worth living.
What can I say about Walter Chiari? Walter was nice, and
everyone knows what a kiss of death that can sometimes be. Wal-
ter was amusing, good-looking, even-tempered, highly intelligent,
and a delightful companion. He followed me all over Europe, all
over the world in fact. Our association lasted a long time and we
even lived together on many occasions. And, yes, Walter often
asked me to marry him, but I couldn't and I didn't. The distance
that separates liking from love is as wide as the Pacific as far as
I'm concerned. And that was always the bottom line between me
and Walter Chiari.
There was an odd footnote to our relationship, however. Wal-
ter and I (along with Jimmy Granger and David Niven) actually
made a film together. It was my next project for MGM, The Lit-
tle Hut, and the less said about that fiasco the better. The feeble
plot had the four of us stranded on a desert island, thinking
about sex but not, the production code being what it was, doing
very much about it. I hated it, every minute of it, but what could
I do? If I took another suspension they'd keep me at Metro for
the rest of my life. I would have played Little Eva if they'd
wanted, anything to get through my contract fast.
223
AY A GARDXER
A much more lasting male relationship, in fact one of the most
gratifying of my life, also began In Spain. Through Betty Sicre, a
good chum, I'd met Robert Graves at a party In Madrid. At first,
1 have to admit, I wasn't at all clear about who he was and I
mistook him for some sort of scientist. How was I to know that
he was a writer and Greek scholar of enviable eminence, some-
one the London Times would call, "the greatest love poet in En-
since John Donne"?
Robert was big and broad, six foot two with a thick shock of
white hair. His face seemed to have been carved out of solid
rock, but It was softened by his warmth and an Impish, self-
mocking of humor. He loved women, loved to be in their
presence, loved the sound of their laughter and their talk. And I
have to admit that 1 truly loved him as well, even though he was
close to his middle sixties when we met and there was never even
the slightest suggestion that we should carry things further into a
physical relationship. The best way I can describe the situation is
that there was sort of a love-conspiracy between us3 and that
being together with him and his wonderful wife Beryl and the
kids in their house high on a hillside on Majorca gave me a kind
of pleasure and satisfaction nothing else In my life could ap-
proach.
When I first went to visit Robert on Majorca, I was determined
to learn all I could about the work he did. "You know, Robert," I
said, "I really don't understand poetry/'
And he said, to the point as always, "My darling, you're not
supposed to understand It, you're supposed to enjoy It.55 Poems
are like people, he told me; there aren't that many authentic ones
around.
Later, on my way to bed, I turned up a copy of Robert's
Collected Poems and I asked him which one I ought to read first.
He picked one that he said I might perhaps agree to take person-
ally, though It had been written long before we met I still re-
member some of the lines:
She speaks always in her own voice
Even to strangers. . . .
She Is wild and Innocent, pledged to love
Through all disaster. . . .
There was a smile on his face the next morning.
224
AVA: MY STORY
"I loved It/? ! said.
"It's you to the life/5 he said.
Through all the years we knew each other5 Robert wrote sev-
eral poems for mes something that makes me very proud. The
first ever, which came with a little note reading £To Ava from
with love— 1964" was "Not to Sleep/5
Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,.
Counting no sheep and careless of chimes^
Welcoming the dawn confabulation
Of birds-j her children,, who discuss why
Fanciful details of the promised coming —
Will she be wearing red? or russet, or blue
Or pure white? whatever she wears5 glorious.
Not to sleep all Iong5 for pure joy>
This is given to few but at last to me5
So that when I laugh or stretch or leap from bed
I shall glide downstairs^ my feet brushing the carpet
In courtesy to civilized progression.
Though did 1 wish, I could soar through the open window
And perch on a branch above5 acceptable ally
Of the blrds5 still alert, grumbling gently together.
What can you say about a man who would send something
like that? Is It any wonder that I felt the way I did about him?
225
TWENTY-SIX
hough Td been involved in a couple of
previous film versions of Papa Heming-
way's works that had turned out fine, I
never thought that filming The Sun Also Rises was the best of
ideas. I didn't think it could be done without spoiling it, and Fm
afraid I turned out to be right.
Originally published in 1926, with its title taken from a partic-
ularly down-in-the-mouth section of Ecclesiastes, Sun was notori-
ous because its main character, Jake Barnes, was sexually
impotent owing to a wound suffered in World War L Even Papa's
own mother had called it "one of the filthiest books of the year."
Papa had given it to his first wife, Hadley, as part of her divorce
settlement, and she'd sold it practically right then and there for
ten thousand dollars. By the time Darryl F. Zanuck decided he
wanted to turn it into a movie nearly three decades later, those
same rights cost him a hundred and twenty-five thousand, none
of which came home to Papa.
Initially, or so Fve been told, Zanuck wanted Jennifer Jones
for the leading part of Lady Brett Ashley, but she turned it
down and Papa personally informed Zanuck he thought I would
be swell. When Henry King, who'd directed me in Snows of
Kilimanjaro., sent me the treatment, I felt an immediate kinship
with Lady Brett, who Papa wrote was "as charming when she is
drunk as when she is sober." I always felt close to Papa's
women.
The rest of the cast took a while to assemble and was a pretty
226
AVA: MY STORY
mixed lot. Tyrone Power played Jake, Mel Ferrer his pal Robert
Cohn, Errol Flynn was my besotted fiance Mike Campbell,
Juliette Greco (who promptly caught Zanuck's eye) played a
French lady of the night, and Robert Evans, a former clothing
manufacturer from New York who later became head of produc-
tion at Paramount, played Pedro Romero, the matador who
loved me.
More of a problem than the cast was the first draft of
the script. When I read it, I nearly had a fit. I took Papa
the script and told him for his own pride he had to change
things. Now, when Papa got mad he would stand on something
and make speeches. Perched on a chair, he started to scream,
"They haven't even got the right fucking kind of planes in it!"
Finally, he calmed down and Peter Viertel, a young man he
liked very much, was brought in and did another, much supe-
rior draft.
Still, the movie was hardly the damn book. For one thing, it
focused more on what the publicity called "Hemingway's color-
ful world," the mad whirl of fiestas, bulls, bistros, and parades.
And for another, it seemed obsessed, at least as far as that pub-
licity was concerned, with the supposedly racy nature of the pro-
ceedings. "Again," the ads blared, "Twentieth Century-Fox
breaks tradition, as it brings you Hemingway's boldest love story
that shocked the world. So daring — so delicate — it could not be
filmed until now." Or how about, "Only Hemingway, master of
unspoken secrets, could successfully tackle this daring theme, . . .
could weave this shattering novel of dissipation and passion in
pleasure-mad Europe." Right.
Actually, it was always the romantic aspects of the story that
appealed to me. Lady Brett was an American who'd married a
British lord and had been widowed by the First World War. She'd
met Jake Barnes and fallen madly in love with him, but because
of his wound felt there was no hope for them. So both she and
Jake joined what used to be called the Lost Generation, the group
of bohemian pleasure seekers who sought to flee their pain
through drinking and general dissipation across the face of Eu-
rope.
In the course of the film, almost every man she meets falls
madly for Lady Brett: the Scot Mike Campbell, the American
Robert Cohn, the Spanish bullfighter Pedro Romero, and of
227
AVA GARDNER
course poor Jake. This causes all sorts of dreadful complications,
especially since I stay with no one and am happy with no one.
Robert Cohn finally can't take any more and beats up everyone
in sight, which appears to knock a bit of sense into me as well.
Though Papa hadn't wanted a happy ending for these characters,
the whole point of the thing being that they couldn't find con-
tentment, Hollywood wasn't satisfied with that. So the film ends
with me and Jake sharing a cab. I say, "Oh, darling, there must
be an answer for us somewhere," and the poor man agrees, "Fm
sure there is."
Though the movie starts in Paris, most of it is in fact set in the
Spanish city of Pamplona, site of the world-famous running
of the bulls at the San Fermin fiesta. Henry King had shot all
kinds of footage at the real fiesta, and though that was used
in the final film, by the time the cast was assembled, Pamplona
was covered with four feet of snow. So we all went instead to
Morelia, Mexico, where Henry and Tyrone Power had filmed
Captain from Castile in 1946, to fill in the blanks. Not only was
the city old enough to look Spanish, complete with a statue of the
great Spanish writer Cervantes, but the city fathers agreed to
repaint the interior of their bullring so it matched Pamplona's
exactly.
Of all the actors who worked with me on that film, I got along
best with Errol Flynn. I adored him, but although I dated him a
couple of times when I first arrived in Hollywood, we were never
physically involved. Errol was probably the most beautiful man I
ever saw, his perfect body equally at home in a swimsuit or
astride a horse. And he was fun, gallant, and well mannered with
a great sense of humor. When he walked into a room, it was as if
a light had been turned on. As he grew older, he drank too much
and was chased around by scandal and gossip. But Errol Flynn
always had style, honey. Real style.
Despite that silly ad campaign, Sun might have gotten better
reviews than it deserved when it came out. Time magazine, which
had practically laughed at me in Bboiuani Junction, said this was
"the most realistic performance" of my entire career. Papa, pre-
dictably, was not pleased. He called it "Darryl Zanuck's splashy
Cook's Tour of the lost generation," and added that as far as he
was concerned it was "all pretty disappointing, and that's being
gracious. You're meant to be in Spain and all you see walking
around are Mexicans. Pretty silly."
228
AVA: MY STORY
No one In Hollywood was too concerned about Papa's com-
plaints, though. As David O. Selznick once told John Huston, "If
a character goes from Cafe A to Cafe B, instead of Cafe B to Cafe
A, or if a boat heads north instead of south, Hemingway is up-
set." This time, though, I think his irritation was justified. What
happened to him shouldn't happen to a dog.
229
TWENTY-SEVEN
hough I damn well knew I'd been nothing
but lucky when the health and beauty
genes had been passed around, I'd never
bothered much about my looks. They didn't seem to have that
much connection with who I thought I was, with what I felt was
important. Then something happened, something terrible, that
drove home the grim truth that without my face, the future was
going to be pretty bleak.
Not long after I'd arrived in Spain, Papa Hemingway had in-
troduced me to a man named Angelo Peralta, who owned a beau-
tiful ranch in Andalusia near Seville where he bred fighting bulls.
And not just any bulls, but the especially fast and dangerous
Miura bulls that have killed more matadors than any other
breed. When the great Manolete died, it was because of the horns
of a Miura bull.
After nearly two years in Spain, I'd become something of an
aficionada of bullfighting, so when, in October of 1957, Angelo
Peralta invited me and any friends I chose to visit him on his
ranch and watch the testing of young bulls, I was quite happy to
accept. Both Bappie and Walter Chiari were staying with me at
La Bruja at that time, so we all went down together.
The ring used for this testing was nothing near the size of the
large bullrings found in all the major cities. It was a smallish
circular arena built of wood, with openings at various places to
admit the fast, specially trained horses and expert riders used in
the procedure. The young bulls, intent on killing anything that
230
AVA: MY STORY
moves, are let in one at a time. They charge the horse, and the
rider attempts to simultaneously keep his animal out of harm's
way and plant barbed darts called banderillas in the bull's back.
A few rushes and crashes, with horns smashing into the wooden
barriers, and the experts have decided on the bravery of this par-
ticular youngster and another one is let in.
Bappie, Walter, and I joined the large crowd that had gathered
around the ring to watch the spectacle. We were enjoying the
action and the sunshine and not being shy about drinking mind-
bending concoctions called solasombras, a particularly lethal
combination of absinthe and Spanish cognac. Though in those
days I was admittedly caught up in the passion and pagentry of
the bullfighting ritual, desensitizing myself with solasombras was
really the only way I could face seeing those beautiful animals
slaughtered in a bullring.
Suddenly I began to hear murmurs all around me, a sort of
increasing chorus. "What about it, Ava? Get up on a horse and
try your luck. It's great fun. Give it a try, Ava."
Worse than that, I began listening to them. Well, why not? I
thought. I'll just hang onto the horse; it knows what to do. Just
lean down and plant the dart in the bull's back.
Which was an awful mistake. First of all, in films or out of
films, I'd never ridden a horse in my life. The closest I'd come
was perching on the back of a few tired old mules as a little girl
in North Carolina. Sure I was a good athlete, but that had noth-
ing in common with riding a spirited horse at dizzying speed and
facing a charging young bull determined to kill you both.
Someone in authority should have stepped in and stopped me.
You don't fool with bulls of that breed and ferocity. If Luis Mi-
guel had been there, he would have stopped me at once. But Wal-
ter Chiari just stood there smiling. And Bappie for some reason
had left the arena.
I can't remember who helped me into the saddle. Somebody
said comfortingly, "Now you just hang onto the reins with your
left hand. Hold die banderillas in your right. The horse knows
his stuff and as the bull goes past just stick them in his back.
Anywhere will do." Thanks a lot.
Whoosh ... I was off, hurtling around the ring as the horse
went into overdrive. I made three flying circuits before the young
bull was let in and, oh, boy, did the action ever start then. The
231
A VA CARD Nr £ R
bull flew at the horse but just missed, crashing Into the circular
barrier with a bang. The next few seconds are still somewhat
confusing to me, but as best as I can figure, just as I leaned down
to stick In my banderilla, the horse reared high to avoid being
disemboweled by the next charge.
I went overboard, plunging Into a welter of horses' hooves, but
I don't think either the horse or the bull touched me. My cheek
smashed Into the earth. I felt the Impact,, but no pain, no fear, no
panic. I guess the solasombras had done their job and left me
properly stupefied I remember being picked up and carried from
the ring. I was not hysterical or even frightened.
To this day, Pm pretty certain it was the force with which I
struck the ground that created the large, discolored lump up
on my cheek5 a lump that the photographs show had started to
form even as I was being lifted off the ground.
Oh, yes, there was a photographer with a high-speed camera
at a good angle In the crowd so he could catch everything
happened. It wasn't until later that 1 discovered that little
fact, or that Paris Match, the French version of Life magazine,
paid seventy-five thousand dollars for that unique set of prints.
The whole thing had been plainly stage-managed with the idea of
getting me a little woozy, putting me aboard a very fast and high-
spirited horse and into the ring with a very dangerous animal.
That's not a gag, It's a crime. I can only hope to God that there
was nothing prearranged about the fall as well.
But on that day, life had to go on. A great party and barbecue
had been prepared, an event that had been announced through
the Andaluslan grapevine. Gypsies had come from miles around,
providing their wonderful flamenco singing and dancing. Fueled
by an endless supply of wine, I joined in and danced until the sun
rose behind the mountains.
I do remember looking into the mirror on my first visit to the
bathroom and seeing this lump, which seemed to be the size of
my fist, sticking out of my cheekbone. I thought it looked pretty
horrible for a woman who depended on her face for a living, but
I didn't panic. 1 simply went back to the dance.
The next day, in Seville, the horror began to focus. I ran Into
two American agents who lived in Rome* We had lunch together
and they said, "For God's sake, Ava, you've got to go back to the
States or England right away and get that fixed." When I took
232
A VA: M V STORY
another look at myself in the mirror and realized that the lump
had not gone down, 1 knew they were right. 1 needed Archie
Mclndoe.
So I went to see Archie at his East Grinstead hospital for the
Royal Air Force. The war was over, but the RAF was still lying
and there were always horrible accidents. I knew that in com-
parison to what was going on with those badly burned pilots, my
little injury was of almost no consequence* But Archie was a
of enormous compassion and understanding, and he enough
to spare for me.
He told me that my lump was a hematoma, a blood clot. He
said that a new method of treatment by injection had just come
out, but he wouldn't dare to use it on me because it was so
that no one knew what the complications might be? including the
possibility of another hematoma on top of the old one, which
would certainly mean permanent disfigurement.
I sat there and looked at the man who was probably the great-
est plastic surgeon in the world, let out a breath, and waited for
his advice.
"It will take time," he said, "but It will go away of its own
accord. You'll need heat treatment and massage, and we can try
ultrasound, but it will go away. My advice is, don't let anyone
try to operate or use a needle. Be patient"
When Archie Mclndoe tells you to be patient, you're patient. 1
began his method of treatment in London and continued it dally
when I returned to La Braja. Then,, about six months later, Frank
came over to Spain. He came to the house looked at the
Iump5 which was still as large as a walnut, and said, "Friends of
mine tell me about this great plastic surgeon in New York. It
won't hurt to get a second opinion. Because, honey ^ you ain't
gonna make any films looking like that."
I agreed. And on my next visit to New York, 1 went to get this
man's opinion. He was quite certain about how to things.
"We have this new injection that we can use Immediately/' he
said. "It's a pity I didn't see you right after It happened, I could
have injected you then."
Naturally, Archie's warning leapt right Into my head. "Walt a
minute," I began. "The surgeon who first advised me was Sir
Archibald Mclndoe. I'm sure you've heard of him."
Of course he knew about Archie Mclndoe, the doctor said,
233
AVA GARDMER
barreling right along and barely paying any attention to me. But
it was still a pity that I hadn't come to see him immediately. And
before he began the treatment, he wanted to inform me of his fee.
He was building a new hospital in Texas and my fee, which he
would naturally consider a contribution to that establishment,
would be one million dollars.
Now it was my turn to be heedless. I stood up and said, 'Tuck
you and your new hospital and your outrageous fees," and
marched out the door. As you can imagine, that was the last I
saw of any doctor except Archie where my hematoma was con-
cerned. And, just for the record, I'd like to say that not a single
penny was I ever asked to pay by Archie Mclndoe. To this day, I
don't know why he felt I was worth ten seconds of his time.
As Archie had prophesied, the lump slowly subsided, though I
was always conscious that it existed and I began to fear that my
film career might be over. I continued to visit Archie and I be-
came more involved with those badly mutilated pilots. It was the
best possible therapy for me, because compared with their inju-
ries, my lump couldn't have been more insignificant.
What Archie did for those boys my words can never ade-
quately describe. Oh, God, their burns were terrible. Many had
hardly any faces left; some didn't have limbs. Their treatments
were long and often agonizing; sometimes more than a hundred
operations were needed to give them a fighting chance. But Ar-
chie counseled and talked and gave them strength. I met a lot of
them and we danced and laughed together. They were so brave I
could have wept. Archie told me my visits did them a lot of good,
but I'm sure they helped me more than I ever helped them.
One day, Archie rang me in Madrid and said, "Ava, I want a
favor from you."
"It's yours," I said.
"We've got our annual fete in a couple of weeks, a sort of
garden party that raises funds for the hospital. I want you to
come over here to East Grinstead and sell your autographs in one
of our tents."
"God, I'll be terrified."
"No, you won't. Will you do it?"
"Of course."
My fears were for once natural because since the accident the
press reports had described me as half-dead, crippled, disfigured
234
AVA: MY STORY
for life. A lot of friends had called me up or written to say how
sorry they were and how they hoped I'd get better. Jesus!
Down at East Grinstead, Archie chuckled at my fears, but I
was wary. "I suppose there'll be press and photographers there/'
I said.
"Sure there will," he said in a matter-of-fact voice. He crossed
the room and took my chin gently in his hand. Turning my face
to the light, he said quietly, "Ava, there's nothing unsightly on
your face now. You can go in front of any camera in the world, I
promise you."
I didn't believe him. I looked at my face every morning in the
mirror and I could feel the lump. Vastly diminished, yes, but still
there, like a shadow under the skin. Despite Archie's words, a lot
of fears remained in my mind.
The morning of the fair, 1 noticed that Archie opened the
champagne rather early. We toasted each other, and by the time I
reached my place in the tent I'd consumed my fair share. The
photographers were everywhere, taking my picture from every
angle known to God and man. I was frightened out of my mind,
but I was doing this for Archie, so I smiled and signed auto-
graphs and got through it somehow.
The next day, there were glamorous pictures of me in all the
newspapers, and Archie told me what he had done.
"Ava," he said, "I turned the press on you deliberately. I rang
every newspaper editor in London and said, 'You can come down
to my fair and photograph Ava Gardner from as close as you
wish and from any angle. And you can see for yourself if any
plastic surgery has been done, if any knife has ever touched that
magnificent face.'"
That statement almost moved me to tears. What more could
Archie have done for me? Without letting on, he'd given me back
my self-confidence. As he'd done with so many young airmen, he
had given me back my life*
235
TWENTY-EIGHT
he Naked Maja, a better title than a film,
was not my most memorable effort: a
rather tame biography of the great Span-
ish artist Francisco Goya. I played the Duchess of Alba, Goya's
favorite model, and Tony Franciosa, a very nice man but a
method actor to the teeth, played the painter. The lights would
be set, the cast would be standing in front of the camera waiting
for Tony to start the scene, and he'd be standing off to the side,
carrying on as if he were choking to death and nearly vomiting
before he would come on. Honey, that was one method I could
live without.
Aside from Tony, however, The Naked Maja stays in my mem-
ory for two reasons. One is that it was the first time I worked
with one of the greatest cameramen I've ever known, Giuseppe
Rotunno, whose beautiful colors flooded the whole movie. More
important, however, The Naked Maja was the last picture I had
to do on my damn MGM contract. When it was over I was free
at last — free to choose my own projects, free to command the
kinds of fees I was worth. It was about time.
I didn't have to find my first script as a free agent; it found me.
Producer-director Stanley Kramer had bought the rights to On
the Beach, Nevil Shute's novel about the end of the world, and he
wanted me to play the heroine of the piece, the heavy-drinking,
disillusioned but still vulnerable Moira Davidson. I'd read the
book and liked it, so I thought, Honey, maybe this time you can
make yourself some real money.
236
AVA: MY STORY
I was still working on The Naked Maja in Rome when the
thing came up, and Stanley agreed to fly across to discuss the
project. I set up a dinner with a few friends and he, very sweetly,
brought me a gift of half a dozen flamenco records. Of course, I
had to play them, and, of course, I had to dance to them as well,
so naturally the party went on into the wee hours.
The next morning I said to David Hanna, who was my man-
ager at the time, "What's the matter with Stanley? I set aside all
last evening to get to know him and discuss the picture, and he
didn't even bring the subject up."
David smiled at that. "Ava," he said, "I just got the same mes-
sage from Stanley. He asked me, cHow do you do business with
her? I've only got forty-eight hours.595
Once Stanley and I did get together, things went smoothly.
Shooting was to begin in January 1959 and I ended up with a
salary of four hundred thousand dollars, happy to finally have
the money for my services go to me instead of the damn studio.
And I was delighted that Stanley was able to secure the services
of Giuseppe Rotunno as cinematographer, not to mention a cast
that included my old pal Greg Peck, Fred Astaire in his first
straight dramatic role as a disillusioned scientist, and a young
newcomer named Anthony Perkins as an Australian naval officer.
Though Fd read the book, Stanley5s script made me weep. You
couldn5t say it was marvelous — that was somehow the wrong
word. It was compelling, tragic, moving, chilling ... I don't
know what expression you can use about the end of the world.
Stanley liked to call it "the biggest story of our time,55 and who
could disagree? It was a fictional scenario, but my God, everyone
in the cast and crew knew it could happen. And that added a
dimension of reality to the unreal, world of filmmaking that none
of us had experienced before.
The film was set in 1964, five years in the future. A nuclear
war, precipitated by a small, unnamed country, has ended all hu-
man life in the Northern Hemisphere, and the southern half of
the world is only give four more months to survive. The Aus-
tralian city of Melbourne, at the most southern tip of that con-
tinent, will survive the longest, but even for the people there, it's
just a matter of time.
Into Melbourne harbor comes a U.S. nuclear submarine which
survived the war intact only because It was submerged when the
237
AVA GARDNER
bombs went off. Its captain, Dwight Lionel Towers, lost his wife
Sharon and their two children. As played by Greg Peck, Towers
is a model of decency, trying to put the best face on things and
do his duty in a society in which people are preparing for the
inevitable end by handing out poison pills to all and sundry.
Inevitably, Captain Towers falls in love with my character, the
cynical, boozy but very human Moira Davidson. It's a tough rela-
tionship because he is still very much in love with his wife as
well, and at times confuses her with me. And both of us can't flee
from the knowledge of how finite our span on earth is. "If
Sharon were alive," I tell a pal, "I'd do any mean trick to get
him. There isn't time. No time to love."
One thing I definitely didn't love was being on location in Mel-
bourne, Not that the Australian people weren't wonderful indi-
vidually; they were — down-to-earth, gutsy, and awfully friendly.
In groups, however, they seemed overwhelmed by the idea of
being the location for a Hollywood movie, something that had
never happened to the city before. There were crowds every-
where, and everything we did seemed to cause controversy. When
we had to cordon off a city block on a Sunday morning, for
instance — something that citizens usually take in stride — one of
the country's leading churchmen lambasted Stanley for interfer-
ing with "one of the fundamental freedoms — freedom of wor-
ship" because a church happened to be on the block.
And, naturally, we hit a heat wave when we were there, with
temperatures regularly going over one hundred degrees. And I
don't have to be bashful about stating what every Aussie will
agree to: that the drinking situation at that time was nearly as
bad as it was back home during Prohibition. Joy left town every
night at six P.M. sharp, as every pub on the continent closed. At
restaurants, any wine you happened to be drinking with your
meal was snatched from the table promptly at 9 P.M. and taken
down and locked away with the rest of the forbidden fruit.
Fortunately, Greg Peck and his wife Veronique had not only
rented a huge old Victorian house, they'd had the foresight to
bring their own French chef with them. The Pecks' place became
a second home for me, Fred, Stanley, and Anthony Perkins, who
was shy about everything but attacking his plate.
And poor Stanley, used to the good things of Hollywood,
found to his chagrin that he had to ship a great deal of equip-
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AVA: MY STORY
ment and props from America, including a pair of mobile gener-
ators and a mobile dressing room. The Australian navy helped
him out with the temporary loan of an aircraft carrier, and the
Royal Navy pitched in with one of their submarines, HMS
Andrew.
As far as studio space went, Stanley also had to improvise. He
got the use of the Royal Showgrounds, a massive establishment
used most of the year for storing wool, of all things. His produc-
tion office was in an auto showroom and his wardrobe depart-
ment in a place that usually housed farm tools. None of the
indoor facilities were properly soundproofed, and on days when
things like Billy Graham revivals took place nearby, filming be-
came awfully difficult.
Still, despite all these troubles, On the Beach contains some
fine technical achievements, most of them due to the genius of
Pepe Rotunno. One scene had Greg and me kissing in front of a
campfire as the camera circles us from a distance and does a
beautiful three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn that the other tech-
nicians kept telling Pepe wasn't possible. By the time the camera
was finished circling, it might have qualified for the longest kiss
in screen history, but Jesus Christ, hanging In there for almost
two minutes was very exhausting.
The film ends with Captain Tower bowing to his men's wishes
and taking his ship back to the States so they can die near their
loved ones. I was saying good-bye to him — forever. He was leav-
ing— forever. As I run toward him on the dock, you can just see
our two profiles come together as the sun sets between our lips. It
was a shot that once again everyone said was impossible, because
Pepe was shooting straight into the sun, but he made it work,
and I personally think it's one of the greatest in cinema history.
You know some shots will live in your memory forever, and that
one always will in mine.
On the Beach premiered simultaneously in eighteen of the
world's most important cities on December 17, 1959. The idea
was to position it as a film you had to see if you never saw an-
other one as long as you lived, and because of Its subject matter,
the film quickly moved off the movie page and onto the front
page. The New York Journal- American, for instance, headlined
'"On the Beach' Hits Like an Atom Bomb."
Everywhere the film opened, controversy went with it. The
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AVA GARDNER
New York Daily News ran an editorial calling it "a defeatist
movie" and insisting that "the thinking it represents points the
way toward eventual enslavement of the entire human race."
Even as patrician an observer as Stewart Alsop was moved to
comment that "it is simply not true that a nuclear war would
mean 'everybody killed in the world and nothing left at all, like
in On the Beach:"
As for my performance, the critics couldn't seem to decide
what was more surprising: how well I acted or how unglamorous
I looked. Newsweek was typical, deciding that "Miss Gardner
has never looked worse or been more effective." Frankly, I didn't
care what the hell they thought. I was proud of being part of this
film, proud of what it said.
A footnote to my Australia stay was that it marked the end of
my long and generally pleasant relationship with Walter ChiarL
He'd come across for a few weeks and did not amuse me when in
one of the shows he gave at a local theater he did a takeoff on
Frank Sinatra. I had suspected for a long time that Walter was
more interested in the publicity he gained from our relationship
than he was in our having a private life. This was made clear in
spades when he felt he had to make a statement to the press
about us before he left Australia.
"No one has to feel sorry because they think I've been hurt?"
he said. "I know when I'm hurt and I know how much hurt I'm
willing to take. I suffer because I love Ava, and I love her because
I understand her, because I know she is so good and defenseless,
and because I know she suffers."
Hell, he might just as well have written me a personal letter
with a copy sent to the press.
On a more positive note, my private life got a lift when the real
Mr. Sinatra called and told me he was flying to Australia to see
me. What's six thousand miles when you're still in love?
Ostensibly Frank was coming down to give two concerts in
Melbourne and two in Sydney. The truth was, we wanted to talk,
to look at each other, to be together. The press were, as usual, as
thick as flies on the beach, but we had our ways and means of
being private. And with only two nights, we didn't even have
time to have a fight!
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GREGORY PECK
worked with Ava over the years In three to-
tally different movies; The Great Sinner, The
Snows of Kilimanjaro, and On the Beach.
Certainly Ava grew in experience and maturity with every one of
them. I've always admired her as an actress and felt that she was
underrated because people were deceived by her beauty and did
not expect more from her. Also, she herself was not overly am-
bitious about becoming a great actress. Yet she did constantly
improve and at her best I think she could certainly be counted
among the better actresses on the screen.
The first thing everyone noticed about Ava was that excep-
tional beauty, but as a young fellow I was not as bowled over by
that as older fellows were. Yes, Ava was a beautiful girl, but I had
met other beautiful girls. Our relationship was and always has
been as pals. I suppose some fellas would say, "Oh, come on, this
is one of the most desirable and beautiful women in the world,
and you tell me you were just pals?" And the answer is yes, that's
the truth. You don't make a ran at every beautiful girl you meet
It's quite possible for a young man and a young woman in their
prime years to be great friends.
What I liked about Ava was that we had so much in common
it was like we were young people from the same hometown. We
both were products of middle-class, small American towns where
everybody knew everybody, and it was on that basis that we
struck up an immediate friendship. Ava was also outspoken, and
there was something refreshing about that because sometimes
241
AVA GARDNER — •
she'd be outspoken when other people would be afraid to. That
to me shows a strength of character and the kind of grass-roots,
middle-American honesty she has. Sometimes I've thought that
except for that out-of-the-world beauty — that sensational bone
structure, those eyes, and that figure — she was typical of dozens
of girls I knew in high school and college. But that beauty shaped
and changed her, and she became an object of pursuit, adulation,
and attention such as few girls ever know.
Ava was not as ambitious as I was. I think I worked more at
the acting, did more homework, more preparation. I came from
the theater and I had a great respect for fine acting. Ava was
more diffident about her talent, and I always had a tendency to
encourage her and even, God help me, to coach her a little bit. I
wanted her to be good, to be her best. I must have told her hun-
dreds of times that she had it in her to be a great actress, that all
she needed was a little more courage to attack, to go at a scene
with the intention of selling it, of grasping the audience's atten-
tion and holding it.
But as often as you would tell her, she was always a little re-
luctant about asserting herself. Also, her development as an
actress wasn't easy because everyone — directors, producers, and
to a certain extent the critics and the audience — was perfectly
happy just to look at her. It was okay if she just said her lines and
walked through without being awkward or amateurish or
clumsy. They really didn't expect her to get beneath the skin of a
part the same way that Bette Davis, for instance, always did. And
Ava used to whisper in those days, which I think was due to the
way they taught acting at MGM. They thought this whispering
projected a kind of sex appeal and also covered for a lack of
acting experience. Rita Hayworth did it, too; it's a kind of
crutch.
The Great Sinner, which came out in 1949, was based very
vaguely on Dostoyevsky's The Gambler,, with me as the serious
young man who can't resist the lure of the tables. Directed by
Robert Siodmak, it had a big-time cast, including Walter Huston,
Agnes Moorehead, Ethel Barrymore, and Melvyn Douglas, and
here was young Ava, who'd only learned to whisper her lines in
that young ladies' finishing school at MGM, holding the screen
very well. And remember, those big-time people don't give any-
thing away. They come on-screen and expect to dominate every-
thing and everybody.
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AVA: MY STORY
But it was very hard to dominate Ava because of her essential
strength of character, her honesty, and this almost unreal beauty.
And this was true even though she was not like some actresses
who are in there scratching and scraping and fighting to domi-
nate every scene. Ava is quite content to let somebody else domi-
nate. But of course they never quite completely do because she's
there. You're liable to find yourself looking at Ava when some-
body else is acting their heart out and chewing up the curtains.
Ava and I had a mutually shared tendency on this picture to
disregard the director, because Robert Siodmak was an absolute
nervous wreck. He was a hyperthyroid type in the first place,
jittery and nervous, and now he had the responsibility for this
very "heavy" picture on his shoulders.
There was usually a nurse present on the set, and a couple of
times a day, when Siodmak was talking to the cameraman or the
actors, shouting and gesticulating, she'd just sidle up to him, roll
up his sleeve, and jab a needle in his arm. I don't know if it was
vitamins or a tranquillizer, something to keep him from going
right through the roof. Whatever it was, he wouldn't pay any
attention to it.
At other times, with hundreds of people in the casino scene
and Melvyn Douglas eyeing me as I'm gambling away and Ava
standing there watching me lose my shirt, Bob would really be
overcome with the weight of the situation. He was always sitting
on the seat attached to the camera crane, and he'd mutter, "Up,
up, up" and off he'd go to hide eighteen feet above the crowds
while he collected his thoughts. And Ava and I would grin at
each other and say, "There he goes again!"
As for The Snows of Kilimanjaro, it was certainly successful at
the box office. While success at the box office does not always
mean artistic greatness, this was certainly a wholehearted at-
tempt, a serious effort to make a fine Hemingway picture.
We had of course a very good director in Henry King. I made
six pictures with him. I loved him and respected him, and I think
Ava did, too. I believe that her work was much more subtle, and
that she acquired much more confidence under his direction. She
did things in Kilimanjaro that she could not have done three
years earlier in The Great Sinner. And I think that is largely be-
cause Henry King was the kind of man she could trust. Ava felt
good with Henry King. He was an old-time director who'd
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AVA GARDNER
started in silent films, and he understood his trade and he under-
stood actors.
He loved lying, he was a lifelong flier. A man's man. A tall
handsome fellow. Probably in his early sixties at that time, with
very clear pale blue eyes. A couple of actresses I knew who had
worked with him said when he looked at you with those pale
blue eyes your knees melted. I think that Henry definitely had an
appeal for the ladies. He was a Virginia gentleman of the old
school, and I think that Ava trusted him because there was that
Southern flavor that she understood. And he understood her. I
think he gave her confidence and suggestions that made it possi-
ble for her to come out and be a little more assertive. With Henry
she was able to allow her emotions to have fuller play, to allow
her emotions to dictate her playing, and to begin to get a sense of
what acting is really like. I've always had a theory — I think prob-
ably most actors think that way— that the emotion below the
surface is like an underground river that has to flow through the
entire story. Sometimes it's a calm emotion. Sometimes it's vio-
lent. Sometimes it's a mixture of the two. But that dictates what
the external actor is doing and saying, the facial expressions and
what she or he looks like. It all has to come from that under-
ground river of emotion. The words will come out right if the
river is flowing below. And I think Ava began to be able to act
like that by the time we did Kilimanjaro. I remember that in
some of those scenes she was very moving and touching, and
very, very sympathetic.
Stanley Kramer, who produced and directed On the Beach, is a
filmmaker who, whether the subject is racial prejudice or the nu-
clear arms race, very much wants to say something about crucial
matters of world importance. He seized on Nevil Shute's book
and said, "I'm going to make a picture and perhaps I can have
some effect on people's attitude, perhaps I can change their mind-
set about the dangers of nuclear buildup." I think we all became
somewhat imbued with Stanley's mission, we all wanted to help
him do it, including Ava. I believe that she felt good about being
in that picture.
It did turn into quite an adventure, however. Terribly hot.
There was a spell where the temperature was over one hundred
degrees. Ava and I, our characters having become lovers, were
trying to play a lighthearted romantic scene on a beach. But the
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AVA: MY STORY
air was so thick with flies they almost blackened the skies. There
would be thousands of flies crawling on Ava's forehead and in
her hair, and the effects men would rush in with a smoke gun
and blow smoke in our faces. That would get rid of the flies for a
minute or two and allow us to say a few lines before they settled
in again.
I have worked with a few actresses, who will remain nameless,
who would just not work under those conditions. But Ava was
never, never the kind of actress who would complain about her
working conditions. She took it like a trouper and we just kept
plugging away despite everything until we got the scene.
In Nevil Shute's novel, my character determined that since he
was going to die, he would die faithful and true to the wife
whom he loved. This in spite of being terribly attracted to Ava's
character and it being obvious that they were meant to be lovers.
But he resisted the temptation, and she understood that. So when
they parted, when his submarine steamed out of Melbourne har-
bor and she stood on the point waving to him, it was a love that
had not been consummated. That's what Nevil Shute wrote.
Stanley Kramer, however, decided that the audience just
wouldn't accept that a man like me would be able to resist a
beautiful, willing woman who was in love with him. "We have to
give them some sex," he said. "This is a serious picture, it's about
the death of the world, and we have to give them some romance
and sex." I told Stanley he was wrong, that he was corrupting my
character and Ava's character, that self-denial on a matter of
principle was romantic. But he didn't agree. And Nevil Shute al-
ways hated that scene.
By the time we did On the Beach, Ava had a wonderful style.
There were certain things she did that I think no one could equal.
She was perfect for On the Beach, and 1 don't know of anyone
who could match her performance in The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
She had this natural poignancy and her feelings ran very deep. To
my mind she developed into a fine actress. I've been telling her
that for years, and she always waves it off.
245
TWENTY-NINE
he Night of the Iguana started with a
phone call. The year was 1963 and I was
sitting around in Spain, getting up late,
talking to my friends, dancing flamenco all night long. In short, I
was enjoying life and minding my own business and I wanted to
go on doing so. I did not want to be in a movie at all And then
the damn phone rang.
"Ava, dariin'," a voice said. No one could ever mistake
that quiet, smoky, Irish-flavored way of talking. I hadn't heard
it in eighteen years, since a certain party had chased me around
a swimming pool, but I knew it could only belong to John
Huston.
"We're here in Madrid," the voice said.
"Who's we?" I asked suspiciously. John on the phone could
only mean work, and the three pictures I'd done since On the
Beach — The Angel Wore Red, 55 Days at Peking, and Seven
Days in May — didn't exactly make me bubble over with enthusi-
asm at the thought of getting back in front of the camera.
"Ray Stark and I. Nice guy. Producer. He's bought the rights
to Tennessee Williams' fine new play, The Night of the Iguana.
Great part in it for you."
And before I can tell him what to do with that great part, John
slips in a line he knows I can't resist. "What about a drink
tonight? Show us the town."
That's okay by me. I'm into this hospitality business. After
three or four days of my usual regimen, I'd thoroughly ex-
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AVA: MY STORY
hausted the gentlemen from Hollywood. But they must have
gotten to me, too, because I agreed to do the film and they
agreed to pay me five hundred thousand dollars. And that was
the start of my relationship with John, one of the greatest and
most enduring friendships of my life, one that lasted until the
day he died.
As written for the screen by John and Tony Veiiler, Iguana, if
not exactly identical to what had opened on Broadway in 1961,
still was powerful stuff. Though most of the action takes place in
Mexico, the film opens in suburban Virginia, where Episcopal
minister T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton, back from
Cleopatra and Becket) has a nervous breakdown right in front of
his congregation, screaming about having appetites that just had
to be satisfied.
The good padre, it turns out, had been having an affair with
one of his younger parishioners, conduct unbecoming enough to
cause him to be turned out of his church for good and alL We
next see him in Mexico as an alcoholic employee of Blake's Tours
("Tours of God's World Conducted by a Man of God"). He's
showing the country to a group of vacationing teachers from a
Baptist Female College, whose number includes a seductive little
Texas wench named Charlotte Goodall (played by Lolita's Sue
Lyon) who casts a greedy eye on poor Shannon.
When Shannon and Charlotte are caught in an indiscreet
position in Shannon's room, Charlotte's chaperone threatens
to expose the poor man to his employers for the reprobate
he is. In a frenzied and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to avoid
this, Shannon takes the bus and the tourists to the only place
he's ever felt comfortable in, a run-down establishment called
Hotel Costa Verde. Which is where I come in. I play the good-
hearted, hang-loose proprietor of the place, Maxine Fauik, the
widow of Shannon's best friend and a pretty good buddy of his
myself.
Though the mountaintop Costa Verde is supposedly closed for
the season, I soon end up with another pair of guests. A penniless
spinster artist named Hannah Jelkes (played by Deborah Kerr)
shows up accompanied by her ninety-seven-year-old grandfather,
"the world's oldest living and practicing poet."
Soon Hannah and Shannon are engaged in long-winded di-
alogues about the meaning of life, something that really gets
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AVA GARDNER
Maxine?s goat. She suspects, not totally without cause, that
the spinster and Shannon have something of a yen for each
other. But at the film's close, little Charlotte has hooked op with
the bus driver,, Hannah walks off into the sunset alone and a
chastened Shannon and Maxine are left together. They talk about
going down to the beach for a swim, and when Shannon tells her
he doesn't know if he can get back up the mountain, Maxine
promises, 'Til get you back up5 honey. I'll always get you
back up."
Williams had set his play in Acapulco, but God forbid
that John, whose motto clearly was, "Do things the hard way
whenever possible," should even consider filming there. Instead
he hit on the idea of Puerto Vallarta, a remote spot on the Pacific
coast of Mexico that had been called the most unlikely resort this
side of the Hindu Kush. There were no roads into the town,
no telephones either, and both plumbing and electricity were
decidedly erratic. When John told people, "It's not at all like get-
ting up in the morning and driving to MGM," he was not kid-
ding.
And if Puerto Vallarta wasn't inaccessible enough, the actual
Iguana filming was done on an isolated peninsula called Mis-
maloya located some eight to ten miles further away. Reachable
only by boat, and so small it wasn't even on the map, Mismaloya
was nothing more than a tiny fishing hamlet where about a hun-
dred Indians lived in thatched huts. Behind the village was a
mountain plateau where, three hundred feet above the water,
John had the hotel set constructed. I called it "Hollywood on the
Rocks."
John had initially wanted everyone involved in the film to live
on Mismaloya, but some of us understandably rebelled. Richard
Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, who was in residence with him,
rented a four-story villa in Puerto Vallarta and made the daily
trip to the location in a yacht. I chose a speedboat, which I
mostly waterskied behind, and though my place in Puerto Val-
larta had one of the first air conditioners ever seen in those parts,
believe me, honey, living there was no picnic.
Reenie and I lived in a funny little place with a high wall,
but one not high enough to deter the Mexican beach boys,
young kids who climbed over every night looking for a place to
sleep. Because after you climbed the wall, everything in the
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AVA: MY STORY
place was totally open — there were no doors on any of the
rooms.
Going to the bathroom5 which was often a dire necessity, was
also an adventure. You might find a cat or a dog or a rat as big as
either one of them waiting for you. I remember one night we'd
worked late, and I had my dinner brought to my bed on a plate. I
nibbled at it, put the plate on the floor, fell into bed, and
promptly went to sleep. By the morning, the rats had eaten it all.
I'm surprised they hadn't eaten me as well.
Filming o'h Iguana began at the end of September 1963, and
though my character didn't appear until about page forty of the
script, John, who had determined to shoot in continuity, wanted
everyone there for the start. Soon after we got there, John called
together Richard and Elizabeth, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon, Ray
Stark, and me and solemnly presented each of us with a small
gold-plated derringer and five bullets, each engraved with the
name of one of the other recipients. Naturally, the old fox hadn't
put his name on any of the damn bullets. John didn't say any-
thing, he just walked away looking bland. It was, Deborah Kerr
later said, "almost like the start of an Agatha Christie mystery
novel." I immediately locked mine in a suitcase — I can't stand
guns.
Yet, despite the potential for a fracas presented by the combi-
nation of this high-powered cast and our godforsaken location,
we all got along remarkably well. For one thing, Elizabeth and I
were friends from the old Metro days. It's like we were two grad-
uates from the same alma mater, pleased to find each other in the
wilderness.
And though this was the first time I'd met Richard, I felt the
same way about him. He was like someone I would've liked to
have had for a brother, and his teasing manner made me feel
at ease. He was also a ferocious drinker, at whose instigation
John put bars -both at the foot and at the top of our long, hun-
dred-plus-stairs climb to the mountain plateau. But when we
worked together, I went up on lines more often than he did. In
one scene, when I was supposed to say, "In a pig's eye you are,"
what came out was, "In a pig's ass you are." Old habits die
awfully hard.
All this equanimity, however, was really hard on the gentlemen
of the press, who came down to the location in enormous num-
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AVA GARDNER
bers expecting who knows what kind of a ruckus. Even when
nothing was going on, they sent back stories with headlines like
"Liz, Richard, Ava, and Sue— Mighty Tense in the Jungle" and
"Liz Keeps Her Eye on Burton and Ava Gardner." They were so
hungry for anything to write about that when poor Sue Lyon got
bitten by a scorpion, the story made the goddamn New York
Times.
Even more preposterous was the fairy tale, which was sent all
around the world, that I was going to marry the film's associate
director, Emilio Fernandez. Emilio had once been a director him-
self, but he had a tendency, John used to say, to shoot people he
didn't like. He'd winged his last producer, and that was that. The
man was a character, but there as much chance of my marrying
him as the man in the moon. But that didn't stop papers like
the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner from running stories with
headlines like "Ava's New Mexican Flame Is a Pistol-Packin'
Firebrand," And people ask me why I get so furious with the
press!
In fact, the only member of the cast who acted up at all —
unless you count Sue Lyon's continual making out with her boy-
friend as acting up — was the iguana. At a key point in the script,
the damned fat lizard is supposed to make a rush for his freedom,
no doubt symbolizing something profound about the human con-
dition. Well, when the time came, that iguana had conditions
of his own: he was so fat and happy after being treated like
a pet for weeks that he absolutely refused to go anywhere. And
who the hell can blame him? It took a few well-placed jolts
of electricity to get the poor guy to scuttle off like he was sup-
posed to.
There were two bad moments in the making of The Night of
the Iguana. Though the cast didn't stay there, quite a few of the
crew lived in Mismaloya (they called it Abismaloya) in a collec-
tion of apartment blocks that had been specially built for their
use. Not terribly well built, however, as it turned out. Because
late one night in mid-November, Tommy Shaw, John's veteran
assistant director, and Terry Moore, the second a.d., walked out
onto their balcony only to have it totally collapse underneath
them. They both fell nearly twenty feet to the hard ground be-
low. Terry was okay, but Tommy had broken his back; people
said it was a miracle that he hadn't died. He had to be rushed to
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AVA: MY STORY
a hospital immediately, and the guys put him on a board and
carried him shoulder high out to a boat, into Puerto Vallarta and
onto an airplane. Fortunately, he survived to work on more of
John's films.
One evening less than a week later, the news was worse. We
were all crowded into one motorboat coming home, full of equal
portions of song and tequila, when we noticed Ray Stark's ocean-
going yacht, which he occasionally took back and forth to Los
Angeles, closing in on us. He had picked up a terrible news flash
on his radio: President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
The boat's air of drunken cheerfulness turned immediately to so-
briety, silence, and tears.
Despite all this tragedy, I was determined to do my best in
Iguana. I even made myself look awful, had lines penciled in un-
der my eyes, because it was that kind of part. My hair was pulled
back into a tight ponytail and I didn't wear anything except a
sloppy serape and toreador pants. And John let me go back to
my North Carolina accent, which meant that I got to say things
like "cotton-pickin' " and call folks "honey," which, you can
imagine, wasn't exactly a strain.
Dear John. I have only one rule in acting — trust the director
and give him heart and soul. And the director I trusted most of
all was John Huston. Working with him gave me the only real
joy I've ever had in movies.
Take, for instance, the scene 1 have when Maxine goes for a
romantic swim with the two beach boys she keeps around the
hotel for just such occasions. I was nervous about doing it, and
John, bless him, understood. He stripped down to his shorts and
got into the water with me for a rehearsal, showing me exactly
how he wanted it to go, then directed the scene soaking wet.
That is my kind of director.
And John helped with the conceptualizing of Maxine as well.
In the original Broadway production, where the role was played
by Bette Davis, Maxine had been a genuine man-eater, a woman
who was lonely, hard-bitten, and cruel. Shannon ending up with
her was much more of a curse than a blessing. John, however,
felt the character, especially the way I played her, was warmer,
more human, a better person than Tennessee's original ending
allowed, and he had the scene rewritten to emphasize the point.
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AVA GARDNER
Tennessee was never happy with that, but anyone seeing the film
knows that John's choice was the only one that fit.
All that aside, I've never been really happy with The Night of
the Iguana; in fact, I got embarrassed about my performance the
first time I saw it. The critics, however, must have been looking
at a different picture. "Ava Gardner is absolutely splendid," said
The New Yorker. "Ava Gardner all but runs away with the pic-
ture," said Life. "Miss Gardner gives the performance of her ca-
reer," said the Hollywood Reporter.
Hell, I suppose if you stick around long enough they have to
say something nice about you.
252
THIRTY
liming The Bible wasn't John Huston's
idea. Big as he thought, even he couldn't
come up with a picture that included Adam
and Eve, the Tower of Babel, Noah's Ark, Abraham and Sarah,
not to mention the creation of the whole goddamn world. Only
the Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis thought big enough for
that, or had the nerve to rent a sign on Broadway, a huge thing
that extended for an entire city block and grandly announced
that "Dino De Laurentiis has reserved this space to announce the
most important movie of all time."
Dino's ideas, however, didn't always pan out exactly as he'd
planned them. He'd originally envisioned two six-hour films,
costing a total of ninety million dollars, with four, maybe five
directors assigned. What he ended up with was one normal-sized
film with one larger-than-life director, John Huston, And once
John came aboard, another of Dino's ideas, that opera star Maria
Callas would play Sarah, also got the heave-ho. "You," John said
as he handed me the script, "will be playing Sarah."
I looked at the script. It was written by Christopher Fry, a fine
playwright, and though it looked great on the page, the dialogue
was definitely on the arty side. For instance, Sarah had lines like,
"Abram, behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing.
I pray thee, go in unto my maid according to that law which
says, when the wife is barren, her maid servant may bear for her.
It may be that I may obtain children by her." Quite a mouthful.
"John, honey," I said. "I can't speak lines like this. They're not
my style. They're too contrived, too stagy."
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John gave me one of his slow, cunning smiles and said softly,
"Of course you can, darlin3, of course you can." Maybe that hyp-
nosis he tried on me twenty years before was finally taking effect,
because I found myself agreeing with him.
John also told me that he had the actor who was going to play
Abraham all picked out. It was someone Fd never met, George C.
Scott. Now, if I had any female intuition at all, the mention of
that name should have set off every internal alarm within ear-
shot. Because the trouble that Abraham and Sarah were having
on the biblical front was nothing compared to the storm between
George and me that was about to break behind the scenes.
No sooner had I arrived at the Grand Hotel in Rome, where
the filming was to begin in the summer of 1964, than my tele-
phone rang. It was John, of course, saying, "Ava, darlin', come
down and meet George." I liked him immediately. He was over
six feet tall, broad-shouldered, and powerful, with a broken nose
and a quick smile. And he couldn't have been nicer.
We chatted a bit, John made his usual jokes, and we parted
outside his door, George heading down the corridor one way and
me going the other toward the elevator. I was almost there when
I heard him call my name.
"Ava," he said. "Why don't we have a drink and dinner
tonight?"
"Sure," I said. "Good idea." We're going to be working to-
gether, he's a nice guy, so why not get acquainted? Famous last
words.
To make a long story short, I fell for George and he fell for me,
and in those early weeks of shooting, we saw a lot of each other
off the set. George seemed highly intelligent and civilized, very
gentle but with a slightly sardonic sense of humor, which suited
me fine. He knew the film world backward and forward, and he
was a magnificent, intense actor thrown into the bargain.
So what was the problem? The problem, honey, was booze.
We both drank a fair amount, but when I drank I usually got
mellow and happy. When George got drunk he could go berserk
in a way that was quite terrifying. He began to be jealous of my
friends — just mentioning Frank's name, for instance, infuriated
him — and though he was still attached at the time, he began to
talk about our getting married.
George's outbursts weren't limited to our time off the set. One
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day, for instance, we were shooting this very delicate scene where
I say something like, "Go into the tent of my handmaiden," that
sort of jazz. George, I knew, had been a bit pissed all day, and
suddenly he went absolutely bonkers and began ripping his cos-
tume off. He literally flung the clothes on the floor and stormed
off the set in his underwear. Why? God only knows.
I went over and sat down next to John and looked up at him
for some direction. The son of a bitch hadn't moved, hadn't even
taken the cigar out of his mouth. I waited awhile, but John didn't
say a word. Finally, I couldn't stand the strain so I whispered,
"John, what are we going to do? We've got no Abraham."
And John gave me his little smile and said, "It's just right for
the scene, honey. If we can get him back, he'll be great."
And, by God, after a few more minutes George C. strode back
in again. There were still a few problems, like finding a costume
to replace the one he'd torn to shreds, but after that it all went
quite smoothly.
All of this came to a climax in a small hotel in Avezzano, a
town in the Abruzzi mountains where we did some exteriors. As
usual, George and I had gone out to dinner, and returning to the
hotel we'd gone back to his room for a nightcap. George had
drunk quite a lot that night, and after another two or three I
could see he was getting into one of his rages* He began to argue
with me and I decided it was time to leave. Fat chance. Suddenly,
out of the blue, a hand smashed across my face and punches fell
on me from all angles. What do you do? Scream? Faint? Try
reasoning? I tried reasoning. The result was more punches, more
accusations. It felt like hours before I managed to get out.
Back in my room, the remnant of a party was going on, with
Reenie dancing with Peter O'Toole, who was cast as an angel.
One look at my face and the party stopped abruptly. Peter tried
to comfort me, but he couldn't really help.
The next morning, I took my swollen and bruised face and
black eye in to the makeup man. God, I was a mess. He took one
look at me and screamed, "For Christ's sake, who did this to
you?" I didn't tell him, but it wasn't too hard to figure out, and
within a few minutes most of the crew and technicians knew, and
they were simmering. You better believe the atmosphere on the
set that day was more than slightly electric.
Early that morning, George had apologized profusely. He
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didn't know why he had done it, why it had happened. It was
disgraceful, he was ashamed of himself, it would never happen
again. Only much later in life did I discover that this kind of
abject, heartbroken apology is very much the rule from the sort
of men who beat up women.
Still, I have a gut feeling that if I hadn't been working with
John Huston and his crew on his picture, I would have taken off
after that first battering from George and never seen him — or the
film — again.
But I didn't. I shared scenes with George. I went out to dinner
with George. I kept up appearances with George. George wanted
to marry me. I had no intention of marrying George — ever.
John, of course, was very much aware of what was happening,
and I think he took some precautions. When we moved on to
locations in Sicily, I noticed three very tough-looking guys just
hanging around the set. They had nothing to do with our film
crew, they were just there. As we were in Sicily, I naturally
thought, I never knew Mafiosi were so interested in the Bible, but
I soon forgot about them.
Then one night George and I and Reenie had dinner at a res-
taurant on top of a hill in Taormina. We took our seats and, lo
and behold, those three tough guys showed up and were seated at
another table some distance from ours.
George C. had had a few drinks, and was having a few more,
and the tension was increasing. I can't remember how far into the
meal we'd gotten before I began waving to the waiter for the
check and preparing to leave. Because George, in the condition
he was in, couldn't have cared less about whether we had a fight
in public or in private.
Outside, it was dark and warm, and the lights from the restau-
rant were spilling across our faces. George was starting to get
threatening, and I was frightened. Then, suddenly, out of the
darkness that trio of toughs appeared at our side. Very quietly.
Very swiftly. Very solidly. One took George's right arm, one took
his left, the third trailed a little way behind. No noise, no tug-
ging, no pushing. And no fuss from George as he was led away to
a waiting car and placed inside.
No harm came to George; he arrived on the set next morning
full of the usual apologies. I glanced at John to see if I could get
the slightest confirmation that he might be paying the local
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AVA: MY STORY
Mafiosi a few bucks to make certain that his Sarah arrived in
front of the camera with her face in one piece. If he was, and I
think he was, he never gave it away.
When The Bible wrapped, I flew to London to see Robert
Graves at Oxford and to hear him give a public lecture in his
capacity as professor of poetry. I was staying at the Savoy Hotel,
and who should show up — on business of his own, or so he
said — but the man himself, George C. Would I have dinner, for
old time's sake? He was still in love with me. Could we forget the
past, or at least have dinner? I agreed. London seemed pretty
safe, the Savoy even safer.
At dinner I could sense that familiar tension growing, the con-
versation suddenly beginning to slide from the easy, happy famil-
iarities to terse questioning. The number of drinks increased. I
got through that dinner as quickly as I could, found a taxi back
to the Savoy, and with similar speed said good night in the lobby
and shot up to the safety of my suite.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the door. "Tell him I'm
not here," I said to Reenie. "Say anything. Try and get rid of
him."
I looked around for a place to hide. My bedroom? Reenie's
bedroom? The bathroom? Shouldn't a lady's toilet be inviolate? I
ran into it and locked the door. I heard Reenie's frantic voice, the
crash as he burst through the door. "Where is she?" George
screamed. "I know she's here."
What I didn't know until later was that he had a broken bottle
against Reenie's throat.
"Which bedroom is she in? ... I'll find her." The voice trailed
away as he searched in the bedrooms. Then I heard Reenie's
voice at the bathroom door. "Miss G.! Miss G.!"
I unlocked it and pulled her inside. Relocked it and thought:
What the hell do we do? Two friends were staying across the
corridor. If only we could get to them, they could ring down to
the desk. Now George was back at the bathroom door, banging
and yelling. And then we saw our only way of escape. Above the
tub on the corridor side there was a transom window about four
feet long and two feet high. Fortunately, it opened from the bot-
tom. And there was a chair in the bathroom. Reenie and I were
both pretty trim. I can't remember who went first, but I do re-
member we got through the opening with something approaching
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AVA GARDNER
the speed of light. We took refuge with our friends across the
corridor and rang down to the desk. The Savoy's security men
were up almost as quickly as the few seconds we took getting
through the transom window. They escorted Mr. George C. Scott
back to his own room and left him there. The rage and the noise
he made as he smashed his own apartment to pieces brought the
security men back again in a hurry, and then the British police.
George spent the night in a London cell and was charged and
brought before the magistrate next morning. The usual fine for
drunk and disorderly was ten shillings. No doubt he settled the
damage to the Savoy's property separately.
I thought I had said good-bye to George C. Scott forever. But
no. Back in Los Angeles visiting Bappie and my friends, I was
staying at one of the bungalows near the pool at the luxurious
Beverly Hills Hotel. I suppose it must have been around one A.M.
when someone smashed his fist through the back door, breaking
the screen and the glass, and entered the bungalow. In a flash, I
knew who it was, and when he entered my room I was terrified
out of my mind at the sight of this huge, completely drunk, al-
most insane man. He loved me, he said, he wanted to marry me.
Why wouldn't I marry him? If he couldn't have me, he was going
to kill me. And he sideswiped me across the face with such force
it knocked me to the floor. Then came more blows, more anger,
more threats.
I was stretched out on the floor, with George astride me. I
can't remember if he had any more drinks, but I think he must
have, because he smashed bottles to get a weapon to threaten me
with. He was kneeling across me, waving the jagged edges of
glass in front of my face with one hand and hitting me with the
other. Telling me he loved me, and smashing a fist into my eye.
"Marry me, do you hear what Fm saying?", followed by another
blow. And all the time I was thinking: Oh, my God. If his mind
twists a little bit more he'll thrust this broken bottle into my face
or my throat. With an enormous effort I held back the terror and
the screams that were rising inside me. This was the real meaning
of being scared to death.
I knew my only hope was being sweet and understanding.
"George, darling," I managed to squeeze out, in a voice as soft
and appealing as I could make it. "You're in a terrible state. Let
me call a doctor and have him come over."
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AVA: MY STORY
No way. He wouldn't even listen. And he wouldn't leave. This
went on for hours.
Suddenly, and by this time it was early in the morning, the
phone began to ring. "If you try and answer that," he hissed, "I'll
kill you."
"George," I said. "People know that I'm here. If I don't an-
swer, they'll send someone to find out why."
That appeared to make sense to him. He let me get up, but he
stood behind me and said, "Be careful. One wrong word and I'll
kill you."
I answered the phone. It was Veronique, Greg Peck's wife and
a dear friend. I knew with absolute certainty that if I said any-
thing, George would carry out his threat. But how could I let her
know what was happening? Could I "act" into the phone to give
her some idea of my terror? Veronique did not get the message. I
replaced the telephone in its cradle. And I went on talking in my
calmest voice to George.
"Listen, honey, you're in bad shape. You have to have a doc-
tor. Let me call Bill Smith — he's a great friend, a good doctor.
You don't have to behave like this."
I kept on that theme. Oh, God, it was the most realistic piece
of acting I've ever done in my life. Finally, I got through. George
said, "Okay."
Slowly I picked up the phone. Thank God, Bill was up. I told
him where I was. "Please hurry. It's very urgent."
Bill caught the urgency all right, and was around in a few min-
utes. Oh, Jesus, I have never been happier to see a man in my life.
It was growing light outside, but my curtains were still drawn
and inside it was dim and dark. I said, "Bill, my friend here is in
a terrible state. Can you help him with a sedative?"
Bill, of course, didn't know what the hell was going on, but he
quickly examined George and gave him a rapid shot. "That
should do it," he said as he closed his bag and moved back to-
ward the door. Oh, my God, I thought, if he leaves me ... and I
can't scream out even now.
But I went with him to the door, and as he turned back to say
good-bye I put my face out so that he could see it, and I saw his
face react with absolute disbelief and horror. Then he was gone.
Inside, the sedative was beginning to work. George was sitting
there, blank, not saying anything. Bill had gone straight to the
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hotel phone and called Bappie. God knows how long it took her
to get to the bungalow. I was still dazed, shocked into silence by
this confrontation. Bappie came in, saw my face — I later found
out I had a detached retina in one eye and a badly bruised right
cheekbone. She rushed to the fireplace to get a huge poker. I re-
strained her, whispering urgently, "Bappie, stop, stop . . . he'll
kill us both."
A minute later, without a word, George walked out the way
he'd come in, through the smashed back door. I have never seen
him since.
I was sorry for George then, and I'm sorry for George now. I
understand he's completely under control these days, but, my
God, the fear he could impart in those terrible rages.
These days the whole world knows about the type of man who
abuses and batters women. But then it was hushed up, something
you didn't talk about. Now, thank God, it is, because I can tell
you that those few hours with George C. Scott were the most
terrifying of my life. Even today, if I so much as see him on tele-
vision, I start to shake all over again and have to turn the set off.
260
RODDY McDOWALL
va was like the most fantastic relative,
because she didn't make you pay a price
for knowing her. She was the great older
sister who just adores you. And spoils you. Her loyalty was dev-
astating. In fact, it could be embarrassing. Because if she was
your friend, she would kill for you, and sometimes you didn't
want her to. She believed in the good decent things, she really
did. And to the best of her ability, she lived that way.
Ava was an extraordinary woman because she never copped a
plea. She was completely who she was and what she was, and she
never made an excuse about it. Because she was volatile and hon-
est, if somebody hurt her or took advantage of her, she'd just cut
them to ribbons. But if she was wrong, if she'd done an injustice,
her agony was terrible, her remorse phenomenal, and she would
do everything to repair the damage.
I first met Ava in 1942, at a war bond rally in Pershing Square
in Los Angeles. She was twenty and I was thirteen and I got her
autograph: what she signed was "Mrs. Mickey Rooney." She was
simply and in every way one of the most beautiful girls that one
had ever seen in one's life. Her body was absolutely extraordi-
nary; the way all her facial features were placed was perfect; she
was classically beautiful. And her spirit was quite adorable. It's
very strange to see that sort of tenderness radiating out of some-
body that exquisitely beautiful.
We didn't become tremendously close friends until she was in
her early forties, by which time the slings and arrows had both
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taken their toll and strengthened her. By the time I knew her, she
was this gouache of remarkable qualities that I found to be
deeply appealing, heartbreakingly moving. She was a survivor,
but she had no armor for insult. She wasn't hard— there wasn't a
hard bone in that woman's body. And she was one of the very
few people I've known who don't have a shred of malice. Yet she
could be a holy terror and hysterically funny if she was on a tear,
if she took umbrage at something. But she didn't harbor resent-
ments, and she would constantly be about repairing what she felt
might have been a hurt. She was a study in contradictions.
The highly irritating thing -about Ava, of course, was that she
had no regard for her intellectual capacity or her talent. She was
a wonderful actress and she never believed it. If you told her that,
or if you told her how beautiful she was, she'd get very uncom-
fortable and virtually begin to shake. She didn't know what to do
with the information; it unnerved her.
Ava was always alive. Even in the depths of depression or an-
guish, she was terribly alive. And she could get heartbreakingly
depressed. There were times when she couldn't see people, times
when she was so miserable, when life was so black for her. It
couldn't have been easy for anybody to have been witness to the
depths of her unhappiness or self-loathing. She didn't like herself.
And so everyone felt wildly protective about Ava, and therein,
of course, lies madness. The vulnerability was part of her great
appeal. Everybody felt that yes, they could bring her some solace
or help for whatever this bottomless well of unhappiness in her
was. Well, of course, you can't But Ava didn't take advantage of
that; she wasn't looking for you to be a nurse. Some people eat
you up with that, but Ava wasn't inclined that way. She was a
loner. Like a bear, she would go off somewhere and hibernate.
Yet she was a very passionate woman about things that she
liked doing. For instance, I live right across the street from Gene
Autry and that really thrilled her.
"I've got to go over and see him," she said.
"You can't," I said. "It's ten o'clock at night."
"But he was my mother's favorite actor."
Well, it was hysterical. Who's going to believe that Ava
Gardner was down there on Autry's not-so-mini estate, throwing
pebbles at his windows and saying, "Mr. Autry, my name's Ava
Gardner ..." I don't think he was even there. Her responses to
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AVA: MY STORY
things were so childlike, it was so sweet. She was totally immedi-
ate. She had no pretensions, none whatever.
In 1969, we made a movie together, I directed her in The
Ballad of Tarn Lin. She hadn't made a film in a couple of years, it
was a very large part, and she was very nervous. It was not a
successful movie, by any manner of means, but her performance
is remarkable and dead-on.
The film was based on a Scottish border ballad by Robert
Burns that is about a bitch-goddess who walks the earth in per-
petuity, refurbishing her godhead with the sacrifices of young
people. She takes them and she destroys their lives; she's a mag-
net for them and she sucks them dry. And the ultimate triumph
in the piece is that a young man is saved by the true love of a
pure young girl.
In modern terms, the film was about this very rich, opulent,
seductive, enchanting woman who at base was a killer of
creativity and productivity. It's a piece that could only be played
by a creature who, when coming on from the wings, carried with
her glamour, maturity, and mystery. Vivien Leigh could've
played her, but she was dead. Probably Jeanne Moreau could've
done it. But Ava was unique because she was an imperial creature
with a great peasant streak, which is a miraculous combination
to find. Her ability to scrub the kitchen floor, you know, was
always there. Hers was the most unpretentious elegance I ever
knew.
Ava was one of the most perfect screen actresses I've ever en-
countered because she had a childlike concentration, which is
wildly important. It's one of the major things that a film actor or
actress should have, because immediacy is tremendously impor-
tant to hold. I found that when you were working with her you
should really never have more than three takes. Because she
really did it.
Watching her act was a fascinating thing to me — I was often
stunned. There was one time when she had to take a dagger, stick
it into a desk, and say something like, "I will not die." And when
she said it, her eyes in that moment just filled with blood. It was
incredible. She didn't have acting craft, but she had this immedi-
ate instinct. So in a sense perhaps the toll was larger for her than
somebody who had craft at their fingertips. Because she had to
really completely do it in that moment.
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There were a lot of young people age eighteen to twenty-five in
the cast of Tarn Lin, and though at first Ava was afraid to meet
them, within an instant she became absolutely devoted to them.
There was one moment in the film where twelve or thirteen of
them were playing games on the floor and she had to walk right
through, up this huge staircase, turn around on a platform, and
just lace into them, cut them to ribbons, and throw them out.
Ava was dressed in an evening gown — she looked incredible —
and everything went fine until she turned around on the staircase
and this really awful performance came out. It was like the motor
ran out the moment she turned around and looked at them. We
rehearsed it two or three times and I said, "What's wrong, Ava
Lavinia?"
"Honey, I can't do this," she said.
"Why?"
"Those are my babies. I can't tell them off. I love them."
I began laughing and I said, "Why don't you just pretend it's
five o'clock in the morning in Madrid, and you want to get those
musicians out of the room." She came in and boom! did it. She
longed for good direction. Immediately she'd connect, and imme-
diately she would produce.
Ava's beauty finally became double-edged. In the first place,
when you look in the mirror, you're not seeing the image that
other people see, so you don't appreciate the fact of your beauty.
But if you are continually told that you are beautiful, even if you
can't really understand that, nevertheless you are still custodian
of it, you are the keeper of that beauty. So you've got a problem,
because that's schizophrenic.
We had to do a lighting test of her for Tarn Lin and she was
very nervous, very skittish, so I told her I'd be there with her. We
went onto this dark soundstage, with just a work light, and she
sat on a stool. And I sat there beside her talking very, very quietly
as Billy Williams, our cinematographer, began to light.
And as the light slowly came on, it was like a painting happen-
ing. It was the first time in years I'd seen her with all the war
paint on, and I was devastated.
"Good God, you really are gorgeous," I said.
"No, honey, no, no, no," she said in this very soft voice she
had.
"Yes, you are. You are really some beautiful thing."
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AVA: MY STORY
"No, I used to be."
"What do you mean? You are."
"No, honey. When I was young, I was beautiful. When I
would work all day and then stay out all night, and then come to
work the next day and still look okay. And then stay out the next
night, and come to work the next day. Now, then I was beau-
tiful."
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STEPHEN
BIRMINGHAM
hen I was in Mexico in 1963 doing a
location piece on The Night of the
Iguana for Cosmopolitan, the unit pub-
licist warned me about Ava. "Everybody will talk to you," he
said. "John Huston will talk to you. Burton will talk to you,
Deborah Kerr will talk to you. But you must not approach Miss
Gardner. She does not like the press; in fact, she wanted a closed
set, which she didn't get. But we have promised her that she will
not be interviewed. So you must not approach her."
After I'd been there a couple of days, we were all at the bar at
the location one afternoon and somebody said, "Ava, do you
want a ride back to town on my boat?"
"No thanks," she said. "I'm going to water-ski back." And she
looked around and said, "Anybody want to come with me?"
"I'll go," I said.
And she said, "Fine."
When I was on the skis, I could tell she was telling the boat
boys to give me a hard time. They'd slow down and practically
stop and I'd sink down into the water. She was terrible — she was
trying to knock me off. She did not succeed. And many, many
boozy hours later, dancing and listening to Frank Sinatra records
at her house and getting pissed drunk, we were the best of
friends.
I went home after I finished my work, and she began telephon-
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A VA: MY STORY
ing. From Los Angeles, from Mexico, from the Main Chance
Farm in Arizona, saying she wanted to marry me. At the time I
was happily married, and I kept trying to explain that to Ava.
"Well, that doesn't matter," she'd say. "I want to marry you.
We'll worry about your wife later." I think she probably saw me
as a reasonably stable and maybe civilized person who could
bring a little of that stability into her life, something she had
never really been able to find.
The first impression you had of Ava was that she was so beau-
tiful. She would do her hair with toothpicks from the olives in
martinis and it would look great. She could walk out of a hotel
without makeup, wearing flats, one of those kilt-type skirts with
a big safety pin in it and a simple peasant blouse and she looked
gorgeous. She had an ability to find the key light, the one that
made her look the best. She even told me once, "When Fm in a
room, I know how to find that light." My wife and I were in
Madrid with her once, and the sun hit her face just so, and we
both said simultaneously, "Ava, you are too beautiful." And she
said, "Oh, shit, Fm sick of hearing that."
Yet by the time I met her, I think that Ava was a very damaged
woman, badly bruised by the awful, macho people in the indus-
try. She felt injured by MGM, she hated Mr. Mayer, she was
always very bitter. She just wasn't tough enough to deal with it.
Because it's a rotten business.
Frank Sinatra was different. They stayed very, very close.
Every time Fd be with her, he would call at least once. And she
would go up into her bedroom, close the door, and talk for half
an hour. The only time I saw them together, she was staying at
his suite at the Waldorf Towers. He was looking up an address in
the phone book and he couldn't read it without his glasses, which
he didn't have. And Ava, who had these funny little Ben Frank-
lin—type half-glasses, said, "Here, try mine." And he put them on
and he said, "Hey, they work for me! That's another reason why
you and I should get back together." Which I thought was kind
of cute.
When he left, I said, "Why don't you get back together?" And
she said, "We'd be at each other's throats in five minutes." It was
all about jealousy. Sinatra liked to be recognized, and if a pretty
girl came up and spoke to him, Ava would get furious. And Ava's
eyes liked to travel around the room; she'd fix on this one and
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that one, and the next thing you'd know the person would be
over at the table and Frank would get furious. So they were al-
ways jealous of each other, just like teenagers.
George C. Scott was another story. He beat Ava up on several
occasions. I was staying in her house in Madrid while she was in
Rome doing The Bible with him and when she came back, her
arm was in a sling and God, she looked like hell. He'd broken a
collar bone, yanked out a whole hunk of her hair, and she had
double vision in both eyes.
"How can you stand this guy?" I said.
"Oh, I've fallen for him,59 she said. "I've fallen for him."
The next thing I knew, Scott showed up in Madrid and I was
invited for drinks in her apartment. I walked in and George's face
looked like raw hamburger, sort of oozing and awful. Ava pulled
me aside into the kitchen and she said, "You see George's face?"
"My God, what happened?"
"Last night he got drunk, he had a fire going in the fireplace,
and he threw himself face-first into the live coals. I had to pull
him out."
Ava did come from an environment, kind of redneck, where
men beat up women. If you weren't happy with what your wife
or your girlfriend did, you let her have it, you slammed her
across the face. So I think she thought that was part of the way
men and women interact. Or at least it wasn't strange to her.
Also, she had a tendency toward liking violence. She obviously
liked bullfighters, and she liked the bullfight itself, its kind of
physical excitement.
Ava really liked Spain; she kept saying it was her spiritual
home. But after she'd been there for a dozen years or so, the
Spanish government suddenly claimed that she owed them about
a million dollars in taxes.
Morgan Maree was Ava's business manager, and either he or
someone from his office came flying over with all sorts of receipts
to help her with this crisis. They showed evidence of the Amer-
ican dollars that she'd spent over there. They said she'd been a
big attraction for Madrid and for Spain, that the publicity she got
when she'd show up at the bullfights was good for tourism. Their
argument was that she had done a lot for Spain, and therefore
Spain should treat her a little better.
Now in Spain, protocol says that at a meeting you don't get
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AVA: MY STORY
down to business right away. First it's "How is your daughter?
How is your niece? How is your ailing Aunt Louisa?" You talk
family and then after about fifteen minutes of that, you get down
to business.
A big meeting was set up between Ava, the person from Mor-
gan Maree, and Seiior Manuel Fraga Iribarne, who was Franco's
Minister of Tourism and the Police, which I always thought was
a marvelous combination. And Ava, who always called him
Senor Bragas, which means underpants in Spanish, was getting
very impatient with this backing and filling.
Finally, Iribarne said, "Ah, Senorita Gardner, yes, we are now
here to discuss your indebtedness to the Spanish government of
ten thousand dollars."
"What the fuck?" she shouted. "I thought it was a million!"
"You're quite right. Miss Gardner," Iribarne replied. "It is a
million dollars."
She had been offered a way out and she blew it. After that
explosion, she had to move to London. I don't think she could
ever have gone back to Spain. They would have jumped her for
the taxes.
One of Ava's problems was that she had been told all along
that she didn't have to have any talent. On Night of the Iguana, I
heard Ava ask John Huston about her character. "Now, is Max-
ine in love with Shannon, or what? What do you think she's feel-
ing?" And though they talk about what a wonderful director
John Huston was, all he said was, "Don't worry, sweetheart. Just
stand there and look beautiful. That's all you have to do." I think
she'd been told that so often that she didn't think she had any
acting talent.
The minute Ava got to a party, she'd say, "Where's the bar?
Where's the bar? Where's the booze?" And she'd have a drink
right away. She always talked about her shyness, she blamed the
drinking on the shyness, but I think she suffered from low self-
esteem that came from having been told that she didn't have any
talent. "Honey, you just stand there and be beautiful."
That's why, when the looks really went, in her last seven or
eight years, Ava became very reclusive. She wouldn't go out.
When I'd go to see her in London, I'd try to make her get dressed
up and go out, but she wouldn't leave the apartment. I think she
felt that without her looks she was a nothing. Except a mind. She
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always knew that she was smart, but I don't think she thought
she had any real ability.
Also, in the forties and fifties when Ava was getting started, it
was considered rather chic to get drunk; she grew up in a Holly-
wood that expected people to get drunk. She'd go for long peri-
ods and not have anything to drink at all, but when she would
start drinking, she wouldn't stop until she went off to her room
and closed the door. Once at her house in Madrid, she cooked
this whole elaborate Thanksgiving dinner. She was almost child-
like, setting the table, getting the turkey out, and the dressing and
the sweet potatoes. But by the time we all sat down at the table
she wasn't able to join us.
When Ava was drinking, it was exciting, I must say, because
you never knew what was going to happen. She had the capacity
of an ox, and the energy. She never seemed to get tired. Some-
times she would be almost incoherent, you wouldn't know what
she was talking about, but she wasn't about to fold her tent. And
she'd get very suspicious. She'd point to my watch, for example,
and say, "That's a tape recorder, isn't it?"
"No, it isn't, honey, it really isn't."
"Take off that watch!"
So I'd have to put the watch way over on the other side of the
room.
One night in New York we started out with rnai tai's and din-
ner at Trader Vic's. Then we went to some little bar on West
Forty-fourth Street that was a favorite of Frank's where every-
body knew her and fussed over her. At this point it was well after
midnight and she decided she was hungry again. She was a great
steak eater, so we went to a steakhouse on Third Avenue called
Christo's where the owner, who'd heard she was in town, had
reserved a bottle of aged Anejo tequila just for her.
Of course we had more drinks there, and then she said,
"Damn, I promised Betty Sicre" (who was a great friend of hers
from Spain) "that I would get together with her son Ricardo,
who's at Princeton. I haven't done it and I really feel awful. I
really should try to see little Ricardo."
Having had several drinks myself, I said, "Hell, let's take a taxi
and go down to Princeton."
"Wonderful idea," she said. "That's a great idea."
So we went out and got a taxi, Ava dressed as the movie star
270
AVA: MY STORY
with a long dress and a mink coat. The driver was delighted to
take us the sixty-five miles to Princeton. Ava opened the tequila
in the back of the cab, and she and I passed the bottle back and
forth during the trip.
We got to Princeton around seven o'clock in the morning and
Ava wouldn't let go of the tequila bottle. Her friend had given it
to her and therefore she was not going to leave it in the taxi. I
kept saying, "Can't we put it in the back of the cab?" and the
answer was always, "No, I have to carry it with me."
We got on the campus and I said, "Where does little Ricardo
live? What's his dormitory?" Well, she had no idea. "We'll just
go up and down the streets here and we'll ask people." So, as the
kids were headed toward their first classes of the morning, here
was Ava Gardner in a long gown jumping out of this cab and
saying, "Do you know my friend Ricardo Sicre?" Nobody did.
Soon the word spread across Princeton that Ava Gardner,
clutching a bottle of tequila, was in a New York taxi with some
unknown person cruising up and down the campus. And a little
band of kids began following the cab, running after us and shout-
ing, "Ava, Ava."
We stopped in front of a dormitory and she jumped out — she
had these very quick little steps when she ran and it was awfully
hard to keep up with her — and ran into the entrance hall saying,
"Ricardo! Ricardo! Where are you?" No sign of Ricardo.
"Well," she said, "well just have to go to the top."
"What do you mean?"
"Who's the president of this university, anyway?"
"His name happens to be Robert F. Goheen, I happen to know
that."
So she said to the driver, "Take us to the president's house."
At this point, it's about a quarter past eight in the morning.
We pull up at the president's house, which as I recall was a
stately white Georgian mansion. And Ava, clutching the bottle of
tequila, starts to jump out of the cab.
"Ava, let's think about this now, let's think about this very,
very carefully," I said. "You're very fond of your friend Ricardo
and you're very fond of his parents. You, on the other hand, are
Ava Gardner, and you have had, uh, a little bit to drink tonight.
I'm not arguing with you about the bottle of tequila that has to
be under your arm, but you are not really dressed for calling on
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AVA GARDNER
the president of Princeton University, who's probably in there
now in his bathrobe having breakfast with his wife. I have a terri-
ble feeling that if you barge into the president's house at this
point in the morning, you may have little Ricardo bounced right
out of this college."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," she said.
So we get back in the cab and head to New York. We stopped
at a Howard Johnson's on the Turnpike and had some breakfast.
We got back into the cab and were almost to the Lincoln Tunnel
when Ava said, "Jesus Christ! It's Yale!"
272
THIRTY-ONE
uch as I appreciated having a real home
at La Bruja, living there made me feel
too cut off from the center of things. It
was Madrid I really loved. The damn place had lifel The narrow
streets were full of old bars with tapas on the counters and hams
hanging from the rafters, places that rang with the sounds of
guitars, castanets, and flamenco dancing. If you knew your way
around, the nights went on forever.
So I sold La Bruja and rented a beautiful apartment at 11,
Avenida Doctor Arce in Madrid. I've never been entirely sure
who the hell Doctor Arce was, but one thing I found out imme-
diately: my next-door neighbor was none other than Juan Peron,
the ex-dictator of Argentina.
Now, aside from the fact that I did not much care for the dame
he was living with, Peron had one very disturbing trait. Every so
often he would march out onto his balcony, which adjoined
mine, and make long, loud, arm-waving speeches to the empty
street below. Nobody took any notice; I don't suppose they even
heard him against the sound of the traffic. But the speeches dis-
turbed me, and damn it, I felt they let down the tone of the
neighborhood.
After years in the country, my Spanish was now fully func-
tional, and, as you can imagine, I was especially good with the
bad words. I knew that the pejorative Spanish word for homo-
sexual was maricon, which rhymes nicely with Peron. So, when-
ever Senor Peron stepped grandly onto his balcony and began to
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AVA GARDNER
harangue his nonexistent supporters, Reenie and I and whatever
other servants were around formed our personal opposition party
by chanting in unison, "Perdw es un mancon. Perdw es un mari-
con" After all, if you're involved in politics, you've got to expect
a certain amount of opposition. If the son of a bitch wanted to
make a comeback as the dictator of Argentina, let him rehearse
in a studio like any other performer.
But if I thought this was the end of Senor Peron, it was because
I had no idea of how powerful he was. One morning I was in-
vited to come to a nearby American base for a flyby, with these
wonderful young men doing formation flying, which looked al-
most suicidal to me. When they finally landed, each plane's nose
was poised right over a cold bottle of beer.
I signed autographs for these guys, smiled, and did the usual
things. There was supposed to be a beer party afterward, but for
some reason, regulations or superstition, I was never sure which,
they couldn't invite me to it. The boys were very nice, and so
upset that they had to include me out that I suggested they collect
their wives and girlfriends and head on over to my place for a
party of our own.
They gathered in my lounge, about a dozen handsome young
kids in uniform with wings on their tunics and pretty women on
their arms. Gleefully, they showed me the present they'd brought:
an orange flying suit with the special shoulder insignia of a one-
star general in the U.S. Air Force. They didn't say if they'd re-
ceived the proper authorization for this stunt, but the suit fitted
perfectly, and as far as I was concerned I was the first female one-
star general in the Air Force's whole damn history.
As I opened the door to let in one more guest, I noticed the
Peron broad sailing past with her nose in the air and her pair of
yippy lap dogs yipping their way down the stairs. So I said to my
two dogs, both very aristocratic corgis, "Go get those two little
mutts!" As if on cue, they dashed down the stairs, making lots of
noise, but I don't think they ever attacked or hurt the Peron dogs.
The next thing 1 knew — it couldn't have been more than ten
minutes later — the doorbell rang and my secretary came back to
tell me, "Ava, there's a bunch of Guardia Civil out there looking
very serious." So I strolled out, feeling very formidable in my
orange flying suit, smiled and said, "Can I help you?"
There were four Guardia Civil in their black capes and intim-
274
AVA: MY STORY
idating three-cornered hats, as well as an officer, and it was the
officer who said, "We are here to arrest the owner of this apart-
ment, all the servants, and all the guests." And, we learned later,
there was a line of police cars waiting outside for just that pur-
pose.
"How interesting," I said. "Why don't you come inside and
have a drink."
They came inside, but brother, they didn't look like they were
in a drinking mood. The sight of all these American fliers, how-
ever, changed the atmosphere, even though you wouldn't have
known it by looking at the Guardia's stern faces. The officer was
polite and courteous. A quick nod, a few muttered phrases, and
they were filing out through the door again. But we were that
close to having landed in jail. And that's how close Peron was to
Francisco Franco, the man who pushed all the buttons in Spain.
The case was officially closed, I suppose, but it continued to
rankle me. I mean, Jesus Christ, here's Franco welcoming this
little tinpot dictator, setting him up in an apartment, and allow-
ing him to orate any time he damn well pleased from the balcony
next to mine, and when my poor little dogs open their mouths
it's a goddamn international incident.
Other things about Spain began to bother me as well. For
starters, nothing works there. It doesn't matter who you are or
how much money you've got, you can't find a telephone that
functions properly. And I doubt if even the Duchess of Alba has a
toilet that works. Not to mention that I hadn't made a single
close friend there in all those years.
So, when some time later the tax authorities arrived on my
doorstep demanding something like a million dollars in back
taxes, I was not exactly in the most receptive frame of mine, es-
pecially since as far as I knew I'd been paying my damn taxes
every year. They were insistent, however, and since the idea of
getting embroiled in lawsuits with the local authorities gave me
the shudders, I packed up and moved to London in 1968 and
never looked back.
Since that first visit on my way to Pandora and the Flying
Dutchman, I've always loved London. So it rains sometimes. It
rains everywhere sometimes. And I happen to like the rain. More
important, the British leave you alone. They take three or four
photographs when you arrive and then they forget you exist. It's
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AVA GARDNER
a very civilized town. If I choose to walk down the street or go
across the park with my dog, nobody bothers me. When people
do recognize me, they smile and nod their heads, which is a hell
of a lot different from the treatment I've been used to.
And whenever I needed the loot, I took a deep breath and
agreed to some film work. Naturally, I turned down more roles
than I accepted, including the one that was such a wonderful
success for Anne Bancroft in The Graduate. And to be honest,
the ones I accepted were often for all the wrong reasons.
When the chance for a cameo as Lily Langtry in John Huston's
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean came up in 1971, for
instance, I was planning to go waterskiing in Acapulco around
that time anyway, so I figured I might as well let them pay for the
trip and a few other things besides.
And when I was offered Earthquake a few years later, I was
sitting in London feeling very fed up because the weather was
dreadful and energy shortages meant I had no hot water or heat.
Suddenly the idea of making a film again in Hollywood sounded
like fun. I was just ready for a change of scenery.
I got a bigger change of scenery than I bargained for in 1975,
when I agreed to fly to the Soviet Union and take a small role in
George Cukor's The Blue Bird. I was told the assignment would
last three weeks. It turned out to be three months of unending
Russian monotony.
Before I got over there, I was under the impression that all
Russians were hard workers. Jesus! They never appeared on time,
took no pride in their work, nothing. It was the saddest country
Pve ever been in. One day Reenie and I were sitting in what was
supposed to be a dressing room, and I said, "Fm going to sit here
in this window and smile at every Russian that passes. And I
won't give up until I make one Russian smile back at me." I even
waved at them and said hello. Did I get even a single smile back?
Not on your life. When we all finally arrived back in London, I
swear to you I saw several members of our crew fall to their
knees and kiss the ground. You've never seen so many people
happy to be back home.
276
THIRTY-TWO
nless you count television, which I don't,
it's been a good half dozen years since I
made a motion picture. And honey, if
you think I miss the business, you had better think again.
I live my life now according to my own standards. In all my
life I've never stuck to a schedule of any kind, and I'm not about
to start now. I am really an uncomplicated person. I like to live
simply and out of the public eye. I enjoy my privacy enormously.
I'm not the playgirl I used to be. And though I do miss the cud-
dles a man in my life would mean, other than that I prefer to be
alone.
I do, however, have a lot of friends in London, what the En-
glish call "chums." Really good friends, so I'm far from lonely.
We have dinner at our homes or, if we go out, it's to places where
we won't be disturbed. Thank God, I'm not a public figure here.
If I have to, as I once did, slip into a robe and, with my hair
looking a mess, steal down the street to a friend's house to bathe
because he had hot water and I didn't, people pretend not to
notice me on the street. God bless the English. I even once re-
ceived a letter addressed simply to "Ava Gardner, Hyde Park,
London." And some character at the Post Office had scrawled
across the envelope, "Which bench?"
Actually, my apartment in Ennismore Gardens in
Knightsbridge suits me so well I hate to leave it, even for a park
bench. It takes up the entire second floor of a converted Victorian
building, with one huge room living/dining room running from
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AVA GARDNER
front to back and corridors branching off to the kitchen and bed-
rooms that are happily pressed into service when Bappie, who
now lives in Los Angeles, or Reenie, who moved to Sacramento,
comes for a visit.
The place is decorated in Oriental style, with huge screens, tall
vases, and massive chests, but I made sure to place comfortable
armchairs on either side of the fireplace where I can sit around in
jeans and a shirt, reading, listening to music, or doing crossword
puzzles. And though I'm not very big on mementos, there are
photographs of my favorite people all over the place.
The best thing about the apartment, however, is its floor-to-
ceiling French doors that open out onto the lovely gardens. They
each have a balcony, and Morgan, my current Welsh corgi, uses
one of them as his office, barking salutations to everyone who
passes by on the street below.
Morgan, who is named after Jess Morgan, my friend and fi-
nancial adviser, is really one of the joys of my life. I make sure he
never runs out of his favorite treat (raw carrots, of all things),
I've scribbled him cards when I've been out of town, and I've
always enjoyed taking him on long daily walks. We'd often trek
into Hyde Park, where like a good fellow he'd fetch his ball for
as long as I had the energy to keep tossing it out there.
When Morgan and I are at home, I'm likely as not to wander
over to the television and see what's on. Every once in a while
one of my old films will turn up and I'll think, God, I was pretty,
wasn't I? The beauty thing was fun — it's always nice to be told
you're beautiful — but honestly, I think I look much more inter-
esting now. I don't hanker after lost youth or any of that rubbish.
And I'll never be one of those women who look in mirrors and
weep.
There is something I resent about age, however, and that's that
you can't do the things you used to be able to. Believe me, honey,
my days of staying up all night and then taking a shower and
plunging on are long behind me. But still, I really resent it when
people tell me I ought to cut down on this or that. Tell me to stop
drinking and 111 drink. Tell me to stop smoking and Fll smoke. I
once called John Huston, who'd been an outrageous smoker and
ended up living attached to a cylinder of oxygen, and asked him
when he finally gave up smoking. "When I had to, darling," he
said in that molasses voice of his. "When I had to."
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AVA: MY STORY
A few years ago, something happened to me that I never antici-
pated. I had a stroke, which affected my walking and made my
damn left arm just about useless. Having always been an active
person, if I'd fully realized that I was even partially paralyzed, I
would have jumped out of the window — if I could have made it
that far.
Instead, I went on. I had no choice: that's one lesson I learned
very early in life. You have to persevere. And I learned to com-
pensate, to take joy in sights and sounds and situations I once
took for granted. One thing Fve always known is that the process
of growing up, growing old, and growing toward death has never
seemed frightening. And, you know, if I had my life to live over
again, I'd live it exactly the same way. Maybe a few changes here
and there, but nothing special. Because the truth is, honey, Fve
enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time.
279
FRANKA
bout fifteen years ago I was asked to de-
sign the clothes for Permission to Kill,
one of Ava's films. You meet people, ei-
ther the chemistry works or it doesn't; and from that day we
became very great friends. There was something very human,
very vulnerable about her. I felt like protecting her, and then she
protected me. She never went to fashion shows before, ever. But
she never missed any of mine. She would just say, "Honey, I'll be
there." It was real support.
I would go out in the evening and she would say, "Oh, honey,
what are you wearing?" And the jewelry would come round and
I would wear it and the next day it would go back again. Or once
I was ill, I had a very bad cold, and she phoned me. It was almost
midnight, it was very ugly winter weather, and she said, "Honey,
do you have anything?" And there she was in a taxi, with the
medicine, with the hot soup, at midnight.
And this was the lady who gave me my wedding reception,
who gave me away. She was all dressed up in white, with a white
fox, wonderful, because she said, "I've been married three times
and I've never been in white, honey." The ceremony was very
early in the morning, nine o'clock, and she ordered a cab for
herself and Charles Gray, a friend who lived down the street. For
some reason, the cab didn't come. There were workmen on the
square, and she just went into their lorry and asked them, "Can I
go?" She arrived in that, with a workman driving them, and she
said, "Honey, even MGM could not have done it." When she
relaxed with people, she was terrific.
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AVA: MY STORY
Ava moved to London because she quite liked the privacy of it,
and the culture. In London you can choose the life you want, and
you are left alone to it. You don't feel that you have to do things
that you don't want to do. You're quite accepted if you don't.
I deal with lots of ladies, all those who are in front of the
camera. They can deal with people they are working with, and
the moment someone else comes from the outside they just
freeze. It's not just Ava; you'll find most of film stars are very
private people. It's a very tough journey when you really have to
continuously be it. And know that you are looked at. One is not
prepared always. When day after day, day after day, every little
scene that you do is reported, you just get fed up. Although being
a public person you understand that it has to be done, that
doesn't mean that people take it very easily. Ava would say,
"Honey, it's a bitch." Because sometimes it just gets too much.
But whether you feel like it or not, the public wants you. Ava
said that what it had become was sheer ugliness. She said when
they were in Hollywood, they were not allowed to smoke in pub-
lic, they were not allowed to do this and that. It was all about
beauty. And now they will photograph you only when they see
you in an awful pose, position, situation. The world has changed.
People like ugliness. They don't like perfection, they don't like
stars.
Ava really loved life. She wasn't negative about things; she was
the most completely passionate person. About everything. She
just loved beautiful things. Even clothes — she'd just enjoy them.
Everything was like she'd never had a dress before. A wonderful
quality. She hated, as we called them, the long faces, negativeness
in anything. She was positive. She would never say, "No, you
mustn't do that." It was "Just do it. You deserve it. Come on,
you must have it."
And she never ever said anything against or about anybody,
Never, never, never. Whenever she married, she loved the man
she married. And when it didn't work, it didn't work. It's as sim-
ple as that. And she had the kind of respect that she would never
allow anyone to say anything. I remember when she gave an in-
terview to someone who was divorcing and talking so badly
about her husband. She said, "Honey, I can't understand that
you could possibly talk like that. You must have loved him some-
time and you grew apart."
She liked in men a thing that is very difficult to find, a com-
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GARDNER
plete person where you could feel good about everything. Pro-
tected and loved, being able to share and to talk, not just the
physical side. And if you have one, it's very difficult to find the
other. When she was with a man, he had to be looked up to,
respected. She couldn't respect someone who was just hanging
around her. She couldn't. It would destroy her and she would
destroy him.
Today, you have these actresses who go to school and they
can't wait to get success. They can cope with it because they feel
secure. Ava, because it started so early in her life, she wasn't
quite ready for it. Very often she would sort of say, "Oh, well,
you know, honey, I'm just a movie queen." But she was a much
warmer person than these other actresses. She gave more to life,
and wanted more out of it.
I see her as this beautiful little girl who left Mama and Papa,
who was happy in her childhood, and had a sort of vision and
dream of something completely different. And suddenly she was
discovered and sent to this MGM. She called it not a factory, but
much worse. Like a prison camp — every name that is not nice.
They were absolutely tortured, treated like God knows what.
And that, she said, destroyed her. "We were exploited like ani-
mals," she said. "Just exploited."
So that wonderful beautiful girl, who was brought up with
freedom, with love, with everything, suddenly was like a flower
with a chain put around her. You are allowed to grow just that
way. You can't open your arms, you can't do what you want
naturally to do. So you suppress yourself your whole life. And
because of it, you simply try to run away. That maybe is where
alcohol came in, because through struggling and running and not
being able to be yourself, you need to get the simple courage to
get into another room.
You look to life for that something that was there in your
childhood. And you cannot find it. This fame makes you like an
animal, really, like a hunted animal. You're just beautiful, you're
not allowed to be yourself. I think it was very, very difficult for
Ava to live that life. She was a free woman, she couldn't be
locked in.
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MEARENE JORDAN
y older sister was working for Miss G.
around the time she was married to
Artie Shaw. When my sister found she
had to go back to Chicago, she said, "Reenie, why don't you
work for Ava? She's such a sweet little girl and she needs some-
body that she can trust. She's going through some terrible times."
I began working for Miss G. in 1947 or 1948 and we were just
pals from day one. We could get mad at one another, but we
never stopped speaking. All these years, whether we were to-
gether or not, that was the one thing we had. I guess that's why
we remained friends.
She was fun, and very sharing. If I ever made her anything,
from a cup of coffee to a martini, she'd say, "Well, where's
yours?" She wasn't what we thought of as the stereotypical
Southerner. We'd go to clubs during the time before integration,
and if they threw me out, she'd leave, too. So to keep her, they'd
tolerate me.
We were both Capricorns, and Capricorns just work with the
present. Sometimes I'd wake her up and she'd say, "Oh, shit,
what's today gonna bring?" She was like that. She never said
tomorrow or yesterday. It was "Do I want to face this day?"
Then sometimes she'd cover her head back up.
Her work was, as she would say, a paycheck. She knew this
was the only work she could do where she could make a decent
living, and she'd say, "If you can get me there, Reenie, I'll work."
And sometimes getting her to the set was a major difficulty. She
did not like working. Period.
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AVA GARDNER
"Fm not going today," she'd say. "Call 'em up. Tell 'em any-
thing."
"You've got to be kidding, lady. You know you got to go.
Why do you do this?"
"Fm not going. Tell 'em anything"
"Okay, if you don't go, Fm going to sing." And then she'd get
up, because she knew I was a lousy singer. We played games like
that. Once she got there, she would act as if there was no place
she'd rather be. I could have socked her. . . . But my God, some-
times to get her there.
If a producer or somebody offered her a script, if she didn't
want to do it she didn't care how much money was involved, she
just wouldn't do it. Wouldn't discuss it, wouldn't even look at it.
In Spain they had a hamburger place called Pam-Pam and she
would say, "I might end up working in Pam-Pam, but Fm not
going to do anything I don't want to do." It didn't bother her
one bit.
She was a very demanding person at times. She wanted com-
plete loyalty; that's why she didn't like a lot of people around
her. If six of us went into a restaurant and two over here were
talking quietly, saying, "Tomorrow, if it's not raining, we'll go
fishing," if she didn't hear what we were saying, she would think
we were maybe saying something concerning her that we didn't
want her to hear. She was very self-conscious that way.
And she loved to curse. It would just tickle her to put a whole
string of words together. "Not one word you've said makes
sense, you know that, don't you?" I'd say to her. "Why do you
have to say all of them? Why don't you just say one?"
She could change when she drank. It was like night and day
then. It was a thing we used to say: "Watch the third martini."
She would get more suspicious of the people around her. But she
had no dealings with drugs. She'd say, "Anything you can't get
out of a bottle of gin, you don't need." We had a code for it, we
called it the three G's: Good Gordon's Gin. She'd say, "Reenie,
do we have any of those three G's?" }
We just had codes for everything, especially people, so we
could talk all day and nobody would know who we were talking
about. Barbara Stanwyck, we'd call her Short Lips. Hugh
O'Brian we referred to as Tight-Ass. Robert Taylor was Mr.
Clark; Fred MacMurray, Mr. Gordon. One actor we called
284
AVA: MY STORY
Snowflakes. We had a director we called Cornflakes. We called
Deborah Kerr Miss Continuation because her voice never
changed from one film to the other. I won't tell you the name we
had for Elizabeth Taylor because she was a very sweet girl and
we loved her very much.
Miss G. was an extremely funny person. She should have been
a comedian. She could get fun out of the darnedest things, and
would nearly kill herself laughing. And she loved getting back at
people. When she and Eileen, her secretary, were in Africa for
Mogambo, they wanted to go to this club that was right across
the street from the hotel. But the club didn't want any actresses,
especially without an escort, so they kept saying they were filled
up.
Finally, she said, "Eileen, why don't you call and tell them that
you are Clark Gable's secretary and that Mr. Gable is coming in
out of the bush and he would like a table for about twenty-four
people?" Then she and Eileen sat by the hotel window and they
watched the waiters hustling to set the tables up. Of course,
Clark Gable had no idea; he didn't know anything about it. She
laughed about it for years. She'd say, "That's a just reward."
But I don't think she ever realized she was a star. People kept
telling her she was, but to her, she just worked in the movies. She
would say, "I take my paycheck, wash up, and go home." She
lived for years without any of the regular things that movie stars
have. If she didn't have a car, she'd get out and walk five blocks
and take a taxi to where she was going. There was often nothing
to remind her that she was a movie star.
She did become more movie-starrish in Spain. But she got tired
of that, got tired of the distance that that put between people,
and she finally got back to her old self. Sometimes we got in
situations where I was really frightened for her, as well as for
myself. We'd be out too late, trying to go home instead of staying
on, and the Gnardia Civil would stop us. And she had a flip
tongue sometimes, she'd tell them, "You tell Franco . . ." and all
that. Oh, my God, there was nothing timid about her. She had a
tongue for you if you messed with her; it could get icy. Yes, in-
deed, she could back you off of her.
Spain is where she got into her flamenco phase. I think she
liked it so much because it annoyed everybody else, I really do.
She knew it drove everybody else up the wall. And once she left
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AVA GARDNER
Spain, she couldn't have cared less about that mess, she turned
off it that quick.
Wherever we went, she could always find Gypsies. While we
were in Australia for On the Beach, she found this little Gypsy
fella, he had two girls with him, and they'd come back to the
house and do the doggonedest flamenco. I wasn't too fond of it,
but it didn't bother me. I could roll with the punches because she
and I were the same age. But Bappie, being older, she hated it,
and Ava would make me go down and wake her up because we
were having a flamenco. She would be cussin', "Goddamnit, god-
damnit, I'm so sick of this fucking flamenco." And I would say,
"Come on up and give us some claps."
We always had wine for the Gypsies — that's all they drank, the
cheaper the better. On this particular night, the music was going
and the gals were flamencoing, and the little guy was going
around and around. He grabbed Ava and she was going around
doing the paso doble with him. She got all excited and snatched
his hat off to put it on her head, and his hair was all in that hat.
The poor little guy felt the air on his head and knew he had been
uncovered. He was just a little short old man, he must've been
seventy years old.
When Ava looked down and saw all this hair, I thought she
was going to faint. She threw the hat down and tore out of there
and hid. The little man retrieved his hat, plopped it back on his
head and flew down the stairs with the two girls. They never
collected their money that night. And her sister continued to cuss.
"Goddamnit, serves her goddamn right. Goddamn Gypsies."
Boy, we laughed hard for years at that.
I've met all of Ava's husbands. She loved all of them, and she
was on a friendly basis with them afterward. One thing was, she
didn't take any money from them. Men always love you when
you don't get their pocketbooks.
Mickey Rooney was a funny little guy — she got a big kick out
of him. She saw him last year and she said, "Reenie, he's still the
biggest liar in the world. Poor Mickey, he cannot tell the truth,
he never could. But he's cute."
Artie Shaw was not fun. He was nice, but certainly nothing fun
about him. Now one thing Ava never referred to was nationality.
But this particular time, after she saw him in New York, she said,
"Reenie, when I think of how crazy I was about that man. When
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AVA: MY 5TOJRY
I saw him the other day, he was just a little ol' half-baldheaded
Jew. I don't know why I loved him, but he had me goin' so."
Howard Hughes was so rich he didn't have to dislike or like
anybody. He could throw a brick and hide his hand. He wasn't a
man, he was a giant in how he could rule people. He would go to
universities and get the best brains in there and hire them. These
poor guys thought they were going to be engineers or something,
and maybe a year later, he might call one of them up and tell him
to bring him a loaf of whole wheat bread or a can of figs. They
thought they were going to be working on airplanes, but he had
them for when and if he needed them. Ava liked him, she ad-
mired him, but I don't think she loved him. It was sort of, "I
don't mind."
Frank Sinatra, that was her big love. He was and is a lovely
man, and they did love one another so much. They really did. It
was too bad they just couldn't make it. There were not many
peaceful moments between them — they didn't have that kind of
temperament.
Little things, anything, could set them off. If he looked across
the room in a restaurant, she would swear, "Reenie, I saw him,
he was winking at a girl." Probably wasn't a girl in sight, but
she'd say, "I saw him give her the look." And the fight would be
on.
Or they'd be in her house down at the beach in Pacific Pal-
isades. He'd get mad and he'd call his man, Hank Sanicola, and
say, "Come get my clothes." So we'd put the clothes on a broom
handle, he'd be on one end, I'd be on the other, and by the time
we got the clothes in the car, he'd call downstairs and say, "Tell
Hank to bring my clothes back." They'd made up. And Hank
would get so mad. "Goddamnit," he'd say, "I wish they'd make
up their minds."
After he calmed down from the fact that he was famous and
all after From Here to Eternity, he always wanted her with him.
But, as he became famous, he took on this entourage of people.
And Ava couldn't deal with that, as she got older; she just
couldn't deal with a lot of people. He was always calling her up;
even when he was marrying Barbara, he called her several times
and asked if she would come back. She loved him; she just didn't
love some of the people that he had to have with him. The timing
was bad for them. That was the whole thing. Timing.
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AVA GARDNER ___
Now George C. Scott, he was a very dangerous man. He
would drink that vodka, oh, my God, he would tear up a place.
We were staying at the Savoy in London, and they went to see
Othello. I knew that was a mistake, because when he got full of
his liquor, he would relive these horrible things. So they came
back and naturally, he thought he was Othello. He was pounding
on her and finally she got away from him and ran into her bed-
room.
I was in the adjoining room, and I heard her calling to me. But
he was sitting on the couch in the living room right by the little
hall to her room and dared me to pass. At first I ignored him, I
said, "She's calling me, I have to go, that's what I'm getting paid
for." And he took a glass and broke it and got right in my face,
waving this broken glass and saying, "You gonna go by? You
goin' by? Come on by, come on by." And I realized, my God, he
was serious, so I backed off.
I had cased the place and I remembered that there was a little
window over the bathroom that went into the main hallway. So 1
left the room and got a bus boy and he got some orange crates. I
eased up to the window, pried it open, and slid down to the tub.
She had the door closed, and I opened it and just popped my
finger a little bit to get her attention. 1 got her up over the tub
and out the window and then I followed. You think that's scary?
You should have been there.
One thing about Miss G., though, she was not a sad person at
all. Even last May, when she was quite crippled. She couldn't use
her left arm at all, she would just have to carry it around. Or she
would be sitting on it and couldn't get up. "Come here and get
this fucker out from under me," she'd say. "I can't do a goddamn
thing with it. One of these days I'm going to take a knife and
chop the fucker off." She'd want to see your expression when she
said it, and then she'd fall out laughing later. She could even find
fun in an arm that wouldn't move.
We'd go to the park with her dog, and it took us forever to
walk there, bumping against one another, because I don't walk
too good myself at times. We walked a little too far one day, just
talking about old times and laughing, and coming back she said,
"I'm kinda tired."
"Well, I am, too," I said. "You think we can make it to that
bench over there?"
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AVA: MY STORY
"I don't think I can make it, Reenie. Let's sit down and rest a
bit."
Without thinking, we both plunked down on the ground. Of
course, after we rested, we couldn't get up. Here we are, two
cripples, trying to get up. We had to roll over and crawl to the
nearest tree. The dog is having a fit, "Yap-yap-yap-yap-yap," and
Ava is saying, "If the fucker would shut up, everybody wouldn't
see us."
We finally got close enough to the tree for me to pull myself
up. After I got my balance I went back and got her. By then we
were laughing so hard water was running down our legs. She
said, "Reenie, did you ever think we would come to this?" And I
said, "No, never, never, never."
289
AFTERWORD
n January 25, 1990, Ava Gardner died of
pneumonia after a long illness in her be-
loved Ennismore Gardens flat. She was
just a month past her sixty-seventh birthday. Her long-time
housekeeper Carmen Vargas, and Morgan, her Welsh Corgi, were
with her when she died.
Ava worked for more than two years on her autobiography,
contacting old friends, organizing photographs, and filling some
ninety tapes. The Ava Gardner Living Trust would like to thank
Alan Burgess and Kenneth Turan for putting her reminiscences
into book form.
Burial took place in Smithfield, North Carolina, on January
29. As she expressly stipulated, Ava was buried in the Gardner
family plot, laid to rest among the people she knew and loved
best.
JESS S. MORGAN
Trustee
Ava Gardner Living Trust
290
FILMOGRAPHY
The facts in the following listing were compiled by James R. Par-
ish for The Hollywood Beauties (Arlington House). His research
is hereby gratefully acknowledged.
1942
WE WERE DANCING
Norma Shearer, Melvyn Douglas, Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman, Mar j one
Main, Reginald Owen, Alan Mowbray, Florence Bates, Sig Ruman, Dennis
Hoey, Heather Thatcher, Connie Gilchrist, Ava Gardner (Girl)
MGM
Producers: Robert Z. Leonard, Orville Dull
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Screenwriters: Claudine West, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel
Based in part on the play Tonight at 8:30 by Noel Coward
1942
JOE SMITH-AMERICAN
Robert Young, Marsha Hunt, Harvey Stephens, Darryl Hickman, Noel
Madison, Jonathan Hale, Joseph Anthony, Ava Gardner (Ringsider)
MGM
Producer: Jack Chertok
Director: Richard Thorpe
Screenwriter: Allen Rivkin
1942
SUNDAY PUNCH
William Lundigan, Jean Rogers, Dan Dailey, Jr., Guy Kibbee, J. Carroll
Naish, Connie Gilchrist, Sam Levene, Leo Gorcey, Rags Ragland, Ava
Gardner (Ringsider)
MGM
Producer: Irving Starr
Director: David Miller
Screenwriters: Allen Rivkin, Fay and Michael Kanin
291
AVA GARDNER . _____ —
1942
THIS TIME FOR KEEPS
Ann Rutherford, Robert Sterling, Virginia Weidler, Guy Kibbee, Irene Rich,
Henry O'Neill, Connie Gilchrist, Ava Gardner (Girl in Car)
MGM
Producer: Samuel Marx
Director: Charles Riesner
Screenwriters Muriel Roy Bolton, Rian James, Harry Ruskin
1942
KID GLOVE KILLER
Van Heflin, Marsha Hunt, Lee Bowman, Samuel S. Hinds, Cliff Clark, Ed-
die Quillan, Ava Gardner (Carhop)
MGM
Producer: Jack Chertok
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Screenwriters: Allen Rivkin, John C. Higgins
1943
PILOT NO. 5
Franchot Tone, Marsha Hunt, Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, Alan Baxter, Dick
Simmons, Steven Geray, Ava Gardner (Girl)
MGM
Producer: B. P. Fineman
Director: George Sidney
Screenwriter: David Hertz
1943
HITLER'S MADMAN
John Carradine, Patricia Morison, Alan Curtis, Ralph Morgan, Howard
Freeman, Ludwig Stossel, Edgar Kennedy, Ava Gardner (Katy Chotnik)
MGM
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Director: Douglas Sirk
Screenwriters: Peretz Hirschbein, Melvin Levy, Doris Malloy
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AVA: MY STORY
1943
GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE
Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Bela Lugosi, Ava Gardner (Betty),
Ric Vallin, Minerva Urecal
Monogram
Producers: Sam Katzman, Jack Dietz
Director: William Beaudine
Screenwriter: Kenneth Higgins
1943
YOUNG IDEAS
Susan Peters, Herbert Marshall, Mary Astor, Elliott Reid, Richard Carlson,
Allyn Joslyn, Ava Gardner (Girl)
MGM
Producer: Robert Sisk
Director: Jules Dassin
Screenwriters: Ian McLellan Hunter, Bill Noble
1943
THE LOST ANGEL
Margaret O'Brien, James Craig, Marsha Hunt, Philip Merivale, Keenan
Wynn, Henry O'Neill, Donald Meek, Ava Gardner (Hat Check Girl)
MGM
Producer: Robert Sisk
Director: Roy Rowland
Screenwriter: Isobel Lennart
1943
SWING FEVER
Kay Kyser, Marilyn Maxwell, William Gargan, Lena Home, Ava Gardner
(Girl)
MGM
Producer: Irving Starr
Director: Tim Whelan
Screenwriters: Nat Perrin, Warren Wilson
293
AVA GARDNER
1944
THREE MEN IN WHITE
Lionel Barrymore, Van Johnson, Marilyn Maxwell, Keye Luke, Ava
Gardner Qean Brown), Alma Kruger, Rags Ragland
MGM
Director: Willis Goldbeck
Screenwriters: Martin Berkeley, Harry Ruskin
1944
MAIS1E GOES TO RENO
Ann Sothern, John Hodiak, Tom Drake, Ava Gardner (Gloria Fullerton),
Donald Meek
MGM
Producer: George Haight
Director: Harry Beaumont
Screenwriter: Mary C. McCall, Jr.
1945
SHE WENT TO THE RACES
James Craig, Frances Gifford, Ava Gardner (Hilda Spotts), Edmund
Gwenn, Sig Ruman, Reginald Owen
MGM
Producer: Frederick Stephani
Director: Willis Goldbeck
Screenwriter: Lawrence Hazard
1946
WHISTLE STOP
George Raft, Ava Gardner (Mary), Victor McLaglen, Tom Conway, Jorja
Curtright, Florence Bates, Charles Drake
United Artists
Producer: Seymour Nebenzal
Director: Leonide Moguy
Screenwriter: Philip Yordan
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AVA: MY STORY
1946
THE KILLERS
Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner (Kitty Collins), Edmond O'Brien, Albert Dek-
ker, Sam Levene, John Miljan, Virginia Christine, Vince Barnett, Charles D.
Brown, Donald MacBride, Phil Brown, Charles McGraw, William Conrad
Universal
Producer: Mark Hellinger
Director: Robert Siodmak
Screenwriters: Anthony Veiller, John Huston (uncredited)
Based on the story by Ernest Hemingway
1947
THE HUCKSTERS
Clark Gable, Deborah Kerr, Sydney Greenstreet, Adolphe Menjou, Ava
Gardner (Jean Ogilvie), Keenan Wynn, Edward Arnold, Aubrey Mather
MGM
Producer: Arthur Hornblow, Jr.
Director: Jack Conway
Screenwriter: Luther Davis
Based on the novel by Frederic Wakeman
1947
SINGAPORE
Fred MacMurray, Ava Gardner (Linda), Roland Culver, Richard Haydn,
Thomas Gomez, Spring Byington
Universal
Producer: Jerr7 Bresler
Director: John Brahm
Screenwriters: Seton I. Miller, Robert Thoeren
1948
ONE TOUCH OF VENUS
Ava Gardner (Venus, Goddess of Love/Venus Jones), Robert Walker, Dick
Haymes, Eve Arden, Olga San Juan, Tom Conway
Universal
Producer: Lester Cowan
295
AVA GARDNER
Director: William A. Seiter
Screenwriters: Harry Kurnitz, Frank Tashlin
Based on the musical play by Kurt Weill, S. J. Perelman, Ogden Nash
1949
THE BRIBE
Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner (Elizabeth Hintten), Charles Laughton, Vin-
cent Price, John Hodiak
MGM
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Screenwriter: Marguerite Roberts
Based on the short story by Frederick Nebel
1949
THE GREAT SINNER
Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner (Pauline Ostrovski), Melvyn Douglas, Walter
Huston, Ethel Barrymore, Frank Morgan, Agnes Moorehead
MGM
Producer: Gottfried Reinhardt
Director: Robert Siodmak
Screenwriters: Ladislas Fodor, Christopher Isherwood
Based on the novel The Gambler by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1949
EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE
Barbara Stanwyck, James Mason, Van Heflin, Ava Gardner (Isabel Lor-
rison), Cyd Charisse, Nancy Davis, Gale Sondergaard, William Conrad,
William Frawley
MGM
Producer: Voldemar Vetluguin
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Screenwriter: Isobel Lennart
Based on the novel by Marcia Davenport
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AVA: MY STORY
1951
MY FORBIDDEN PAST
Ava Gardner (Barbara Beaurevel), Robert Mitchum, Melvyn Douglas, Lu-
cille Watson, Janis Carter
RKO
Producers: Robert Sparks, Polan Banks
Director: Robert Stevenson
Screenwriter: Marion Parsonnet
Based on the novel Carriage Entrance by Polan Banks
1951
PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
James Mason, Ava Gardner (Pandora Reynolds), Nigel Patrick, Sheila Sim,
Harold Warrender, Mario Cabre, Marius Goring, John Laurie, Pamela Kel-
lino
MGM
Producers: Albert Lewin, Joseph Kaufman
Director: Albert Lewin
Screenwriter: Albert Lewin
1951
SHOWBOAT
Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner (Julie Laverne), Howard Keel, Joe E.
Brown, Marge Champion, Gower Champion, Robert Sterling, Agnes
Moorehead, William Warfield
MGM
Producer: Arthur Freed
Director: George Sidney
Screenwriters: John Lee Mahin (uncredited), George Wells, Jack
McGowan
Based on the musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hamrnerstein II
1952
LONE STAR
Clark Gable, Ava Gardner (Martha Ronda), Broderick Crawford, Lionel
Barrymore, Beulah Bondi, Ed Begley, William Farnum, Lowell Gilmore,
Moroni Olsen, Russell Simpson, William Conrad, James Burke
297
AVA GARDNER
MGM
Producer: Z. Wayne Griffin
Director: Vincent Sherman
Screenwriter: Borden Chase
1952
THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO
Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner (Cynthia), Hildegarde Neff,
Leo G. Carroll, Torin Thatcher, Marcel Dalio
Twentieth Century— Fox
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Director: Henry King
Screenwriter: Casey Robinson
Based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway
1953
RIDE, VAQUERO!
Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner (Cordelia Cameron), Howard Keel, Anthony
Quinn, Charlita
MGM
Producer: Stephen Ames
Director: John Farrow
Screenwriter: Frank Fenton
1953
THE BAND WAGON
Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray, Jack Buchanan,
Ava Gardner (The Movie Star)
MGM
Producer: Arthur Freed
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Screenwriters: Betty Cornden, Adolph Green
1953
MOGAMBO
Clark Gable, Ava Gardner (Eloise Y. Kelly), Grace Kelly, Donald Sinden,
Philip Stainton, Laurence Naismith
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AVA: MY STORY
MGM
Producer: Sam Zimbalist
Director: John Ford
Screenwriter: John Lee Mahin
Based on the play by Wilson Collison
1954
KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner (Guinevere), Mel Ferrer, Anne Crawford,
Stanley Baker, Felix Aylmer, Robert Urquhart, Niall MacGinnis
MGM
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Director: Richard Thorpe
Screenwriters: Talbot Jennings, Jan Lustig, Noel Langley
Based on Le Morte d' Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
1954
THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA
Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner (Maria Vargas), Edmond O'Brien, Marius
Goring, Valentina Cortesa, Rossano Brazzi, Elizabeth Sellers, Warren Ste-
vens
United Artists
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Screenwriter: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
1956
BHOWANI JUNCTION
Ava Gardner (Victoria Jones), Stewart Granger, Bill Travers, Abraham
Sofaer, Francis Matthews, Marne Maitland, Peter filing, Edward Chapman,
Freda Jackson
MGM
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Director: George Cukor
Screenwriters: Sonya Levien, Ivan Moffat
Based on the novel by John Masters
299
AVA GARDNER
1957
THE LITTLE HUT
Ava Gardner (Lady Susan Ashlow), Stewart Granger, David Niven, Walter
Chiari, Finlay Currie, Jean Cadell
MGM
Producers: F. Hugh Herbert, Mark Robson
Director: Mark Robson
Screenwriter: F. Hugh Herbert
Based on the play by Andre Roussin
1957
THE SUN ALSO RISES
Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner (Lady Brett Ashley), Mel Ferrer, Errol Flynn,
Eddie Albert, Gregory Ratoff, Juliette Greco, Marcel Dalio, Henry Daniell,
Robert J. Evans
Twentieth Century— Fox
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Director: Henry King
Screenwriter: Peter Viertel
Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway
1959
THE NAKED MAJA
Ava Gardner (Duchess of Alba), Anthony Franciosa, Amadeo Nazzari,
Gino Cervi, Lea Padovani, Massimo Serato, Carlo Rizzo
United Artists
Producer: Goffredo Lombardo
Directors: Henry Koster, Mario Russo
Screenwriters: Norman Corwin, Giorgio Prosperi
1959
ON THE BEACH
Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner (Moira Davidson), Fred Astaire, Anthony Per-
kins, Donna Anderson, John Tate, Guy Doleman
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AVA: MY STORY
United Artists
Producer: Stanley Kramer
Director: Stanley Kramer
Screenwriter: John Paxton
Based on the novel by Nevil Shute
1960
THE ANGEL WORE RED
Ava Gardner (Soledad), Dirk Bogarde, Joseph Gotten, Vittorio DeSica, Aldo
Fabrizi
MGM
Producer: Goffredo Lombardo
Director: Nunnally Johnson
Screenwriter: Nunnally Johnson
Based on the novel The Fair Bride by Bruce Marshall
1963
55 DAYS AT PEKING
Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner (Baroness Natalie Ivanoff), David Niven,
Flora Robson, John Ireland, Harry Andrews, Leo Genn, Paul Lukas, Eliz-
abeth Sellars, Jacques Sernas
Allied Artists
Producer: Samuel Bronston
Director: Nicholas Ray
Screenwriters: Philip Yordan, Bernard Gordon
1964
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY
Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner (Eleanor
Holbrook), Edmond O'Brien, Martin Balsam, George Macready
Paramount
Producer: Edward Lewis
Director: John Frankenheimer
Screenwriter: Rod Serling
Based on the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II
301
AVA GARDNER .. —
1964
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA
Richard Burton, Ava Gardner (Maxine Faulk), Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon,
James Ward, Grayson Hall, Cyril Delevanti
MGM
Producer: Ray Stark
Director: John Huston
Screenwriters: Anthony Veiller, John Huston
Based on the play by Tennessee Williams
1966
THE BIBLE (...IN THE BEGINNING)
Michael Parks, Ulla Bergryd, Richard Harris, John Huston, Stephen Boyd,
George C. Scott, Ava Gardner (Sarah), Peter O'Toole, Franco Nero
Twentieth Century-Fox
Producer: Dino De Laurentiis
Director: John Huston
Screenwriter: Christopher Fry
Adapted from episodes from the Old Testament
1969
MAYMLING
Omar Sharif, Catherine Deneuve, James Mason, Ava Gardner (Empress
Elizabeth), James Robertson Justice, Genevieve Page, Ivan Desny, Maurice
Teynac
MGM
Producer: Robert Dorfmann
Director: Terence Young
Screenwriter: Terence Young
1972
THE BALLAD OF TAM LIN
Ava Gardner (Michaela), Ian McShane, Stephanie Beacham, Cyril Cusack,
Richard Wattis, David Whitman, Madeline Smith
American International
Producers: Alan Ladd, Jr., Stanley Mann
Director: Roddy McDowall
Screenwriter: William Spier
302
AVA: MY STORY
1972
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN
Paul Newman, Jacqueline Bisset, Ava Gardner (Lily Langtry), Tab Hunter,
John Huston, Stacy Keach, Roddy McDowall, Anthony Perkins
National General
Producer: John Foreman
Director: John Huston
Screenwriter: John Milius
1974
EARTHQUAKE
Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner (Remy Graff), George Kennedy, Lome
Greene, Genevieve Bujold
Universal
Producer: Jennings Lang
Director: Mark Robson
Screenwriters: George Fox, Mario Puzo
1974
PERMISSION TO KILL
Dirk Bogarde, Ava Gardner (Katina Peterson), Bekim Fehmiu, Timothy
Dalton, Frederic Forrest
Avco Embassy
Producer: Paul Mills
Director: Cyril Frankel
Screenwriter: Robin Estridge
1976
THE BLUE BIRD
Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Ava Gardner (Luxury), Cicely Tyson, Robert
Morley, Harry Andrews, Will Geer
Twentieth Century— Fox
Producer: Paul Maslansky
Director: George Cukor
Screenwriters: Hugh Whitemore, Alfred Hayes, Alexel Kapler
Based on the novel by Maurice Maeterlinck
303
AVA GARDNER __ _ __ _
1977
THE CASSANDRA CROSSING
Sophia Loren, Richard Harris, Ava Gardner (Nicole), Burt Lancaster, Mar-
tin Sheen, Ingrid Thulin, Lee Strasberg, John Philip Law, Ann Turkel, OJ.
Simpson, Lionel Stander, Alida Valli
Avco Embassy
Producers: Sir Lew Grade, Carlo Ponti
Director: George Pan Cosmatos
Screenwriters: Tom Mankiewicz, Katy Cosmatos
1977
THE SENTINEL
Chris Sarandon, Cristina Raines, Martin Balsam, John Carradine, Jose Fer-
rer, Ava Gardner (Miss Logan), Arthur Kennedy, Burgess Meredith, Sylvia
Miles, Deborah Raffin, Eli Wallach, Jerry Orbach
Universal
Producers: Michael Winner, Jeffrey Konvitz
Director: Michael Winner
Screenwriters: Michael Winner, Jeffrey Konvitz
1979
CITY ON FIRE
Henry Fonda, Susan Clark, Ava Gardner, Barry Newman, Shelley Winters,
Leslie Nielsen, Richard Donat
Sandy Howard— Bellevue Pathe
Producer: Claude Heroux
Director: Alvin Rakoff
1980
THE KIDNAPPING OF THE PRESIDENT
William Shatner, Hal Holbrook, Ava Gardner, Van Johnson
Safel Pictures
Producers: George Mendeluk, John Ryan
Director: George Mendeluk
Screenwriter: Richard Murphy
Based on a novel by Charles Templeton
304
AVA: MY STORY
1981
PRIEST OF LOVE
Ian McKellan, Janet Suzman, Sir John Gielgud, Ava Gardner
Filmways Pictures Inc.— Enterprise Pictures Ltd.
Producer: Stanley J. Seeger
Director: Christopher Miles
Screenwriter: Alan Plater
TELEVISION
1985
KNOT'S LANDING
CBS
1985
A.D.
NBC
1985
THE LONG HOT SUMMER
NBC
1986
MAGGIE
CBS
305
INDEX
Albert, Eddie, 300
Alerton, Dick, 23
Alsop, Stewart, 240
Ames, Stephen, 298
Anderson, Donna, 300
Andrews, Harry, 301, 303
Andrews Sisters, 29
Anthony, Joseph, 291
Arden, Eve, 295
Arnold, Edward, 55, 295
Astaire, Fred, 237, 238, 298, 300
Astor, Mary, 178, 293
Autry, Gene, 55, 262
Aylmer, Felix, 299
Bailey, Charles W. II, 301
Baker, Stanley, 299
Balsam, Martin, 301, 304
Bancroft, Ann, 276
Banks, Polan, 297
Barnett, Vince, 295
Barrymore, Ethel, 39, 296
Barrymore, Lionel, 39, 62, 294, 297
Barton, Ben, 160
Basic, Count, 120
Bates, Florence, 291, 294
Baxter, Alan, 292
Beacham, Stephanie, 302
Beaudine, William, 293
Beaumont, Harry, 294
Begley,Ed,297
Bergryd, Ulla, 302
Berkeley, Martin, 294
Berman, Pandro S., 296, 299
Birmingham, Stephen, 266-272
Bisset, Jacqueline, 303
Bogarde, Dirk, 301, 303
Bogart, Humphrey, 38, 195, 196, 299
Bolton, Muriel Roy, 292
Bondi, Beulah, 297
Bose, Lucia, 223
Bowman, Lee, 291, 292
Boyd, Stephen, 302
Brahm, John, 295
Brando, Marlon, 194
Brazzi, Rossano, 299
Bresler, Jerry, 295
Bronston, Samuel, 301
Brown, Charles D., 295
Brown, Joe E., 297
Brown, Phil, 295
Buchanan, Jack, 298
Buck, Joyce, 99
Buck, Jules, 99-101
Bucquet, Harold, 61
Bull, Clarence, 43, 44
Bujold, Genevieve, 303
Burgess, Alan, 290
Burke, James, 297
Burns, Lillian, 44, 45, 111, 142-143,
145
Burns, Robert, 263
Burton, Richard, 62, 247-249, 266,
302
Byington, Spring, 295
307
INDEX
Cabre, Mario, 137-139, 154, 297
Cadell, Jean, 300
Caiias, Maria, 123, 143,
Cansino, Margarita. See Hayworth,
Rita
Cardiff, Jack, 197
Carlson, Richard, 293
Carradine, John, 292, 304
Carroll, Leo G., 298
Carter, Janis, 297
Cervi, Gino, 300
Champion, Gower, 297
Champion, Marge, 297
Chapman, Edward, 299
Charisse, Cyd, 296, 298
Chariita, 298
Chase, Borden, 298
Chertok, Jack, 291, 292
Chiari, Waiter, 223, 230, 231, 240,
300
Christine, Virginia, 295
Clark, Cliff, 292
Clark, Susan, 304
Cohn, Harry, 177-178
Cohn, Joan, 177-178
Cole, Ben, 172-175, 222
Collins, Joan, 194
Collison, Wilson, 299
Comden, Betty, 298
Conrad, William, 295-297
Conway, Jack, 104, 295
Conway, Tom, 294, 295
Cooper, Jackie, 55
Cortesa, Valentina, 299
Corwin, Norman, 300
Cosmatos, George Pan, 304
Cosmatos, Katy, 304
Cotten, Joseph, 301
Cowan, Lester, 295
Coward, Noel, 291
Craft, Art, 90
Craig, James, 293, 294
Crawford, Anne, 299
Crawford, Broderick, 297
Crawford, Joan, 39, 42
Creech, Al (nephew), 6-8, 14, 34
Creech, Elsie Mae Gardner (sister), 2,
6, 34
Crowther, Bosley, 188
Cukor, George, 212, 216, 218, 276,
299, 303
Culver, Roland, 295
Currie, Finlay, 300
Curtis, Alan, 292
Curtright, Jorja, 294
Cusack, Cyril, 302
Dahl, Arlene, 110-113
Dailey, Dan, Jr., 291
Dalio, Marcel, 298, 300
Dalton, Timothy, 303
Dandridge, Dorothy, 143
Daniell, Henry, 300
Dassin, Jules, 293
Davenport, Marcia, 296
Davis, Bette, 200, 242, 251
Davis, Luther, 295
Davis, Nancy, 296
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 199
Dawn, Jack, 40, 41
De Carlo, Yvonne, 106
De Laurentiis, Dino, 253, 302
De Medicis, Catherine, 11
De Sica, Vittorio, 301
Dean, James, 126
Dekker, Albert, 295
Delevanti, Cyril, 302
Deneuve, Catherine, 302
Desny, Ivan, 302
Dietz, Jack, 293
Doleman, Guy, 300
Dominguin, Luis Miguel, 201-208,
222-223, 231
Donat, Richard, 304
Dorfmann, Robert, 302
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 91, 242, 296
Douglas, Kirk, 301
Douglas, Melvyn, 242, 243, 291, 296,
297
Drake, Charles, 294
Drake, Tom, 294
Duff, Howard, 105, 106, 118, 128,
146
Duhan, Barney, 30-31
Dull, Orville, 291
Durbin, Deanna, 40, 48
INDEX
Eddy, Nelson, 141
Eldridge, Roy, 98
Estridge, Robin, 303
fitting, Ruth, 204
Evans, Robert, 227, 300
Fabray, Nanette, 298
Fabrizi, Aldo, 301
Fairbanks, Douglas, 55
Farnum, William, 297
Farrow, John, 298
Fehmiu, Bekim, 303
Fenton, Frank, 298
Ferber, Edna, 140
Fernandez, Emilio, 250
Ferrer, Jose, 303
Ferrer, Mel, 227, 299, 300
Fineman, B. R, 292
Fitzgerald, Ella, 29, 143
Flynn, Errol, 227, 228, 300
Fodor, Ladislas, 296
Fonda, Henry, 28, 304
Fonda, Jane, 303
Ford, Henry II, 104
Ford, John (Jack), 181-185, 299
Foreman, John, 303
Forrest, Frederic, 303
Fox, George, 303
Franciosa, Anthony, 236, 300
Francis, Arlene, 167
Franco, Francisco, 275
Franka, 280-282
Frankel, Cyril, 303
Frankenheimer, John, 301
Frawley, William, 296
Freed, Arthur, 140, 141, 143, 297,
298
Freeman, Howard, 292
Freud, Sigmund, 91, 92
Froeschel, George, 291
Fry, Christopher, 253, 302
Gable, Clark, 23, 24, 32, 34, 37, 39,
40, 54, 61, 62, 102-105, 178,
180, 182-184, 190, 285, 295,
297, 298
Garbo, Greta, 39, 41-43, 118, 142,
169-170, 172
Gardner, Beatrice (Bappie) (sister), 2,
16, 21, 27-28, 31, 32, 34-35,
38, 40, 41, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56,
57, 64, 68-72, 76-81 102, 124,
128, 129, 133-136, 159, 160,
169-170, 172, 173, 203, 230,
231,258,260,278,286
Gardner, Elsie Mae. See Creech, Elsie
Mae Gardner (sister)
Gardner, Inez. See Grimes, Inez
Gardner (sister)
Gardner, Jonas (father), 3-5, 9,
15-17, 19-20, 36
Gardner, Mary Elizabeth Baker
(mother), 2-10, 13, 14, 16,
19-20, 24-27, 31-32, 34,
36-37, 55, 59
Gardner, Melvin (Jack) (brother), 2,
5, 12, 25, 36
Gardner, Myra (sister). See Pearce,
Myra Gardner (sister)
Gardner, Raymond (brother), 2, 9-10
Gargan, William, 293
Garland, Judy, 39, 47, 49, 123, 142
Garson, Greer, 39
Geer, Will, 303
Genn, Leo, 301
Geray, Steven, 292
Gielgud, Sir John, 305
Gifford, Frances, 294
Gilbert, John, 171
Gilchrist, Connie, 291, 292
Gilmore, Lowell, 297
Goheen, Robert F., 271
Goldbeck, Willis, 294
Gomez, Thomas, 295
Gorcey,Leo,64,291,293
Gordon, Bernard, 301
Goring, Marius, 297, 299
Goya, Francisco, 236
Grable, Betty, 55
Grade, Sir Lew, 304
Granger, Stewart (Jimmy), 213-216,
223, 299, 300
Graves, Robert, 224, 257
Gray, Charles, 280
Grayson, Kathryn, 49, 141, 143, 297
309
INDEX
Greco, Juliette, 227, 300
Green, Adolph, 298
Greene, Lome, 303
Greenstreet, Sydney, 103, 295
Griffin, Z. Wayne, 298
Grimes, Inez Gardner (sister), 2, 35,
55
Guest, Beatrice. See Gardner, Beatrice
(Bappie)
Guest, Charlie (brother-in-law),
78-81, 102, 128
Guilaroff, Sydney, 42-43, 110
Gwenn, Edmund, 294
Haight, George, 294
Hale, Jonathan, 291
Hall, Grayson, 302
Hall, Huntz, 293
Hammerstein, Oscar II, 141, 297
Hanna, David, 237
Harding, Warren G., 54
Harlow, Jean, 23, 178
Harris, Richard, 302, 304
Hauser, Gaylord, 170
Hawks, Howard, 67
Haydn, Richard, 295
Hayes, Alfred, 303
Haymes, Dick, 114,295
Hayward, Susan, 298
Hayworth, Rita, 114, 195
Hazard, Lawrence, 294
Heflin, Frances, 62, 82, 88, 90, 95
Heflin, Van, 62, 82, 95, 96, 292, 296
Hellinger, Mark, 84-86, 295
Hemingway, Ernest (Papa), 84-85,
98, 99, 165-166, 168, 201, 202,
204, 226-230, 243, 295, 298
Hemingway, Hadley, 226
Hepburn, Audrey, 188
Hepburn, Katharine, 142, 145
Herbert, F. Hugh, 300
Heroux, Claude, 304
Hertz, David, 292
Heston, Charlton, 301, 303
Hickman, Darryl, 291
Higgins, John C, 292
Higgins, Kenneth, 293
Hinds, Samuel S., 292
Hitchcock, Alfred, 86
Hodiak, John, 294, 296
Hoey, Dennis, 291
Holbrook, Hal, 304
Holden, William, 55
Holiday, Billie, 89
Hornblow, Arthur, Jr., 295
Home, Lena, 142-144, 146-148,
293
Howard, Sandy, 304
Hughes, Howard, 66-81, 105, 113,
127-128, 154, 157, 158, 160,
195,199,204-211,219,221,
223, 287
Hunt, Marsha, 291-293
Hunter, Ian McLellan, 293
Hunter, Tab, 303
Huston, John, 85, 99-102, 228,
246-256, 266, 269, 276, 278,
295, 302, 303
Huston, Waiter, 242, 296
Illing, Peter, 299
Ireland, John, 301
Iribarne, Manuel Fraga, 269
Isherwood, Christopher, 296
Jackson, Freda, 299
James, Rian, 292
Jeffries, Lionel, 217
Jennings, Talbot, 299
Johnson, Nunnally, 301
Johnson, Van, 62, 63, 292, 294, 304
Jones, Dick, 126, 159, 160
Jones, James, 177
Jones, Jennifer, 116, 226
Jordan, Bobby, 293
Jordan, Mearene (Reenie), 102, 117,
119, 123, 153-156, 204-205,
208, 215, 220-221, 248,
255-257, 276, 278, 283-289
Joslyn, Allyn, 293
Justice, James Robertson, 302
310
INDEX
Kanin, Fay, 292
Kanin, Michael, 292
Kapler, Alexel, 303
Karloff, Boris, 141
Katzman, Sam, 293
Kaufman, Joseph, 297
Keach, Stacy, 303
Keel, Howard, 141, 143, 297, 298
Kellino, Pamela, 297
Kelly, Gene, 124, 292
Kelly, Grace, 22-23, 178-181, 183,
298
Kennedy, Arthur, 304
Kennedy, Edgar, 292
Kennedy, George, 303
Kennedy, John R, 251
Kern, Jerome, 141, 297
Kerr, Deborah, 103, 247, 249, 266,
285, 295, 302
Kettman, Gus, 175
Keyes, Evelyn, 102
Khan, Aly, 195
Kibbee, Guy, 291, 292
King, Henry, 167, 168, 226, 228,
243-244, 298, 300
Knebel, Fletcher, 301
Konvitz, Jeffrey, 304
Koster, Henry, 300
Kramer, Stanley, 236-239, 244, 245,
301
Kruger, Alma, 294
Kurnitz, Harry, 296
Kyser, Kay, 293
Ladd, Alan, Jr., 302
Lamarr, Hedy, 147
Lamour, Dorothy, 55
Lancaster, Burt, 85, 86, 295, 301, 304
Lang, Jennings, 303
Langley, Noel, 299
Laughton, Charles, 145, 296
Laurie, John, 297
Law, John Phillip, 304
Lawford, Peter, 49, 58
Lee, Preston, 8
Leigh, Vivien, 263
Lennart, Isobel, 293, 296
Leonard, Robert Z., 291, 296
LeRoy, Mervyn, 296
Levant, Oscar, 298
Levene, Sam, 291, 295
Levien, Sonya, 299
Lewin, Albert, 137-139, 297
Lewis, Edward, 301
Lewis, Sinclair, 91, 104
Lombard, Carole, 54, 105
Lombardo, Goffredo, 300, 301
Loren, Sophia, 304
Lugosi, Bela, 64, 293
Lukas, Paul, 301
Luke, Keye, 294
Lundigan, William, 291
Lustig, Jan, 299
Lutz, Glenn H., 52
Lutz, Mrs. Glenn H., 52
Lyon, Sue, 247, 249, 250, 302
MacBride, Donald, 295
MacDonald, Jeanette, 141
MacGinnis, Niall, 299
MacLaine, Shirley, 121
MacMurray, Fred, 284, 295
Macready, George, 301
Madison, Noel, 291
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 303
Mahin, John Lee, 141, 179, 297, 299
Main, Marjorie, 291
Maitland, Marne, 299
Malley, Peggy, 120
Malory, Sir Thomas, 299
Mankiewicz, Joseph L., 194-198,
299
Mankiewicz, Tom, 304
Mann, Stanley, 302
Mann, Thomas, 91
March, Fredric, 301
Maree, Morgan, 268, 269
Marshall, Bruce, 301
Marshall, Herbert, 293
Martini, Mr. (Spanish teacher),
220-221
Marx, Samuel, 292
Maslansky, Paul, 303
Mason, James, 137, 296, 297, 302
311
INDEX
Masters, John, 212, 299
Mather, Aubrey, 295
Matthews, Francis, 213, 299
Maxwell, Marilyn, 62, 63, 162, 293,
294
Mayer, Louis B., 39, 41, 44, 48, 51,
52, 85, 103, 111, 140, 145, 267
McCall, Mary C, Jr., 294
McCarthy, Joe, 140
McDowall, Roddy, 261-265, 302,303
McGowan, Jack, 297
McGraw, Charles, 295
McGuire, Mickey. See Rooney,
Mickey
Mclndoe, Sir Archibald, 222,
233-235
McKellan, Ian, 305
McLaglen, Victor, 294
McShane, Ian, 302
Meek, Donald, 293, 294
Mendeluk, George, 304
Menjou, Adolphe, 295
Meredith, Burgess, 304
Merivale, Philip, 293
Meyer, Johnny, 67, 79, 195, 207
Miles, Christopher, 305
Miles, Sylvia, 304
Milius, John, 303
Miljan, John, 295
Miller, David, 292
Miller, Seton L, 295
Mills, Paul, 303
Minnelli, Vincente, 298
Miranda, Carmen, 47
Mitchum, Dorothy, 121
Mitchum, Robert, 119-121, 297
Moffat, Ivan, 299
Moguy, Leonide, 83, 294
Monroe, Vaughan, 32
Moore, Terry, 250
Moorehead, Agnes, 242, 296, 297
Moreau, Jeanne, 263
Morgan, Frank, 296
Morgan, Helen, 141
Morgan, Jess, 278, 290
Morgan, Ralph, 292
Morison, Patricia, 292
Morley, Robert, 303
Mowbray, Alan, 291
Murphy, Richard, 304
Naish, J. Carroll, 291
Naismith, Laurence, 298
Nash, Ogden, 114,296
Nazzari, Amedeo, 300
Nebel, Frederick, 296
Nebenzal, Seymour, 82, 83, 292, 294
Neff, Hildegarde, 298
Nero, Franco, 302
Newman, Barry, 304
Newman, Paul, 303
Nicolosi, Joseph, 115
Nicot, Jean, 11
Nielsen, Leslie, 304
Niven, David, 223, 300, 301
Noble, Bill, 293
O'Brian, Hugh, 284
O'Brien, Edmond, 85, 86, 195,
197-198, 295, 299, 301
O'Brien, Margaret, 293
O'Brien, Pat, 55
O'Hara, Maureen, 181
O'Neill, Henry, 292, 293
O'Toole, Peter, 255, 302
Odekirk, Glenn, 70
Olsen, Moroni, 297
Orbach, Jerry, 304
Orry Kelly, 116
Owen, Reginald, 291, 294
Padovani, Lea, 300
Page, Genevieve, 302
Parish, James R., 291
Parks, Michael, 302
Parsonnet, Marion, 297
Pathe, Bellevue, 304
Patrick, Gail, 291
Patrick, Nigel, 297
Paxton, John, 301
Payne, John, 55
Pearce, Myra Gardner (sister), 2, 7—8,
36-37
Peck, Gregory, 145, 166, 237-239,
241-245, 296, 298, 300
Peck, Veronique, 238, 259
Peralta, Angelo, 230
312
INDEX
Perelman,S.J., 114,296
Perkins, Anthony, 237, 238, 300, 303
Peron, Juan, 273-275
Perrin, Nat, 293
Peters, Susan, 293
Petersen, Les, 51—53, 56
Picasso, Pablo, 201
Plater, Alan, 305
Ponti, Carlo, 304
Porter, Cole, 89, 197
Power, Tyrone, 227, 228, 300
Price, Vincent, 296
Prosper!, Giorgio, 300
Puzo, Mario, 303
Quillan, Eddie, 292
Quinn, Anthony, 298
Raffin, Deborah, 304
Raft, George, 83, 84, 294
Ragland, Rags, 291, 294
Raines, Cristina, 304
Rakoff, Alvin, 304
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 11
Rameau, Hans, 291
Ratoff, Gregory, 300
Ray, Nicholas, 301
Raymond, Gene, 55
Reid, Elliott, 293
Reinhardt, Gottfried, 296
Rich, Irene, 292
Riesner, Charles, 292
Rivkin, Allen, 291, 292
Rizzo, Carlo, 300
Roberts, Marguerite, 296
Robeson, Paul, 141
Robinson, Casey, 165-167, 298
Robson, Flora, 301
Robson, Mark, 300, 303
Rogers, Jean, 291
Romm, May, 91, 92
Rooney, Mickey (husband), 39,
47-60, 63, 67, 79-80, 90, 97,
99, 105, 112-113, 122, 128, 286
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 55
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 55
Rosza, Miklos, 87
Rotunno, Giuseppe (Pepe), 236, 237,
239
Roussin, Andre, 300
Rowland, Roy, 293
Ruman, Sig, 291, 294
Ruskin, Harry, 292, 294
Russell, Rosalind, 55
Russo, Mario, 300
Rutherford, Ann, 292
Ryan, John, 304
Sachs, Lester, 160
Sachs, Manie, 159, 160
San Juan, Olga, 295
Sanicola, Hank, 130, 131, 153-154,
156, 159, 160, 287
Sarandon, Chris, 304
Schamm, Charlie, 41
Senary, Dore, 140, 142
Schenck, Marvin, 31—32
Schenck, Nick, 195
Scott, George C, 254-260, 268, 288,
302
Scott, Hazel, 32-33
Seeger, Stanley J., 305
Seiter, William A., 296
Sellers, Elizabeth, 299, 301
Selznick, David O., 116, 228
Selznick, Irene, 116
Serato, Massimo, 300
Semas, Jacques, 301
Sharif, Omar, 302
Shatner, William, 304
Shaw, Artie (husband), 69, 88-99,
102, 113, 125, 127, 129-130,
141? 143-144, 146, 154, 169,
283, 286
Shaw, Elizabeth Kem, 141
Shaw, Tommy, 250
Shearer, Nonna, 60-61, 291
Sheen, Martin, 304
Sherman, Vincent, 298
Shine, 14
Shore, Dinah, 142
Shute, Nevil, 236, 244, 245, 301
Sicre, Betty, 224-225, 270
Sicre, Ricardo, 270, 271
313
INDEX
Sidney, George, 33-34, 141, 142,
292, 297
Sim, Sheila, 297
Simmons, Dick, 292
Simmons, Jean, 213—214
Simpson, O. J., 304
Simpson, Russell, 297
Sinatra, Barbara, 287
Sinatra, Dolly, 150, 160
Sinatra, Frank (husband), 69,
121-131, 128, 138-139,
149-164, 167-176, 184-187,
189-193, 201, 202, 205, 207,
213-214, 233, 240, 254,
267-268
Sinatra, Marty, 150-151, 160
Sinatra, Nancy, 123-127, 149,
151-152, 157
Sinden, Donald, 180, 298
Siodmak, Robert, 86, 242, 243, 295,
296
Sirk, Douglas, 292
Sisk, Robert, 293
Skelton, Red, 122
Smith, Bill, 259
Smith, Madeline, 302
Sofaer, Abraham, 299
Sondergaard, Gale, 296
Sothern, Ann, 294
Sparks, Robert, 297
Spier, William, 302
Stainton, Philip, 298
Stander, Lionel, 304
Stanwyck, Barbara, 118, 284, 296
Stark, Ray, 246, 249, 251, 302
Starr, Irving, 292, 293
Statner, William, 304
Stephani, Frederick, 294
Stephens, Harvey, 291
Sterling, Robert, 292, 297
Sterling, Rod, 301
Stevens, Warren, 299
Stevenson, Robert, 297
Stewart, James, 39, 55
Stone, Lewis, 48
Stordahl, Axel, 160
Stossel, Ludwig, 292
Strasberg, Lee, 304
Strickling, Howard, 147-148, 191,
200
Sturges, Preston, 69
Suzman, Janet, 305
Tarr, Beatrice. See Gardner, Beatrice
(Bappie) (sister)
Tarr, Larry (brother-in-law), 27-31,
54, 79
Tashlin, Frank, 296
Tate, John, 300
Taylor, Elizabeth, 49, 111, 194, 248,
249, 285, 303
Taylor, Robert, 117-119, 128, 189,
284, 296, 298, 299
Templeton, Charles, 304
Teynac, Maurice, 302
Thalberg, Irving, 60-61, 137
Thatcher, Heather, 291
Thatcher, Torin, 298
Thoeren, Robert, 295
Thorpe, Richard, 291, 299
Thulin, Ingrid, 304
Tone, Franchot, 292
Tracy, Spencer, 39
Travers, Bill, 213, 215, 299
Truffaut, Frangois, 197
Turan, Kenneth, 290
Turkel, Ann, 304
Turner, Lana, 41-42, 44, 49,
125-126, 147, 172-175, 222
Tyson, Cicely, 303
Urecal, Minerva, 293
Urquhart, Robert, 299
Valli, AHda, 304
Vallin, Ric, 64, 293
Vallone, Tony, 126
Vargas, Carmen, 290
Veiller, Anthony, 85, 99, 295, 302
Vetluguin, Voldemar, 296
Viertel, Peter, 227, 300
Vogeler, Gertrude, 44—45
Vronsky, Stepan, 94
314
INDEX
Wakeraan, Frederic, 103, 295
Walker, Robert, 114, 116, 117, 295
Wallace, Henry, 145
Wallach, Eli, 178, 186, 304
Wallis, Hal, 97
Wallis, Minna, 97, 169, 170
Ward, James, 302
Warfield, William, 141, 297
Warren, Annette, 144
Warrender, Harold, 297
Watson, Lucile, 297
Wattis, Richard, 302
Wayne, John, 181
Weidler, Virginia, 292
Weill, Kurt, 114, 296
Weiss, Milton, 38, 47
Wells, George, 297
West, Claudine, 291
Whale, James, 141
Whelan, Tim, 293
Whitemore, Hugh, 303
Whitman, David, 302
Williams, Billy, 263
Williams, Esther, 49, 57, 142
Williams, Tennessee, 246, 248,
251-252, 303
Wilson, Warren, 293
Winsor, Kathleen, 97
Winner, Michael, 304
Winters, Shelley, 304
Wolff, Maritta, 82
Wynn, Keenan, 293, 295
Yordan, Philip, 294, 301
Young, Robert, 291
Young, Terence, 302
Yule, Joe (father-in-law), 50, 52
Yule, Joe, Jr. See Rooney, Mickey
Yule, Mrs. Joe (mother-in-law), (Nell
Pankey), 50-52
Zanuck, Darryl R, 165-167, 210,
226, 228, 298, 300
Ziegfeld, Flo, 141
Zimbalist, Sam, 299
Zinnemann, Fred, 62, 178, 292
315
(Continued from front flap)
Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter
Lawford, dancing at Giro's and the Trocadero
—and married to Mickey Rooney, the most
popular entertainer in America. And that was
only the beginning....
Over the next four decades Ava Gardner
would dazzle the world with memorable
roles in such film classics as Show Boat, The
Bible, and The Night of the Iguana. Here,
she recalls the early days, from posing for
cheesecake photos "sultry enough to melt the
North Pole".to battling stage fright with a shot
of bourbon, and from making The Snows of
Kilimanjaro and The Barefoot Contessa,
movies that brought her international fame,
to her Oscar-nominated performance in
Mogambo, playing opposite her screen idol,
Clark Gable.
Here, too, with characteristic candor, Ava
reveals her tempestuous private life: the three
stormy marriages that ended in divorce; the
passionate affairs with matadors and movie
stars; the complex twenty-year friendship with
eccentric multimillionaire Howard Hughes;
the romantic dreams, the doubts, the battles
offscreen and on; the wild times and, later,
the quiet times of a hard-living, hard-loving
screen siren who was called the most
irresistible woman in the world.
Jacket design © 1990 One Plus One Studio
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