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Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations (2013)

by Peter Evans(Favorite Author)

3.35 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1451627696 (ISBN13: 9781451627695)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is about as avant-garde as biographies get: Gardner reminisces about her past in a drunken, post-stroke attack haze via telephone to writer Peter Evans with topics ranging from her childhood to the Unholy Trinity of Husbands she married: Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. Gardner continuously procrastinates over how much she wants to reveal about all three men, which goes on for over 200 pages. Her affair with Howard Hughes goes into a fair amount of detail but the one with George C. Scott merely mentions his capacity for drunken violence and nothing more. Nothing terribly deep, alas.Published after both Ms. Gardner and Mr. Evans' death, this might be the only biography that comes with a spoiler at the end of the book in the... more epilogue written by Ed Victor. All I'm going to say about the spoiler is that if confession is good for the soul then Ava Gardner didn't have one.
review 2: A fascinating but incomplete account of Ava Gardner's life. The author attempted to ghost write Ava's autobiography in the final years of her life. This book is as much his story of trying to get a coherent history out of her as it is her story of coming to Hollywood. Her story ends here with Frank Sinatra, who probably interfered with her continuation with the author, who she discovered has once been sued in the 50s by Sinatra for libel. But even before Sinatra probably paid her off, she was tired of having to relive the past, exhausted by the process of recollecting for the author, and frequently embarrassed about her sex life if she said something too frank. We hear a lot about Mickey Rooney, a moderate amount about Howard Hughes, and some about Artie Shaw. She talks very little about her career other than her regret at not being in "The Graduate". There is no information here that was not included in Lee Server's "Love is Nothing", and if you really love Ava Gardner, it is depressing to hear about her post-stroke years when she was wracked with insecurity about her looks, just as she had been making somewhat of a television comeback. None of this is the author's fault. He played the hand he was dealt, and it is commendable that the book was finally completed. It does have value, but it is not particularly enjoyable. less

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