Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing" [Paperback]

Lee Server's brand new "Ava Gardner, Love is Nothing", is a proud companion to his comprehensive biography of actor Robert Mitchum. Trust me, "Love is Nothing" includes everything. Ravishing and famous in her time, Ava Gardner is, sadly, almost forgotten today. Gardner, a 5'6" barefoot tom-boy from Grabtown, North Carolina, had her photograph reviewed by MGM Studios in the late 1930's. She received a movie contract. MGM paid her $150.00 a week. But Ava languished at the Culver City, Calif. lot for years, taking bit parts and extra work. She was loaned-out to Monogram Pictures in 1943 for a small role in "Ghosts on the Loose", with Bela Lugosi. But then came a saucy portrayal as a mobster vixen in "The Killers(1946)" with Burt Lancaster. Her career took off. With success came money and recognition. And love. Two quick marriages to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw ended badly. Ava became jaded on love. But not on romance. Then she met Frank Sinatra. The young New Jersey crooner fell madly in love with Ava. But Frank and Ava were incendiary. And they liked to drink. Volatile and flighty, they were perhaps, too much alike. They could make love and argue in just a matter of minutes. On their wedding day, Frank and Ava broke-up and reconciled before the ceremony. Twice. Server's book details Ava's starring role in MGM's "Mogambo(1953)", with Clark Gable. Husband Sinatra tagged along with them, on-location, in Africa. Ava had to buy Frank's plane ticket. Sinatra was at the lowest point in his career. The marriage strained under the cross-currents of opposite business directions. Ironically, Ava was on the verge of stardom; Sinatra was just all played-out. Sinatra and Ava parted; the damage done. The scars of their love would haunt them both for the rest of their lives. Mediocre film roles followed. But, in 1957, 20th Century-Fox hired Ava to star in an adaption of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", the story of Jake, an American journalist, and his friends enjoying Paris in the 1920's. The movie co-starred

Tyrone Power, Eddie Albert, Henry Daniell, and Errol Flynn as Mike Campbell. Ava was stunning as Lady Brett, but it was Flynn, as the world-weary Campbell, who stole the show. Flynn delivered a textured performance as the dissolute playboy. His portrayal mirrored real-life. He died just two years later. More films followed for Ava, but she never overcame a deep insecurity about acting. And she drank. In 1968, due to tax problems, Ava moved from Spain to London, her final home for the next 22 years. She never forgot Sinatra(and, maybe, never stopped loving him). Frank Sinatra paid all her medical expenses after her 1989 stroke, which left her partially paralyzed and bedridden. This a long(560 pages) and detailed biography, but it's never boring, as Server dishes up every explicit morsel of this woman's amazing life. It may not all be true, but, then again, maybe it is.

Ava Gardner, under the mistaken belief that she

was having a date with director Howard Hawks, soon

learned that the tall, "rail thin" man with the

"rawboned face of a cowboy" was none other than Texas

entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Modestly amused by the

mixup, Hughes asked Ava out again, and they soon began

seeing each other "several times a week or more." But

let there be no mixup about Lee Server's powerfully

compelling portrait of Ava Gardner. The man, along

with his international contacts and sources, has

crafted a a complex portrait of a barefooted country

girl whose photograph in the window of a portrait

studio in New York ultimately captivated the world

with her beauty and the antics of her personal life.

Server's previous biography, Robert Mitchum, 'Baby I

Don't Care' , showcased his expertise with all things

film and noire, and AVA GARDNER allows him full venue

to elaborate in this ode to the Barefoot Contessa of

two continents. With a surplus of parentheticals and

bottom-of-the-page addendum, Server leaves tidbits

like Ava changed partners, always something new and

savory demanding a change to the next blank page

where something must be written. From Ava's best

friend in high school, to her last, closest chums in

London's high-brow Knightsbridge district, everyone

had something to say about Gardner's extraordinary

goddess-like beauty and her volatile personal

landscape.

This book reveals Gardner's inauspicious beginnings

deep in the red-dirt heartland of North Carolina, and

then provides the reader a world tour with the most

enticing brunette of the forties and fifties as she

emotes in private and on film. Hemingway, Sinatra,

Mickey Rooney, Lana Turner, Howard Hughes, Robert

Mitchum, Luis Miguel Dominguin, Esther Williams,

Fidel Castro, Judy Garland, John Huston, and many

others have their moments in the sol and sombra with

Ava. Only MGM central casting would have difficulty

finding all the extras for this moveable feast of a

book. The baked Alaska is Gardner's jagged frankness

and crisp retorts left unprintable in the 40's, 50's,

and 60's, but poured out on Server's pages like so

much tequila.

The rise of the paparazzi, the inspiration for La

Dolce Vita and the final cast for The Pink Panther

all had something to do with Ava Gardner. There are

sweet, candid remittances from BBC Television's Joanna

Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous fame, who was a castmember of

Roddy McDowall's first directorial effort, Tam Lin, which

starred Gardner in her forty-seventh year. Server's sources also

include past information from previously published

show business biographies that has been tweaked and

updated with scandal, certainty, and revelations from

Ava's personal friends (Spoli Mills, Betty Sicre) and

industry insiders like Gene Reynolds, producer of

television's M*A*S*H*, Hemingway pal A.E. Hotchner,

and Artie Shaw, Ava's second husband. But it was her

third husband she had the most difficulty releasing.

Server's depiction of Ava and Frank drops readers in

the minefields and mortar shells of a very personal

war that was unfortunately quite public, and it

leaves no profanity unmuttered. Credits rolled at the

end of their final love scene, and Server fills in

the spaces no one else dared or could.

With a list of 109 personal interviews and 24 pages of

sources, Server 's skullduggery into the nine decades

since Ava Gardner arrived in Grabtown, North Carolina,

on December 24, 1922, has revealed the Venus who often

erupted like Mount Vesuvius, leaving heartbreak

and despair in her wake. The only elements missing are

possibly the addition of more photographs and a desire

to see Ava Gardner, the actress and seductress, on

film again. The psychology of her alcoholism and her

regrets at the end of her life reveal the pain. But

her eternal beauty and her gypsy soul dance away the

night in the streets and clubs of Madrid. You can

almost hear the castanets.

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

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