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Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"

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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.

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

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.

Being a fan of film noir and mid-century American movies, I've read many film star biographies and autobiographies from that era. Compared to many other life studies, Lee Server's version of Ava Gardner's life is exceptionally well written and quite a page turner--you won't be bored. It is also a sad and empty story of a life not well lived, at least the way Server gives us the facts. Although what Server provides is well-detailed and supported by names and places, it becomes, in essense, the same story over and over: parties, drinking, sexual partners. I kept hoping for a bit more insight on Gardner's state of mind or her dreams of a life. It never surfaced, but maybe it was never there.

The title of Lee Server's bio of gorgeous Gardner flirts with some irony--one of the most beautiful love goddesses of the 20th century never really found love. She married Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra), and she had affairs with countless others--well, in the case of this book, she counted others. Server serves up a dishy, fact-laden, anecdote-ridden book that recounts, among other things, who screwed whom in Hollywood--and it's delightful! When Ava was asked how she could love the 119-pound Sinatra, she cooly responded, "19 pounds of him was c---!" In recounting her daze with Rooney, Serves tells us that Mickey described Norma Shearer, the doyenne of M-G-M, as "hotter than a half-f---ed fox in a forest fire." Ouch!
Scrupulously researched and related in specific day-by-day, movie-by-movie, man-by-man chronology, Gardner's rise and ultimate fade out reads like a faintly seedy Greek tragedy. Reputedly so beautiful that man were literally staggered at first sight of her, sexually liberated in a repressive time and repressive industry and rich enough to buy anything and anyone she wanted, Ava apparently spent a great deal of time alone--and lonely. Monogamy wasn't the strong suit of any of her husbands, and loyalty was not a quality well known in her profession, so she trusted no one. Without trust, love may have been impossible, but the sex was easy . . . until she became bored with that. Too much of anything becomes excessive, and the saddest thing about Gardner's life as related by Server is that though she had everything and was ultimately spoiled by her successes, there was little joy in her life. Towards the end, living alone and in relative anonymity in London, she worked only to support herself.
Citing the arc of Gardiner as a star and woman is the true fascination with Server's book. By the time she was 35, she had run through all three husbands, yet she lived until almost 70. She acted in movies for nearly 50 years, yet towards the end was forced to do wretched television soaps, such as Knot's Landing, and execrable European films. Love is Nothing is another saga of a lonely love goddess, yet a detailed, fascinating, and ultimately saddening read.

This is an enjoyable and interesting biography of a somewhat uninteresting subject. Ava Gardner was considered one of the great screen beauties but she herself was uninterested in a career and only made films for the money. Her interests were geared toward drinking, hard partying and men. I agree with the previous reviewer who said that the book could have been shorter if the author have supplied a list with the people who thought she was the most beautiful woman on earth. The reader is pounded with these statements over and over again and it gets to the point where they become unintentionally funny. My favorite was the quote from the person who said that she was so beautiful that it made his eyes hurt. Please! At 500 pages, it is a bit much but the author's writing is engaging and he manages to hold your interest even if Gardner's life mostly consisted of sex, booze and fighting with the men in her life and basically living it up in exotic locales such as Madrid and Mexico.

Lee Server is one fascinating writer. His exceptionally well written book, "Ava Gardner" is one to be savored! The author has an uncanny ability to capture Gardner in the most humane, respectable and revealing terms, while sharing fascinating behind-the-scenes first hand accounts that serve to show all sides of Gardner's life.

I've been enthralled with biographies since the third grade, and this one is beautifully written. There's a lot to learn and discover. Most importantly this book is especially flowing, interesting, and the kind of book you can't put down.

As Ava "lived large, long, and precisely as she wanted to" this book truly shares it all. This is an excellent biography about an incredibly interesting woman!

It's an apt comparison, but as darkly beautiful as she is, Angelina Jolie has nothing on Ava Gardner, a woman so stunning in her prime that she redefined the concept of what a screen temptress could be. When motivated by a strong director, she could be a fine actress as well. Unlike Christopher Andersen, whose recent hatchet job on Barbra Streisand reflects a bloodthirsty taste for the tawdry, celebrity biographer Lee Server does a far more thorough and fair-handed job in chronicling Gardner's turbulent life. Born the seventh child of a tobacco sharecropper in North Carolina, she was discovered in rather incredible fashion through a snapshot of her seen accidentally by a Hollywood talent agent. That single glimpse was enough for her to receive the studio build-up to become a starlet. In quick succession as her movie parts got bigger and more prominent, she married among the most powerful, high-profile and notorious men in show business - Mickey Rooney, then MGM's biggest box office draw; bandleader Artie Shaw, an intellectual elitist who wanted to transform her; and most famously, Frank Sinatra, her true soul mate in pleasure seeking. She also dallied with dozens of lovers, including Howard Hughes, Spain's leading bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, and in a particularly violent chapter, George C. Scott.

However, Server describes a far more complex woman than the men obsessed with her. She treasured close friendships with Ernest Hemingway and Henry Miller, writers who stirred her thirst for greater meaning in her life. And in spite of her hatred of film work, she delivered sterling work in her thirties and forties with "Mogambo", "On the Beach", "Seven Days in May" and "The Night of the Iguana". The author provides plenty of detail regarding her love of alcohol, sex and crude behavior, for example, urinating in the lobby of the Ritz Hotel in Madrid which caused her to be banished from the premises permanently. I would be hard pressed to say Gardner led anything less than a full life, truly the stuff of legend, but Server is rather indulgent in spending a voluminous 560 pages to tell her story. Granted he has obviously done an impressive amount of research, including new interviews with intimates and colleagues, but I have to believe only Gardner's most devoted fans are likely to be interested in all the information presented here. The resulting book is an intriguing account of not only a scandal-ridden hedonist with no regrets but also a proto-feminist who lived by her own rules. Taken from that perspective, the book is an eminently readable, warts-and-all tribute.

Server's book is one of the best on a film star that I have ever read. Well written and researched Server presents the story of Ava Gardner, a fine actress who, in my opinion, never got enough good roles. She was a wonderfully luminous presense on the screen and has always been one of my favorites. How could I not like a girl from North Carolina who, though raised on Tobbacco Road, voted for Henry Wallace and defied Tinseltown's racial norms by having black friends? Ava did things her way and though there was a lot of unhappiness she lived life to the full and everyone who knew her said that she was a great gal. Server is knowledgeable about her films and really makes that era of Hollywood come alive. His biography had everything you could want in such fare: sex, alcohol, temper tantrums and plenty of bad marriages and love affairs. But he obviously loves his subject and treats her with just the right blend of irreverence and respect. Reading this book is like talking with an old friend about a shared interest. I look forward to Server's next effort.