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51 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Love is Nothing, June 8, 2006
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.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Venus From Mount Vesuvius, May 20, 2006
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.
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27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Love May Have Been Nothing, But Boozing It Up Was, November 14, 2006
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.
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