Ava Gardner was the sex symbol who dazzled the other sex symbols. Elizabeth Taylor and Lana Turner thought her the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide. Ernest Hemingway carried around one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento. Howard Hughes begged her to marry him: she punched his front teeth out. Her charismatic presence, jaw-dropping beauty and scandalous adventures fuelled the legend that she became. Yet she was a farm girl who became a reluctant goddess, and who retreated from the world's gaze for the last years of her life. Filled with fresh insights gleaned from interviews with Ava's colleagues, friends and lovers, this is the definitive biography of Hollywood’s most glamorous, restless and uninhibited star.
Author: Lee
Server is an American writer who has written several books about Hollywood and
cinema.
My thoughts:
I just had to introduce you to Ava Gardner's story! I have read two, maybe
three biographies of Ava, but this one is very well written and complete. It is
an overview of Ava the actress, the woman, the lover. I was eight or nine years
old the first time I saw her on the screen in a Sunday series of old black and
white movies. That is how I became acquainted with great movies and Hollywood
stars. I thought, and still think today, that Ava is the most beautiful woman
in the world. She was dark, exotic and had great sex appeal. Astonishingly, she
never underwent plastic surgery, she ate and drank like a man and she swore
like a trooper. She lived a free and passionate life, so passionate that Ava
invented her own rules. It will surprise you to learn that Ava never wanted to
be an actress, but fate, as many would have it, decided otherwise. I love this book and I feel that her life was
both exciting and chaotic, as she was prone to sabotaging her happiness. After
all, she did shut herself away in her own gilded prison. I strongly recommend
to you this excellent and heart breaking biography of a very shy farm girl who
became a barefoot goddess.
This sounds great! I love women like this, but why do they also tend to sabotage their own happiness? Is that the price of freedom for a woman? Maybe so.
ReplyDeleteI think it is subconscious behaviour, driven by the fear of letting herself fall for someone, of losing control and of being hurt. In addition, Ava thought that she was a bad actress and not an interesting woman. To make matters worse, she dated some cultivated men who thought she was just another pretty girl...thus increasing her sense of insecurity.
DeleteI think I'd enjoy this story. Thanks for the recommendation. :-)
ReplyDeleteI am sure you will enjoy it! :-)
DeleteI'm afraid I don't know her films very well at all, but your description of this biography makes me want to read it and discover some of her work.
ReplyDeleteReally? Ava was great but not as good as Vivien Leigh or Bette Davis. Here are a few suggestions 1) Mogambo - with Clark Gable, Grace Kelly 2) Pandora - with James Mason 3)The Barefoot Contessa - with Humphrey Bogart
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