Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

This wickedly candid memoir that Ava Gardner dared not publish during her lifetime offers a revealing self-portrait of the film legendâ€™s life and loves in Hollywoodâ€™s golden age.

â€œI EITHER WRITE THE BOOK OR SELL THE JEWELS,â€ Ava Gardner told her coauthor, Peter Evans, â€œand Iâ€™m kinda sentimental about the jewels.â€ So began the collaboration that led to this remarkably candid, wickedly sardonic memoir.

Ava Gardner was one of Hollywoodâ€™s great stars during the 1940s and 1950s, an Oscar-nominated leadÂing lady who co-starred with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Humphrey Bogart, among others. Her films included Show Boat, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Barefoot Contessa, and On the Beach. But her life off the screen was every bit as fabulous as her film roles.

Born poor in rural North Carolina, Gardner was given a Hollywood tryout thanks to a stunning photo of her displayed in a shop window. Not long after arriving in Hollywood, she caught the eye of Mickey Rooney, then Americaâ€™s #1 box-office draw. Rooney was a womanizer so notorious that even his mother warned Gardner about him. They married, but the marriage lasted only a year (â€œmy shortest husband and my biggest mistakeâ€). Ava then married band leader and clarinetist Artie Shaw, who would eventually marry eight times, but that marriage, too, lasted only about a year (â€œhe was a dominating son of a bitch . . . always putting me downâ€). She carried on a passionate affair with Howard Hughes but didnâ€™t love him, she said. Her third marriage was a tempestuous one to Frank Sinatra (â€œWe were fighting all the time. Fighting and boozing. It was madness. . . . But he was good in the feathersâ€).

Faithfully recording Avaâ€™s reminiscences in this book, Peter Evans describes their late-night converÂsations when Ava, having had something to drink and unable to sleep, was at her most candid. So candid, in fact, that when she read her own words, she backed out and halted the book. Only now, years after her death, could this frank and revealing memoir be published.

â€œIf I get into this stuff, oh, honey, have you got something coming,â€ Ava told Evans. Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is the stunning story of a legendary starâ€™s public and private lives.
Country USA
Brand Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Hardcover
PartNumber black & white halftones
Height 9
Length 6
Weight 1.04940036712
Width 1
ReleaseDate 2013-07-02
NumberOfItems 1

Country	USA
Brand	Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Hardcover
PartNumber	black & white halftones
Height	9
Length	6
Weight	1.04940036712
Width	1
ReleaseDate	2013-07-02
NumberOfItems	1

Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

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