Ava Gardner

Starred review from April 22, 2013
Jaw-dropping anecdotes about film legends and the studio system in its heyday make this an irresistible read for Hollywood history buffs. A fiery beauty (1922–1990) who loved to fight (even with the author she hired), Gardner inspired uncanny devotion among colleagues, friends, and lovers. Of the latter, there were many, and even seasoned fans will learn fresh tidbits about ex-husbands Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, as well as her tumultuous relationships with Howard Hughes and George C. Scott. One of the more touching stories is of Gardner, self-conscious after a stroke left her face partially paralyzed, asking a famed cinematographer to set up flattering lighting prior to meeting with a publisher. Journalists will find the book of interest as it makes transparent the prickly process of ghostwriting. Evans (Bardot: Eternal Sex Goddess) shares the difficulty of sequencing the life of a movie star whose memory is failing and who angrily retracts batches of sensitive material that slip out during 3 a.m. phone calls. Gardner is funny and frank, and Evans’s diligence makes the book not only one of the more revealing celebrity autobiographies published recently, but a candid glimpse into the world of a ghostwriter, star handler, and late-night confidante. 8-page b&w insert. Agent: Ed Victor, Ed Victor Literary Agency

February 1, 2013

It's hardly surprising that lusty-voiced actress Gardner has secrets to spill, but this spill-all is said to be so notorious that it had to await her death to be published. Get ready for juicy opinions (second husband Artie Shaw was a "dominating son of a bitch," and Gardner fought constantly with third husband Frank Sinatra, who was nevertheless "good in the feathers"). So let yourself be seduced; what film fans could resist?

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2013
In 1988, only two years before her death, legendary actress Ava Gardner, then living in semiseclusion in London and running low on money, asked the late Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography: I either write the book or sell the jewels, and I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels. Gardner didn't want to do a sugarcoated memoir, preferring to tell it straight, the real story of the marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra, the multiple affairs (with Howard Hughes, among many others), the hardscrabble childhood in North Carolina tobacco country. But as the two met and Gardner began speaking of her life, it became clear to Evans that the actress was more reticent about telling it straight than she pretended to be. The conversations were uninhibited, to be sure, but Gardner balked at the finished chapters ( I sound too fucking vulgar ), leading ultimately to the project being abandoned. Shortly before his own death in 2012, Evans wrote this memoir of a memoir-in-progress, transcribing Gardner's recollections and providing connective passages setting the scenes. What emerges doesn't cover the sweep of the movie icon's remarkable life as fully as Lee Server's Ava Gardner (2006), but it does capture Gardner's indelible voicevulgar, yes, but humanly so as well as unfailingly witty and movingly melancholic. Finally, 25 years after the fact, we have at least a facsimile of the unbuttoned version Gardner claimed she wanted to tell. Movie buffs will be as transfixed by the actress' own words as they have always been by her drop-dead beauty on the screen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)