Peter Evans (4) (1933–2012)

Let's get it straight folks. This is not the proverbial biography of Ava Gardner as some reviewers were complaining about, it states on the cover the book consists of CONVERSATIONS with her. Conversations with the author for the intended book they were co-writing.
After spending uncountable hours with her in person and on the phone at all hours, she nixed it. Why? Because she wanted to maintain a public image that reality did not fit.
Ava Gardner was a whole hell of a lot of woman. Strong, show more opinionated, intelligent she called it like she saw it. Vulgar, brash, stunningly beautiful and fiercely herself- like it or lump it, men were intrigued and she had her share.
This book was written from a unique standpoint in that 1) both Ava and the author died before it was published and 2)it's not a whitewashed cleaned up bio for the masses...it's real. show less

This is far, far better than one would expect from the cover and the title. It’s absolutely Nabokovian in how the book is about its own creation; at least half of it concerns the author trying to cajole his subject into talking. And what a subject! Ava Gardner was a self-described broad when such a term was still used and comes across as sharp, foolish, tough, vain, sexy, lonely, insecure, sensible, and someone you’d love to have a drink with. It’s a terrific study of celebrity and show more reads like the inspiration for Sunset Blvd, although not as depressing.

There’s a laugh-out-loud line one every other page—but don’t lend this to your maiden aunt. show less

This wickedly candid memoir that Ava Gardner dared not publish during her lifetime offers a revealing self-portrait of the film legend’s life and loves in Hollywood’s golden age. “I EITHER WRITE THE BOOK OR SELL THE JEWELS,” Ava Gardner told her coauthor, Peter Evans, “and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.” So began the collaboration that led to this remarkably candid, wickedly sardonic memoir. Ava Gardner was one of Hollywood’s great stars during the 1940s and 1950s, show more an Oscar-nominated lead­ing 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 America’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 (“my shortest husband and my biggest mistake”). Ava then married band leader and clarinetist Artie Shaw, who would eventually marry eight times, but that marriage, too, lasted only about a year (“he was a dominating son of a bitch . . . always putting me down”). She carried on a passionate affair with Howard Hughes but didn’t love him, she said. Her third marriage was a tempestuous one to Frank Sinatra (“We were fighting all the time. Fighting and boozing. It was madness. . . . But he was good in the feathers”). Faithfully recording Ava’s reminiscences in this book, Peter Evans describes their late-night conver­sations 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. “If I get into this stuff, oh, honey, have you got something coming,” Ava told Evans. Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is the stunning story of a legendary star’s public and private lives. show less

A cold war spy novel with some unusual twists. Plenty of blood and intrigue, and though written in the more leisurely style of times past, it still grips the reader. It well captures the self-assuredness of the British upper classes, particularly in the realm of spying and the fate of empires.