Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"
by Lee Server
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Book Summary Information
Author: Lee ServerEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-15
ISBN: 0312312105
Number of pages: 560
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Book Reviews of Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"
Book Review: Portrait of a Siren
Summary: 5 Stars
First of all, let me say this is an excellent biography, a superb, superb read--magnificently done. What one comes to doubt is the worthiness of his subject. His subject is Ava Gardner. The first most obvious thing about her was her beauty--and it is a fact--she was one of the most beautiful women to ever star in a Hollywood movie. That much should be given to her, and testaments to her spectacular, disarming beauty are replete throughout the book.
Server excellently sketches us the portrait of this woman, whose persona was quite layered, and rife with contradictions. Ava--what could you say about her? First of all one starts with the physical aspect of her, which made her a veritable screen goddess and international star--and that singular beauty was a significant force in her life for several reasons. It firstly compelled nearly every man she ever knew to want her; and this dazzling beauty seemed to give her a seemingly endless line of credit with men. That is to say she was so beautiful that it allowed her to exhibit darker shades of her personality with impunity, and largely without consequence. She was a woman of extremes, of light and darkness. She was said to be initially shy with people, in that it was difficult for her to wade at first into social interaction--yet when she did gain that initial familiarity, she displayed an easiness of manner, an honesty, a genuineness, a down-to-earth charm that won her the fondness of a great many people. And yet, oftentimes the charm was simply a mood, only skin deep--when the mood would turn, and it inevitably did, she could be cold, callous, rude, brutal and direct if it sought her fancy. She could be tremendously ingratiating, and did not put on airs,--a trait which won her many a friend while filming this movie and that--and yet she was incredibly difficult to work with on the set, hypersensitive to the slightest disturbance, demanding outrageous perks which one would only expect of the most pompous star. Her beauty enabled her to treat men exactly as she pleased, with callousness, neglect, or outright abuse and yet they nearly almost always came back obediently for more, until she tired of them, or more rarely, they would at some point finally reach their threshold for the invective she dealt out.
Server points out that Ava was a flawed person whose belief in love was irreparably damaged from a miserable marriage to bandleader Artie Shaw. Shaw, a cold, arrogant, distant man, saw Gardner as a backwoods, ignorant country girl and despised her for her lack of education and sophistication; his contempt and scorn for her wounded her time and time again, until literally he could no longer endure what he considered her lack of intellect and dull, provincial ways and divorced her; and he seemed to be the one man whom Ava had wanted but ultimately whose approval she never won--an exception which would never be repeated again for the rest of her life. She projected a down-to-earth affability which she could alternate with a detached aloofness, which with her appetite for sex fooled many men into thinking she was in love when in reality she was only passing the time and opting against loneliness. Her beauty, spirit, and aloof detachment made her a positive obsession of Frank Sinatra, her husband in the 50s. At the same time Frank and Ava were possibly the very worst couple of that entire decade. Both suffered as it was from wild mood swings and lacked entirely a quality most people practice in major relationships--the ability to regulate or modify one's speech to a situation. Whenever Frank or Ava were upset, or frustrated or angry or even dissatisfied(which was, admittedly, almost perpetually), they would express their feelings, as they did as a rule to everyone else in their lives, without qualification or filter, profanely, with extreme prejudice. Neither Frank nor Ava ever seemed to be able--nor ever really wanted--to mask what they felt to anyone in particular; they were never able to hold back in their dealings with anyone, and this rule held true for their marriage as well. The fact that Ava and Frank were both by this time alcoholics--Ava especially--and inveterate social animals accustomed to going out on the town every night only fueled the instability and the strife, and they broke up.
Ava stopped working regularly after her breakup with Sinatra and her life completely disintegrated into a restless jaunt around the globe of drinking, parties and sex. Server relates that Ava was a person who could act at times with a chilling, ruthless selfishness--she had two abortions in her life, one Sinatra's child and the other possibly Sinatra's but possibly one of the many lovers she took while filming "Mogambo" . This is heartrending in itself, but because of her breakups with Sinatra and Shaw, she came to believe that true love would never happen again to her and that love itself even was not desirable; she had no husband in the second half of her life and virtually no family at all besides her sister, and moreover, no children, since she had aborted all of her pregnancies--and this was an equation for a life essentially of emptiness and loneliness, and though Ava gamely tried to fill it with parties and casual lovers, her life for the most part became as much. Server is outstanding and thorough in his treatment of his subject; the freshness and verve of his writing convey to us the allure and mystique of his charismatic subject; and we are no different than the rest; in reading his work we fall in love with her too, and ultimately we pity her for a life of glamour and fame but also of tragic choices that ultimately did not serve her well in the end.
Summary of Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"
"The most complete and engrossing biography yet of this exotic Southern girl...Excellent."--Liz Smith
She was the sex symbol who dazzled all the other sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento, and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him--but she knocked out his front teeth instead.
She was one of the great icons in Hollywood history--star of The Killers, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Night of the Iguana--and one of the few whose actual life was grander and more colorful than any movie. Her jaw-dropping beauty, charismatic presence, and fabulous, scandalous adventures fueled the legend of Ava Gardner--Hollywood's most glamorous, restless and uninhibited star.
"A seductive book."--The New York Times
"Deliciously entertaining."--Publishers Weekly
"Irresistible and finally heartbreaking."--The Newark Star-Ledger
"Super."--USA Today
In this acclaimed first full biography of Gardner, Lee Server recreates--with great style and vivid detail--the actress's life, from her beginnings as a barefoot North Carolina farm girl to her heady days as a Hollywood goddess. He paints the full spectacle of her tumultuous private life--including her string of failed marriages to Mickey Rooney, Sinatra and Artie Shaw--and Gardner's lifelong search for adventure and love.
Ava Gardner: "Love is Nothing" is both an exceptional work of biography and a richly entertaining read.
She was the sex symbol who dazzled all the other sex symbols. She was the temptress who drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide and haunted him to the end of his life. Ernest Hemingway saved one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento, and Howard Hughes begged her to marry him--but she knocked out his front teeth instead.
She was one of the great icons in Hollywood history--star of The Killers, The Barefoot Contessa, and The Night of the Iguana--and one of the few whose actual life was grander and more colorful than any movie. Her jaw-dropping beauty, charismatic presence, and fabulous, scandalous adventures fueled the legend of Ava Gardner--Hollywood's most glamorous, restless and uninhibited star.
"A seductive book."--The New York Times
"Deliciously entertaining."--Publishers Weekly
"Irresistible and finally heartbreaking."--The Newark Star-Ledger
"Super."--USA Today
In this acclaimed first full biography of Gardner, Lee Server recreates--with great style and vivid detail--the actress's life, from her beginnings as a barefoot North Carolina farm girl to her heady days as a Hollywood goddess. He paints the full spectacle of her tumultuous private life--including her string of failed marriages to Mickey Rooney, Sinatra and Artie Shaw--and Gardner's lifelong search for adventure and love.
Ava Gardner: "Love is Nothing" is both an exceptional work of biography and a richly entertaining read.
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