Ava Gardner: Original Gangster

LEE SERVER: “She was who she was. She liked jazz and driving too fast and nights that went on forever. She loved gin and dogs and four-letter words and Frank Sinatra. Once upon a time she was thought to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Existence became a daily contradiction as she craved her privacy and dignity but lived in headline type for the world to see, complete with front-page-worthy love affairs, drinking binges, public spectacles, and violence. She became first the prototype and then the caricature of jet-set decadence, a founding mother of la dolce vita, queen of the night, in constant flight from the paparazzi. Pleasure took the place of love, and love became something to be feared or at best enjoyed at a distance and in memories of what had or might have been.”

AVA GARDNER: “I think the most vulgar thing about Hollywood is the way it believes its own gossip.  I know a lot of men fantasize about me; that’s how Hollywood gossip becomes Hollywood history.”

AVA GARDNER: “After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, “She can`t talk! She can`t act! She`s sensational!”

AVA GARDNER: “I can remember that first meeting with Mickey very clearly – probably because he was wearing a bowl of fruit on his head.  He was playing this Carmen Miranda character – do you remember Carmen Miranda?  She was a Brazilian dancer, a hot little number while she lasted.  Mickey was playing her, complete with false eyelashes, false boobs, his mouth smothered with lipstick.  I was my first day in Hollywood.  I was being hauled around the sets to be photographed with the stars.  He came over to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mickey Rooney.’  He did a little soft-shoe-shuffle kind of dance, and bowed to me.  I remember asking him one evening, shortly after we were married, what he thought of me that first time we met.  We had a kind of truth game we used to play in bed…  He said, ‘Okay, when they said you were a new contract player, I figured you were a new piece for one of the executives.  The prettiest ones were usually spoken for before they even stepped off the train.  I didn’t give a damn.  I wanted to fuck you the moment I saw you.’”

LEE SERVER: “Mickey Rooney was a star with money to burn and had shown her a big-spending life she had never known, but Howard Hughes made Mickey seem like a boy who had just gotten paid from his paper route. Howard was a kind of wizard, capable of breathtaking acts of magic. Did you want to fly to the desert at Palm Springs for dinner? Or to Acapulco for the weekend? But then Howard would go too far, expect too much, and she would have to put her foot down, sometimes a stiletto-heeled foot right on his instep. It became a kind of game, a teasing, sometimes torturous game at which she was becoming increasingly adept. Ava’s sister would come running to her with news of Howard’s peace offerings: rings and bracelets, diamonds and rubies, piled in a heap like a sultan’s treasure, waiting for her. Bappie was orgasmic. Ava said: ‘Tell him to fuck off!’”

 

AVA GARDNER: “Anyway, Mick called me that night and asked me out to dinner.  I said I was busy.  That was a stupid thing to say.  Who the hell was I busy with, fahcrissake?  It had taken about six minutes flat to unpack my only suitcase and brush my teeth.  I didn’t know a goddamn soul in Hollywood, except my sister.  And I’m busy?  Every conversation ended up with him asking me to have dinner with him.  Finally I just ran out of excuses.  I thought the hell with it, and said O.K. – but I have my sister Bappie staying with me, I told him.  ‘Fine, bring Sis along, too,’ he said, bang-off.  He wasn’t what I’d call a hand-some may-an, and his shortness surprised me, but there was definitely something appealing about him.  He had thick, red-blond wavy hair, crinkly Irish green eyes, and a grin that was… well, it definitely wasn’t innocent, honey, I can tell you that!”

 

AVA GARDNER: “I still didn’t know that he was the biggest wolf on the lot.  He was catnip to the ladies.  He knew it, too.  The little sod was not above admiring himself in the mirror.  All five foot two of him!  He probably banged most of the starlets who appeared in his Andy Hardy films – Lana Turner among them.  She called him Andy Hard-on.”

AVA GARDNER: “No wonder, when I think of that marriage now, I think of nightclubs: the Palladium, Ciro’s, the Coconut Grove, where we danced to Tommy Dorsey’s band.  Guys didn’t trouble me much – most of them knew I was Mickey’s wife – but that’s where I learned to drink, I mean to drink seriously.  All the clubs were hot on underage drinking, but Mick would slip me dry martinis in coffee cups.  Sipping a dry martini out of a coffee cup seemed as glamorous as hell to me.  That doesn’t mean I let Mick off the hook.  I brought up his cheating all the time.  I couldn’t help myself.  We fought constantly.  ‘I’ve had it with you, you little shit’ I’d scream at him.  He’d look all hurt and innocent – a real Andy Hardy look.  Boy, he was some actor.  He’d say that no one could love me more than he did.  No one could be more faithful than he was.  Not once did he admit to two-timing me.  Neither did he ever say he was sorry.  Nevertheless, when he was feeling flush, or had made a big score at the track, he would try to placate me with nice pieces of jewelry.  I remember a beautiful pair of diamond drop earrings.  But quite a few of those peace offerings had to go back when the bookies came knocking.”

ARLENE DAHL: “She was too beautiful. She was considered a threat by the so-called glamour girls at Metro… ‘Ava,’ I said, ‘you are, if not the most, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life…’ Ava didn’t have to wear makeup. She had naturally beautiful skin, and great color to her lips. She dressed very casually…And there was no one who could touch that posture, the way she walked and presented herself. She was a sexy woman without trying. All she had to do was walk into the room.”

AVA GARDNER: “It’s a shame that it didn’t work out with Mick. The idea of being married had always appealed to me, and I was hopelessly in love with him by this time.  We lived in a tiny apartment on Wilshire in Westwood that we’d rented from Red Skelton.  One bedroom, living room, kitchen, and a tiny dining room.  Oh God, Mickey and I were out practically every night of our lives together.  We danced, he drank a fair amount – I was catching on pretty fast.  A week or so after we got back from our honeymoon, I woke up in the middle of the night with the most god-awful pain in my stomach.  Mickey drove me to the Presbyterian Hospital.  Like everybody in my family, I had a misplaced appendix.  In those days you stayed in hospital for three weeks after even a minor operation.  So I came home, and the first night I found evidence that Mick had been screwing somebody in our bed.”

AVA GARDNER: “Mickey had been drinking throughout the evening and was as high as I’d seen him.  A whole bunch of his regular sidekicks were there.  We’d had a big argument over something before we came out, and he was completely ignoring me.  I knew that he’d been spoiling for a fight all evening.  Finally, he took out this little book full of girls’ numbers.  Too drunk to give a damn, and the guys egging him on, he started reading off their names and saying what they were good at in bed – in front of me!  That was it!  I left.  I kicked Mickey out the same night.  Or I did when he got home, whatever time that was!  He moved out to his ma’s place in the Valley.   I wouldn’t take his calls.  I was driving him crazy.  One night he tried to kick my door down.  When Louis Mayer heard about that, all hell broke loose.  I knew that dumping Mickey was a risk.  Careerwise, it could have been the end of me.  If I stopped being Mrs. Rooney, they wouldn’t think twice about letting me go.  But I really had no choice.  Mickey was never going to change his ways.  I knew that if I had sued Mick for adultery, and named some of the girls he’d been fucking, it would have blown his wholesome Andy Hardy image right out of the water.  It could have destroyed his career stone dead.  I knew that citing ‘incompatibility’ was the cleanest and fastest route out of the marriage.  A couple of weeks later, the studio renewed my contract and increased my salary.”

BERDIE ADAMS: “Ava came up to my office one day. She came in very quietly, almost snuck in, because this was when she first started and was afraid of everything. And she says, ‘I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I’m really curious to see what my pictures look like.’ So I said, ‘Well, c’mon.’ And I went and pulled out the drawer of her stuff they had taken. And I spread the pictures out for her to look at, and she studied them. And you want to know something? Those were stunning photos of her. She was the most beautiful woman on the lot, absolutely, nobody compared to her. But not only that, she couldn’t take a bad picture. And that was rare, y’know; everybody has a bad side. And she looked at the pictures for a little while, and when she was done she straightened up and ‘Jeez,’ she said, ‘From the way people went on, I thought I was better-looking than that…’”

AVA GARDNER: “Artie Shaw was difficult, he was complex, but I was stuck on him.  To tell the truth, I was always a little afraid of him.  Not physically.  Artie was another kind of bully.  I was afraid of his mind.  He was a dominating son of a bitch.  He used to put me down so much I lost complete confidence in myself.  When I went into analysis – that was something else he made me do – I insisted on taking an IQ test, because I was at the point where I thought there was something seriously wrong with my mind.  We, it turned out very well indeed.  I didn’t have an enormous IQ, but I did have a rather high one.  I owe Artie plenty.  He made me get an education.  I enrolled in the University of California because of him.  I more or less didn’t work for a whole year because of him.  I took correspondence courses.  I was doing very well.  B-pluses.”

LEE SERVER: “For Ava to be there on the inside of Artie Shaw’s music as it was being created was like living in a joyous dream, exciting and satisfying in ways that moviemaking had never been. She was the band’s number one fan, cheering at every rehearsal, dancing on the sidelines of every one-night stand – ‘sipping bourbon, listening to the music, and having a ball.’”

AVA GARDNER: “I was happy traveling with the band, hanging out with Artie and his literary pals.  Guys like Sid Perelman, Bill Saroyan, John O’Hara.  Artie said all I had to do was keep my mouth shut, sit at their feet, and absorb their wit and wisdom.  I was happy to do that.  I was comfortable with all those guys.  I was unhappy when he broke the band up.  He said he didn’t want his wife on the road with a bunch of musicians.  He said it wasn’t dignified.  He once told me he couldn’t respect a woman who made a living as a movie star – ‘Movie acting has nothing at all to do with talent, it’s all about key lights and cheekbones,’ he said.  I think he said that when I beat him at chess after he’d hired a Russian grand master to give me lessons.”

AVA GARDNER: “1945.  I also started hitting the bottle when I was with Artie.  I drank with Mick, but that was kid stuff.  With Artie I’d get properly drunk.  I got drunk because I was so insecure.  I was completely out of my depth.  He always had his nose in a book.  He was mixing with a bunch of pseudointellectuals.  Most of them were Reds.  We’d go to the Russian Consulate.  We’d sit down to dinner, and the vodka bottles would appear, and the caviar.  We’d drink the vodka down the hatch.  In one gulp, you know?  That’s when I got a taste for the hard stuff.”

STEVE DUNLEAVY: “I made my way over to the table. There were about four people with her, no other names there, just some hangers-on. They were all drunk. I turned to her and I said, ‘I’m terribly sorry to bother you, Miss Gardner, my name is Steve Dunleavy and I’m a reporter with the Sydney Sun and we would like to have a picture of you…’ She started shouting four-letter words at me. And then she reached into the bucket for the champagne bottle. They must have taken it away. But she had a full glass of champagne in her hand and she threw it at me, the glass and all. She just drenched me with it. But the thing I remember about that night, although she was drunk – and I’d heard all the stories about her, the absolute marathon drinking she did – and she’s cursing at me – it was incredible to hear what came out of her mouth, like a sailor and a truck driver were having a competition – and I’m drenched in champagne – regardless of all that at that moment as I saw her face the only thing I could think was, how bloody gorgeous the woman was. She was absolutely stunning.”

AVA GARDNER: “All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years Artie Shaw financed on an analyst’s couch.”

BOB RAINS: “I took the clay model over to her dressing room. I said, ‘Ava, you want to take a look at this? What do you think?’ She looked it over and laughed. She said, ‘That’s not my figure.’ And then with a cute smile on her face she pinched off some of the clay from the chest area and stuck it to the rear end. She smoothed it on with her finger and made the fanny bigger. She said, ‘That’s more like my ass.’”

GREGORY PECK: “What I liked about Ava was that we had so much in common it was like we were young people from the same hometown. We both were products of middle-class, small American towns where everybody knew everybody, and it was on that basis that we struck up an immediate friendship. Ava was also outspoken, and there was something refreshing about that because sometimes she’d be outspoken when other people would be afraid to. That to me shows a strength of character and the kind of grass-roots, middle-American honesty that she has. Sometimes I’ve thought except for that out-of-the-world beauty—that sensational bone structure, those eyes, and that figure—she was typical of dozens of girls I knew in high school and college. But that beauty shaped and changed her, and she became an object of pursuit, adulation, and attention such as few girls ever know.”

LENA HORNE: “Ava was like my younger sister; she and I were spiritually akin…If Ava came to you, you couldn’t help but like her, because she wasn’t competing with anybody. She walked a mile in everybody’s shoes. She really did.”

AVA GARDNER: “Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl`s values.”

RODDY MCDOWALL: ““The highly irritating thing about Ava, of course, was that she had no regard for her intellectual capacity or her talent. She was a wonderful actress and she never believed it. If you told her that, or if you told her how beautiful she was, she’d get very uncomfortable and virtually begin to shake. She didn’t know what to do with the information; it unnerved her.”

RODDY MCDOWALL: “Ava was like the most fantastic relative, because she didn’t make you pay a price for knowing her. She was the great older sister who just adores you. And spoils you. Her loyalty was devastating. In fact, it could be embarrassing. Because if she was your friend, she would kill for you, and sometimes you didn’t want her to. She believed in the good decent things, she really did. And to the best of her ability, she lived that way.”

CHERYL CRANE: “Mother and Ava Gardner were a dynamite pair. Of all her friends, I think they were the closest in temperment and outlook on life. They shared many of the same tastes and even fell for many of the same men, yet they never let it affect their friendship. Both loved all things Latin. Bullfights thrilled them. They could rumba, samba, or dance the flamenco from sundown to sunrise. Even their final years were similar. Both were world-class beauties who ended up no longer wanting romantic attachments, were somewhat reclusive, and hooked on the telephone. They were telephone friends until Ava passed away in 1990.”

AVA GARDNER: “First Mick, then Artie… Lana beat me to both of them.  And to Frank, too.  Even so, I liked her.  We became good friends.”

AVA GARDNER: “I came into this world at ten o’clock at night, and I’ve often thought that that was the reason I turned into such a nocturnal creature. When the sun sets, honey, I feel more, oh, alert. More alive. By midnight, I feel fantastic. It takes talent to live at night, and that was the one ability I never doubted I had.”

KENNETH TYNAN: “Miss Gardner is not easily discouraged when she gets the smell of riot in her nostrils, and I allowed myself to be swept in an open car across London with her entourage, which was joined at odd times by a policeman and a rich swimmer named Esther Williams, on whose presence Miss Gardner insisted, saying that ‘a party isn’t a party without a drunken bitch lying in a pool of tears.’”

AVA GARDNER: “I must have seen more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Hollywood.”

LEE SERVER: “For Ava, Spain was immediately a place of enchantment. With the passion of the people, with the flaring dark romanticism of the culture, she made an instant, heartfelt, lasting connection. The fury of the flamenco, the blood sport, the wine and dance and dinners till midnight – all the clichés of the travel writers’ lexicon – she experienced them all with an open and eager enthusiasm, and they had a life-altering result.”

AVA GARDNER: “Frank knew I was dating Luis Miguel Dominguín. Luis Miguel was the most famous bullfighter in the world. Bogie [Humphrey Bogart] was furious that I was giving Frank a hard time. He loved Frank like a brother. They started the Rat Pack together. ‘I don’t know why you want to two-time Frank with a goddamn fruit,’ he’d needle me. Stuff like that. Luis Miguel was one of the bravest men I knew. He was definitely no fruit, I can tell you that.”

A.E. HOTCHNER: “Luis Miguel Dominguin at that time was Spain’s number-one matador.  He was a lithe, magnificently handsome man who came from a family of bullfighters; even his beautiful sister Carmen had once performed brilliantly in the ring.  Dominguin had not fought for over a year, following a severe stomach cornada, but he had recently received highly lucrative offers from South America and was thinking of returning to the bullfight wars.”

AVA GARDNER: “Maybe I just didn’t have the temperament for stardom. I’ll never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went up to her and said, “Miss Davis, I’m Ava Gardner and I’m a great fan of yours.” And do you know, she behaved exactly as I wanted her to behave. “Of course you are, my dear,” she said. “Of course you are.” And she swept on. Now that’s a star.”

ROBERT GRAVES: [“Poem for Ava Gardner”] “Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,

Counting no sheep and careless of chimes,

Welcoming the dawn confabulation

Of birds, her children, who discuss why

Fanciful details of the promised coming—

Will she be wearing red, or russet or blue

Or pure white? Whatever she wears, glorious.

Not to sleep all night long, for pure joy,

This is given to few but at last to me,

So that when I laugh or stretch or leap from bed

I shall glide downstairs, my feet brushing the carpet

In courtesy to civilized progression,

Though did I wish, I could soar through the open window.

And perch on a branch above, acceptable ally

Of the birds, still alert, grumbling gently together.”

IMOGEN WHEELER: “She became very taken with the Gypsy scene. It was not touristy like it is today, but very authentic and gritty, and you could have these fantastic nights. There were streets in Madrid, narrow old streets lined with bars on both sides, and you went in and out from one to the next through the night, filling your wineglass at each one, all of them with flamenco singers and musicians playing for tips or for free drinks. Or in Grenada, these caves where an entire family of Gypsies would be playing and dancing, from children to grandparents. When it would be very late at night and people were starting to leave, Ava would invite them to her place, and for some wine or some pesetas they would come and play and dance until morning.”

SHEILA SIM: “There were parties, and the Spanish parties, of course, went all the way through the night. And we came when they invited us, for ten o’clock. And of course what they hadn’t made clear was that it wouldn’t be remotely starting until midnight. And Ava would be out until dawn, much to our fury, because when she’d arrive on the set, arrive for makeup, she looked so beautiful.”

 

 

 

CANDY TOXTON: “She was very free, I mean, nothing embarassed her. She was very comfortable with her body. I remember going up to her apartment one day, she was getting ready to go out, and she wanted to borrow a pair of earrings. Her door was open…And she was in front of the mirror putting some makeup on, and she was standing there nude. It was rather shocking for me. And she had the MOST gorgeous body, and the complexion and the hair, I mean she was just BEAUTIFUL. And she was quite comfortable being like that….and it made me very uncomfortable because I felt quite UGLY next to her.”

CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD: “A story about Kenneth Tynan I forgot to write down.  They were in the Gargoyle the other night and Ken (who fancies himself as an aficionado) got into an argument about a certain bullfighter: had he retired or not?  Ken said not and bet twenty pounds which was accepted.  So they called Spain to find out.  The first person they tried was Ava Gardner; but they were told – this was around 3AM – that she had gone out pigeon shooting!”

SHARON STONE: “Ava Gardner was the most beautiful woman in the world, and it’s wonderful that she didn’t cut up her face. She addressed aging by picking up her chin and receiving the light in a better way. And she looked like woman. She never tried to look like a girl.”

AVA GARDNER: “I’ve certainly never taken the care of myself that I should have. On the contrary. I’ve done a lot of late nights without enough sleep and all that. But I’ve had fun. Whatever wrinkles are there, I’ve enjoyed getting them.”

RODDY MCDOWALL: “Ava was always alive. Even in the depths of depression or anguish, she was terribly alive. And she could get heartbreakingly depressed. There were times when she couldn’t see people, times when she was so miserable, when life was so black for her. It couldn’t have been easy for anybody to have been witness to the depths of her unhappiness or self-loathing. She didn’t like herself. And so everyone felt wildly protective about Ava, and therein, of course, lies madness. The vulnerability was part of her great appeal. Everybody felt that yes, they could bring her some solace or help for whatever this bottomless well of unhappiness in her was. Well, of course, you can’t. But Ava didn’t take advantage of that; she wasn’t looking for you to be a nurse. Some people eat you up with that, but Ava wasn’t inclined that way. She was a loner. Like a bear, she would go off somewhere and hibernate.”

AVA GARDNER: “When I’m old and gray, I want to have a house by the sea. And paint. With a lot of wonderful chums, good music, and booze around. And a damn good kitchen to cook in.”

AVA GARDNER: “You can sum up my life in a sentence, honey: She made movies, she made out, and she made a fucking mess of her life. But she never made jam.”

AVA GARDNER: “If I had my life to live over again, I’d live it the same way. Maybe a few changes here or there, but nothing special. The truth is, honey, I’ve enjoyed my life. I’ve had a hell of a good time.”