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On Ava Gardner

Lee Server is a writer who published a highly acclaimed biography of actor Robert Mitchum in 2002 and has now graced us with Ava Gardner: “Love Is Nothing,” (St. Martin’s Press, 551 pp.) The research behind this first-rate book is outstanding, and so is the writing. It’s not the sort of writing that many professional historians would prefer (Server was once a screen writer), but it suits the subject matter admirably, being sophisticated, mildly ironic, and in a few cases obscene. It is always entertaining. The book’s rock solid objectivity would have been admired by American historians of an earlier era when ideology was less important than a clear presentation of the facts.

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was a reigning queen of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s. She remained active in films until 1986. Why is she important? Because movies shaped Americans at the time to a greater extent than perhaps any other force outside the family and school. And the Ava Gardner story tells us much about the people and the machinery that made the magic on the screen. Here are five observations from this new biography.

1. Democracy mattered in Hollywood. Talent, good looks, and aggressive behavior were often rewarded in the struggle to reach the highest levels of stardom and executive authority no matter what one’s background. Louis B. Mayer, the ruthless head of MGM, had been a junk dealer in Minsk. Ava Gardner was born in rural North Carolina, in a farming family from a class often dismissed as “white trash.” By a fluke, her breathtaking beauty brought her to the attention of MGM brass when she was 18, and in the course of a few years she became a star. Her major films were made between 1946 and 1954.

2. The hypocrisy of the movie industry was extraordinary. While films were heavily censored between 1934 and 1968, and “family values” and happy endings were expected, the people who made the films were often morally degenerate and predatory. Studio heads Mayer, Harry Cohn, and Howard Hughes, for example, bedded women by the score, promising to get them into pictures. Server’s descriptions of Hughes, who was a lunatic of sorts, are especially memorable. Stars like Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, and Ava Gardner had endless affairs (and abortions), at least in part to boost their careers. Marriage was often a mere convention. Gardner married actor Mickey Rooney, band leader Artie Shaw, and singer-actor Frank Sinatra. That was about par by Hollywood standards. Over the years, Rooney and Shaw would each have eight marriages.

3. Given the alcoholism, drug use, and concentration on carousing and seduction that stalked many movie productions (Server’s many examples are often hilarious), the wonder is that so many good films emerged. Gardner, like Turner, had a strong desire for sex, and wherever she went there were affairs with an incalculable number of men, young and old, rich and poor, actors and stagehands, waiters and bullfighters. The actress smoked 60 cigarettes a day and drank very heavily from her early twenties on. She was clearly an alcoholic by the time she made her most notable movies, and in her last years, wracked with illness, she mixed her pills with liquor.

4. Gardner’s story assures us that universally desired beauty, fame, and wealth can be mercilessly destructive. While she could be shy, charming, and funny, the actress was a monster during much of her life, shouting orders, throwing often violent temper tantrums, and howling obscenities at the merest provocation. Her incredibly stormy and prolonged relationship with Frank Sinatra proved that both of these world renowned entertainers were deeply troubled mentally and emotionally.

5. Gardner’s career illustrates the need of people to have gods. Major movie stars were deities to countless millions all across the globe, and they were forever dodging worshipful crowds and plagues of reporters and photographers. In her old age, living alone in London, Gardner missed the fame, watching old movies of herself and others, calling up pals to ask them if they remembered how young and beautiful they had once been. She seems to have learned nothing, was without any supernatural faith, and died wishing that she had had love and children. Artie Shaw said of his ex-wife, “What are you going to say about something that represented a part of your past you don’t recognize anymore? I don’t even know who she is. There’s nothing to talk about. She ruined her life. She killed herself—I mean by smoking and drinking and carrying on.” But the public mourned the loss of a goddess, the gorgeous legend whose movies had stimulated their fantasies and helped them shape their world view.

Posted on Monday, October 8, 2007 at 8:44 AM | Comments (0) | Return

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