Ava Gardner’s Memoir Tells All; It Lives Up to Legend

“MISS GARDNER has had the sort of life that novelists like Jackie Collins and Judy Krantz make up. The difference is, Ava lived hers,” writes James Brady.

Did she ever! Now that I’ve read the late Ava’s memoir (just out from Bantam with beautiful pictures), it becomes even more apparent that this is one film star who lived up to her legend. She didn’t miss much. Although her publishers say Ava finished taping her book several months before her untimely death last January, the work still seems slightly sketchy, as if remaining to be filled out. And they do interlard the memoir with comments from some intimates--Gregory Peck, Roddy McDowell, the writer Stephen Birmingham, the designer Franka, Ava’s longtime helper-companion Mearene Jordan.

Still, this is the very best and most authentic voice of the sensuous, sultry Ava, who decided she’d better tell her own side of the story, or “it’s likely to be too late, and then the self-appointed biographers step in adding to the inaccuracies, the inventions, and the abysmal lies that already exist.”

Considering how much she disliked the press and how seldom she spoke about herself, every anecdote in “Ava, My Story” becomes a pearl beyond price.

AVA TELLS us the abiding reality of her adult life was her unending love for Frank Sinatra--and his for her. She offers the story without glossing it over. They were insanely jealous, and drank too much. They couldn’t live with or without each other. But as tempestuous as it became, their devotion never ended. “Every single day during our relationship, no matter where in the world I was, I’d get a telegram from Frank saying he loved me and missed me. He was a man who was desperate for companionship and love. Can you wonder that he always had mine!”

Ava reveals how Sinatra hated Howard Hughes and gives many details about Howard’s obsessive behavior where she was concerned. But the actress claims she never had an affair with the eccentric billionaire. On the other hand, she details her romances with Howard Duff and Robert Taylor, as well as her violent relationship with George C. Scott. Booze and beatings ended this love affair, but Ava writes, “Even today, if I so much as see him on television, I start to shake all over again and have to turn the set off.”