Ava Gardner: "Love Is Nothing"

Front Cover
Macmillan, 2007 M05 15 - 551 pages

"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.

 

Contents

PROLOGUE
1
Ava
3
PART ONE
9
Goddess Country
11
Zombies at the Beachcomb
44
Femme Fatale
101
Venus in Furs
134
PART TWO
169
Spanish for Cinderella
277
Sun and Shadow
325
Vita Dolce Vita
351
Love Is Nothing
383
PART FOUR
431
Venus Falling
433
Sources
501
Filmography
527

Frankie Goes to Hollywood
171
Torrid Was Your Blood
190
Tempt Me to Madness
236
PART THREE
275
Acknowledgments
535
Index
541
Copyright

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About the author (2007)

LEE SERVER is the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed biographies Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care and Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing. Robert Mitchum was named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times, "the film biography of the year" by the Sunday Times (U.K.) and one of the "60 Greatest Film Books." Ava Gardner was a New York Times Notable Book, and a New York Times, Los Angeles Times and USA Today bestseller. He lives in Palm Springs, California.

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