Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

by Peter Evans

  Mick also bought me the most beautiful diamond ring, a real iceberg—and asked for it back the following week to pay off his bookies. Talk about feast and famine, honey . . . although not many people knew about the famine side of that marriage. In true Hollywood style, they only saw the feast.

  Actually, I didn’t mind the ring going back, well not too much, anyway—diamonds are an acquired taste and at nineteen I still hadn’t acquired it. Anyway, diamonds look tacky on a woman before she’s forty. But Mick promised he’d get me another one, twice as big. A diamond as big as the Ritz, he promised. He never did, but he always believed that he had a sure thing for tomorrow at Santa Anita, or a dead cert at the Del Mar track the day after. I’d like to say that sort of thing was a rare occurrence, but it wasn’t. His relationship with his bookies was built on eternal optimism. That’s why he’s so broke now, the poor darling. All those wives took him for a bundle but no more than the bookies did. He had a kind of cartoon resilience.

  But once I knew he was still fooling around, even though he continued to deny it, I should have checked out right there. Even though I knew the girls he was screwing didn’t mean a thing to him, that’s what I should have done. He was just a lecherous sod who loved getting his rocks off. Everybody was fucking everybody in those days. Maybe it was the war! Lana Turner, who had become a good friend of mine, knew how distraught I was. She said a fuck meant nothing to men like Mickey. I should just brush it aside, she said.

  I couldn’t do that, I told her.

  “Well, if you’re not going to leave him, you must do something to let the little bastard know how you feel,” Lana said.

  That night we had dinner at Chasen’s. Afterward, Mickey insisted on buying drinks for the whole bar. I knew that once he bought for the bar, he’d have to stay around until the bar bought drinks for him. It was a machismo thing. I left him to it and took a cab home.

  When he came in at God knows what hour, I was fast asleep, or pretending to be—having ripped up every sofa and overstuffed armchair, every cushion and all the drapes in the house. It was overkill but I knew the marriage wasn’t going to last anyway. We were playing injury time with benefits—for both of us! We both liked screwing too much to give that up cold turkey. That’s what complicated it, I suppose.

  But I must say, it’s a lonely business fucking someone you no longer love. Especially a husband.

  I stopped typing. And read that line again:

  It’s a lonely business fucking someone you no longer love. Especially a husband.

  Tough, funny, vulgar, cynical, it was a classic Ava Gardner line.

  It rolled off the tongue. I didn’t want to lose it.

  The problem was I couldn’t reconcile it with something she had told me earlier—that she was “even more in love with all three of my husbands the day I left them than the day we married.”

  I knew that sometimes she lied to me, of course. She was an actress and that’s what actresses do. Sometimes they say things for effect, sometimes to avoid a situation they don’t want to talk about, or simply because they’ve forgotten what they told you the first time around.

  I was still trying to figure out which quote to go with—it made no difference to me; if there was a contradiction, I always used the quote that was most interesting—when I remembered another thing she’d said:

  “It’s my fucking life. I’ll remember it the way I want to remember it.”

  It still made me laugh.

  16

  It had been a couple of days since Ava’s irrational outburst when I dropped off a copy of the new Winston Churchill biography at her apartment. She had been expecting me to deliver an already overdue draft chapter of her own book. I saw the look of disappointment in her face when I handed her the Churchill volume instead. She thanked me with a rather distant smile. “How much longer is my fucking book going to be, baby?” she said. I asked her to be patient for a few more days. But her remark still rankled.

  I knew that the delay was as much my fault as hers. I had let her get away with murder as an interviewee. She never stuck to an idea or story line. She talked in vignettes, snapshots, and digressive asides. She interrupted herself to tell dirty jokes. She was all over the place; she had no regard for continuity at all. Sometimes it was deliberate evasion. Sometimes she was plainly bored: “Jesus, Pete, I had no idea how fucking tiring this remembering back game was going to be!” And there were matters about which she was just naturally close-lipped.

  It was fascinating stuff, as well as frustrating, but it was fun. And it all took time.

  Shortly before I left for a lunch with Ed Victor, I wrote a note to her accepting the blame for the delay. It wasn’t entirely accurate or wholly truthful, but it would pass as an apology, and maybe she would see the need to increase the pace rather than just bitch about it.

  Dear Ava,

  I understand your frustration and disappointment at our progress on the book. You are right to be angry and I am wrong not to have explained the reason for the delay before. Since your material is so rich and wonderful, and we want to secure a deal as quickly as possible, a couple of weeks ago I decided to try to eliminate the first draft and go straight for the jugular! Unfortunately this approach, which I thought would speed things up, has not only slowed me down, but also failed to convey the sense of immediacy, the spontaneity and bite of our late-night conversations, when you are at your best. I shall now return to our original routine of letting you see a chapter for your thoughts before I begin a final polish. I hope this will put us back on track—as well as taking us closer to the book we both want.

  Hope you had a better night.

  Much love,

  Peter

  PS: I’m enclosing the draft of the chapter continuing the breakup of your marriage to Mickey. I hope you agree it really moves the story forward apace. I look forward to your comments. PE.

  Despite the stress our marriage was under, Mick and I continued to go out practically every night. If we decided to have an evening at home, the house became mysteriously filled with strangers—his press people and yes-men, the hangers-on, in fact, Mickey’s usual entourage. I saw through those people. I saw through Hollywood. A naive, little country girl that I was, I saw through the phoniness, and all the crap.

  No wonder, when I think of that marriage now, I think of nightclubs: the Palladium, Ciro’s; the Cocoanut Grove, where we danced to Tommy Dorsey’s band. My God, those names bring back memories. The Cocoanut Grove was my favorite club, even though Mick often abandoned me while he sat in on drums with the Dorsey band. The music was great, and Mickey was a terrific drummer, but left alone at the table for hours on end I felt like a B girl, as we called the hookers who worked the bars in those days.

  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—not just the Beachcomber’s zombies, although they were damn lethal, too, but real grown-up girls’ drinks. All the clubs were hot on underage drinking but Mick would slip me dry martinis in coffee cups. The furtiveness of it gave the whole thing a kind of Prohibition glamour. I loved it. Sipping a dry martini out of a coffee cup seemed as glamorous as hell to me. It made me feel sophisticated but I was just another starlet, a kid seeking approval.

  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. How could I ever doubt him? My allegations were ridiculous, he insisted. Not once did he admit to two-timing me. Neither did he ever say he was sorry.

  I might still have settled for an apology and a promise not to cheat on me again. Even an empty promise would have been better than his lies. I wasn’t stupid and I resented him treating me as if I was. His lies were a kind of sadism tow
ard me, as if I didn’t matter.

  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, and those that stuck didn’t stay around for long either. Jesus, I was careless with my good pieces in those days.

  Anyway, in spite of the humiliation of knowing Mickey was cheating on me, I still wanted him to want me. I wanted him to want me all the time. I was just pissed off with his screwing around. In the end, I started throwing in a few curves of my own.

  For instance, after we’d made love—and we never stopped doing that, we never got bored with each other in bed, that’s for sure—I’d say things to him that I knew would hurt him. I’d taunt him about his height. I’d tell him I was tired of living with a midget. I’d say I’d kill him if he knocked me up. That was cruel, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.

  I know that it hurt him because he told other people what I’d said. He told Peter Lawford, for instance, who repeated it to me. It was always a mistake to tell Peter Lawford anything. I liked him but he was a terrible gossip. He said that Mick was in tears when he told him how I ridiculed him about his height.

  I didn’t care. I was pleased I’d hurt him. His unfaithfulness was tearing me apart. I had visions of him having sex with other women. I’d go into towering rages trying to figure out who they were. I’d go through all his leading ladies: Gloria DeHaven, Ann Rutherford, Judy [Garland], of course Lana [Turner]. I was pretty certain he’d had Lana. I was out of my mind with jealousy. Wasn’t I beautiful enough for him? Wasn’t I sexy enough? What were the others doing that I wasn’t doing—or was doing wrong? I was nineteen! I was always willing to learn, for God’s sake.

  He told Peter Lawford how demanding I was in the feathers. How I would say to him, “Let’s fuck, Mick! Now!” I don’t know whether I ever said that. I’m not denying I said it. The gist of it was true. I was insatiable at that age. I just didn’t like the idea of him bragging to his mates—to another actor, fahcrissake—about what went on in our bedroom.

  Lawford was a new contract player at the studio, a good-looking English kid, about my age. He was as ambitious as hell. He looked like a guy who did hand stands on the beach, which wasn’t my type at all. He worshiped Mickey. He’d made two movies with him, A Yank at Eton and Lord Jeff, and was always hanging around. He often sat with me at the Grove, keeping me amused, when Mick was sitting in with the Dorsey band. He was there the night I finally made up my mind to leave Mick.

  Mickey had been drinking throughout the evening and was as high as I’d seen him. I don’t remember how many of us were there. The usual crowd, six or eight of us, I guess. Peter Lawford; Sid Miller, the songwriter—he and Mickey were close. A whole bunch of his regular sidekicks were there. Mick was showing off, the center of attention as usual. I was just sitting there looking beautiful as usual. 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 tried to make a dignified exit. I don’t know how many coffee cups of martinis I’d had but I couldn’t have been too steady on my feet. Fortunately, Peter Lawford was keeping an eye on me. He followed me out. He told me later he was terrified that I was going to fall ass over tip down the staircase that led to the Ambassador lobby. He said he thought I was going to break my neck.

  Peter took me home that night and I poured out my heart to him. “I know that something’s going on,” I said, “and I know it’s been going on for some time. I don’t think it’s ever stopped. I’m leaving him, Peter. When he sobers up tell him goodbye for me.”

  I didn’t know it then but there was a lot of Iago in Peter. If there was any lingering doubt in my mind about that marriage, Peter ended it right there. He told me, “There is a girl Mick’s seeing. She’s about fifteen. Mickey has to be careful. Her older sister is her go-between. She fixes meetings for him at the Lakeside Golf Course. It’s been going on for quite a while.”

  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. Eddie Mannix was ordered to patch things up between us.

  Everybody was scared of Mannix. I wouldn’t have liked to cross him, but he always treated me with respect. He promised to try to get me some decent parts if I promised to behave. The usual route for an MGM contract player on the way up was to put her in an Andy Hardy movie: Donna Reed, Esther Williams, Lana Turner, Kathryn Grayson, they all followed that road. Not me. Uncle L.B. wouldn’t hear of it. Not even Mickey could persuade him to give me a break. I knew I was being punished.

  Anyway, Eddie Mannix got me a role in Ghosts on the Loose, a Bela Lugosi picture with the Dead End Kids. It was a cheap loan-out to Monogram, an awful little Poverty Row studio—I think the whole picture took about ten days to shoot, and no retakes, ever! But I got my first billing on that picture, so it’s still kind of special to me.

  Eventually I allowed Mick back in the house. Well, on and off I did. After all, we were still married and the sex was legal—and still pretty good, thank God. There was no point in giving that up just because we were semidetached, I told Bappie.

  “You’re learning, kid,” she said.

  I loved Bappie’s attitude to life. I learned a lot from her. She was a good drinker, too. Although she was never a morning drinker, like me—she said it spoiled her afternoon drinking! She lived in New York during Prohibition. She had a little flirt with R. J. Reynolds, the Winston cigarette heir. They went to all the high-class speakeasies. She was a happy drunk, too. She wasn’t compelled to get into mischief the way I was when I had a load on.

  When I told her I was going to divorce Mickey, she was dead against it. She was also very practical. “Put some money in your purse first, honey,” she said.

  It was good advice and of course I didn’t take it.

  I knew that dumping Mickey was a risk. Career-wise, it could have been the end of me. Pretty starlets were ten a penny at Metro, and anywhere else in Hollywood. The turnover was frightening. 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. He was always going to be fooling around with some pretty new thing, and that wasn’t my idea of marriage.

  Right up to the courtroom door, Bappie was pleading with me not to do it. I was filing for a formal separation, which was the first step to “splitting up the act,” as Mickey called it. That was on January 15, 1943—exactly one year and five days after we were hitched in Ballard. But it seemed a lot longer than that. It seemed like a fucking lifetime.

  Mickey wasn’t happy—and neither was Louis Mayer, who set his attack dog Eddie Mannix onto me. Eddie liked me but I knew he had a job to do. He said, “You know, Ava, you’ll be finished at this studio if you try to take Mickey to the cleaners. Mr. Mayer owns this town. If you do anything to hurt Mickey’s career, you’ll never work in Hollywood again.”

  I said I knew that.

  Eddie was sympathetic. He said, “It was never going to work out with Mick, you know. He is never going to be a one-woman man, kid.”

  I felt my temper rising. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me that before?” I said.

  “You didn’t ask,” he said mildly, but he was obviously startled by my language. So was I. Most people were afraid to say boo to him. “You got a mouth on you, kid. I give you that,” he said, and started to laugh.

  I was lucky he didn’t fire me on the spot.


  When he stopped laughing, he said: “Now listen to me, young lady. I’m going to give you some good advice. Mr. Mayer isn’t going to mind you telling it to the judge. He just doesn’t want you telling him more than you have to.”

  I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I truly didn’t. I was barely twenty years old. I could look smart and sophisticated as hell in those gallery pictures they took of me all the time. The truth was, I didn’t know beans when the bag was open.

  He obviously saw my confusion.

  “Mr. Mayer doesn’t want you to sue for adultery, kid,” Eddie spelled it out for me. He handled me like a baby. “Mr. Mayer doesn’t want Mickey’s name dragged through the courts along with a bunch of dames you reckon he might have shafted. He doesn’t want some shyster lawyer claiming Mickey beat you up, or did this, that, and the other,” he said.

  The penny dropped. “I’m not going to name anybody,” I said. “I’ll sue the little sod for incompatibility.”

  Actually, it was an idea I’d been discussing with Bappie, who’d been having her own marital problems with Larry Tarr. He was just as unfaithful as Mickey. Actually, so was Bappie, to be honest! But apart from that, they got on well together. Anyway, sue for incompatibility, Bappie said, that way nobody gets hurt.

  “Incompatibility, you’d settle for that? Mr. Mayer would really appreciate that,” Eddie said. “I think the least said the soonest mended, don’t you?”

  It was such a childish thing to say, the kind of rubbish you say to kids, I wanted to laugh. But the way he said it was so chilling, I thought better of it.