'Ava, Ava, Ava...morning, noon & night'
For at least four years, there were two women in my friend Peter Evans’s marriage. One was his lovely wife, Pamela. The other was the Hollywood icon, Ava Gardner.
Not that anything untoward was going on. But Peter, a journalist, novelist and biographer, always took his work extremely seriously – and Ava became a real labour of love.
The story of how Ava swept into their lives in January 1988 was one of Peter’s favourite dinner-party tales – and as a man who counted Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Sellers and Aristotle Onassis among his friends, he had a great many.
It was the middle of the night when the phone trilled into life and, as usual, Peter answered it on the first ring – what he called ‘an old newspaper man’s trick’.
‘It never ceased to amaze me how Peter would always hear the phone, but managed to sleep on when the children woke up in the night,’ Pamela recently told me with a half-suppressed smile.
But on this occasion, it was just as well. For the husky voice at the end of the line was Ava Gardner’s and she wanted Peter to help pen her autobiography.
‘Sounds great, Ava,’ Peter replied, still wondering whether it was a crank caller. ‘Does Frank [her protective ex-husband, Frank Sinatra] approve?’
‘F*** Frank,’ came the reply. ‘Are you interested or not, honey?’
It was Ava Gardner through and through: vampish, forthright and not a little bit difficult. It certainly wouldn’t be her last midnight phone call.
‘It happened all the time,’ Pamela told me. ‘I don’t suppose there are many women who regularly wake in the early hours to find their husbands speaking on the telephone to Ava Gardner.’
Peter would spend much of the last two years of Ava’s life [she died in January 1990] working with her on her memoirs. The pair of them would work late into the night, her drinking (often Peter’s Berry Brothers claret), him scribbling down notes. And she would speak with breathtaking candour.
But while Peter clearly adored Ava, she was argumentative and could be a very slippery subject. She freely admitted only doing the book for the money – her oft-repeated line was that she ‘had to write the book or sell the jewels… and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels’ – but she could be fabulously indiscreet, telling Peter the kind of tales that make readers swoon and publishers a fortune. When it came to Hollywood, she had seen and, more importantly, done it all. Her story was dynamite.
The only problems were her frequent flashes of doubt about writing the book – and, eventually, her ex-husband, Frank Sinatra. Years before, Frank Sinatra had tried to sue Peter for US$1m – ‘a truly terrifying experience,’ according to Pamela – for referring to his Mob connections on television. When Ava finally found out about this, months after they had started working together, she pulled the plug on the book, most likely at Frank’s behest.
‘Peter was very sorry to end the relationship, it would have been a terrific book,’ Pam said. ‘I was less sorry because, at first, I thought I’d get my husband back after all that time with Ava.
‘Not that it worked out like that. Peter returned to a novel that he had been writing about a Hollywood actress named Theodora, and before long she had become the third person in our marriage. It’s the story of my life.’
Ava, however, had been consigned to a desk drawer – and she stayed there for more than 20 years. She only re-entered Peter and Pamela’s marriage in 2009. Two decades after her death, Peter finally began the book the actress had called time on. Only now, it wouldn’t just be Ava’s memoirs, it would also tell the story of the psychological chess game they had played; the back and forth, her revelations and retractions, the doubts, the drinking, and those late-night phone calls.
‘Peter had written a piece about Ava for David Patrick Columbia in the New York Social Diary,’ Pamela told me, ‘and after they had read it, an American friend, writer Margo Howard, suggested that Peter return to the book.
Peter and his wife Pamela at a film premiere
‘I was delighted that Peter had come up with another project – but Ava was back and my heart sank at the prospect of once again sharing my marriage with her.’
I could certainly sympathise. I used to meet Peter for regular lunches at Locale, his son’s restaurant on the South Bank – at least until Ava returned. Once he had started on the new book, all social plans were off. It was all about Ava.
‘Ava, Ava, Ava… morning, noon and night,’ said Pamela. ‘The only mercy was that we weren’t getting her regular midnight phone calls.
‘But her voice still echoed through our house. When he began the book, Peter would play back the tapes throughout the day and night – and there she was, endlessly talking about herself and arguing with Peter about how her memoirs should be written.
‘Her ghost had truly risen.’
Just as Ava spent her last two years with Peter, so Peter, it transpired, would spend his last two years with Ava – or at least her spectre. For just as he was finishing the book, my friend Peter tragically died of a heart attack.
The book that was a quarter of a century in the writing, however, has now been published, and it is an extraordinary read. ‘
Ava and Peter have gone now,’ said Pamela. ‘But I can still hear their voices in that book.
‘I just wish I could have them back.’
Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £20.
Theodora: A Sweeping Novel Of Glamour, Passion And Suspense, is out of print but secondhand copies can be picked up at www.amazon.co.uk
Not that anything untoward was going on. But Peter, a journalist, novelist and biographer, always took his work extremely seriously – and Ava became a real labour of love.
The story of how Ava swept into their lives in January 1988 was one of Peter’s favourite dinner-party tales – and as a man who counted Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Sellers and Aristotle Onassis among his friends, he had a great many.
It was the middle of the night when the phone trilled into life and, as usual, Peter answered it on the first ring – what he called ‘an old newspaper man’s trick’.
‘It never ceased to amaze me how Peter would always hear the phone, but managed to sleep on when the children woke up in the night,’ Pamela recently told me with a half-suppressed smile.
But on this occasion, it was just as well. For the husky voice at the end of the line was Ava Gardner’s and she wanted Peter to help pen her autobiography.
‘Sounds great, Ava,’ Peter replied, still wondering whether it was a crank caller. ‘Does Frank [her protective ex-husband, Frank Sinatra] approve?’
‘F*** Frank,’ came the reply. ‘Are you interested or not, honey?’
It was Ava Gardner through and through: vampish, forthright and not a little bit difficult. It certainly wouldn’t be her last midnight phone call.
‘It happened all the time,’ Pamela told me. ‘I don’t suppose there are many women who regularly wake in the early hours to find their husbands speaking on the telephone to Ava Gardner.’
Peter would spend much of the last two years of Ava’s life [she died in January 1990] working with her on her memoirs. The pair of them would work late into the night, her drinking (often Peter’s Berry Brothers claret), him scribbling down notes. And she would speak with breathtaking candour.
But while Peter clearly adored Ava, she was argumentative and could be a very slippery subject. She freely admitted only doing the book for the money – her oft-repeated line was that she ‘had to write the book or sell the jewels… and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels’ – but she could be fabulously indiscreet, telling Peter the kind of tales that make readers swoon and publishers a fortune. When it came to Hollywood, she had seen and, more importantly, done it all. Her story was dynamite.
The only problems were her frequent flashes of doubt about writing the book – and, eventually, her ex-husband, Frank Sinatra. Years before, Frank Sinatra had tried to sue Peter for US$1m – ‘a truly terrifying experience,’ according to Pamela – for referring to his Mob connections on television. When Ava finally found out about this, months after they had started working together, she pulled the plug on the book, most likely at Frank’s behest.
‘Peter was very sorry to end the relationship, it would have been a terrific book,’ Pam said. ‘I was less sorry because, at first, I thought I’d get my husband back after all that time with Ava.
‘Not that it worked out like that. Peter returned to a novel that he had been writing about a Hollywood actress named Theodora, and before long she had become the third person in our marriage. It’s the story of my life.’
Ava, however, had been consigned to a desk drawer – and she stayed there for more than 20 years. She only re-entered Peter and Pamela’s marriage in 2009. Two decades after her death, Peter finally began the book the actress had called time on. Only now, it wouldn’t just be Ava’s memoirs, it would also tell the story of the psychological chess game they had played; the back and forth, her revelations and retractions, the doubts, the drinking, and those late-night phone calls.
‘Peter had written a piece about Ava for David Patrick Columbia in the New York Social Diary,’ Pamela told me, ‘and after they had read it, an American friend, writer Margo Howard, suggested that Peter return to the book.
Peter and his wife Pamela at a film premiere‘I was delighted that Peter had come up with another project – but Ava was back and my heart sank at the prospect of once again sharing my marriage with her.’
I could certainly sympathise. I used to meet Peter for regular lunches at Locale, his son’s restaurant on the South Bank – at least until Ava returned. Once he had started on the new book, all social plans were off. It was all about Ava.
‘Ava, Ava, Ava… morning, noon and night,’ said Pamela. ‘The only mercy was that we weren’t getting her regular midnight phone calls.
‘But her voice still echoed through our house. When he began the book, Peter would play back the tapes throughout the day and night – and there she was, endlessly talking about herself and arguing with Peter about how her memoirs should be written.
‘Her ghost had truly risen.’
Just as Ava spent her last two years with Peter, so Peter, it transpired, would spend his last two years with Ava – or at least her spectre. For just as he was finishing the book, my friend Peter tragically died of a heart attack.
The book that was a quarter of a century in the writing, however, has now been published, and it is an extraordinary read. ‘
Ava and Peter have gone now,’ said Pamela. ‘But I can still hear their voices in that book.
‘I just wish I could have them back.’
Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations by Peter Evans and Ava Gardner, is published by Simon & Schuster, priced £20.
Theodora: A Sweeping Novel Of Glamour, Passion And Suspense, is out of print but secondhand copies can be picked up at www.amazon.co.uk
AVA GARDNER: A LIFE IN BRIEF
- Born in North Carolina, USA on Christmas Eve, 1922.
- Signed to MGM Studios in 1941 and became one of Hollywood’s leading actresses, starring in lms including Mogambo and The Night Of The Iguana.
- Married actor Mickey Rooney in 1942. They divorced in 1943. Two years later, Gardner had another year-long marriage to jazz musician Artie Shaw. The beauty’s third and final marriage to singer and actor Frank Sinatra lasted between 1951 and 1957.
- Moved to London in 1968.
- After years of heavy smoking, she developed emphysema and had two strokes.
- She died of pneumonia, at the age of 67.