Ava Gardner was the sex symbol who dazzled the other sex symbols. Elizabeth Tayl
or and Lana Turner thought her the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She
drove Frank Sinatra to the brink of suicide.
Ernest Hemingway carried around
one of her kidney stones as a sacred memento. Howard Hughes begged her to marry
him: she punched out his front teeth. Her charismatic presence, jaw-dropping bea
uty and scandalous adventures fuelled the legend that she became.
Yet she was
a farmgirl who became a reluctant goddess, and who retreated from the world's g
aze for the last years of her life. Filled with fresh insights gleaned from inte
rviews with Ava's colleagues, friends and lovers, this is the definitive biograp
hy of Hollywood's most glamorous, restless and uninhibited star.
