Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations

By: Peter Evans, Ava Gardner

Narrated by: William Hope

Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

This wickedly candid memoir that Ava Gardner dared not publish during her lifetime offers a revealing self-portrait of the film legend's life and loves in Hollywood's golden age.

Ava Gardner was one of Hollywood's great stars during the 1940s and '50s, an Oscar-nominated leading lady who co-starred with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Humphrey Bogart, among others.

But this riveting account of her storied life and career had to wait for publication until after her death, so concerned was Gardner with its frankness. 'I either write the book or sell the jewels,' Gardner told co-author Peter Evans, 'and I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels.'

The legendary actress serves up plenty of gems in these pages, reflecting with delicious humour and cutting wit on a life that took her from an impoverished childhood in North Carolina to the heights of stardom.

Get ready for the most revealing Hollywood autobiography in decades.

©2013 Peter Evans and Ava Gardner (P)2014 Audible, Inc

Enjoyably candid Hollywood memoire

While there is a sincere effort here to capture Gardners voice, which isn't bad, men doing lady's voices can come over more like drag queens than queens of Hollywood. The narrator's voice also has a bit of a patronising tone. This might grate on you, it did me. Having said all that, this is about as close to Ava Gardner as we can get these days, so I'm very happy I read it. She was a remarkable character and that comes through very clearly in this warts-&-all memoir.

Exactly like the real Ava

Performance on point- brings Ava back to life. As someone very familiar with the late Ava herself, this rings true and sounds exactly like her. Normally avoid reading about Ava but this came highly recommended. Does not disappoint.

Great story, a little choppy

I actually read this book after seeing a video summarizing it on tik tok about Ava Gardner. I have seen her in someone movies and didn’t know her life was interesting so I decided to listen to it and I’m so glad I did. The stories she tells and the way Peter keeps her dialogue in the book is such a nice touch and probably the best part. It makes you feel like you get to know her as a person. Little things I didn’t care for: the start was a little slow to me. He spent so much time talking about what lead up to getting her to write the book and the story about her life near the end felt rushed. It was a little over the place. Almost like he put it in order of when she said it vs telling it in order and at times it was hard to keep up but did make it more real in a way. Like someone was sitting down telling you their life story and remembering things that haven’t in while and just blurting them out. SPOILER: The ending wasn’t very good in fact there really wasn’t an ending because Ava had scrapped the project and Peter had passed before the book was published. For the most part though, great read and would recommend to anyone who loves old Hollywood

Love the format!

This was a great read. Couldn’t put it down. I was particularly a fan of Ava Gardner but this book roped me in! Loved it.

Interesting story of a beautiful woman

I loved the way this story was written and told. It was humorous and full of interesting stories about Ava. I learned a lot about her life and felt like I was right there beside her listening to her talk.

So sad it ended!

I could have listened for hours more! The narrator was awesome. I felt like Ava was talking. Years of smoking made it believable.

A genuine life story

An honestly telling and extremely interesting insight into the life of a Hollywood legend that reminds us that even icons are still humans with passion, emotions, regret, and pain.

A book about an Interview!

Is there anything you would change about this book?

It's just too long and dull. I was hoping for an interesting biography about this fascinating woman, but after 4 hours I gave up.

Loved this story

Loved the narrator so very interesting hated to see it end . Ava was a very unusual person and had a really funny sense of humor

Riveting!!

I watched so many of her movies growing up and always thought she was beautiful. To hear her recall and relate some of her personal life experiences and the men she had been involved with were fascinating to me. I gave the book 4 stars because I believe she held back. It's too bad at the end what happened to them both, we could have hoped for a sequel.