My thanks to:
David Patrick Columbia, New York Social Diary, where it all started when he published Peter’s original Ava article.
Margo Howard, who read the article and pushed Peter to pick up his Ava Gardner book again.
Bob Bender, who worked closely with Peter on the manuscript.
The late Jess Morgan, Todd Johnson, Maggie Phillips, Bill Edwards, Eric and Marcelle Clark, Brian Wells, Richard Kahn, Greg Morrison, Michael Baumohl, Myrna and Jeffrey Blyth, Norma Quine, Jeanne Hunter, Penny Bianchi, Kitty Kelley, David and Nancy Aukin, Matt Warren, Paulene Stone Burns, Rev. Michael Kingston, Pat and Roy Bailey, Maggie and Jeff Tetlow, Jerry and Sheridan Lewis, Duncan and Rachel Clark, Helene Gaillet de Neergaard, Phillip Kurland. All supported Peter with wise counsel and friendly encouragement.
Ed Victor, Peter’s agent and friend, who supported Peter throughout the original Ava venture as well as The Secret Conversations.
Also: William Pratt, Christine Walker, Mark Saunders, and Michael Evans.
My children, Lisa and Mark, and granddaughters, Camilla and Clementine, who have always been very supportive of Peter and me.
Finally, I spent the late eighties living with Peter and Ava, and the last couple of years of Peter’s life again living with them. While I was reading the manuscript of The Secret Conversations, I could hear Peter’s voice on every page. To relive those memories was both a delight and sadness in equal measure.
So to Peter, my love always and thank you for being my companion, friend, and husband.
About the Author
PETER EVANS was a columnist and foreign correspondent with London’s Daily Express in the 1960s and also wrote for the Los Angeles Times, Vogue, and New York magazine, as well as every major newspaper in Britain, including The Times, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Mail.
He was also the author of a dozen books, including Ari, a biography of Aristotle Onassis; the bestselling novel The Englishman’s Daughter; The Mask Behind the Mask, the first and official biography of Peter Sellers; and Goodbye Baby & Amen, the defining book on the Sixties, with pictures by David Bailey. Peter Evans’s book Nemesis was made into a West End play, Onassis, starring Robert Lindsay.
Peter Evans died in 2012, just as he finished this book.
ALSO BY PETER EVANS
Nemesis: The True Story of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie O, and the Love Triangle That Brought Down the Kennedys
Behind Palace Doors (with Nigel Dempster)
Ari: The Life and Times of Aristotle Onassis
Bardot: Eternal Sex Goddess
Peter Sellers: The Mask Behind the Mask
Goodbye Baby and Amen: A Saraband for the Sixties (with David Bailey)
Theodora
The Englishman’s Daughter
Titles
ALSO BY AVA GARDNER
Ava: My Story
Simon & Schuster Newsletter
Thank you for downloading and we hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster eBook.
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster.
Index
A.D., 217
All About Eve, 62, 234
Ari (Evans), 10, 150
Aristophanes, 11
Arshawsky, Sarah, 201
Astaire, Fred, 63
Babes on Broadway, 110
Bacall, Lauren (Betty), 51, 52
Baker, David Forbes (grandfather), 38–39
Baker, Elizabeth (grandmother), 39
Bancroft, Anne, 263
Barefoot Contessa, The, 7, 61, 63, 65, 232–36, 271
Barrymore, Lionel, 119
Baxter, Anne, 234
BBC, 279, 280
Bergman, Ingrid, 19
Bhowani Junction, 77, 234
Bible, The, 143
Billboard, 273
Bogarde, Dirk, 12–13, 57, 195, 261
on Evans, 10, 263–64
Evans warned about Ava by, 13, 24, 26–27, 82, 150
Bogart, Humphrey, 16, 50, 61, 63, 239
Ava on, 233–34, 236
lisp of, 28
Boys Town (1938), 120, 137, 245
Brando, Marlon, 18–19, 21
Brecht, Bertolt, 16
Bringing Up Baby, 187
Buck, Joyce, 54
Buck, Jules, 54
Bull, Clarence, 125
Burton, Richard, 6
Cabré, Mario, 225, 226–27, 273
Cagney, Jimmy, 119
Callas, Maria, 11
Camille, 121
Capote, Truman, 50
Captains Courageous, 120, 137, 245
Cardiff, Jack, 7–8, 62, 83–85
Carter, Nell, 120, 134, 136, 141, 142, 168
Catcher in the Rye, The (Salinger), 26
Cavani, Liliana, 13
CBS, 237
Chapman, Mrs., 3
Chasen, Dave, 116
Cher, 6
Churchill, Winston, 150, 163
Citizen Kane, 231–32
Clarke, Thurmond, 243
Colman, Ronald, 110, 116
Columbia, 274
Confidential, 139, 239
Coward, Noel, 50
Crosby, Bing, 46
Cukor, George, 77, 234, 261
Daily Telegraph (London), 13
Dali, Salvador, 270, 271–72
Damned, The, 13
Darnell, Linda, 190, 234
Davies, Marion, 46
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 238–39
Dead End Kids, 168
Dean, James, 19, 42
Death in Venice, 13
DeHaven, Gloria, 166
de Havilland, Olivia, 32
Diamonds Are Forever, 269
Dominguín, Luis Miguel, 16, 236–37, 262
Dorsey, Tom, 165, 208, 222–23
Dorsey band, 165, 167, 222–23
Douglas, Kirk, 99
Duhan, Barney, 92
Durante, Jimmy, 63, 116–17
East of Eden (film), 42
East of Eden (Steinbeck), 42
Ebony, 238
Edwards, Bill, 261, 275–77
Eldridge, Roy, 206