Ava Gardner: Twilight of the Goddess

"It was a bit of a problem," Ava told me cautiously of the Scott business, unwilling even to mention Scott's name. "He was going through a very bad state. He's a fine actor, but he can't handle alcohol. There were days when things got a little rough."

But it was more than a little rough. Gardner didn't want to talk about Scott at first, but eventually she called my hotel. "In order to protect somebody I don't care much about I didn't tell you about someone I do care about," she said. "But I'd have to see you to tell you." She paused, then said, "Oh hell, I'll tell you now, why not?" And she told me about the time she went to Scottsdale, Arizona, to film her part as Lily Langtry in Huston's The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

"I had been at a health farm and from there Reni and I drove to Scottsdale. We lived in this little motel. There was one door on one side and one door on the other. A car stayed around the clock outside and there was always somebody there. We didn't know who he was or what he was doing there. When I left I didn't know that John had put a guard on both doors. I found out later that George C. Scott was working in the same little town and John had a guard at my door 24 hours a day. And he never mentioned it to me."

With Ava willing to talk about Scott, I brought up The Bible again. "John was the first person to jump up when he attacked me," she said, "and there were plenty of others around. The other man [Scott--she again had trouble mentioning his name] was a coward and John was not. He prevented what could have been a nasty incident."

Why didn't she just stay away from him? I wondered.

"First of all, darling, to keep him sober was impossible," she said. "When we were doing The Bible he was in a nuthouse with bars on the windows, he was locked up two or three times. And John would send me to get him out. And Reni said, 'Missy, don't go there to that fucking crazy man, he'll kill you.' But I was sent to get him out and calm him down. They used to give him injections to calm him down when he got absolutely crazy and then they locked him up. He'd stay there for two or three days, get off the booze, go through his withdrawals, and then John would say, 'All right honey, would you go and get George?' So I'd get him out of the nuthouse and we'd start all over again. When George is sober he's highly intelligent and God knows a wonderful actor. But when he drinks he goes absolutely crazy."

The following day Ava called again and invited me to hit some tennis balls with her, but I couldn't make it. "That's too bad, darling," she said. And as if she were punishing me, she purred, "I'm going to have apple and raspberry pie with pure English cream. Give me a ring and we'll do it another time."

But there would be no more time to play tennis with Ava. Several months after I saw her in that summer of 1986, she suffered a debilitating illness that became her final decline. It began with a flu that turned into double pneumonia. She came to Los Angeles for treatment, and less than two weeks later she suffered a stroke while watching a Laurel and Hardy movie on TV. The left side of her body went numb and her speech slurred. She had to learn to walk again. She recovered sufficiently to return to London, but there she had a relapse and had to begin all over again. For a woman as athletic and physical as Ava Gardner was, the paralyzing stroke was severely depressing. But she returned again to Los Angeles, and went through more physical therapy. When I went to see her, I brought champagne, which she sipped. Then, when she wanted to bring her laundry to her sister's, I helped her put on a sweater before she went down the elevator and entered the lobby, where photographers were waiting, but not for her.

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Lawrence Grobel is the author of The Hustons and Conversations with Capote, and writes for Playboy, The New York Times and Redbook.

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