Aaron Costa Ganis and Elizabeth McGovern (all photos by Jeff Lorch)
Peter Evans was a journalist for London’s Daily Express and other newspapers and was infamous for his unauthorized biographies of The Kennedys and Aristotle Onassis. In 1988 he was approached by his agent to interview the equally infamous Hollywood actress and legend Ava Gardner. Gardner was still recovering from a stroke she suffered two years earlier, and although unenthusiastic about revealing the sordid details of her private life, she needed the money. Many of their conversations took place during the night, when Gardner, drunk and suffering from insomnia, would call Evans and while flirting, tell him the tidbits about her past he and his publisher desperately wanted to hear. Gardner eventually thought better of telling the truth about her many affairs and stopped the interviews, killing the book. Twenty years after her death, Evans got permission from her estate to publish the interviews in Ava: The Secret Conversations, which was finally published in 2013, after Evans’s unexpected death. The resultant book is actually more about Evans and his difficulty in getting his subject to open up about the really juicy details of her storied life than it is a biography of the star herself.
Actress Elizabeth McGovern has done a masterful job of adapting Evans’s book for the stage and Ava The Secret Conversations is currently at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. Although the character of Evans is a main part of the action, McGovern places Gardner front and center in the spotlight where she belongs. As in the book, we don’t get much detail about Gardner’s films but then, although she did receive an Oscar nomination for Mogambo, she was never thought of as an actress. Her beauty got her her original contract with MGM, but because of her thick North Carolina accent they mostly cast her in non-speaking or bit parts for the first four years of her Hollywood career. Elizabeth Taylor was considered pretty but Gardner was beautiful. Marketing materials for her 1954 film The Barefoot Contessa called her “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal” and she was always more famous for her body than her body of work.
When we first meet Ava on stage those days are long past her. Her stroke has left her face partially immobilized, and she protectively cradles her left arm. She is also having memory lapses, forgetting what her dog looks like or even its name while walking it in the park. Thankfully she remembers the past and eventually shares it with Evans and the eager audience. She met Mickey Rooney on her first day on the MGM lot and soon married him at 19. Although they had sex like rabbits, she divorced him after 16 months because of his rampant infidelity. She soon married clarinetist and band leader Artie Shaw, who bullied and dominated her with his superior intelligence. After 53 weeks of marriage, at age 24, Gardner was once again divorced and soon having an affair with eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes. Gardner’s third marriage was her longest and stormiest, a four-year headline-making, paparazzi-fueled team up with Frank Sinatra.
McGovern vibrantly brings to life this legendary woman, who loved to drink, to smoke, to fornicate, to swear and to laugh. She lived her life to the fullest, even a stroke didn’t slow her down much. McGovern artfully plays the role of a lifetime through a wide range of emotions, from the stroke and memory addled present to the glory days of yesteryear. Aaron Costa Ganis lends strong support as writer Evans, gently coaxing the star to impart her deepest and most personal secrets. In flashback scenes to her marriages, he also gives us a taste of Rooney, Shaw and Sinatra in their interactions with Ava. Evans is often engaged in dialogue with his impatient agent, represented by the disembodied voice of Ryan W. Garcia. Director Moritz Von Stuelpnagel keeps everything moving smoothly during the 130-minute playing time. Toni-Leslie James has created some lovely costumes that become a legend best. David Meyer’s scenic design at times morphs into different locations, including the finale which gives McGovern a chance to strut down the red carpet one last time as the earthy and vital creature that was Ava Gardner.
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