There were several instances in their stormy relationship where Scott beat the c*#&#@$p out of her, and when she finally broke things off he started stalking her. I read that at one point, Huston had to hold off filming of "The Bible"; because one night, Scott beat Gardner up so badly that hair and makeup couldn't conceal it, and an enraged O'Toole beat the heck out of Scott, rendering both of them "un-filmable" for several days.
That is just one version of the story, and that too from a biased source, as it is from a biography of Gardner. Scott never gave his version. Neither was there any official complaint before the police. And it's not as if the parties involved wouldn't have called the police out of fear of bad publicity, because Ava Gardner already had a notorious reputation that wouldn't suffer much from being known as the victim of abuse in a relationship, and Scott's difficult nature meant he didn't have many sympathisers either.
Given that Scott was an alcoholic and got into brawls, it is possible that he also hit Gardner. However, this version of events - with all the details about Scott stalking Gardner and O'Toole beating him up - sounds overly dramatised. There are other versions, too, one of which claims that it was Frank Sinatra, not O'Toole, who threatened to kill Scott. The widely different stories suggest that the original incident has been exaggerated and reported differently at different times to the media. And the idea that Scott's stroke had anything to do with the publication of Gardner's biography is absurd; he already suffered a series of strokes in the 1980s due to his alcoholism and smoking habits.
Gardner also accused her partner Howard Hughes of dislocating her jaw. Both accusations, against Hughes and Scott, may be true. But equally, it could show that Gardner had a propensity to demonise those men with whom her relationship soured beyond just a mutual decision to break up.
I am tempted to regard the biography's version of events as a case of accusing someone who already has a bad reputation of even more wrongdoing, because people are pre-disposed to believe the worst of him.
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imbluzclooby
8 years ago
I always liked Scott as an actor. He was so intense and badass that you couldn't ignore him. He commanded attention on screen. I also admired the manner in which he dissed the Academy after his win for "Patton".
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