Meeting Howard Hughes
Many prominent men had courted Ava Gardner, but few matched Howard Hughes’ status. He met her before she became single. Her mother was still living at the time, and the family had a lot of medical bills to pay, so Hughes helped out. It was a golden era for Hughes, who took time away from his other economic interests to produce films in Hollywood and romance starlets. Despite his request for her hand in marriage, she rejected, having learnt her lesson from marrying Rooney. She and Hughes had an on-and-off relationship for decades, and she described him in her memoir as “painfully shy, completely enigmatic, and more eccentric… than anyone [she] had ever met.”
Meeting Howard Hughes
Husband Number Two
Gardner didn’t take long to find someone new after her divorce, and while she and Rooney were both too young and inexperienced when they married, she was determined to try again, this time with someone more mature, the conductor and jazz musician Artie Shaw. While she and Rooney were only a few years apart, Gardner’s second husband, Artie Shaw, was more than a decade her senior, and his intelligence and masculinity made him the perfect match. The catch, however, is that Shaw was married when he and Gardner became connected. However, he left his wife for Gardner, and the two married in 1945.
Husband Number Two
