The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses anti-gay prejudice and racism.

Though Evelyn Hugo is fictional, Jenkins Reid has named three actresses whose stories influenced her character: Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, and Rita Hayworth. All three were huge stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1960s, when the “big five” studios dominated filmmaking. These studios (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., RKO Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and 20th Century Fox) had considerable control over their contracted stars, whom they relied on for ticket sales. Actors’ stardom was perpetuated by media outlets and gossip columns telling stories about their lives, just as is the case for Evelyn Hugo.

Ava Gardner was signed by MGM in 1941, and she rose to fame, eventually being nominated for an Academy Award in 1953 and a Golden Globe in 1964. She had three highly publicized marriages to famous men: the actor Mickey Rooney, the jazz musician Artie Shaw, and the singer and actor Frank Sinatra. Jenkins Reid has cited a book titled Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversation as the initial inspiration for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. The book is based on taped conversations from the 1980s in which Gardner tells a ghostwriter about her marriages. While she eventually backed out, the book was published in 2013, long after her death and that of the ghostwriter. Like Gardner, Evelyn recounts her life story to a ghostwriter in The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which Jenkins Reid describes as “an entire book that feels like the juiciest parts of this Ava Gardner book” (Block, Tara. “Taylor Jenkins Reid on the Scandalous True Stories that Inspired her Latest Novel.” Popsugar, 13 June 2017).

Jenkins Reid has also acknowledged the “striking” parallels between Evelyn and Elizabeth Taylor (Granett, Brandi Megan. “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Q&A with Taylor Jenkins Reid.” Huffpost, 22 May 2017). Taylor began as a child star in the 1940s, and by the 1960s, she was the highest-paid movie star in the world. Like Evelyn, she married seven different men (most famously fellow actor Richard Burton) and endured constant media scrutiny. Also like Evelyn, Taylor was best friends with a gay man (actor Montgomery Clift), and she was the first on the scene when he crashed his car. Unlike Harry in the novel, Clift suffered serious injuries but did not die.

Evelyn Hugo is also partially based on Rita Hayworth, who achieved stardom in the 1940s and acted in 61 films during her career. Born to a Spanish father, Hayworth was christened Margarita Carmen Cansino, and she was initially cast in exoticized, non-leading roles, so she adopted her mother’s Anglo-Irish maiden name, Hayworth, at the advice of her studio head. She also dyed her hair red and changed her hairline to appear more northern European. Evelyn is also subject to xenophobia and racism in Hollywood, and she changes her name, her accent, and her hair color to pass as white instead of Cuban so she can be a leading lady. Hayworth also famously said of her romantic interests, “Men go to bed with Gilda [her most famous part] but wake up with me” (Block, 2017). Evelyn thinks about these lines in Chapter 52.