Everything about Ava Gardner totally explained
Ava Lavinia Gardner (
December 24,
1922 –
January 25,
1990) was an
Academy Award-nominated
American actress. She is listed as one of the
American Film Institute's
greatest stars of all time.
Biography
Early years
Ava Gardner was born in 1922 in the small farming community of
Brogden,
Johnston County, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children (she had two brothers; Raymond and Melvin, and four sisters; Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez and Myra) of poor
cotton and
tobacco farmers; her mother, Molly, was a
Baptist of
Scots-Irish and
English descent, while her father, Jonas Bailey Gardner, was a
Catholic of
Irish American and American Indian (
Tuscarora) descent. When the children were still young, the Gardners lost their property, forcing Jonas Gardner to work at a sawmill and Molly to begin working as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School.
When Ava was thirteen years old, the family decided to try their luck in a bigger town,
Newport News, Virginia, where Molly Gardner found work managing a boardinghouse for the city's many shipworkers. That job didn't last long, and the family moved to the Rock Ridge suburb of Wilson, North Carolina, where Molly Gardner ran another boarding house. Gardner's father died of bronchitis in 1935. Ava and some of her siblings attended high school in Rock Ridge and she graduated from there in 1939. She then attended secretarial classes at
Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year.
Gardner, who by age eighteen had become a stunning, green-eyed brunette, was visiting her sister Beatrice in New York in 1941 when Beatrice's husband Larry, a professional photographer, offered to take her portrait. He was so pleased with the results that he displayed the finished product in the front window of his Fifth Avenue studio.
Early career
In 1941, a
Loews Theatres legal clerk, Barnard "Barney" Duhan, spotted Gardner's photo in the Tarr Photography Studio on 5th Avenue in New York. The photo had been taken in 1939 by the proprietor, Ava's brother-in-law
Larry Tarr, who was married to Ava's older sister, Bappie (Beatrice). At the time, Duhan often posed as an MGM talent scout to meet girls, using the fact that MGM was a subsidiary of Loews. Duhan entered Tarr's and tried to get Ava's number, but was rebuffed by the receptionist. Duhan made the offhand comment, "Somebody should send her info to MGM", and the Tarrs did so immediately. Shortly after, Ava, who at the time was a student at
Atlantic Christian College, traveled to
New York to be interviewed at MGM's New York office. She was offered a standard contract by MGM, and Ava left school for Hollywood in 1941 with her sister Bappie accompanying her. MGM's first order of business was to provide her a voice coach, as her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible.
Oscar nomination
Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for
Mogambo (1953), however she lost to
Audrey Hepburn for
Roman Holiday. Many thought Gardner's finest performance was as Maxine Faulk in
The Night of the Iguana (1964), for which she wasn't nominated. (
Grayson Hall, as the repressed Judith Fellowes, however, was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category).
Other films include
The Hucksters (1947),
Showboat (1951),
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), 1954's
The Barefoot Contessa (which some consider to be her "signature film" which famously mirrored her normal real life custom of going
barefoot), Bhowani Junction (1956),
The Sun Also Rises in which she played party-girl "Brett Ashley", 1957), and the film version of Neville Shute's best-selling
On the Beach, co-starring Gregory Peck.
Gardner also showed her depth as an actress in
55 Days at Peking (1963).
"Off-camera, she gave off sparks of wit, as in her assessment of
John Ford, who directed her in
Mogambo: 'The meanest man on earth. Thoroughly evil. Adored him!'"
Later life
She moved to
London, England in 1968, undergoing a
hysterectomy to allay her worries of contracting the uterine cancer that had killed her mother. That year she made what some consider to be one of her best films, a technicolor, English-language remake of
Mayerling, in which she played the Austrian Empress Elisabeth opposite
James Mason as Emperor Franz Joseph.
Marriages and relationships
Mickey Rooney
Soon after her arrival in
Los Angeles, Gardner met fellow MGM contract player
Mickey Rooney; they married on
January 10,
1942 in
Ballard, California. She was 19 years old. Gardner made several movies before 1946, but it wasn't until she starred in
The Killers opposite
Burt Lancaster, that she became known as a movie star and
sex symbol. (Rooney and Gardner divorced in 1943, mainly because Rooney wouldn't give up his partying ways). Rooney later rhapsodized about Gardner's performance in bed, though upon hearing this Gardner retorted "Well, honey, he may have enjoyed the sex, but [goodnessknows] I didn't." She once characterised their marriage as "
Love Finds Andy Hardy".
Artie Shaw
Her second marriage was to jazz musician and band leader
Artie Shaw, from 1945 to 1946 and it was even more disastrous than the first. It was during this marriage that Gardner began to drink and take refuge in therapy.
Frank Sinatra
Her third and last marriage (1951-1957) was to singer and actor
Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra left his wife, Nancy, for Ava and their subsequent marriage made headlines. Sinatra was savaged by gossip columnists
Hedda Hopper and
Louella Parsons, the Hollywood establishment, and by his fans for leaving his "good wife" for this exotic
femme fatale. His career suffered, while Ava's prospered -- the headlines only solidified her sexy screen siren image. The marriage to Sinatra was stormy -- passionate fighting, jealousy, at least one suicide attempt (by Sinatra), and numerous separations.
Gardner used her considerable clout to get Sinatra cast in his
Oscar-winning role in
From Here to Eternity (1953). That role and the award revitalized both Sinatra's acting and singing careers. Ava said of her relationship with Sinatra, "We were great in bed. It was usually on the way to the bidet when the trouble began." (This quote inspired the song "Frank and Ava" by
Suzanne Vega.) During their marriage Ava became pregnant, but she'd an abortion due to the volatility of her marriage. She had always wanted children, but she said years later, "We couldn't even take care of ourselves. How were we going to take care of a baby?" Gardner and Sinatra remained good friends for the rest of her life.
Howard Hughes
She began dating billionaire aviator
Howard Hughes in the early to mid-1940s, a relationship that lasted into the 1950s. Despite his initial claims that she'd be an easy catch, they were never intimate.
Ernest Hemingway
She
divorced Sinatra in 1957 and headed to
Spain where her friendship with famed writer
Ernest Hemingway led to her becoming a fan of bullfighting and bullfighters such as
Luis Miguel Dominguín (who was currently with China Machado), with whom she'd a tempestuous affair. "It was a sort of madness, honey", she said later of the time.
Final years
After a lifetime of smoking, Gardner suffered from
emphysema, in addition to an autoimmune disorder (which may have been lupus). After two
strokes in 1986, which left her partially paralyzed and bedridden, Frank Sinatra paid the cost of her ($50,000) medical expenses. Her last words (to her housekeeper Carmen), were, "I'm so tired", before she died of pneumonia at the age of 67. After her death, one of Frank Sinatra's daughters found him slumped in his room, crying, and unable to speak. Ava wasn't only the love of his life but also the inspiration for one of his most personal and magical songs, "I Am a Fool to Want You", recorded after their separation. Reportedly, a lone black limousine parked behind the crowd of 500 mourners at Ava's funeral. No one exited the vehicle, but it was assumed that the anonymous mourner was indeed Frank Sinatra. A floral arrangement at Ava's graveside simply read: "With My Love, Francis".
Gravesite
Gardner was buried in the
Sunset Memorial Park,
Smithfield, North Carolina, next to her brothers and their much-loved parents, Jonah (1878-1938) and Mollie Gardner (1883-1943). The town of Smithfield now has an
Ava Gardner Museum.
Filmography
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ava Gardner'.
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