Ava Gardner Biography

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 - January 25, 1990) was an American actress and singer.

She was signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941, and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953), and also received BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for other films.

Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1940s to 1970s, including The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), 55 Days at Peking (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in London in 1990, at the age of 67.

She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Early life

Gardner was born near the farming community of Grabtown, North Carolina. She was the youngest of seven children. She had two older brothers, Raymond and Melvin, and four older sisters, Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra. Her parents, Mary Elizabeth "Molly" (ne Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner, were poor cotton and tobacco farmers. While there are varying accounts of her background, Gardner's only documented ancestry was English.

She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother. While 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 Gardner was seven years old, the family decided to try their luck in a larger city, Newport News, Virginia, where Molly Gardner found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers. While in Newport News, Gardner's father became ill, and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Ava was 15 years old. After Jonas Gardner's death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Molly Gardner ran another boarding house for teachers. Gardner 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.

Early career

Gardner was visiting her sister Beatrice in New York in 1941, when Beatrice's husband Larry Tarr, 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 Tarr Photography Studio on Fifth Avenue.

A Loews Theatres legal clerk, Barnard Duhan, spotted Gardner's photo in Tarr's studio. 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 Gardner's number, but was rebuffed by the receptionist. Duhan made the comment, "Somebody should send her info to MGM", and the Tarrs did so immediately. Shortly after, Gardner, who, at the time, was a student at Atlantic Christian College, traveled to New York to be interviewed at MGM's New York office by Al Altman, head of MGM's New York talent department. With cameras rolling, he directed the 18-year-old to walk towards the camera, turn and walk away, then re-arrange some flowers in a vase. He did not attempt to record her voice because her Southern accent made it almost impossible for him to understand her. Louis B. Mayer, head of the studio, however, sent a telegram to Altman: "She can't sing, she can't act, she can't talk, she's terrific!" She was offered a standard contract by MGM, and left school for Hollywood in 1941, with her sister Beatrice accompanying her. MGM's first order of business was to provide her with a speech coach, as her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible to them.

Career

After five years of bit parts, mostly at MGM, and many of them uncredited, Gardner came to prominence in the Mark Hellinger-produced smash-hit film noir The Killers (1946), playing the femme fatale Kitty Collins.

Other films include The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), Lone Star (1952), Mogambo (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), The Sun Also Rises (1957), and On the Beach (1959). A particularly notable role was in The Barefoot Contessa, as the doomed beauty Maria Vargas, a fiercely independent woman who goes from Spanish dancer to international film star with the help of a Hollywood director played by Humphrey Bogart, with tragic consequences.

Gardner starred as Guinevere in 1953's Knights of the Round Table, opposite actor Robert Taylor as Sir Lancelot. Indicative of her sophistication, she portrayed a duchess, a baroness, and other ladies of royal lineage in her films of the 1950s.

Off-camera, she could be witty and pithy, as in her assessment of director John Ford, who directed Mogambo ("The meanest man on earth. Thoroughly evil. Adored him!").

She was billed between Charlton Heston and David Niven in 55 Days at Peking in 1963, which was set in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. The following year, she played her last major leading role in a critically acclaimed film, The Night of the Iguana (1964), based upon a Tennessee Williams play, and starring Richard Burton as an atheist clergyman and Deborah Kerr as a gentle artist traveling with her aged poet grandfather. John Huston directed the movie in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, insisting on making the film in black and white - a decision he later regretted because of the vivid colors of the flora. Gardner received billing below Burton, but above Kerr. She was nominated for a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award for her performance.

She next appeared again with Burt Lancaster, her co-star from The Killers, this time along with Kirk Douglas and Fredric March, in Seven Days in May (1964), a thriller about an attempted military takeover of the US government. Gardner played a former love interest of Lancaster's who could have been instrumental in Douglas's preventing a coup against the President of the United States.

John Huston chose Gardner for the part of Sarah, the wife of Abraham (played by George C. Scott), in the Dino De Laurentiis production The Bible: In the Beginning..., which was released in 1966. In a 1964 interview, she explained why she accepted the role:

He [Huston] had more faith in me than I did myself. Now I'm glad I listened, for it is a challenging role and a very demanding one. I start out as a young wife, and age through various periods, forcing me to adjust psychologically to each age. It is a complete departure for me, and most intriguing. In this role, I must create a character, not just play one.

Two years later, in 1966, Gardner briefly sought the role of Mrs. Robinson in Mike Nichols' The Graduate (1967). She reportedly called Nichols, and said, "I want to see you! I want to talk about this Graduate thing!" Nichols never seriously considered her for the part, preferring to cast a younger woman (Anne Bancroft was 35, while Gardner was 44), but he did visit her hotel, where he later recounted that "she sat at a little French desk with a telephone, she went through every movie star clich. She said, 'All right, let's talk about your movie. First of all, I strip for nobody.'"

Gardner moved to London in 1968, undergoing an elective hysterectomy to allay her worries of contracting the uterine cancer that had claimed the life of her mother. That year, she appeared in Mayerling, in which she played the supporting role of Austrian Empress Elisabeth of Austria, opposite James Mason as Emperor Franz Joseph I.

She appeared in a number of disaster films throughout the 1970s, notably Earthquake (1974) with Heston, The Cassandra Crossing (1976) with Lancaster, and the Canadian movie City on Fire (1979). She appeared briefly as Lillie Langtry at the end of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), and in The Blue Bird (1976). Her last movie was Regina Roma (1982), a direct-to-video release. In the 1980s, she acted primarily on television, including the mini-series remake of The Long, Hot Summer and in a story arc on Knots Landing (both 1985).

Personal life

Marriages

Soon after Gardner arrived in Los Angeles, she met fellow MGM contract player Mickey Rooney; they married on January 10, 1942. The ceremony was held in the remote town of Ballard, California, because MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer was worried that fans would desert Rooney's Andy Hardy movie series if it became known that their star was married. Largely due to Rooney's serial adultery, Gardner divorced him in 1943, but agreed not to reveal the cause so as not to affect his career.

Gardner's second marriage was brief as well, to jazz musician and bandleader Artie Shaw, from 1945 to 1946. Shaw had previously been married to Lana Turner. Gardner's third, and last, marriage was to singer and actor Frank Sinatra, from 1951 to 1957. She would later say in her autobiography that he was the love of her life. Sinatra left his wife, Nancy, for Gardner, and their subsequent marriage made headlines.

Sinatra was blasted by gossip columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons, the Hollywood establishment, the Roman Catholic Church, and by his fans for leaving his wife for a noted femme fatale. Gardner used her considerable influence, particularly with Harry Cohn, 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.

The Gardner-Sinatra marriage was tumultuous. Gardner confided to Artie Shaw, her second husband, that, "With him [Frank], it's impossible... It's like being with a woman. He's so gentle. It's as though he thinks I'll break, as though I'm a piece of Dresden china, and he's gonna hurt me." During their marriage, Gardner became pregnant twice, but aborted both pregnancies. "MGM had all sorts of penalty clauses about their stars having babies", according to her autobiography, which was published eight months after her death. Gardner remained good friends with Sinatra for the rest of her life.

Relationships

Gardner became a friend of businessman and aviator Howard Hughes in the early to mid-1940s, and the relationship lasted into the 1950s. Gardner stated in her autobiography, Ava: My Story, that she was never in love with Hughes, but he was in and out of her life for about 20 years. Hughes' trust in Gardner was what kept their relationship alive. She described him as "painfully shy, completely enigmatic, and more eccentric ... than anyone [she] had ever met".

After Gardner divorced Sinatra in 1957, she headed for Spain, where she began a friendship with writer Ernest Hemingway (she had starred in an adaptation of his The Sun Also Rises that year, and five years earlier, Hemingway had successfully urged producer Darryl F. Zanuck to cast Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a film which adapted several of his short stories). While staying with Hemingway at his villa in San Francisco de Paula in Havana, Cuba, Gardner once swam alone without a swimsuit in his pool. After watching her, Hemingway ordered his staff: "The water is not to be emptied". Her friendship with Hemingway led to her becoming a fan of bullfighting and bullfighters, such as Luis Miguel Domingun, who became her lover. "It was a sort of madness, honey", she later said of the time.

Gardner was also involved in a relationship with her live-in boyfriend and companion, American actor Benjamin Tatar, who worked in Spain as a foreign-language dubbing director. Tatar later wrote an autobiography in which he discussed his relationship with Gardner, though the book was never published.

Religion and political views

Although Gardner was exposed to Christianity throughout her early years, she identified herself as an atheist later in life. Religion never played a positive role in her life, according to biographers and Gardner herself, in her autobiography Ava: My Story. Her friend Zoe Sallis, who met her on the set of The Bible: In the Beginning... when Gardner was living with John Huston in Puerto Vallarta, said Gardner always seemed unconcerned about religion. When Sallis asked her about religion once, Gardner replied, "It doesn't exist." Another factor that contributed to this was the death of Gardner's father in her younger days, stating, "Nobody wanted to know Daddy when he was dying. He was so alone. He was scared. I could see the fear in his eyes when he was smiling. I went to see the preacher, the guy who'd baptized me. I begged him to come and visit Daddy, just to talk to him, you know? Give him a blessing or something. But he never did. He never came. God, I hated him. Cold-ass bastards like that ought to ... I don't know ... they should be in some other racket, I know that. I had no time for religion after that. I never prayed. I never said another prayer." Concerning politics, Gardner was a lifelong Democrat.

Death

After a lifetime of smoking, Gardner suffered from emphysema, as well as an unidentified auto-immune disorder. Two strokes in 1986 left her partially paralyzed and bedridden. Although Gardner could afford her medical expenses, Sinatra wanted to pay for her visit to a specialist in the United States, and she allowed him to make the arrangements for a medically staffed private plane. She suffered a bad fall a week before she died, and she lay on the floor, alone and unable to move, until her housekeeper returned. Her last words (to her housekeeper) were reportedly "I'm so tired". She died of pneumonia at the age of 67, at her London home, 34 Ennismore Gardens, where she had lived since 1968.

Gardner was buried in the Sunset Memorial Park, Smithfield, North Carolina, next to her siblings and their parents, Jonas (1878-1938) and Molly Gardner (1883-1943). The town of Smithfield now has an Ava Gardner Museum.

Book

In the last years of her life, Gardner asked Peter Evans to ghostwrite her autobiography, stating, "I either write the book or sell the jewels." Despite meeting with Evans frequently, and approving of most of his copy, Gardner eventually learned that Evans, along with the BBC, had once been sued by her ex-husband Frank Sinatra. Gardner and Evans's friendship subsequently cooled, and Evans left the project. Evans's notes and sections of his draft of Gardner's autobiography, which he based on their taped conversations, were published in the book Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations after Evans's death in 2012.

Award nominations

Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Mogambo (1953); the award was won by Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday. Her performance as Maxine Faulk in The Night of the Iguana (1964) was well reviewed, and she was nominated for a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe. Additionally, Ava Gardner won the 1964 Prize San Sebastin for best actress for her performance in The Night of the Iguana.

Film portrayals

Gardner has been portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden in the 1992 TV mini-series Sinatra; Deborah Kara Unger in HBO's 1998 television movie The Rat Pack; Kate Beckinsale in the 2004 Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator; and Anna Drijver in the 2012 Italian TV film Walter Chiari - Fino all'ultima risata. (Strangely, for a Martin Scorsese film, The Aviator includes a chronological error by depicting Hughes meeting Gardner at the premiere of the 1939 movie The Women"?an event that occurred two years prior to her arrival in Hollywood.)

The images of Gardner and Clark Gable are featured on the cover of Robin Gibb's 1983 album How Old Are You?

The 2018 Spanish television series Arde Madrid is a comedy-drama with thriller elements based on elements of Ava Gardner's life in Francoist Spain. Gardner is portrayed by Debi Mazar.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1941	Fancy Answers	Girl at Recital	Short film Uncredited
1941	Strange Testament	Waitress	Uncredited
1941	Shadow of the Thin Man	Passerby	Uncredited
1941	H.M. Pulham, Esq.	Young Socialite	Uncredited
1941	Babes on Broadway	Audience member	Uncredited
1942	Joe Smith, American	Miss Maynard, Secretary	Uncredited
1942	We Do It Because	Lucretia Borgia	Short film Uncredited
1942	This Time for Keeps	Girl in car lighting cigarette	Uncredited
1942	Kid Glove Killer	Car Hop	Uncredited
1942	Sunday Punch	Ringsider	Uncredited
1942	Calling Dr. Gillespie	Student at finishing school	Uncredited
1942	Mighty Lak a Goat	Girl at the Bijou box office	Short film
1942	Reunion in France	Marie, a salesgirl	Uncredited
1943	Hitler's Madman	Franciska Pritric, a Student	Uncredited
1943	Ghosts on the Loose	Betty
1943	Young Ideas	Co-ed	Uncredited
1943	Du Barry Was a Lady	Perfume Girl	Uncredited
1943	Swing Fever	Receptionist	Uncredited
1943	Lost Angel	Hat Check Girl	Uncredited
1944	Two Girls and a Sailor	Dream Girl	Uncredited
1944	Three Men in White	Jean Brown
1944	Maisie Goes to Reno	Gloria Fullerton
1944	Blonde Fever	Bit Role	Uncredited
1945	She Went to the Races	Hilda Spotts
1946	Whistle Stop	Mary
1946	The Killers	Kitty Collins
1947	Singapore	Linda Grahame/Ann Van Leyden
1947	The Hucksters	Jean Ogilvie
1948	One Touch of Venus	Venus
1949	The Bribe	Elizabeth Hintten
1949	The Great Sinner	Pauline Ostrovsky
1949	East Side, West Side	Isabel Lorrison
1951	Pandora and the Flying Dutchman	Pandora Reynolds
1951	My Forbidden Past	Barbara Beaurevel
1951	Show Boat	Julie LaVerne
1952	Lone Star	Martha Ronda
1952	The Snows of Kilimanjaro	Cynthia Green
1953	Knights of the Round Table	Guinevere
1953	Ride, Vaquero!	Cordelia Cameron
1953	The Band Wagon	Herself
1953	Mogambo	Honey Bear Kelly	Nominated - Academy Award for Best Actress
1954	The Barefoot Contessa	Maria Vargas
1956	Bhowani Junction	Victoria Jones	Nominated - BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress
1957	The Little Hut	Lady Susan Ashlow
1957	The Sun Also Rises	Lady Brett Ashley
1958	The Naked Maja	Maria Cayetana, Duchess of Alba
1959	On the Beach	Moira Davidson	Nominated - BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress
1960	The Angel Wore Red	Soledad
1963	55 Days at Peking	Baroness Natalie Ivanoff
1964	Seven Days in May	Eleanor Holbrook
1964	The Night of the Iguana	Maxine Faulk	Nominated - BAFTA for Best Foreign Actress Nominated - Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress - Drama
1966	The Bible: In the Beginning...	Sarah
1968	Mayerling	Empress Elizabeth
1970	Tam-Lin	Michaela Cazaret
1972	The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean	Lily Langtry
1974	Earthquake	Remy Royce-Graff
1975	Permission to Kill	Katina Petersen
1976	The Blue Bird	Luxury
1976	The Cassandra Crossing	Nicole Dressler
1977	The Sentinel	Miss Logan
1979	City on Fire	Maggie Grayson
1980	The Kidnapping of the President	Beth Richards
1981	Priest of Love	Mabel Dodge Luhan
1982	Regina Roma	Mama

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1985	A.D.	Agrippina	Miniseries
1985	Knots Landing	Ruth Galveston	7 episodes
1985	The Long Hot Summer	Minnie Littlejohn	Television film
1986	Harem	Kadin	Television film
1986	Maggie	Diane Webb	Television film