“Deep down, I’m pretty superficial.”
Ava Gardner was born in 1922 in a small farming community in 1922, the youngest of seven children, to a mother of Scottish-Irish and English descent and to an Irish American and American Indian descent. Ava’s parents lost their property when the children were still young, forcing her parents to seek work elsewhere. When Gardner was thirteen years old, her family decided to move to a bigger town in Virginia to try their luck there. At the age of eighteen, Ava had become a stunning, green-eyed brunette. While she was visiting her sister Beatrice in New York in 1941, her brother-in-law, Larry Tarr, a professional photographer offered to take her portrait. He was so delighted with the results that he displayed the portrait in the front window of his photography studio on Fifth Avenue. A Loews Theatres legal clerk, Barnard Duhan spotted Gardner’s photo in Tarr’s studio and he tried to get her number under the pretext that he was an MGM talent scout, using the fact that MGM was a subsidiary of Loews. He recommended that they send Ava’s information to MGM which they did immediately. After an interview at MGM’s New York office, MGM offered her a standard contract and Ava left school for Hollywood in 1941, accompanied by her sister, Bappie. The first thing that MGM did was to provide her with a voice coach to help her lose her almost incomprehensible Carolina drawl.
As Ava had little acting experience, her first roles were one-liners. However, after her first starring role in “Whistle Stop” (1946), MGM loaned her to Universal for her first outstanding film, “The Killers” (1946). Although Gardner remained at MGM for seventeen years, few of her best films were made there. Her latent talent was really brought out in the film “Mogambo” (1953), directed by John Ford which earned her an Academy Award nomination and again in “Bhowani Junction” (1956)’ directed by George Cukor.
Offscreen, Gardner had a tempestuous life having been married three times to Mickey Rooney, jazz musician Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra. Ava helped Frank Sinatra in his film career but they had an extremely volatile marriage, although they remained good friends after their divorce. In addition, Ava also had relationships with Howard Hughes and Ernest Hemingway.
After 3 failed marriages and a dissatisfaction with Hollywood life, Ava decided to move to Spain in 1955 and most of her subsequent films were made abroad. Although she was a cosmopolitan and well-known actress by this time, she never overcame the deep insecurity about her acting and life in the public eye. Ava’s last successful film was “The Night of the Iguana” (1964) and after tax trouble in Spain, she moved to London in 1968 where she lived until her death in 1990 at the age of 68 as a result of two strokes and emphysema.
Although Ava Gardner’s film career might not have brought her great fulfillment, many people still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history.
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