Ava Gardner: Difference between revisions

American actress (1922–1990)

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics’ attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak‘s film noir The Killers. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford‘s Mogambo (1953), and for best actress for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for her performance in John Huston‘s The Night of the Iguana (1964). She was a part of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

During the 1950s, Gardner established herself as a leading lady and one of the era’s top stars with films like Show Boat, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (both 1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956) and On the Beach (1959). She continued her film career for three more decades, appearing in the films 55 Days at Peking (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning… (1966), Mayerling (1968), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974) and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). And in 1985, she had the major recurring role of Ruth Galveston on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing. She continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in 1990, at the age of 67.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gardner No. 25 on its greatest female screen legends of classic American cinema list.^[1]

Early life[edit]

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina,^[2] the youngest of seven children. She had two older brothers, Raymond Allison and Jonas Melvin, and four older sisters, Beatrice Elizabeth, Elsie Mae, Edna Inez, and Myra Merritt.^[3] Her parents, Mary Elizabeth “Molly” Gardner (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner, were poor tobacco sharecroppers.^[4] She was of English and Scots-Irish ancestry.^[5][6][7]

She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother. While the children were still young, the Gardners lost their property, and Molly received an offer to work as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School that included board for the family and where Jonas continued sharecropping tobacco and supplemented the dwindling work with odd jobs at sawmills.^[4] In 1931, the teachers’ school closed, forcing the family to finally give up on their property dreams and move to Newport News, Virginia, where Molly found work managing a boarding house for the city’s many shipworkers.^[4] While in Newport News, Jonas became ill and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Ava was 15 years old. After her father’s death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Molly ran another boarding house for teachers. Ava 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.^[8]

Gardner was visiting her sister Beatrice in New York City in the summer of 1940 when Beatrice’s husband Larry Tarr, a professional photographer, offered to take her portrait as a gift for her mother Molly.^[9][10] 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.^[8]

Barnard Duhan, a legal clerk at Loews Theatres, spotted Gardner’s portrait in Tarr’s studio. At the time, Duhan often posed as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) talent scout to meet girls, using the fact that MGM was a subsidiary of Loews. Duhan entered Tarr’s studio and tried to get Gardner’s number, but he 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 toward the camera, turn and walk away, then rearrange some flowers in a vase. He did not attempt to record her voice because her strong Southern accent made understanding her difficult for him. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, however, sent a telegram to Altman: “She can’t sing. She can’t act. She can’t talk. She’s terrific!”^[8] She was offered a standard contract by the studio 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 because her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible to them,^[11] and Harriet Lee as her singing teacher.^[12]

Her first appearance in a feature film was as a walk-on in the Norma Shearer vehicle We Were Dancing (1942). Fifteen bit parts later, she received her first screen billing in Ghosts on the Loose (1943), and she is featured by name on the theatrical poster.^{[citation needed]} After five…