Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner Biography
When Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, her family was a cotton and tobacco farming family in Smithfield, North Carolina. Mary Elizabeth, who everyone knew as Mollie and Jonas Bailey Gardner, had seven children, two boys and five girls, with Ava being the youngest. Jonas and Mollie were already poor to begin with, but they lost their property when the children were still quite young, and so had to seek alternative sources of income. Jonas found work in a sawmill, and Mollie secured a position as a housekeeper at a dormitory for schoolteachers.
The income wasn’t nearly enough, though, and the Gardners decided that they might have better luck in a larger city, so they headed off to Newport News, Virginia, to look for better work when Ava was about seven years old. Mollie found work running a boarding house for ship workers, and things were okay for a while. However, about seven years later, Jonas contracted bronchitis and unfortunately died.
Following her husband’s death, Mollie moved the family to Rock Ridge in North Carolina, where she once again found work running a boarding house, this time for teachers.
After Ava Gardner graduated from high school in Rock Ridge, she attended Atlantic Christian College with the intention of becoming a secretary, but this plan was to last only about a year, as events soon took a different course.
In 1941, Ava visited her sister, Beatrice, who had by now married a professional photographer called Larry Tarr and was living in New York. During her visit, Larry decided he would like to take a portrait photograph of Ava. The results were so good that he displayed the portrait in the window of his studio on Fifth Avenue.
The portrait was spotted by Barnard Duhan, who worked for Loews Theatres, the owners of MGM Studios. Duhan was in the habit of pretending to be a talent scout for MGM in order to meet girls, and so tried to get more information about the girl in the picture, but was turned away by Larry Tarr’s secretary. However, as he was leaving, he made an off-the-cuff remark about someone needing to get the girl to MGM.
This sounded like a great idea to Beatrice and Larry, and they contacted the studio. Soon after, Ava travelled back to New York again to meet with Al Altman, who was head of the talent department at MGM’s New York office. He arranged for a camera to record Ava whilst he directed her with some simple tasks. He made no effort to record her voice as her deep Southern drawl made it all but impossible for Altman to understand her. As a result of the test, MGM Studios offered Ava Gardner a contract, and in 1941, she left school to head to Los Angeles. The first thing she did when she arrived was a attend lessons with a speaking coach.
Shortly after she arrived in Los Angeles, she met Mickey Rooney, and the pair fell in love, deciding to get married. The studio wasn’t particularly happy about it, though, as Rooney, another MGM contract actor, was starring in a popular series of movies as Andy Hardy, and they feared that if it became known that he was married, his popularity, and therefore that of the movies, would suffer. Consequently, the studio arranged a venue for the wedding in the middle of nowhere, in the town of Ballard, California. The couple was married on 10 January 1942, but the studio needn’t have worried. Less than a year later, they were divorced, with the main cause being Rooney’s string of affairs.
Ava would marry again in 1945, this time to a bandleader called Artie Shaw. He had previously been married to Lana Turner, but this marriage too failed, and the couple was divorced in 1946. Also, during the 1940s, she had an on-off relationship with the reclusive Howard Hughes, whom she described as painfully shy. Their relationship lasted into the 1950’s but she said in her autobiography that she was never really in love with him.
After five years of playing mainly uncredited bit parts under her MGM contract, Ava Gardner landed her first real role as Kitty Collins in 1946’ The Killers. The movie was a hit and led to a number of roles soon after, including The Hucksters, Show Boat and The Snows of Kilimanjaro. She starred opposite many leading men of the era, including Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart.
In 1951, Ava Gardner married again, but this time, far from being a secret, the union caused headlines around the world as she married Frank Sinatra, who had left his wife, Nancy, for her. During her time with Sinatra, Ava became pregnant on two occasions, but both times, she had terminations. MGM had severe penalty clauses in her contract, and to have a baby would probably have meant the end of her career. The marriage lasted only until 1957, but even so, Gardner said that Sinatra was the love of her life and they remained lifelong friends.
Following the divorce from Sinatra, Ava spent time with Ernest Hemingway. On one occasion, she was swimming naked and alone in the pool at his villa in Cuba. After he witnessed this, Hemingway ordered the staff not to empty the pool of its water.
In 1953, Ava Gardner starred as Queen Guinevere opposite Robert Taylor’s Sir Lancelot in Knights of the Round Table, and it was noted that she could not only play the femme fatale as she had so skilfully done in The Killers but could also play sophisticated parts such as duchesses, baronesses, and queens.
Ava Gardner’s star was on the rise through the 1950s, and by 1963, when she starred opposite Charlton Heston in “55 Days at Peking,” she received second billing, ahead of David Niven. In her last leading role in a significant film, she received second billing again, this time behind Richard Burton and ahead of Deborah Kerr in The Night of the Iguana, which was released in 1964.
Two years later, however, she made an effort to land the part of Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which was released in 1967. She was never seriously considered for the part by Mike Nichols, as he wanted someone younger. She was now 43 years old. Anne Bancroft, who got the part, was only 36.
The following year, Ava Gardner moved to the place where she would call home for the rest of her life, 34 Ennismore Gardens in London. At the same time, she decided to have a hysterectomy. Her mother had died of uterine cancer, and she had the surgery to prevent the same thing from happening to her.
This didn’t stop her from taking on significant roles, though, as in 1968, she starred as Empress Elisabeth of Austria opposite James Mason’s Emperor Franz Joseph I.
The 1970s brought cinema-goers the disaster movie, and Ava Gardner starred in a number of them, including Earthquake with Charlton Heston, The Cassandra Crossing with Burt Lancaster, and a Canadian movie called City on Fire, which also starred Barry Newman and Henry Fonda.
A few more movies followed, but her career was now winding down with her last outing being 1982’s Regina Roma, which was a straight-to-video release. After this, she transitioned to television and had a fairly lengthy story arc in Knots Landing.
Illness started to take its toll in the 1980s. She had been a lifelong smoker and suffered from an autoimmune disorder as well as emphysema. In 1986, she had two strokes, which left her bedridden. Frank Sinatra arranged and paid for a specially equipped plane to fly her to the USA for treatment, but in the middle of January 1990, Ava suffered from a fall at home and was unable to move until her housekeeper found her. Her housekeeper said that her last words were, “I’m so tired.” A week later, on 25 January 1990, Ava Gardner died from pneumonia. She was 67 years old.
She was buried alongside her brothers, sisters, and parents in Sunset Memorial Park in Smithfield, North Carolina, USA.
Ava Gardner FAQ
Ava Gardner was an American actress and singer who rose to fame during Hollywood’s Golden Age. Known for her beauty, talent, and bold personality, she starred in a string of major films from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Gardner starred in classics such as The Killers (1946), Mogambo (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), and Night of the Iguana (1964), earning both critical acclaim and popular appeal.
Yes, she was under contract with MGM and became one of its biggest stars. Her career reflected both the glamour and constraints of the Hollywood studio system.
Ava Gardner is remembered as one of the screen’s great icons, an actress who balanced elegance with intensity and defied expectations both on and off the screen. She also remains a symbol of mid-20th-century cinematic style and stardom.
[this article originally appeared on 5MinuteBiographies.com on 19 July 2018]
