Ava Gardner: The Daughter of Eve

Ava Gardner (1922-1990)

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina. She was the youngest of seven children: Raymond, Melvin, Beatrice a.k.a. "Bappie", Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra. Her somewhat muddy education took place in a town called Brogden, approximately 77 miles from the tobacco farm where she and her siblings were raised.
Ava was no glamour girl from the start; she could hold her own with the boys and ran around the rough country-side just as barefoot as could be. . .but it didn't matter how earthy she was. By the time she was eighteen there was no way to deny that Ava was a full-fledged beauty--just the type of girl one would see at the movies.
It was also around this time that Ava went to New York to visit her sister and brother-in-law, Bappie and Larry Tarr. Ironically, Larry was a photographer, and had Ava pose for a few pictures for him that he displayed in his shop window.
Ava had planned on becoming a secretary and settling into the laid-back, southern life, but M-G-M came a-knocking on her door! A scout had seen her picture in the window and inquired as to who the girl was.
It was in no time flat that Louis B. Mayer arranged a screen test for her. According to Ava's nephew, Billy Grimes, the interview went something like this:

"She can't act. She can't talk. She's terrific. Sign her."

Ava was signed to a seven year contract. It was shortly after that Ava was touring the studio while "Babes On Broadway" was being filmed. Well, Mickey Rooney fell head over heals for her and they were married soon after. . . against the studio's wishes; but the studio didn't have to wait long to get the result they really wanted. They divorced 17 months later.
It was at that time when billionaire Howard Hughes began his pursuit for Ava. She had turned him down time after time, but one night after "no" meant nothing to him, she was forced to hit him on the head with a silver candle stick. He was still crazy about her.
Shortly after, Ava met and married band leader, Artie Shaw. This time, the weak link in the chain was Ava's educational background. He constantly rubbed the almost lack of it in her face. It ended in divorce in 1946.
It wasn't long after that Ava fell for who other than the famous crooner, Frank Sinatra. It couldn't have come at a worse time, too. Three years earlier, Ava had hit the spotlight in the movie, "The Killers". Her fame was so new and she had turned to her friend, the drink, to help her handle the stress. The Roman Catholic singer was married and had two kids, and even the shadow of the word "divorce" was scandalous.
Here's what Ava had to say about it:

"When Nancy said, "My married life with Frank has become unhappy and almost unbearable," the shit really hit the fan. In the next few weeks, I received scores of letters accusing me of being a scarlet woman and worse. One correspondent addressed me as "Bitch-Jezabel-Gardner," the legion of Decency threatened to ban my movies, and Catholic priests found the time to write me accusatory letters. I even read where the Sisters of Mercy and Joseph asked their students at St. Paul Apostle School in Los Angelos to pray for Frank's poor wife. I didn't understand then and still don't why there should be the purient mass hysteria about a male and a female climbing into bed together and doing what comes naturally."
They had a hard enough time even having an affair, and getting married would be even more difficult. Both Frank and his wife Nancy were Roman Catholic, and couldn't divorce. Finally, they were granted legal separation, and Frank married Ava 72 hours later in 1951. All the scandal and so forth had already strained the relationship, and Frank had hit rock bottom while Ava's career flourished. The marriage reeked of jealousy.
Frank even created ideas that Ava was having affairs, and one night she was wearing an expensive gold bracelet that the constantly rebuffed Howard Hughes had given her. He accused her of being in love with Hughes, and she took off the bracelet and threw it out the window. He would do things like call her and say
"I just wanted to say good bye" and she would hear a loud gun shot. She would hysterically run over to find him sitting by himself in his room. She would confront him about the gunshot and he would say "Gunshot? What gunshot?".
Then again, if she would watch him at a night club act even think she saw him looking at another woman she would get upset and say that he humiliated her. It was on both sides.
1952 looked a little better for them, though. She was cast in "Mogambo" with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly, while Frank was starting to work his way back up.
He was trying for the movie "From Here To Eternity". He got the role of Maggio, but it is rumored that Ava sealed the deal. Nevertheless, both were nominated for Academy Awards. Frank won, Ava didn't. . . .another strain.
Probably the biggest strain of all was that while filming "Mogambo", Ava learned that she was pregnant. She quickly flew to London to have an abortion. In her autobiography she stated "Frank and I could barely look after ourselves, we certainly couldn't look after a child". In fact, it has been said that Ava aborted three of Frank's children, but only one was documented. It killed Frank. In 1954 they separated and Frank dated actress Jeannie Carmen.
In the same year, Ava travelled to Spain to work on "The Barefoot Contessa". It was there that she fell in love, not with a man, but with a country. . . .though she did like the bullfighters. She would eventually move there; she never really liked Hollywood. After ten years in Spain, she moved to London. She occasionally worked, but only for money
It has been said by many that Ava's years in London were very lonely. All of a sudden she looked old, and her heavy duty life style was catching up with her. She was very self-deprecating, and she accepted what her later years brought to her. After she left the TV show "Knot's Landing", she became very ill, and according to actress Donna Mills, would not take visitors. She suffered a stroke in 1989, and died in 1990. . . .Sinatra, the love of her life, took care of all her final costs, but did not attend her funeral.
Ava dished out a lot of pain in her life, but accepted a lot more. It's been said by many that all she wanted out of life was to be happy. . . maybe she would have been better off being that secretary she would have happily been. I think it hurt Ava that all people saw was her glorious face and nothing else. I'm not quite sure that she would like being remembered, and the title still holds today, "as the most beautiful actress in ever Hollywood". Her face and body was her job, and that's all. It is not fair that people were so hard on her, and still judge for the mistakes that I'm sure she regretted later in life. It was hard enough living through them, but to have people constantly reminding her of them, even in death, would have driven any woman crazy. Ava was a strong person, and accepted her punishment. She gave us-- her fans-- her life. . . I think that we owe it to her to to forgive her.

Date of Birth
24 December 1922, Grabtown, North Carolina, USA

Date of Death
25 January 1990, Westminster, London, England, UK (bronchial pneumonia)

Birth Name
Ava Lavinia Gardner

Nickname
Snowdrop
Angel

Height
5' 6" (1.68 m)

Trivia

• Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#68). [1995]
• Her singing voice in Show Boat (1951) was dubbed by Annette Warren, although her voice is left in on the soundtrack album.
• Her mother, Mary Elizabeth ('Molly') Gardner, née Baker, was of Scottish-Irish and English descent; her father, Jonas Gardner, was of Irish and Native American (Tuscarora) descent, a tobacco farmer who died of bronchitis 1935.
• Youngest of seven children, her older siblings were Raymond, Melvin ('Jack'), Beatrice ('Bappie'), Elsie Mae, Inez and Myra.
• Her early education was sketchy; by 1945, she had read two books, the Bible and "Gone with the Wind." In later life, she more than made up for this lack by continual self-education.
• She sang in her own voice for The Killers (1946) but in all MGM films her singing voice was dubbed (much to her disgust).
• Flamenco became one of Ava's favorite pastimes after she learned it for The Barefoot Contessa (1954); increasingly proficient and needing little sleep, she often danced all night.
• In a promotion for The Little Hut (1957), a small island in Fiji was renamed Ava Ava and leased to a contest winner.
• She was continuously under contract at MGM, 1941-1958.
• There is an Ava Gardner Museum of memorabilia in Smithfield, North Carolina.
• She spent her final years as a recluse in her London apartment -- her only companions were her longtime housekeeper Carmen Vargas and her beloved Welsh Corgi, Morgan. Frank Sinatra paid all her medical expenses after her 1989 stroke, which left her partially paralyzed and bedridden. Vargas took her body home to her native North Carolina for private burial. None of her ex-husbands attended.
• After her death in 1990, Ava's longtime housekeeper, Carmen Vargas, and her dog, a Welsh Corgi named Morgan, were taken in by her former co-star Gregory Peck.
• Once met J.R.R. Tolkien and neither knew why the other was famous.
• Ex-daughter-in-law of Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney's father).
• Was a good friend of Lena Horne, despite the fact that they both competed for the part of Julie in Show Boat (1951).
• When shooting Earthquake (1974), she surprised director Mark Robson by insisting that she do her own stuntwork, which included dodging blocks of concrete and heavy steel pipes.
• A statue of her from The Barefoot Contessa (1954) was given to Frank Sinatra as a gift. He kept it in his backyard garden well after their divorce. When he married Barbara Marx, she forced him to get rid of it.
• During the first two years of her marriage to Frank Sinatra, he was at the lowest point of his career. She often had to lend him money so he could buy presents for his children. He was so broke by 1951 that Gardner had to pay for his plane ticket so that he could accompany her to Africa, where she was shooting Mogambo (1953). This all changed after he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity (1953).
• Part of On the Beach (1959) was filmed in Berwick, a suburb of Melbourne. Ava had a street which was being developed at the time named after her. It is of course called "Gardner Street".
• Measurements: 36-23 1/2-37 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)
• Once named "The World's Most Beautiful Animal" (in a 1950s publicity campaign).
• Chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest American female screen legends (Number 25).
• Is portrayed in The Aviator (2004) by Kate Beckinsale and by Marcia Gay Harden in Sinatra (1992) (TV).
• Although she often gave the name of her North Carolina hometown as Grabtown, and at other times as Smithfield, the town's name is actually Brogden. "Grabtown" is a nickname given to it by locals. Smithfield is a larger town nearby.
• Is portrayed by Deborah Kara Unger in The Rat Pack (1998) (TV), by Christine Andreas in Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story (1995) (TV), and by Jon Mack in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV).
• Frank Sinatra nicknamed her "Angel".
• Appeared in three films based on Ernest Hemingway stories--The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), and The Killers (1946).
• During her final years living in London, she became the dinner companion of director Michael Winner.
• While living in Spain, became a good friend of writer Ernest Hemingway, whom she and others called Papa. Both were aficionados of bullfighting.
• An Australian reporter found that Gardner was quite adept at foul language, and her swearing was "like a sailor and a truck driver were having a competition." She threw a glass of champagne at the reporter, who said that at the moment she did so "the only thing I could think was how bloody gorgeous the woman was.".
• Production designer John Hawkesworth, an Englishman who was the set-dresser on her starring vehicle Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), said of Gardner that she "could eat twice as much as anyone and drink three times as much.".
• Her three husbands were married a total of twenty times between them.
• While pregnant with Frank Sinatra's child, she had an abortion because Sinatra was still married to his first wife.
• Her The Angel Wore Red (1960) co-star Dirk Bogarde nicknamed her "Snowdrop" because, he said, anything less likely was difficult to imagine.
• A distant cousin of Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
• Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 319-321. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
• In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta. She was occasionally dubbed by Dhia Cristiani, Lidia Simoneschi and Andreina Pagnani.
• Suffered from a severe case of emphysema in later life and could not travel far without an oxygen tank.
• When her first husband, Mickey Rooney, brought his hugely successful musical "Sugar Babies" to London in the late 1980s, Gardner confessed to him that she had contemplated suicide after being left partially paralyzed by two strokes in 1986.
• Frank Sinatra bought her a puppy for her birthday during their courtship, a Corgi she named Rags. For the rest of her life she always had a Corgi with her. After Rags died, she had Cara and then Morgan.
• She and Robert Taylor had a brief love affair during the filming of The Bribe (1949).