Ava Gardner

Lore & Background

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children. Her ancestry was English and Scots Irish, and she was raised in her mother’s Baptist faith. When she was born, her family was considered “better than well-to-do” by community standards, as her father owned a tobacco and cotton farm, a sawmill, and a country store. The Depression, however, caused the family to lose their property. Her mother worked as a cook and housekeeper at a teachers’ dormitory, and her father sharecropped tobacco and took odd jobs at sawmills. When the teachers’ school closed in 1931, the family moved to Newport News, Virginia, where her mother managed a boarding house. Gardner’s father died from bronchitis in 1938, when she was 15. The family then moved to Rock Ridge, North Carolina, where her mother ran another boarding house. Gardner graduated high school in 1939, wearing hand-me-down clothes that drew derision from classmates. She attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College for about a year. Both she and a close friend recalled that she preferred being barefoot. In the summer of 1940, while visiting her sister in New York City, her brother-in-law, a professional photographer, took her portrait. The portrait was displayed in his studio window, where a legal clerk named Barnard Duhan spotted it. Duhan, who often posed as an MGM talent scout, suggested sending her information to the studio. Her brother-in-law did so. She was interviewed at MGM’s New York office by Al Altman, who directed her to walk toward the camera, turn, walk away, and rearrange flowers. He did not record her voice because her strong Southern accent made her difficult to understand. MGM head Louis B. Mayer reportedly sent a telegram saying, “She can’t sing. She can’t act. She can’t talk. She’s terrific!” She was offered a standard contract and left school for Hollywood in 1941, with her sister accompanying her. MGM provided her with a speech coach and a singing teacher. Her first feature film appearance was a walk-on in *We Were Dancing* (1942). After fifteen bit parts, she received her first screen billing in *Ghosts on the Loose* (1943). She came to prominence in 1946 playing the femme fatale Kitty Collins in *The Killers*. Despite good reviews, she had a fragile self-image and was too scared to eat in the studio commissary for fear of seei

Reader's Guide

Gardner's career spanned from 1942 to 1986. Her first feature film appearance was a walk-on in We Were Dancing (1942). She gained prominence in The Killers (1946). In the 1950s she starred in Show Boat (1951), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), Mogambo (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), and On the Beach (1959). Later films include 55 Days at Peking (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966), and Mayerling (1968). She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Mogambo, and Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for The Night of the Iguana (1964). She died in 1990 at age 67 after a stroke in 1986.

Did You Know?

• Gardner was ranked No. 25 on the American Film Institute's greatest female screen legends list in 1999.
• She had a lifelong habit of going barefoot, which influenced her decision to accept the role in The Barefoot Contessa.
• She remained lifelong friends with Gregory Peck and was active in progressive politics.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress." — Ava Gardner "[On John Ford] The meanest man on earth. Thoroughly evil. Adored him!" — Ava Gardner "[On her relationship with Frank Sinatra] We were great in bed. It was usually on the way to the bidet when the trouble began." — Ava Gardner "Gardner worked with John Ford on Mogambo (1953)." — Ava Gardner