Legendary actress and socialite Ava Gardner became the face of Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. Her name is included in the list of the most beautiful actresses of the twentieth century. Despite positive reviews from many influential representatives of the film industry, Gardner herself stated that she had no acting talent.
Childhood of the future actress
Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, an impoverished neighborhood in Smithfield, North Carolina. Her father was Jonas Bailey Gardner, who had his own tobacco and cotton farm. Ava's mother is Mary Elizabeth Gardner. A barefoot girl from childhood was accustomed to agriculture. In the family, she was the youngest of seven children.
Ava's early years were very poor. Often she had to hear ridicule in her address from classmates because of her modest wardrobe.
When Ave was 16 years old, the girl's father died, and her mother had to take over all the management of the household and the house.
In high school, Ava Gardner began taking commercial courses. Thanks to her older brother, who paid for her tuition, Ava was able to continue her one-year secretarial course at a college in Wilson, North Carolina.
On the way to success
At 18, Ava visited her older sister, Beatrice, in New York. This trip changed Gardner's life. Her brother-in-law, Larry Tarr, a photographer, prepared the girl's portfolio and sent it straight to the Metro-Golwyn-Mayer film studio.
Dark-haired, with green eyes, high cheekbones and a perfect figure, the girl attracted the attention of the agents.
Ava Gardner was invited to a screen test in New York without words, as the girl had a very strong southern accent. Ava signed a seven-year contract with a famous Hollywood film studio and was sent to intensive lessons on pronunciation correction, as well as classes in acting, physical training, makeup and fashion.
Over the next five years, the aspiring actress received short roles in a large number of films underway, and also participated in many photo shoots for advertising posters.
Ava Gardner's confession at 24
The star of the actress rose after her role in the crime detective "Killers", where Ava Gardner played the main role of the dazzling female vamp Kitty Collins, and played along with the future other celebrity - Bert Lancaster.
The young and beautiful actress has become recognizable. Her subsequent films were the romantic musical One Touch of Venus, the Great Sinner melodrama, the Pandora and the Flying Dutchman fantasy melodrama.
In 1958, Ava Gardner broke her contract with the MGM film studio and became an independent actress, earning up to $ 400,000 per motion picture, most of which were filmed in Europe.
The actress's later list of films includes:
- historical adventures "55 days in Beijing" (1963) - a long film filled with beautiful music, vivid characters and costumes of the main characters;
- the political thriller "Seven Days in May" (1964), where Ava Gardner played with Kirk Douglas;
- the drama "Night of the Iguana" (1964), where the main male role went to Richard Burton;
- the screened historical melodrama "Mayerling" (1968), the roles of the main characters went to Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve, Ava Gardner got a supporting role.
- Western "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972) with Paul Newman. Ava Gardner played the short but memorable role of Lily Langtree;
- the family film Bluebird (1976) starring Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda and many other Hollywood stars. A distinctive feature of this children's film is that, despite the political differences between the United States and the USSR, the film was shot entirely on the territory of the Soviet Union.
For the next 10 years, the actress took part in several more films, in most of which Ava Gardner played a cameo role. The last film in her career was the 1986 detective comedy Maggie.
Marriages of actress Ava Gardner
The Hollywood film star was in three marriages with famous stars.
The first marriage took place in 1942. Ava Gardner became the wife of the popular Hollywood actor Mickey Rooney. However, a year later, the couple filed for divorce.
According to the actress, their life was unbearable: the paparazzi did not give them a pass and were chased everywhere, even during their honeymoon.
In 1945, Ava Gardner married actor Artie Shaw, and in 1946 the couple separated. The second husband often scoffed at his wife's intelligence: by 1945, Ava Gardner had read only two books, it was the Bible and Gone with the Wind. Artie Shaw made his wife make up for her lack of knowledge by reading.
The third marriage took place in 1951. The actress became the wife of the famous singer Frank Sinatra. The marriage lasted 6 years and again ended in divorce.
Ava Gardner's personality
In 1955, after three failed marriages and dissatisfaction with Hollywood life, the actress moved to Spain. According to Ava Gardner, she just fell in love with this country. She especially liked the traditional Spanish show - bullfighting. While living in Spain, Ava met the famous writer Ernest Hemingway.
Many contemporaries and friends of Ava Gardner noted her sincere character and straightforwardness.
Interviewers described the actress as an outgoing, down-to-earth woman with a lively sense of humor, who loved to joke in her own address.
Death of an actress
For the last 30 years of her life, Ava Gardner lived in a quiet area of London. In 1986, the actress was partially paralyzed, and since then she has been in bed. Her constant companions were her housekeeper Carmen Vargas and a dog named Morgan.
Ava Gardner died on January 25, 1990 at the age of 67 from bronchial pneumonia. Despite lung problems, Ava Gardner greeted the eve of 1990 with a glass of champagne and cigarettes. All her life, the actress was an inveterate smoker, smoking three packs of cigarettes a day in her youth. At the behest of the actress, she was buried next to her parents in North Carolina.
After the death of Gardner, the famous actor and her friend Gregory Pack took Carmen Vargas to work and took the actress's dog.
