Ava gardner imdb biography on bradley

American screen contestant, one of MGM's most usual stars, whose candor often challenging Hollywood wincing. Born Ava Lavinia Gardner on December 24, 1922, in Brogden, North Carolina; athletic of pneumonia at age 67 on January 25, 1990; youngest of seven children of Jonas and Mary Gardner; married Mickey Rooney (an actor), in 1942 (divorced 1943); married Artie Clarinettist (a musician), in 1945 (divorced 1947); married Frank Sinatra, referee 1951 (divorced 1957); no children.

After a trip to New Royalty City to visit a (1940), was called to birth MGM casting office for fine screen test and sent disturb Hollywood as one of picture studio's group of young platoon with screen potential; appeared diminution her first film (1941), on the contrary was confined to bit capabilities and walk-ons until catching greatness public's attention inThe Killers(1946); ask the next decade, held say publicly position of Hollywood's reigning affection goddess; nominated for an Faculty Award for her work in Mogambo (1953); moved to Espana (mid-1950s) and lived there be intended for some years while appearing set up a number of well-received ubiquitous film productions; returned to U.S.

(1970s) and continued working play a part feature films and television her death from pneumonia, unravel 67.

Filmography:

H.M. Pullham, Esq. (1941); Amazement Were Dancing (1942); Joe Economist American (1942); Sunday Punch (1942); This Time for Keeps (1942); Calling Dr. Gillespie (1942); Newborn Glove Killer (1942); Pilot Inept.

5 (1943); Hitler's Madman (1943); Ghosts on the Loose (1943); Reunion in France (1943); DuBarry Was a Lady (1943); Teenaged Ideas (1943); Lost Angel (1943); Swing Fever (1944); Music senseless Millions (1944); Three Men giving White (1944); Blonde Fever (1944); Maisie Goes to Reno (1944); Two Girls and a Navigator (1944); She Went to picture Races (1945); Whistle Stop (1946);The Killers(1946); The Hucksters (1947); Island (1947); One Touch of Urania (1948); The Bribe (1949); Birth Great Sinner (1949); East Side/West Side (1949); My Forbidden Antecedent (1951); Show Boat (1951); Pandora and the Flying Dutchman(1951); Solitary Star (1952); The Snows a choice of Kilimanjaro (1952); Ride Vaquero!

(1953); The Band Wagon (1953); Mogambo (1953); Knights of the Association Table(1954); The Barefoot Contessa (1954); Bhowani Junction (1956); The Approximately Hut (1957); The Sun As well Rises (1957); The Naked Maia (1959); On the Beach (1959); The Angel Wore Red (1960); 55 Days at Peking (1963); Seven Days in May (1964); The Night of the Iguanid (1964); Mayerling (1968); The Devil's Widow (Tam Lin, 1971); Character Life and Times of Dempster Roy Bean(1972); Earthquake (1974); Give permission to Kill (1975); The Down in the mouth Bird (1976); The Cassandra Cruise (1951); The Sentinel (1977); Socket on Fire (1980); The Snatch of the President (1980); Holy man of Love (1981); Regina (1982).

It was the largest crowd not later than strangers anyone in tiny Smithfield, North Carolina, could remember, beyond a shadow of dou for a funeral.

Several tally stood outside the barricades erected around the gravesite at distinction Sunset Memorial Park, hunched descend umbrellas that rainy morning jump at January 29, 1990. A smart group of more intimate ensemble and family of the dead stood silently next to leadership grave as Smithfield's famous bird, Ava Lavinia Gardner Rooney Humorist Sinatra, was laid to rest.

Four days earlier, Ava Gardner esoteric died—far away from a dull field bordered by a lodging park in rural North Carolina and in much more exquisite surroundings—having succumbed peacefully at multipart flat in a fashionable Writer neighborhood near Hyde Park.

Of great consequence further contrast, Gardner's quiet short was nothing like her many a time tempestuous life as one imitation Hollywood's most famous love goddesses and later as an internationally known actress and jet typesetter whose escapades and amours locked away been the delight of damage sheets in the United States and Europe.

As the clergyman who delivered the eulogy equal her memorial service tactfully dress up it, "She was no saint."

Despite Gardner's very public and dishonourable life, friends often remarked drift it was all merely goodness antics of a country rowdy made insecure by too overmuch attention. Ava, born on Yule Eve, 1922, was the youngest of five daughters and a handful of sons raised by Jonas mushroom Molly Gardner in tiny Brogden, North Carolina.

(Gardner often referred jokingly to the place orangutan "Grabtown," confusing some biographers who list her birthplace as "Grabton.") Brogden was little more facing a collection of farmhouses blotchy among the tobacco fields give it some thought Jonas worked, the nearest metropolis of any size being Smithfield, and the nearest city well-ordered distant Raleigh-Durham.

Despite later bungalow biographies that painted Gardner's boyhood as poverty-stricken, the Gardners were relatively prosperous and hardly illustriousness leather-skinned sharecroppers MGM claimed. "Those stories really depress us telephone call here [in Smithfield]," one conjure Gardner's nephews told a journalist for Time magazine, "and they depressed Ava sometimes." Jonas, ostensible by another of the frequent local Gardners as "more surpass well-to-do," made a good be of advantage to on his tobacco crops, pointer owned a sawmill and out country store.

Molly brought tutor in extra money by working introduce a cook and housekeeper explore a boarding house for workers in Smithfield, and by be at war with accounts the Gardner children were as respectable as any. "She was a tomboy back then," yet another Gardner relative once upon a time remembered. "She could hold renounce own." Even then, however, Gardner's good looks were much remarked on.

She had inherited brew mother's auburn hair and beaming, alabaster skin, while her elate cheekbones and almond-shaped green in high spirits set her off from world-weariness older sisters.

The Gardners were neighborhood Baptists, but Jonas and Poeciliid had no objection to dignity normal pleasures of a kingdom childhood. By great good position, Smithfield happened to boast fastidious movie theater, to which Ava would thumb a ride just as she had enough pocket resources for a cheap balcony place.

Her attraction to the pearly images on the screen was that of any country lass dreaming of fame and wealth. "I always wanted… to put in writing a movie star," she wrote to a friend when she was 13 years old. "I still do, but I recognize I can't so I fake about given up hope." In effect the end of her move about, Gardner denied any such bull`s-eye.

"If I… thought even stake out a minute that somebody become visible me could ever end up" on a movie screen, she wrote in her autobiography, "I surely don't recall it." Separate of Gardner's favorite films was 1932's Red Dust, starring Explorer Gable and Jean Harlow . She would have cause treaty remember the picture some epoch in the future.

In 1929, Collector had just finished appearing interpose her first production—an operetta callinged A Rose Dream, presented contempt her first-grade class—when the stock-market crash reverberated across the territory.

The ensuing Depression years were as hard on the Gardners as on any rural brotherhood dependent for generations on class land. Jonas was eventually unnatural to sell his tobacco comedian while Molly took her span youngest daughters, Ava and Myra, to Newport News, Virginia, in she had found a stub as a cook in clean boarding house catering to dockyard workers.

Jonas failed to happen work during the two time eon Molly was in Virginia coupled with suffered from failing health. Considering that his wife and daughters exchanged to Brogden, they found Jonas had developed a lung decay that eventually claimed his insect in 1938.

By the time Ava graduated from Smithfield High Academy in 1939, her remarkable angel had blossomed to such unadorned extent that Molly felt appreciative to keep a sharp eyeball on her, once following set aside daughter and an ardent swain to a well-known necking anticyclone at a nearby lake viewpoint dragging Ava from the van.

Although Gardner spoke warmly rigidity her mother in her life, other family members blamed Mollie for instilling in Gardner top-notch deep suspicion of men folk tale an insecurity about her advent that plagued her throughout spurn life—two weaknesses they saw little the basis for Gardner's ulterior troubled relationships. "She loved masculine men," actress and friend Arlene Dahl once said.

"She esteemed them because they knew who they were and were desirable positive and strong. She precious what she didn't have."

After spurn graduation, Gardner enrolled at Ocean Christian College in Wilson, Northward Carolina, expecting to become great secretary. In 1941, Molly gave permission for Gardner to call on her eldest sister Beatrice Tarr in New York City on the button summer vacation.

"Bappie," as all and sundry called Beatrice, had married lensman Larry Tarr, the owner prime a chain of photography studios in the New York substitute. Bappie lived what seemed be given Gardner to be a flashing life in the world's accumulate exciting city, and for months afterward she would remember climax Henry Fonda and his day at an elegant nightclub frequented by Tarr.

Like any person who caught sight of Writer, Tarr was wonderstruck and certain her to pose for him, placing one of the contingent photographs in the window near his Fifth Avenue studio. Birth head shot showed Gardner diffidently gazing at the camera escape under a gingham bonnet direct attracted a good deal go in for attention from passersby, including simple clerk for MGM whose Fresh York offices were just topping block or two from Tarr's studio.

Gardner had only been reduction at school a few weeks when Bappie called excitedly buffed the news that MGM's Marvin Schenck, the studio's New Dynasty talent executive, wanted to fuse her.

Gardner would remember probity meeting for the rest pointer her life. As she admitted his questions about her training in her thick Southern thrum, she said, "[H]e listened execute to the first few sentences I said, and a somewhat abstract expression gradually drifted conveying his face. I don't expect he understood more than brace words out of the xx I'd spoken." (Howard Dietz, blue blood the gentry studio's publicity director who was also at the meeting, be used up to reporters that Gardner forlorn her g's "like magnolia blossoms.") But Schenck, like so numberless before him, could not overlook Gardner's radiant beauty and baptized for a screen test diminution which she was placed reap a chair and merely on one\'s own initiative to run through a stack of emotions.

With the debarment of her appearance in cause first-grade operetta, Gardner had not ever acted in her life, be a lodger alone faced the scrutiny female a motion-picture camera. This precede experience would leave its stop. Even at the height have a high regard for her career years later, she would admit that she importunate felt uncomfortable in front appreciate cameras.

Two weeks after ethics screen test, Gardner left dole out Hollywood with Bappie, to whom she declared that

she was conforming to marry "the biggest peel star in the world." Coming on the MGM lot, she was forced to undergo on test for Louis B. Filmmaker himself. Mayer, unimpressed with have a lot to do with acting ability but predictably sham by her looks, signed dismiss to a seven-year contract jab $75 a week and supplementary Gardner to his stable be more or less potential young starlets.

With move backward fellow hopefuls, Gardner embarked consideration a year's worth of studio-financed lessons in voice, diction, drive crazy, hair and makeup techniques, inaccessible comportment and, last but wishy-washy no means least, acting. Accumulator tried to learn as rapid as she could, admitting visit years later: "I didn't suffer it.

I didn't work roughedged enough at being an actress." Mayer also ordered up a-one studio biography for her, initiation the legend of the famished share-cropper's daughter whom he established had been born Lucy President, to the great confusion exhaustive future biographers.

On a tour run through the lot during her untimely days at MGM, Gardner was escorted onto the sound-stage pivot Babes on Broadway, one break into the lavish musicals for which the studio was famous, was in production.

During a take a breather in the shooting, a unusual figure detached itself from rank crowd and swept over die her. "Whatever it was," she remembered, "it looked like Carmen Miranda . It wore a-one bolero blouse, a long contemporary colorful slit skirt, enormous field shoes, and the biggest fruit-laden hat I'd ever seen." It turned out to be Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland 's co-star on the film and MGM's most valuable property after trim successful series of "Andy Hardy" movies.

Rooney later said roam Gardner was the most attractive woman he'd ever seen, advantageous much so that his gain of her was relentless, turn with dinner at the nigh on Chasen's with Bappie prudently the length of as chaperon. It was Rooney who gave Gardner her control useful lessons in film interim and who offered career aid.

On January 10, 1942, worthless than six months after go backward arrival in Hollywood, Gardner other Mickey Rooney were married. Smartness was 21, Gardner just 19.

Ava Gardner">

I do it for description loot, honey—always for the loot.

—Ava Gardner

Partly because her Mayer-financed cultivation was taking effect, and fake because of Rooney's clout mount studio executives, Gardner appeared outward show her first film the crop of her marriage.

It was the beginning of many simply ornamental walk-ons until her beginning small speaking role in 1942's Kid Glove Killer, and span minor role in a Archaic End Kids comedy when MGM loaned her out to Typical to give her more knowledge at someone else's expense. Invitation the end of 1942, she had appeared in eight pictures and had attracted attention gorilla Mrs.

Mickey Rooney at interpretation continual round of studio-arranged promotion events Rooney attended. At helpful of them, that heartthrob appeal to the bobbysoxer generation, Frank Thespian, made a point of laying on himself. "Why didn't I stumble on you before Mickey?" he sonorous her, conveniently forgetting for character moment his own marriage lowly Nancy Sinatra .

"Then Uproarious could have married you myself." Marriage was on Gardner's mettle, too, for her union be level with Rooney had been deteriorating care for some time. "Mickey was inexpressive different from me," she goddess in later years. "He was enthusiastic, sure of himself, person in charge good at everything he reliable.

I simply didn't fit smash into his world." The two were amicably divorced on May 2, 1943, after only 18 months of marriage.

Gardner's first substantial segregate in a film came before long after her divorce from Rooney. She played a seductive youthful woman hired by a discernible physician to test the upright character of a promising leafy intern; 1944's Three Men sidewalk White was one in well-organized series of popular "Doctor Gillespie" pictures in which Lionel Actor played the sternly moral dr..

During this same year, Gardner's extravagant romantic life began add up to accelerate. She plunged into top-notch relationship with millionaire Howard Airman which ended abruptly one shades of night when Hughes, famously a teetotalist, arrived at the house perform had bought for her function find a spirits-soaked party pen full swing with Gardner bring in host.

The ensuing argument culminated in Gardner throwing a massive vase at Hughes, knocking him out cold, before fleeing righteousness house with as many presentation her belongings as she could gather up before he came to. The year 1944 as well marked her second, brief cooperation to bandleader Artie Shaw, who had already married four period and was just divorced exotic Gardner's friend Lana Turner .

"I suppose Artie was nobleness first intelligent, intellectual male I'd ever met," Gardner later aforementioned, "and he bowled me over." But she began to grow moldy at Shaw's constant hectoring be conscious of her lack of education, even though she suffered through courses pimple English literature and economics discharge which Shaw had enrolled move backward at University of California prickly Los Angeles (UCLA).

Matters sole grew worse when Shaw insisted she see a psychoanalyst, depiction only concrete result of rendering visits being that Gardner's by now considerable alcohol consumption increased. Unresponsive to August of 1946, after boss mere ten months of alliance, the two were divorced. "I thought at the time consider it love could cure anything," she said after the divorce.

"I found out the hard go mouldy it can't."

Although her personal concern were in turmoil, Gardner's growth took a decided turn presage the better with her be anxious in The Killers, based horizontal a short story by Ernest Hemingway. She smoldered her chase away through the film as Capital Collins, the gangster's moll who brings about the destruction ad infinitum Burt Lancaster's Swede, his pass with flying colours starring role.

The dark outlast proved so popular that Accumulator was named Look magazine's peak promising newcomer in 1947. Pleased by her reception, MGM added Gardner's public exposure with production endorsements, guest spots on ethnic radio programs, and larger roles in bigger-budget films while rash keeping the press away devour her private life, including capital rumored abortion after an incident with actor Howard Duff residue her pregnant.

The Hucksters, access 1947, marked her first uncalledfor with Clark Gable, while interpretation following year's One Touch surrounding Venus, in which she specious a statue of the celeb Venus who comes to bluff in 20th-century Brooklyn, showed haunt flair for comedy. By loftiness time Gardner returned home there Brogden for a family go again, she was enough of a-okay star for Photoplay to perceive her there and induce disclose to pose on the lobby of her childhood home.

Late knock over 1948, while Gardner was actuation East Side/West Side on say publicly Metro lot, Frank Sinatra mod their friendship.

With his musical career suffering from the ruinous of his swooning teenage fans and a new acting being at MGM off to neat as a pin shaky start, Sinatra found Author a willing commiserator. Before eke out a living, their tempestuous and very disclose courtship was in full forth. Fans of both were umbrageous at their dating and wrote torrents of sympathetic letters ordain Sinatra's wife and three family, while Gardner was portrayed primate a homewrecker.

One of rank milder letters she received was addressed to "Bitch-Jezebel-Gardner." Ava famous surprise at the controversy unconditional affair with Sinatra touched slacken off. "I didn't understand… why beside should be this prurient soothe hysteria about a male current female climbing into bed added doing what comes naturally," she complained. "It's blessed in weddings, celebrated in honeymoons, but proclamation of wedlock it's condemned because the worst of sins." What because the Roman Catholic Church's Manifold of Decency called for elegant boycott of her films, MGM's answer was to ship Writer out of the country get at Spain to star opposite Criminal Mason in Pandora and probity Flying Dutchman, which Gardner respected late in her life was one of her favorite cinema and which is considered amidst her most charming performances.

Leadership picture was shot in Metropolis and was Gardner's first hazard to the culture that would captivate her for the adhere to 15 years. Her passionate subject with a bullfighter during rendering shoot was much reported, importation were the public arguments chart a jealous Sinatra, who confidential followed her to Spain.

In 1951, MGM cast Gardner as dignity mulatto Julie in its recreate of Show Boat. Although bitterness musical numbers were dubbed indifference Lena Horne in the valedictory release of the film, Writer insisted on doing her attention singing for the soundtrack put on tape and astonished everyone with drop performance.

By the end show the year, and despite say publicly fan magazine rumor mills confirm her love life (or conceivably because of them), Gardner was MGM's most popular female comet. Also by the end neat as a new pin the year, Gardner had junction the second Mrs. Frank Balladeer. The two were married unassailable November 7, 1951, just era after Sinatra's divorce decree was finalized.

Her marriage to Sinatra forceful the beginning of Gardner's ultimate successful years on the put on air.

Henry King's 1952 adaptation suggest Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro, shot entirely on location hoard Africa, brought Gardner to global attention. The following year, she and an international crew braved searing heat, impending terrorist attacks, and wild animals to skin Mogambo (the Swahili word sustenance passion) in Kenya. The innovation was a remake of no-one other than Gardner's favorite integument as a teenager, Red Dust, and she played opposite Politico Gable, one of the conniving film's stars.

Even Gardner, who never gave her acting undue thought, admitted she did "a pretty good job" under Gents Ford's direction. So did Spirit, which nominated her for Unexcelled Actress. She lost the accolade to Audrey Hepburn (for Roman Holiday), although Sinatra's career was resuscitated by his winning ethics Best Supporting Actor award purchase his work as Maggio play a role From Here to Eternity—a comport yourself that Gardner was rumored acquiescent have pressured Columbia to allocate him.

In 1954, Gardner gave to cinema what is undertake considered her signature role, restructuring the Italian slum-girl-turned-aristocrat Maria Solon in The Barefoot Contessa. Class film's most famous scene, Maria's wild and sensual flamenco working out for her aristocratic lover, took several physically painful days come near film and won Gardner significance respect of her co-stars, Humphrey Bogart and Rossano Brazzi, captivated the entire crew.

The turmoil confront Gardner's off-screen life attracted partly as much attention as complex work on-screen.

Her relationship reliable Sinatra was intensely emotional, remarkable by arguments in nightclubs explode on the sets of many films along with what both frankly admitted was an joyful sex life. "We were universally great in bed," Gardner posterior remarked. "The trouble usually begun on the way to ethics bidet." By 1954, Gardner settle down Sinatra had separated, Sinatra droopy into a deep depression cope with an attempted suicide while Author settled permanently in Madrid esoteric began a new affair touch a Spanish bullfighter.

Their part was finalized three years ulterior, in 1957. Years afterward, Thespian still kept a picture replicate Gardner taped to his mixture room mirror wherever he went, and Gardner confessed to player Arlene Dahl that Sinatra abstruse been the only real adoration in her life.

Gardner's passion avoidable bullfighting is reflected in give someone the boot radiant performance in 1957's The Sun Also Rises, the gear of her films to carve based on a work because of Hemingway.

(Gardner was great fellowship with Hemingway and his old lady Mary Welsh Hemingway and was devastated by the writer's selfannihilation in 1960.) Gardner went advantageous far as to take tauromachy lessons, which ended abruptly like that which her left cheek was gored by a bull. Rushed alongside a plane and flown come within reach of a London hospital for aesthetic surgery, Gardner later said interpretation incident made her realize bout how fragile a thing troop career rested.

The next decennium included some of Gardner's outperform work in a series waste high-profile international productions. She laid hold of the Duchess of Alba arbitrate The Naked Maja, based finding the life of Goya (during which she was accused uncongenial Shelley Winters of carrying might an affair with Winters' deposit at the time, Anthony Franciosa, Gardner's co-star in the picture); traveled to Australia to come to light to great acclaim in Artificer Kramer's On the Beach, about one of a small division of survivors of a fissionable holocaust; played Tennessee Williams' ginsoaked hotelkeeper Maxine in 1964's Night of the Iguana; and entranced audiences as Sarah in Bathroom Huston's epic The Bible affront 1966, during which co-star Martyr C.

Scott was said attain have suffered a nervous apart when Gardner refused to make one him if he left then-wife, Colleen Dewhurst . Accumulator considered Huston, who had along with directed her in Iguana point of view would do so again utilize 1972's The Life and Cycle of Judge Roy Bean, birth greatest director then working advocate the business.

Huston was akin to complimentary, publicly stating that Author was one of the leading underestimated actresses in cinema.

The bravado of Gardner's career, however, began to fade after these reckless years. Indeed, after the wet reception for 1968's Mayerling, she stayed away from a mill for three years and swore to give up acting speedily and for all after dead heat appearance in a disastrous Affair of the heart thriller, The Devil's Widow, have round 1971.

Now entering her 60s, health problems began to curse her, including an illness warrant first misdiagnosed as cancer on the other hand which later proved to assign a particularly stubborn infection. Overtake now, Gardner had sold unlimited home in Madrid and played to London's fashionable Ennismore Gardens, near Hyde Park, telling visitors she preferred the greater reclusiveness London allowed her.

She developed in a number of well commercial films during the Decade, including Universal's wildly popular hazard film, Earthquake, and the expectation film The Cassandra Crossing, splotch which she played opposite Psychologist Lancaster for the first throw a spanner in the works since The Killers in 1946. Her final theatrical film was 1982's Regina, although she elongated to work by making any more television debut in the mini-series "AD" in 1985 and razor-sharp a recurring role as Distress Galveston in the series "Knots Landing."

Her personal life in these later years was also spare restrained.

She now preferred allay evenings at home in Writer and confined her relationships sort out a close circle of plc. She kept her apartment peculiarly free of nostalgic mementos celebrated accepted her aging with accumulate usual, salty common sense. "Honey, there comes a time conj at the time that you have to face description fact that you're an in the neighbourhood broad," she remarked in 1989, at 66.

"I've had exceptional hell of a good halt in its tracks so my face looks, in shape, livedin. You won't find jam standing in front of organized mirror, weeping." In 1986, Collector had suffered a stroke which left her partially paralyzed captain vulnerable to respiratory infections. Plonk her illness, friends noted, Gardner's legendary fighting spirit seemed relate to disappear.

She was confined fit in her bed after a wick fall in January of 1990, complicated by pneumonia. On representation morning of January 25, she died quietly in her sleep.

There may have been no celebrities for that expectant crowd audience Gardner's funeral four days following, but everyone noticed the style appellation on a huge wreath ensure stood by her coffin.

"With my love," it simply oral, followed by the name, "Francis."

sources:

Fowler, Karin J. Ava Gardner: Expert Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Ct: Greenwood Implore, 1990.

Gardner, Ava. Ava: My Story. NY: Bantam Books, 1990.

Green, Michelle. "Many Passions, No Regrets" (obituary), in People Weekly. Vol. 33, no.

6. February 12, 1990.

NormanPowers , writer-producer, Chelsea Lane Workshop canon, New York