Ava Gardner

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak's film noir The Killers.

During the 1950s, Gardner established herself as a leading lady and one of the era's top stars with films like Show Boat, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (both 1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), Mogambo (1953), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956) and On the Beach (1959). She continued her film career for three more decades, appearing in the films 55 Days at Peking (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966), and Mayerling (1968). She continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in 1990, at the age of 67.

She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Mogambo, and for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award, in the category of Best Actress, for her performance in The Night of the Iguana. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Gardner No.25 on its greatest female screen legends list.

Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children. When Gardner was born, by community standards, they were “better than well-to-do” with her father having the deed to their tobacco and cotton farm, and owning a sawmill and a country store. She was of English and Scots Irish ancestry.

She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother. While the children were still young, during the Depression the family lost their property. Gardner's mother received an offer to work as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School that included board for the family, and Gardner's father sharecropped tobacco and supplemented the dwindling work with odd jobs at sawmills. In 1931, the teachers' school closed, forcing the family to finally give up on their property dreams and move to Newport News, Virginia, where Gardner's mother found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers. While in Newport News, Gardner's father became ill and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Gardner was 15 years old. After her father's death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Gardner's mother ran another boarding house for teachers. Gardner attended high school in Rock Ridge and she graduated from there in 1939. The family was not well off and, to the ridicule of her classmates, she had to wear hand-me-down clothes to school. She then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year.

Gardner was visiting her sister in New York City in the summer of 1940 when her brother-in-law, a professional photographer, offered to take her portrait as a gift for her mother. He was so pleased with the results that he displayed the finished product in the front window of his photography studio on Fifth Avenue.

Barnard Duhan, a legal clerk at Loews Theatres, spotted Gardner's portrait in her brother-in-law's studio. At the time, Duhan often posed as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) talent scout to meet girls, using the fact that MGM was a subsidiary of Loews. Duhan entered Gardner's brother-in-law's studio and tried to get her number, but he was rebuffed by the receptionist. Duhan made the comment "Somebody should send her info to MGM", and her brother-in-law did so immediately. Shortly after, Gardner, who at the time was a student at Atlantic Christian College, traveled to New York to be interviewed at MGM's New York office by Al Altman, head of MGM's New York talent department. With cameras rolling, he directed the 18-year-old to walk toward the camera, turn and walk away, then rearrange some flowers in a vase. He did not attempt to record her voice because her strong Southern accent made understanding her difficult for him. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, however, sent a telegram to Altman: "She can't sing. She can't act. She can't talk. She's terrific!" She was offered a standard contract by the studio and left school for Hollywood in 1941, with her sister accompanying her. MGM's first order of business was to provide her with a speech coach because her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible to them, and Harriet Lee as her singing teacher.

Her first appearance in a feature film was as a walk-on in the Norma Shearer vehicle We Were Dancing (1942). Fifteen bit parts later, she received her first screen billing in Ghosts on the Loose (1943), and she is featured by name on the theatrical poster. After five years of bit parts, mostly at MGM and many of them uncredited, Gardner came to prominence in the Mark Hellinger production The Killers (1946), playing the femme fatale Kitty Collins. Although she had good reviews, she kept a fragile self-image. “Ava wouldn't even go eat in the commissary because she was so scared to walk in and see Lana Turner and Greer Garson,” says actress Arlene Dahl.