Ava Gardner
She was the actress who married Frank Sinatra and helped his career restart. She also married actor Micky Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw. She also had an affair with billionaire hypochondriac Howard Hughes. But there was more to Ava Gardner than famous husbands and lovers. She gave us many memorable performances during her 45-year acting career and many fans still consider her the most beautiful actress in Hollywood history.
Biography
Ava was born Ava Lavinia Gardner in Grabtown, North Carolina in 1922. Her family lived modestly and Ava grew up happily, without ambitions or pretensions, in a very straight-laced environment. At age 18, her picture in the window of her brother-in- law's New York photo studio brought her to the attention of MGM, leading quickly to Hollywood and a film contract based strictly on her beauty. Her gawky, unsophisticated demeanor was totally made over by the studio into an image of inaccessible glamour. MGM also provided her with a voice coach, as her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible.Although she entered the movie business very easily she found it tough going to become recognised and she played in a series of second reelers before she emerged from the ranks of decorative starlets. With zero acting experience, her first 17 film roles, 1942-5, were one-line bits or little better.
She landed her first starring role in Whistle Stop (1946), then made a splash that same year in The Killers, co-starring with Burt Lancaster. and then The Hucksters (1947). Ava's publicity photographs changed to reflect her roles in both "The Killers" and "The Hucksters".
Previously she had usually been pictured in swim-suits in broad daylight, but now she was photographed in darkened interiors wearing tight-fitting cocktail dresses. Her pin-up pictures also moved indoors. Frequently she was photographed in black underwear instead of swim suits, normally leaning decorously against a pillar, a looking glass or a cocktail bar.
She continued her upward climb in 1948 with "One Touch Of Venus", an uninspired screen version of a hit Broadway musical. Ava conveyed perfectly the liveliness of the liberated Venus, a statue that comes to life when kissed by an inebriated shop-worker (Robert Walker). Franz Planer, one of only two cinematographers sanctioned by Audrey Hepburn brought out for the first time the majestic nature of Ava's beauty. In previous movies Ava had been presented as a slinky glamour girl, but Planer revealed that her beauty was of a higher order.
Planer's work had great influence on how Ava would be perceived. From now on Ava's publicity pictures concentrated on her face, and care was taken to light it expressively. Famous photographers throughout the world, including many who did not usually work with movie stars, were now eager to photograph her, and quickly Ava achieved international recognition as a great beauty.
Her husky voice and seductive personal presence had made her one of the best-known American actresses by the early 1950s and she continued to make successful movies such as Show Boat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)with Gregory Peck, and The Barefoot Contessa (1954) then George Cukor's Bhowani Junction in 1956, The Sun Also Rises (1957), with Tyrone Power, and On the Beach (1959), again with Peck.
It wasn't until 1953, when John Ford cast her in 'Mogambo', with Clark Gable, that her true talent emerged, gaining her one Oscar nomination, for Best Actress. Her sensitive characterizations in such pictures as Mogambo, Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1964) received much critical praise.
