Ava Lavina Garner who is also known as Ava Gardner or Eva Gardner was born on 24th December 1922. She was an American actress as well as a singer. The first contract she signed was in 1941. It was a contract of Metro Goldwyn Mayer and the actress usually appeared in the small role.
She was born in Grabtown, North California in the United States.
Early Life
Ava was the youngest girl among the 7 children among which four of them were sisters and she also had two older brothers. Her early life began in Grabtown as mentioned earlier. Her parents, Jonas Gardner and Mary Elizabeth were tobacco sharecroppers. The business wasn’t going too well and they were not financially capable of affording various things.
The Entry in the Film Industry
Her career began with her visit to her sister Beatrice in NYC. It was the summer of 1940 when she met Beatrice’s husband. He offered her to take a portrait as a gift to her mother. He was so impressed by the photograph that he kept it in the front window of his studio.
That’s when the legal clerk of Lowes Theatres, Barnard Duhan noticed the photo. He then suggested that the photo should be sent to MGM that is Metro Holdwun Mayer. The photo was then sent to the MGM. The photographer believed the legal clerk. That’s why the photo was sent to the MGM, which later on resulted in the interview.
That’s when the interview of Gardner was scheduled and the MGM’s staff took the interview of the 18-year-old Gardner. In the interview, she had to sing, act, and talk like an actress. However, she performed too bad in the interview that the head of MGM had sent the telegram saying “She can’t sing, she can’t act, she can’t talk, she’s terrific!”.
She was then offered a contract and asked to join the school of Hollywood where she would learn all the things. Later on, her first appearance was in the film We Were Dancing which was released in 1942.
Gardner got many small roles. All of them were bit parts (roles with less than 5 lines). Later on, she got her first screen on the film called 3 Men in White which was released in 1944. Not to mention, there were many short roles in which she wasn’t even credited. There were roughly 15 small roles after which she was given the screen role.
Notable Films and Career
The real debut came after 5 years of such roles. It was the movie by Mark Hellinger production titles The Killers. She was playing the role of Femme Fatale Kitty Collins.
The Killers was released in 1946. Thereafter, she started getting a lot of movies. Other notable films after The Killers were The Hucksters, Show Boat, The Snow of Kilimanjaro, Lone Star, Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, Bhowani Junction, and many others.
She was also in The Sun Also Rises and On The Beach. The fun fact is that during her role in The Barefoot Contessa, MGM cited her as “The World Most Beautiful Animal”.
She didn’t stop after that. She further appeared in many other films.
During the 1950s, the lady had made herself one of the top stars in the film industry which is the reason she was getting more films. The popularity got her many films including Showboat, Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, and many others.
Further, she also acted in various TV series and movies. Some of the new TV movies or series are A.D, Knots Landing, Maggie, Harem, etc. The mini-series Knots Landing had 7 episodes in which she was playing the role of Ruth Galveston. In the same way, there are many other TV films in which she was featured.
All these combined made her popular among various shows. She had a contract with MGM for certain years. Therefore, most of the films were produced by MGM. Other than this, she had very few films. Even after the end of the contract, her total movies started to fade.
Life after MGM
Most of the films done by Ava was for MGM. It was the contract in which she was working., The contract officially ended in 1958. However, she was still cast in many films. The notable movies which were released after the contract was completed also included “On the Beach” which was just one year after the contract and the next one was The Night of Iguana which was 5 years later.
Later on, when the contract was completed, she was getting fewer jobs as compared to the previous ones. After the contract, her contact from the film industry was starting to fade. This is when she moved back to London. She was in Spain until now.
She went to London back in 1968. She was staying close to Sinatra. Later after several years, Gardners suffered a stroke. Sinatra helped her a lot in the hospitals and after a while helped her with all the hospital bills too. Unfortunately, Gardner died due to pneumonia in 1990. The date was January 25 and she was 67 years old by then. She was buried in North Carolina near her parents.
Her Auto-biography
There is a book about her autobiography. In the last days, she asked Peter Evans to write a book about her life. He became the ghostwriter. The book stated, “I either write the book or sell the jewels”. With all this going on, Gardner came to know that Evans was also sued by her ex-husband. The friendship eventually cooled and Evan left the project.
Some of the lines were based on the taped conversation. All these conversations were added in the book with the title Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations After Evans’ Death. There are many things that one can know about her life in this book. The book was released in 2013. The book was first about to launch in the previous year (2012).
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