Oscar Profile #121: Ava Gardner

Born December 24, 1922 the youngest of seven children of a North Carolina tobacco farmer and his wife, Ava Gardner was discovered by an MGM scout who saw her picture in her brother-in-law’s photo shop in New York in 1941. Brought to Hollywood because of her great beauty, she had no acting experience and wasn’t given much to do by the studio. She was little more than decoration in her first seventeen films. Even marriage to MGM’s top star Mickey Rooney from January, 1942 to May, 1943 failed to help her career. It was during her second marriage to bandleader Artie Shaw from October, 1945 to October, 1946 that her career began to pick up, first with MGM’s program filler Whistle Stop and then on loan-out to Universal for The Killers which was the first film in which she proved she could act.

In demand that, MGM finally started giving Gardner starring roles in major films such as The Hucksters opposite Clark Gable; The Great Sinner opposite Gregory Peck; Pandora and the Flying Dutchman opposite James Mason and My Forbidden Past opposite Robert Mitchum. She won the role of Julie in the 1951 remake of Show Boat over good friend Lena Horne, but although she could sing her voice was dubbed by Annette Warren. Gardner’s vocals, however, are heard on the soundtrack recording.

Married to Frank Sinatra at the low ebb in his career in 1951, she supported him until From Here to Eternity brought him back to fame and fortune. Thye divorced in 1957 when they were both at career peaks. Gardner’s three ex-husbands married a combined total of twenty times.

It was during her marriage to Sinatra that Gardner made some of her best films including Henry King’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro with Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward; John Ford’sMogambo with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly, for which she earned her only Oscar nomination; Joseph L.Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa with Humphrey Bogart; George Cukor’s Bhowani Junction and King’s The Sun Also Rises with Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn.

It was during the filming of The Sun Also Rises that she became interested in bull fighting and bullfighters, several of whom became her lovers in her later years.

1959’sOn the Beach with Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins under Stanley Kramer’s direction, proved a career highlight, but her increased drinking caused problems on the set of 1962’s 55 Days at Peking opposite Charlton Heston to the extent that the producers had her character killed off early so that they wouldn’t have to deal with her anymore.

A major supporting role in 1964’s Seven Days in May made audiences sit up and notice and that same year’s The Night of the Iguana brought her some of the best notices of her career. She took subsequent roles for the money, but continued working until a double stroke in 1986. Living in seclusion until her death in January, 1990 at the age of 67, her maid brought her body back to North Carolina for burial. After her death, Gregory Peck took the maid and Gardner’s dog in. None of her three ex- husbands attended her funeral.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

THE KILLERS (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak

Gardner was first taken seriously as an actress as the femme fatale who lures boxer Burt Lancaster to a life of crime in this celebrated film noir from a 1927 short story by Ernest Hemingway. The film earned director Siodmak an Oscar nomination and made a major star of Lancaster in his first film. It also compelled MGM, who had treated her as eye candy during the first six years of her contract to give Gardner bigger and better roles.

SHOW BOAT (1951), directed by George Sidney

Gardner and good friend Lena Horne both wanted the role of Julie, the mulatto singer immortalized by Helen Morgan on stage and in the 1936 film version. Gardner got it, but the studio, which recorded her vocals, decided to have her screen voice dubbed by Annette Warren. Gardner, herself, is heard on the best-selling MGM soundtrack recording. Though the roleis essentially a supporting one, Gardner was given star billing below Kathryn Grayson as Magnolia, but over Howard Keel as Ravenal.

MOGAMBO (1953), directed by John Ford

Ford’s filmed in Africa classic is a remake of Victor Fleming’s rousing 1932 film, Red Dust whose great selling point was having Clark Gable repeat the role he had originated twenty-one years earlier. Gable is terrific, but just as he was overshadowed by Jean Harlow and Mary Astor in the original, he is overshadowed by Gardner and Grace Kelly in this. Gardner as the thinly disguised prostitute and Kelly as the straying married woman both received Oscar nominations for their performances.

BHOWANI JUNCTION (1956), directed by George Cukor

Gardner gives arguably her greatest performance as the Anglo-Indian daughter of a Welsh train driver and an Indian woman torn between the two cultures at the time of the British departure from India. Dismissed by the Indians as an Englishwoman and the British as Indian, she must find herself under the most harrowing of circumstances. It’s a sweeping epic with which Cukor makes great use of the still fairly new Cinemascope lens. It was filmed in Pakistan because India would not allow it to be shot in their country.

THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (1964), directed by John Huston

Gardner is a hoot in a role that had been played on stage by Bette Davis opposite Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr in roles originated by Patrick O’Neal and Margaret Leighton.

Huston’s film of one of Tennessee Williams most overheated plays succeeds on many levels thanks primarily to the performances of the three stars all of whom are at their peak. Gardner as the world-weary but still sexy owner of a rundown hotel, Burton as a defrocked minister and Kerr as the genteel Englishwoman traveling with her poet grandfather are simply unforgettable.