AVA GARDNER

This was an assignment for my A.P. Comp class. We all chose an auto/biography to read, then came in posed as our person. Then an interview was conducted and we answered quesitons in first person as our character etc... as a memeber of audience, you chose one of the people to write an article about, guise as a real publication. Thereby aspiring for a specific and established style, proving you'd paid attentin in class, and practisising the art of composition. The end doesn't make sense unless you understand the assignment.. the fact that if the person you were impersonating was dead in real life, you pretended they had temporarily returned in full health.. or as healthy as they ever were... yes. So questions like "how did you die?" could be answered in less absurdity. Final exam... I got an A+. I chose VOGUE


Perhaps no actress in history was as famous for not being an actress than Ava Gardner. Daintily clad in a deep peach, intricate lace, bustier necked farthingale and conspicuous pearl earbobs, Gardner was the personification of exotic beauty. The very embodiment of the glamour of the forties and fifties celebrity, acclaimed by her contemporary counterparts; Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, and others. Gardner was the ideal of her time and relegated to the domain of succesful moody actresses. Known, to extent that she is known by the general audience member(the original interview took place last week on "The Show," show), only as the wife of famed Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra. The interview with the most beautiful woman ever, as put by Elizabeth Taylor, proved there was more to this "love goddess" than meets the eye.

When her interviewer asked why someone would want to write a book about her, her first words were, "Hell if I know." In typical Gardner style it seems the interview progressed, with Gardner riding along with her wits poised for action, ready to be flung from her mouth swifter than than arrow from the Tartar’s bow. Not all of her responses were as brief, amusing as were, however, and the answers provided to other questions were teeming with interesting facts about her life.

Born Ava Lavinia Gardner in Grabstown, North Carolina, on Christmas Eve in 1922, Gardner was raised in a average-to-do household with many siblings, and grew up with few airs and little ambition. The turning point in her life, she recognised, was when she went to visit her older sister in New York in 1941. Her sister’s boyfriend at the time was a photographer and snapped shots of Ava as an amateur model. He then posted these pictures of her in a store window display and deposited them with the New York office of MGM studios. These first photographs brought attention to Ava, and she was subsequently called down to the office for a screen test. Delighted by the unforced manner of her acting, but perturbed by her heavy southern accent, they sent a silent bit to Hollywood. "After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, ‘She can’t talk! She can’t act! She’s sensational!’" There, the decision to call Gardner down to the West Coast office was made in half a mo.

Gardner’s discovery did not catapult her into stardom, however, MGM only used her as a pin- up model and a supernum- erary actress. Sotto voce, Gardner exclaimed that she was never anything more than an ingenue anyway. Between the years 1943 and 1944 she appeared in nine MGM productions uncredited. Other movie-makers seemed to see more than a soubelle, and frequently ‘borrowed’ her from MGM. Some of her most memorable roles, including Venus in One Touch of Venus and Kitty Collins in The Killers were both production of United Artists, not MGM. Gardner supposed in her interview that perhaps after gaining popularity in the boxoffice, to be sure it was not with critics, MGM realised her beauty and talent and began casting her for starring parts. The first of which being in The Hucksters alongside Clark Gable(my personal favourite actor.) Incidentally, Gable, best known for his portrayal of the lovable rogue from the greatest grossing film of all time, Gone With The Wind, Rhett Butler, was one of the only literary characters Gardner was familiar with. She claimed to have read only two books ever, those being said one-hit-wonder by Margaret Mitchell and The Bible.

Gardner maintained her ataraxy even with MGM’s revelation, and her supine attitude toward her work in movies was evident in the interview. "I didn’t like any of them. It was for the money, honey." Her nonchalance was perhaps evidence of a previous run-in with a famous person: "Maybe I just didn’t have the temperament for stardom.I’ll never forget seeing Bette Davis at the Hilton in Madrid. I went up to her and said, ‘Miss Davis, I’m Ava Gardner and I’m a great fan of yours.’ And do you know, she behaved exactly as I wanted her to behave. ‘Of course you are, my dear,’ she said. ‘Of course you are.’ And she swept on. Now that’s a star."

Gardner abhorred what fame had brought her. After the failure of her first and second marraiges, and the cuckoldry that ensued between her and the observed of all observers, pipulistic and hopeless libertine, Frank Sinatra, it seemed that all the limelight had brought her was unwelcome surveillance. The bill-and-cooers met while Sinatra was still married, during a lower point of his career. In any case, the paparazzi still stuck to him like lips on a whistle.© Given the Gardner’s piquant and Sinatra’s magnetism, the dalliance received much media interest, and Catholic interference. Some church members suggested that Sinatra’s records and Ava’s movies be boycotted. This was damaging to Frank, or Francis, as Gardner tenderly referred to him, but did little to impact her career. Of course, gossip continued to flourish alongside and against the relationship.

The mesalliance that occurred between vir et uxor, established in 1951, was to be known as the romance of the century. Gardner said that the marriage did not change the relationship, though, and querulousness of the two was not undone. She later dumped him, though she admitted in her interview that he would call her during intermission and talk and sing to her for hours on the telephone. Also a statue of Gardner was given to Sinatra, and it stayed in his yard and his general vicinity even into his next marriage, before the new wife told him to remove it. Gardner also revealed that after her death in 1990 of bronchial pneumonia Sinatra locked himself in a room for three days lamenting over the loss of her life and his loss of her love.

Before and after Gardner’s move to spain following a messy breakup and unwanted aftereffects yeilded by unimaginable personal interference by the press, Gardner’s craft fait accompli, and at the culmination of her career over five decades she had a fructification of nearly 70 film and television spots, even if in middle-age she had only worked on films intermittently and with third-tier directors. Ava was cast sometimes because of her unforced style of acting and her exquisite lovelyness. While she was seen by some as a genious believable actress- "I have only one rule abour acting- trust the director and give him heart and soul-’’Gardner was often viewed by critics as a slinky glamour girl with no acting talent. In anycase, Gardner was somewhat reflective of her role in the somewhat anachronistic The Barefoot Contessa, in which her character Maria remains unimpressed by the onslaught of stardom.

Posthumously, Ava Gardner is still as jejune and mesmeric as can be remembered, and in her own words is still "deep down, pretty superficial."