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Date of Birth: Ava Gardner24 December 1922Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#68). [1995] Her singing voice in Show Boat (1951) was dubbed by Annette Warren, although her voice is left in on the soundtrack album. Her mother, Mary Elizabeth ('Molly') Gardner, n?e Baker, was of Scottish-Irish and English descent; her father, Jonas Gardner, was of Irish and Native American (Tuscarora) descent, a tobacco farmer who died of bronchitis 1935. Youngest of seven children, her older siblings were Raymond, Melvin ('Jack'), Beatrice ('Bappie'), Elsie Mae, Inez and Myra. ... Her early education was sketchy; by 1945, she had read two books, the Bible and "Gone with the Wind." In later life, she more than made up for this lack by continual self-education. She sang in her own voice for The Killers (1946) but in all MGM films her singing voice was dubbed (much to her disgust). Flamenco became one of Ava's favorite pastimes after she learned it for The Barefoot Contessa (1954); increasingly proficient and needing little sleep, she often danced all night. In a promotion for The Little Hut (1957), a small island in Fiji was renamed Ava Ava and leased to a contest winner. She was continuously under contract at MGM, 1941-1958. There is an Ava Gardner Museum of memorabilia in Smithfield, North Carolina. She spent her final years as a recluse in her London apartment -- her only companions were her longtime housekeeper Carmen Vargas and her beloved Welsh Corgi, Morgan. Frank Sinatra paid all her medical expenses after her 1989 stroke, which left her partially paralyzed and bedridden. Vargas took her body home to her native North Carolina for private burial. None of her ex-husbands attended. After her death in 1990, Ava's longtime housekeeper, Carmen Vargas, and her dog, a Welsh Corgi named Morgan, were taken in by her former co-star Gregory Peck. Once met J.R.R. Tolkien and neither knew why the other was famous. Ex-daughter-in-law of Joe Yule (Mickey Rooney's father). Was a good friend of Lena Horne, despite the fact that they both competed for the part of Julie in Show Boat (1951). When shooting Earthquake (1974), she surprised director Mark Robson by insisting that she do her own stuntwork, which included dodging blocks of concrete and heavy steel pipes. A statue of her from The Barefoot Contessa (1954) was given to Frank Sinatra as a gift. He kept it in his backyard garden well after their divorce. When he married Barbara Marx, she forced him to get rid of it. During the first two years of her marriage to Frank Sinatra, he was at the lowest point of his career. She often had to lend him money so he could buy presents for his children. He was so broke by 1951 that Gardner had to pay for his plane ticket so that he could accompany her to Africa, where she was shooting Mogambo (1953). This all changed after he won his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity (1953). Part of On the Beach (1959) was filmed in Berwick, a suburb of Melbourne. Ava had a street which was being developed at the time named after her. It is of course called "Gardner Street". Measurements: 36-23 1/2-37 (Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine) Once named "The World's Most Beautiful Animal" (in a 1950s publicity campaign). Chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest American female screen legends (Number 25). Is portrayed in The Aviator (2004) by Kate Beckinsale and by Marcia Gay Harden in Sinatra (1992) (TV). Although she often gave the name of her North Carolina hometown as Grabtown, and at other times as Smithfield, the town's name is actually Brogden. "Grabtown" is a nickname given to it by locals. Smithfield is a larger town nearby. Is portrayed by Deborah Kara Unger in The Rat Pack (1998) (TV), by Christine Andreas in Love and Betrayal: The Mia Farrow Story (1995) (TV), and by Jon Mack in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (1999) (TV). Frank Sinatra nicknamed her "Angel". Appeared in three films based on Ernest Hemingway stories--The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), and The Killers (1946). During her final years living in London, she became the dinner companion of director Michael Winner. While living in Spain, became a good friend of writer Ernest Hemingway, whom she and others called Papa. Both were aficionados of bullfighting. An Australian reporter found that Gardner was quite adept at foul language, and her swearing was "like a sailor and a truck driver were having a competition." She threw a glass of champagne at the reporter, who said that at the moment she did so "the only thing I could think was how bloody gorgeous the woman was.". Production designer John Hawkesworth, an Englishman who was the set-dresser on her starring vehicle Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), said of Gardner that she "could eat twice as much as anyone and drink three times as much.". Her three husbands were married a total of twenty times between them. While pregnant with Frank Sinatra's child, she had an abortion because Sinatra was still married to his first wife. Her The Angel Wore Red (1960) co-star Dirk Bogarde nicknamed her "Snowdrop" because, he said, anything less likely was difficult to imagine. A distant cousin of Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 319-321. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999. In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by Rosetta Calavetta. She was occasionally dubbed by Dhia Cristiani, Lidia Simoneschi and Andreina Pagnani. Suffered from a severe case of emphysema in later life and could not travel far without an oxygen tank. When her first husband, Mickey Rooney, brought his hugely successful musical "Sugar Babies" to London in the late 1980s, Gardner confessed to him that she had contemplated suicide after being left partially paralyzed by two strokes in 1986. Frank Sinatra bought her a puppy for her birthday during their courtship, a Corgi she named Rags. For the rest of her life she always had a Corgi with her. After Rags died, she had Cara and then Morgan. She and Robert Taylor had a brief love affair during the filming of The Bribe (1949). Read more At this site you can watch Ava Gardner movies online for free.
Ava Gardner movies (actor) |
