Ava Gardner first signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew critics' attention in 1946 with her performance in Robert Siodmak's film noir The Killers.
40 Facts About Ava Gardner
2.
Ava Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in John Ford's Mogambo, and for best actress for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for her performance in John Huston's The Night of the Iguana.
3.
Ava Gardner was a part of the Golden Age of Hollywood.
4.
Ava Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in 1990, at the age of 67.
5.
Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24,1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children.
6.
Ava Gardner had two older brothers, Raymond and Melvin, and four older sisters, Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez and Myra.
7.
Ava Gardner was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother.
8.
Ava Gardner attended high school in Rock Ridge and she graduated from there in 1939.
9.
Ava Gardner then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year.
10.
Ava Gardner was visiting her sister Beatrice in New York City in the summer of 1940, when Beatrice's husband Larry Tarr, a professional photographer, offered to take her portrait as a gift for her mother Molly.
11.
Ava Gardner was so pleased with the results that he displayed the finished product in the front window of his Tarr Photography Studio on Fifth Avenue.
12.
Shortly after, Ava Gardner, who at the time was a student at Atlantic Christian College, traveled to New York to be interviewed at MGM's New York office by Al Altman, head of MGM's New York talent department.
13.
Ava Gardner did not attempt to record her voice because her strong Southern accent made understanding her difficult for him.
14.
Ava Gardner played the role of Guinevere in Knights of the Round Table, opposite actor Robert Taylor as Sir Lancelot.
15.
Ava Gardner played the role of Soledad in The Angel Wore Red with Dirk Bogarde as the male lead.
16.
Ava Gardner was billed between Charlton Heston and David Niven for 55 Days at Peking, which was set in China during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.
17.
Ava Gardner played a former love interest of Lancaster's who could have been instrumental in Douglas's preventing a coup against the President of the United States.
18.
Ava Gardner [Huston] had more faith in me than I did myself.
19.
Two years later, in 1966, Ava Gardner briefly sought the role of Mrs Robinson in Mike Nichols' The Graduate.
20.
Ava Gardner said, 'All right, let's talk about your movie.
21.
Ava Gardner moved to London in 1968, undergoing an elective hysterectomy to allay her worries of contracting the uterine cancer that had claimed the life of her mother.
22.
Ava Gardner appeared in disaster films throughout the 1970s, notably Earthquake with Heston, The Cassandra Crossing with Lancaster, and the Canadian movie City on Fire.
23.
Ava Gardner appeared briefly as Lillie Langtry at the end of The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, and in The Blue Bird.
24.
Ava Gardner divorced Rooney in 1943, citing mental cruelty; privately blaming his gambling and womanizing, she didn't ruin his on-screen image as the clean-cut, judge's son Andy Hardy that the public adored.
25.
Ava Gardner later said in her autobiography that he was the love of her life.
26.
Ava Gardner used her considerable influence, particularly with Harry Cohn, to get Sinatra cast in his Oscar-winning role in From Here to Eternity.
27.
Ava Gardner became a friend of businessman and aviator Howard Hughes in the early to mid-1940s, and the relationship lasted into the 1950s.
28.
Hughes' trust in Ava Gardner was what kept their relationship alive.
29.
In 1957, Ava Gardner traveled to Spain and began a friendship with writer Ernest Hemingway.
30.
Ava Gardner had starred in an adaptation of his The Sun Also Rises that year.
31.
Ava Gardner was involved in a relationship with her live-in boyfriend and companion, American actor Benjamin Tatar, who worked in Spain as a foreign-language dubbing director.
32.
When Sallis asked her about religion once, Ava Gardner replied, "It doesn't exist".
33.
Ava Gardner was a staunch supporter of civil rights for African-Americans throughout her life.
34.
Ava Gardner supported Henry A Wallace of the Progressive Party, whose campaign in 1948 for the presidential election sought racial equality and desegregation.
35.
Ava Gardner became a member of the NAACP in August 1968.
36.
Ava Gardner died in January 1990, at the age of 67, of pneumonia and fibrosing alveolitis at her London home 34 Ennismore Gardens, where she had lived since 1968.
37.
Ava Gardner is buried in Sunset Memorial Park in Smithfield, North Carolina, next to her siblings and their parents, Jonas and Molly Ava Gardner.
38.
The Ava Gardner Museum, incorporated in 1996, is located nearby.
39.
Ava Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Mogambo ; the award was won by Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday.
40.
Additionally, Ava Gardner won the Silver Shell for Best Actress at the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1964 for her performance in The Night of the Iguana.