Ava Gardner was one of the most beautiful actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age. She was born in 1922, the youngest of seven children of poor tobacco farmers and she worked hard to become one of the most glamorous and desirable actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age.
Ava was invited for an interview at the MGM studios purely on the grounds of her remarkable beauty. She then moved to Hollywood in 1941, where, after five years busy in B parts, in everything from unbilled bits to romantic leads in East Side Kids movies, she was perfect as Kitty Collins, the film noir femme fatale of 'The Killers' in 1946, leaving Burt Lancaster such a state that he doesn't resist being assassinated.
Unfortunately, she didn't immediately get many good acting jobs; she was cast for her goddess-like beauty in 'One touch of Venus' in 1948 and dubbed among the chocolate box surroundings of 'Show Boat' in 1951. In 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman' in 1951, she has her most rounded role, as a conflicted temptress who drives men mad but also yearns to join James Mason in the hereafter.
Gardner shines in 'The Barefoot Contessa' in 1954 as an actress supposedly modeled on Rita Hayworth but channeling her own individual and vocational demons. She moved to Spain in 1955 following her divorce from Sinatra, and many of her subsequent movies were made away from her Hollywood base. Her fraying beauty goes well into the all-star worlds of 'The Sun Also Rises' in 1957, 'On the Beach' in 1959, and 'The Night of the Iguana' in 1964. Wondrously witchlike in the little-seen 'Tam Lin' in 1979, she also bravely shows up in Earthquake' in 1974 and 'The Cassandra Crossing' in 1976.
In 1968 Gardner moved to London and spent her final years almost as a recluse. She had a stroke in 1989 that left her bedridden, and her third husband Sinatra paid all her medical expenses. Ava Gardner died, aged 67, of pneumonia, in 1990.
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