Still, throughout the seventeen years Ava spent at MGM, she may have become a star, but she still received weak roles in mostly mediocre pictures. The studio counted on her looks and popularity to attract audiences and the gamble paid off. Unfortunately, this did not help Ava to develop her natural talent, which she never did acknowledge.Rooney was just the first of the many male admirers that she would have in her adult life. A few years after her divorce, she met and married bandleader Artie Shaw. The marriage lasted about as long as her first. Shaw would go on to marry many more beautiful women who he tried to educate as he did Ava. By that time, Ava had only read two books, Gone With the Wind and the Bible. She eventually took night classes and read voraciously to make up for her incomplete education. She was a dedicated student and earned high grades.Multi-millionaire Howard Hughes was another admirer. For years, he had spies on Ava so that whenever she broke up with a lover, he was there to step in. He even tried to jeopardize her other relationships so that he could better his odds.At this point, Ava had much more going for her than the suitors in her life. In 1953, John Ford helped Ava achieve her acting breakthrough. He cast her in Mogambo, a remake of the 1932 classic Red Dust. She played the Jean Harlow role, while Clark Gable played the same leading role that he had more that thirty years before. Grace Kelly filled out the third corner of the love triangle. The sassy, confident character was a perfect fit for Ava. She received an Oscar nomination for her performance.
Ava Lavinia Gardner was one of the most beautiful women to appear in movies, and that's saying a lot in Hollywood. She was born on Christmas Eve, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to a tobacco farmer and his wife. Though the family didn't have much money, they never went hungry either, contrary to many later accounts of her life. Running around with the local boys, she acquired her lifelong love of rough language and bare feet. It was only when low market prices for tobacco forced the Gardners into the city that she realized her family was poor. Ava's one dress and thick southern accent made her the object of derision in school. While she struggled to adjust to the new surroundings, her father became ill and eventually died of bronchitis in 1935. Her mother ran a boarding house for laborers to pay the bills.When she was eighteen, Ava had her portrait taken at her brother-in-law's New York photo shop. Pleased with the results, he displayed the picture in the front window of the shop. A supposed scout for MGM admired the portrait and promised that he could get Ava into the movies.The man from MGM turned out to have less power than he claimed, but Ava eventually got a screen test anyway. Though she had a thick accent and no acting experience, Ava was summoned to Hollywood. She signed a seven-year contract with MGM and, chaperoned by her older sister Bappie, she moved to California. Her weekly salary was so low that Bappie had to work at I. Magnin to pay the rent.During her first studio tour, Ava was introduced to Mickey Rooney (he happened to be wearing Carmen Miranda outfit for a comedy number). Rooney was immediately smitten. He tirelessly pursued Ava, first for a date and finally, for her hand in marriage. Rooney's womanizing and ruthless pursuit of the spotlight hurt Ava terribly. The marriage lasted a little over a year. During this time Ava also lost her mother to cancer.Ava spent her days at MGM posing for cheesecake photos and playing bit parts. She appeared in seventeen movies between 1941 and 1946, and as she later noted herself, "no one noticed." It was not until Ava studied with a studio vocal coach that she finally had the accent and confidence for speaking roles.Her first big break was on loan to Universal in 1946 for The Killers. Against her wishes, Ava's singing was dubbed throughout her career, but in this one film, she got to handle her own vocals. Ava was finally getting some attention and a shot at leading roles.
Throughout the fifties, Ava Gardner was one of the most popular movie stars in the world. She thrilled audiences in Technicolor extravaganzas such as Mogambo, The Barefoot Contessa, and Showboat. It was also in the fifties that Ava met and married the love of her life, Frank Sinatra. Their tumultuous, passionate marriage lasted from 1951 to 1957. The relationship was a string of break ups and reconciliations, most of them brought on by jealousy--something as simple as a glance exchanged with a member of the opposite sex in a restaurant. They were close friends until the day Ava died. Frank helped pay Ava's medical expenses when she became ill in later years.In the late fifties, after their divorce, Ava became fed up with Hollywood and the glamorous life. She fled to Spain with her maid and lived there happily for many years. She loved flamenco and bullfights and even had a relationship with a bullfighter. She might have lived the rest of her life in Spain if it hadn't of been for the government. When Ava found out she was required to pay thousands of dollars in taxes, she took off for London.Ava continued to act in Hollywood movies. Late in her career, she adopted a more confident acting style. She abandoned the breathy speech she was coached to use in her Technicolor fantasies. She gave solid performances in On the Beach, The Night of the Iguana, and even stood out in a small part as an empress in Mayerling, an otherwise dull remake of the 1936 original. However, after Iguana Ava only took roles for the money. She never did feel committed to being an actress; she never believed the praise she received.In her later years, Ava stuck to TV movies and stayed close to home. She liked London and loved her apartment. She only went out for walks in the park with her Welsh Corgi Morgan and quiet dinners with friends. She made good friends in London and she enjoyed an easy companionship with her maid Carmen Vargas.Ava saw few people near the end of her life. Though many old friends tried to visit her, she did not want anyone to see how her beauty had faded. She often spoke into a tape recorder, composing her autobiography. She never did see the book in print.In 1989, Ava had a stroke. For a while, she was partially paralyzed and she couldn't move one of her arms. Her health began to decline rapidly. She finally died of Pneumonia at the age of 67.
Carmen was so distraught that she remained in Ava's apartment for a year after her death, cleaning it as if she would return any moment. Gregory Peck and his wife eventually found her there and took her and Morgan to their own home, where Carmen is still employed. Morgan is now in a grave in the backyard, under a marker that reads Morgan Vargas Gardner.Ava Gardner left behind loving friends, a devoted maid, a Corgi dog, and more than one man who felt he had let her down. Once her movie days were over, she was bored and she drank because there was nothing else that she wanted to do. But still, Ava Gardner lived her life with courage and gusto and in the end, she wasn't a glamorous movie star, but the same honest and kind Southern woman that she'd been at the start. She said herself that ". . .the truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time."