Biography
Measurements
Bust: 36"
-
Waist: 3 "
Hips: 37"
Friends and Family
Burt Lancaster
[Friend]
::
Gregory Peck
[Friend]
::
Ernest Hemingway
[Friend]
(Both were aficionados of bullfighting, though Gardner`s interest in bullfighters went beyond their exploits in the ring.)
::
Dorothy Dandridge
[Friend]
::
Lena Horne
[Friend]
(Was a good friend of Lena Horne, despite the fact that they both competed for the part of `Julie` in Show Boat (1951).)
::
Myra
[Sister]
::
Melvin `Jack`
[Brother]
::
Inez
[Sister]
::
Raymond
[Brother]
::
Beatrice `Bappie`
[Sister]
::
Elsie Mae
[Sister]
::
Mary Elizabeth `Molly` Gardner
[Mother]
::
Jonas Gardner
[Father]
Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 Although no one believes me, I have always been a country girl and still have a country girl`s values. Everybody kisses everybody else in this crummy business all the time. It`s the kissiest business in the world.
I made it as a star dressed, and if it ain`t dressed, I don`t want it.
I wish to live until 150 years old but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.
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.
What I`d really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted.
What`s the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.
[in 1985, on why she came out of retirement to appear on a prime-time soap opera] "For the loot, honey, for the loot.
After my screen test, the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, "She can`t talk! She can`t act! She`s sensational!"
All I ever got out of any of my marriages was the two years Artie Shaw financed on an analyst`s couch.
Deep down, I`m pretty superficial.
I couldn`t imagine a better place [Australia] for making a film on the end of the world.
I don`t understand people who like to work and talk about it like it was some sort of goddamn duty. Doing nothing feels like floating on warm water to me. Delightful, perfect.
I have only one rule in acting -- trust the director and give him heart and soul
I haven`t taken an overdose of sleeping pills and called my agent. I haven`t been in jail, and I don`t go running to the psychiatrist every two minutes. That`s something of an accomplishment these days.
I must have seen more sunrises than any other actress in the history of Hollywood.
Nobody ever called it an intellectual profession.
When I lose my temper, honey, you can`t find it any place.
Trivia
A distant cousin of Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
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 also had Tuscarora Native American ancestry.
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 Babes" to London in the late 1980s, Gardner confessed to him that she had contemplated suicide after being left partly paralyzed by two strokes in 1986.
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.".
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.
Frank Sinatra nicknamed her "Angel".
Frank Sinatra was broke by 1951. Ava had to pay his plane ticket, so he could accompany her to Africa, where she shot Mogambo (1953).
Has an abortion with Frank Sinatra`s child, because he was still married to his first wife.
Her father was Irish and her mother was Scots-Irish.
Her The Angel Wore Red (1960) co-star Dirk Bogarde nicknamed her "Snowdrop" because, he said, anything less likely was difficult to imagine.
Her three husbands were married a total of twenty times between them.
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.".
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).
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.
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.
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.
Chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the greatest American female screen legends (Number 25).
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. This all changed after he won his Best Supporting Acror Oscar for his performance in the 1953 film "From Here to Eternity".
Is portrayed in The Aviator (2004) by Kate Beckinsale and by Marcia Gay Harden in Sinatra (1992) (TV).
Once met J.R.R. Tolkien and neither knew why the other was famous.
Once named The World`s Most Beautiful Animal (in a 1950s publicity campaign).
Part of On the Beach (1959) was filmed in a 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."
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.
Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#68). [1995]
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.
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.
Her singing voice in Show Boat (1951) was dubbed by Annette Warren, although her voice is left in on the soundtrack album.
In a promotion for The Little Hut (1957), a small island in Fiji was renamed Ava Ava and leased to a contest winner.
She sang in her own voice for The Killers (1946) but in all MGM films her singing voice was dubbed (much to her disgust).
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.
She was continuously under contract at MGM, 1941-1958.
There is an Ava Gardner Museum of memorabilia in Smithfield, North Carolina.
While in Spain, she also became a bullfight fan.
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