Showing posts with label Ava Gardner. Show all posts

Monday, November 3, 2025

Venom Queen / Ava Gardner

AVA GARDNER

Ava Gardner, born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most captivating icons of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Discovered by a talent scout after her photograph was displayed in a Fifth Avenue studio window in 1941, Gardner signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where her natural allure and Southern charm quickly caught attention. Her early years in Los Angeles were marked by determination, as she studied diction and acting under the studio’s strict tutelage. By 1946, she achieved breakout success in The Killers alongside Burt Lancaster, a noir masterpiece that solidified her status as a femme fatale. Her sultry presence and magnetic beauty drew comparisons to Greta Garbo, and by the early 1950s, Gardner had become one of the world’s most photographed and desired women.

Marlon Brando fury at ‘feeling like a freak’ among revelations in new book of Hollywood secrets

'En ninguna película había logrado aún la inarticulación total que ahora lo dominaba': Marlon Brando conoce a Sophia Loren en el estreno en Roma de On the Waterfront, 1954.
Photo: Keystone

Marlon Brando fury at ‘feeling like a freak’ among revelations in new book of Hollywood secrets

This article is more than 6 months old

Brando, Ava Gardner, Anita Ekberg and other A-listers are featured in a memoir about the glamour of the 1950s film industry

Dalya Alberge
Saturday 4 January 2025

Marlon Brando was the original angry young man, winning an Oscar for On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan’s movie about union corruption. But anger got the better of him at the 1954 Italian premiere of the film, when he refused to watch it after discovering that his voice had been dubbed, a new book reveals.

The dark history of Frank Sinatra’s mansion

The 8,000-square-foot mansion sits on a three-and-a-half acre estate in the heart of the Chatsworth Nature Preserve. It has a splendid view of the San Fernando Valley, the Los Angeles foothills and the surrounding mountains. It also features gardens, terraces and an outdoor pool.SCOTT EVERTS PARA SOTHEBY’S INTERNATIONAL REALTY

MIQUEL ECHARRI

NOV 16, 2024 - 23:15 COT

Poker was played there until the early hours of the morning, while million-dollar rounds of bourbon and French champagne were served. The host — Frank Sinatra — and famous guests, such as Dean Martin, Angie Dickinson, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joey Bishop, all partook in the activities.

The Reluctant Star /What Ava Gardner played best

Ava Gardner

The Reluctant Star

What Ava Gardner played best.

David Denbey

19 August 2013

Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who wrote and directed “The Barefoot Contessa” (1954), a bitter fable about the movie business, gave the picture’s star one of the most craftily prepared entrances in the history of cinema. The setting is a night club in Madrid. A dancer named Maria Vargas is performing, but Mankiewicz shows us only the reactions of the crowd: the men rapt and ravenous; the women irritable. As Vargas finishes her act and goes backstage, three men from Hollywood arrive to meet her. She refuses to come out, but Harry Dawes, a down-on-his-luck writer and director (Humphrey Bogart), barges into her dressing room, where he notices her bare feet below a drawn curtain; she is embracing her lover. Dawes teases her, and, enraged, she yanks the curtain aside. Then, at last, we see her: Ava Gardner, with her thick black hair, bowed lips, cleft chin, and green eyes, wearing a scarlet necklace that matches her lipstick, and a white peasant blouse pulled off one shoulder. Admiration struggles against disbelief: how could anyone look that good?

Mearene Jordan photographs Ava Gardner in the mid-1950s.

Four decades by Ava Gardner’s side: love, movies and rebellion

‘Living with Miss G.’ is Mearene Jordan’s memoir of her time as the maid, assistant and confidant of the American actress, who starred in films such as ‘Mogambo’ and ‘The Night of the Iguana’

Gregorio Belinchón

Madrid, June 16, 2022

During a career spanning nearly half a century, Ava Gardner loved, fought, cried, laughed, suffered, had fun and, obviously, also acted. She was a star. Lauded by Hollywood as “the most beautiful animal in the world,” she battled against the norms of her time, and did what she could to improve the weak scripts that – by contract – she had to follow. She even fled to Europe to escape Hollywood’s conventionality.

Ava Gardner in 1952.VIRGIL APGER
American actress Ava Gardner (1922 - 1990) spoke of her insatiable desire for sex

When Ava kissed me, I felt it in every fibre... but it was the tales of her lovers that really floored me: Secrets of Hollywood's most insatiable sex goddess, by her last confidant

By PETER EVANS FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 23:11 GMT, 21 June 2013 | UPDATED: 15:20 GMT, 22 June 2013

The smallest husband I ever had, and the biggest mistake — that was how Ava Gardner described Mickey Rooney, who’d once been Hollywood’s top box-office draw.