| Ava Gardner Biography |
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Born Ava Lavinia Gardner, in Grabtown, North Carolina, on December 24, 1922. She was the youngest of six children of Mary Elizabeth and Jonas Gardner, an impoverished cotton and tobacco farmer. Gardner's father lost his farm when she was two, and the family moved to Newport News, Virginia, where he worked in a sawmill and her mother ran a boarding house.
At age eighteen, Gardner visited her sister Bea in New York City where Bea's photographer husband took pictures of her and sent them to the casting department at MGM studios in Hollywood. MGM agreed to give Gardner a screen test, and she was hired in 1940. Gardner's first film was, "We Were Dancing" (1942). That same year she married actor Mickey Rooney, with the marriage ending within two years. Gardner married bandleader Artie Shaw in October 1945. The marriage only lasted one year. In 1946 she starred in her first major film, "The Killers" alongside Burt Lancaster. |
In 1950 she met the then married Frank Sinatra and the two began a tempestuous romance. Sinatra divorced his first wife Nancy, and married Gardner in November, 1951. The couple were divorced in July 1957 after a three year separation.
Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in "Mogambo" (1953) "The Barefoot Contessa" (1954) and "The Sun Also Rises" (1957). After her highly publicized divorce from Sinatra, Gardner moved to Madrid in 1958. She continued to act throughout the 1960s, although her roles became less significant. Her last major film was "The Night of the Iguana" (1964), and her last film was the made-for-TV movie "Karem". (1986). Gardner moved to London permanently in 1968. She suffered a stroke in 1986, and died of pneumonia at her London home on January 25, 1990. |