When Hollywood was a factory of black and white stars, responding to well-defined stereotypes (especially female) and with lives engulfed by the industry (more than now), Ava Gardner shone on the big screen, the one with dark hair in the middle of a sea of blondes and that this December 24th he would have turned 100 years old.
Boxed in the label of “femme fatale” In dozens of movies, off-screen, Ava Gardner has tried to live a life without so many corsets, shocking a conservative society that was still light years away from some kind of female empowerment.
At the height of her career, in the 1940s and 1950s, Gardner was beautiful (a little exotic by Hollywood standards), glamorous in her sensuality, and also very famous. She and she took the opportunity to get out of her box.
They made him pay dearly for that defiant attitude that could also be summarized in a mix of songs Who cares? Y Everyone looks at meby two Mexican artists, Thalia Y Glory Trevi, respectively, and who arrived long after her. But Ava sang them and her words suited her perfectly.
Peron’s neighbor
Curiously, in the 60s it was neighbor of former Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón and his then wife María Estela Martínez, who were in exile in Madrid. Ava was an international star who had remained living in Spain, fascinated by that country, by flamenco, bullfighting and bullfighting.
Also a 2018 Spanish series, Madrid burnsreflects the strange and strained relationship they shared in the same building, on the outskirts of the Spanish capital and during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco. Furthermore, the Franco regime dedicated itself to following her closely during the years of Spanish residence, imagining the actress’s contacts with communism due to her uninhibited conduct.
The actress, who often visited Madrid, had arrived there through her friend, the bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguín (father of the controversial singer Miguel Bosé), with whom she, who was following her third divorce, had had a relationship with scandalous ingredients . .
They were regular customers of the meetings in the Madrid apartment of the American actress, international personalities such as Carmen Sevilla, Lola Flores, Sophia Loren and Charlton Hestonplus all the bullfighters who, in 1960s Spain, were real stars.
beautiful and wild
To Ava Gardner They called him “the most beautiful animal in the world”, as a way to describe her wild allure, compared to other more hegemonic divas. That trait about her helped make her stand out, since the actress had a very lackluster childhood in North Carolina, before settling down in Hollywood.
protagonist of classic films such as Venus Was a Woman, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Mogambo, The Barefoot Countess, Night of the Iguana, 55 Days in Beijing and many others, she became famous for both those films and for his lifestyle in which there was never a shortage of parties and many liters of alcohol.
The actress has taken on her reputation as a provocateur and her image as a sexual icon, always on the verge of overshadowing his successful career due to the scandals he was involved in. At one of those parties that she organized herself, she was kicked out of the luxurious Ritz hotel in Paris, the same one where Lady Di Lei would stay years later, a few hours before she died.
Her restless spirit and her intelligence also lead her to make friends with two established writers such as Ernest Hemingway (with whom she shares a passion for Spain) and the playwright Tennessee Williams, another rebel like her.
The star was born on Christmas Eve 1922 in the southern United States, as part of a large and poor familydedicated to the cultivation of tobacco and cotton. At the age of 18 a photo of her taken in a familiar environment arrives in a New York photo studio, she is seen by a Metro Goldwyn Meyer producer and thus she takes her first steps in cinema.
During the 1940s, he made many of his most famous films, alongside characters such as Burt Lancaster, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck and Humphrey Bogart. And it was also the period in which there were several marriages that ended shortly after in divorce: first with the actor Mickey Rooney, then with the musician Artie Shaw and then with the singer Frank Sinatra.
Weddings: various and short
As soon as she set foot in Hollywood, in 1942 Ava, an almost unknown actress at the time, married actor Mickey Rooney who was quite a celebrity. But after a year, the couple ended up. In 1945 she attempted another marriage, this time to jazz musician Artie Shaw, just as briefly.
Shortly thereafter, she began receiving marriage proposals from the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes. The actress pushed them away, over and over, standing in her position. Eventually, the businessman gave in, and Hughes and Gardner became friends.
Her third husband was the legendary singer and actor Frank Sinatra, who left his wife and mother of his children, Nancy Barbato, to marry Ava. The couple remained together for six years, but peace never reigned between them and at the time they were at the center of the chronicles of the show for their explosive marriage.
Ava Gardner’s relationship with Frank Sinatra was reflected in the song I’m crazy to want youcomposed by Jack Wolf, Joel Herron and Sinatra himself, in 1951. The actress herself recounted, years later, in a biography, that the quarrels and reconciliations between her and the singer were constant.
At the peak of her film career, fed up with cheap Americans picking on and judging her, she gave up and went to Spain where, despite the restrictions imposed by Franco’s regime, she was able to hang out in bars and do whatever came her way. in mind.
Several years later, also persecuted by Spanish public opinion, which was ultra-Catholic and opposed to divorce, she changed course and chose to settle in London. Her career continued with several television films, already very much in the background due, among other things, to the actress’s problems with alcohol.
Some biographers tell that, in her London years, almost retired, Ava listened to Sinatra records at home, with whom she also occasionally spoke. In fact, in 1988 when she had a stroke it was the singer who paid for her transfer and subsequent medical treatment in the United States.
Recovered, the actress returned to London, but died shortly after, in 1990, due to pneumonia, when she was 67 years old. Her remains rest in Sunset Memorial Park in Smithfield, her native North Carolina, where she set off as a teenager in search of a better future and became legend.
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Source: Clarin
