The Ava Gardner Thread

[ClassyCo]

Ava Gardner was a first-rate movie star for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer during the 1940s and 1950s. She was beautiful, talented, and quite popular in her heyday.

I've never been a major Ava Gardner fan. Probably the most interesting thing concerning her to me is her early career friendship with Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge in the mid-to-late 1940s when they were each young and struggling actresses trying to find their big break in the film industry. I haven't found a whole about their friendship, but yet again I haven't done any significant research on the matter in years.

As an actress, Gardner was serviceable and sometimes quite good. Although she was the star of a number of big successes, I've never seen her in anything outside of MOGAMBO (1953) and THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954), the latter being one of my favorite Old Hollywood romances. She was stunningly beautiful in both, and she worked well opposite Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart, respectively. Both films were big critical and financial successes at the time of their releases, with MOGAMBO bringing Gardner her only Academy Award nomination. I seem to vaguely remember her popping up in EARTHQUAKE (1974) as well, that movie being from that time I was focusing heavily on the disaster genre in the early-to-mid 1970s.

My favorite performance of hers is probably when she guest-starred as William Devane's mother on KNOTS LANDING in 1985. She appeared in just seven episodes, but I felt her presence was needed and her performance was good. Gardner and Devane seemed like an ideal mother-son pairing and their on-screen banter was electric. While I wish she would've stuck around longer, I realize her story was only short-time, and had she stayed, she would've worn out her welcome.

Any Ava Gardner fans?​

 

[DallasFanForever]

Ava Gardner was very popular in my house growing up. My mother and grandmother were huge fans of hers. I was too young to appreciate her then but as I got older I’ve become fascinated with the old classic Hollywood movies. To me, Ava was strikingly beautiful, downright gorgeous and I really like her as an actress. I don’t think she was the greatest actress of her time, but she had a tremendous on screen presence. Even if I don’t like the movie she’s in, I remember it for her. You mentioned Mogambo and The Barefoot Contessa, two of my favorite movies she did. I also enjoy her in The Killers, Show Boat and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

 

[Crimson]

I think I liked Ava better as a blowsy character actress in the 70s and 80s than during her peak in the 40s and 50s. I've seen many of her major films from her heyday and I just have no reaction to her; I neither like nor dislike her.

 

[ClassyCo]

I think I liked Ava better as a blowsy character actress in the 70s and 80s than during her peak in the 40s and 50s. I've seen many of her major films from her heyday and I just have no reaction to her; I neither like nor dislike her.

I can relate to this, and I never really thought about it this way until I read your post here. While she was beautiful and serviceable, she was also quite bland. She's had no major effect on me even on the movies that she's in that I thoroughly enjoy. Like I said in an earlier post, Gardner was stunning in MOGAMBO and THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, but her presence seems to be lacking in some areas.

On the surface, Ava Gardner's your prototypical movie star of her time. Visually, she's compelling, but somehow lacking in substance. She seems very artificial and manufactured. I understand that the old studio system assembled their stars in this fashion, but Ava Gardner seems almost entirely consumed by it. Similar to Lana Turner, she had a look, but was somehow void of any true charisma. There isn't anything terribly distinctive about Ava Gardner.​

​

When I think about it, the two vehicles I've seen of hers most --- MOGAMBO and THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA --- could have worked just as well with other actresses in her roles. In MOGAMBO, one could perhaps see another dark-haired beauty as Honey Bear, the slinky and seductive femme fatale in a tale about wild romance in Africa. Elizabeth Taylor, a fellow MGM star, could have slid into the role, and we probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. Taylor, with her definitive star quality, probably would've taken some tweaking to be efficient, but she could've pulled it off.

When I think about THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, I automatically think of Ava Gardner, but I also think about how Linda Darnell, a big star for Fox in the 1940s, had eagerly sought after the title role and hoped that her lover, the movie's writer-producer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, would cast her. If memory serves me, Darnell learned that Ava Gardner had been cast in the part while she was vacationing in Europe. Rumor has it that the producers felt that Linda Darnell had past her prime (even though she almost a year younger than Ava) and that ever-declining popularity would damage the film's change of success financially. Others apparently worried about Darnell's alcohol dependency complicating the production.

In hindsight, however, I can see why the producers back in the 1950s sought after Ava Gardner for these roles. Despite her blandness and artifice, her name recognition was more than enough to draw big audiences into the theaters. Her status as an object of desire made her visually appealing for risqué movie posters, while her colorful personal life fueled her celebrity with popular culture.​

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

Ava was "bland"?? She's one of my favorites...

 

[DallasFanForever]

Ava was "bland"??

To me she wasn’t bland at all but I notice that seems to be a popular criticism of her.

 

[ClassyCo]

Maybe not bland, but kind of lost in time somewhere. Certainly not my cup of tea really. She had a handful of good movies (in my view anyway) and that was it.​

 

[ClassyCo]

I want to revisit some Ava Gardner movies. I'm going to browse online and see what it out there for me to find.

@Snarky Oracle! -- do you have any suggestions? I own MOGAMBO and BAREFOOT CONTESSA (which I hear is coming out on the Criterion Collection soon), but I've yet to see her other films. Well, I think I own THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO on one of those budget DVD sets (the movie is in the public domain, isn't it?) and I once had EARTHQUAKE.

But what are some more standout performances? I feel my old, immature dismissal of Gardner as "bland" was unwarranted a little.

 

[ClassyCo]

I just found a playlist You-Know-Where and saved it. Of course, there's like four or five uploads of SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO on there, but it also includes ONE TOUCH OF VENUS, THE SUN ALSO RISES, THE NAKED MAJA, WHISTLE STOP, and 55 DAYS AT PEKING, among a few more maybe.

 

[Snarky Oracle!]

I want to revisit some Ava Gardner movies. I'm going to browse online and see what it out there for me to find.

@Snarky Oracle! -- do you have any suggestions? I own MOGAMBO and BAREFOOT CONTESSA (which I hear is coming out on the Criterion Collection soon), but I've yet to see her other films. Well, I think I own THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO on one of those budget DVD sets (the movie is in the public domain, isn't it?) and I once had EARTHQUAKE.

But what are some more standout performances? I feel my old, immature dismissal of Gardner as "bland" was unwarranted a little.

Oh, you weren't being immature -- you were just discovering!

There's also ON THE BEACH and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (hard to find, as it foretold the JFK assassination, which JFK allowed to film in the White House -- in a scenario that ended more happily than it did in real life, so the film's been somewhat suppressed for 60 years) although it's mostly a guy film; and NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (the only B&W movie John Huston wished he'd shot in color --- and he had a point: as much as I love B&W, the color home movie footage shot at the time on location is beyond gorgeous).

Those are some of Gardner's more notable late-in-her-career films.

 

[ClassyCo]

Oh, you weren't being immature -- you were just discovering!

There's also ON THE BEACH and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (hard to find, as it foretold the JFK assassination, which JFK allowed to film in the White House -- in a scenario that ended more happily than it did in real life, so the film's been somewhat suppressed for 60 years) although it's mostly a guy film; and NIGHT OF THE IGUANA (the only B&W movie John Huston wished he'd shot in color --- and he had a point: as much as I love B&W, the color home movie footage shot at the time on location is beyond gorgeous).

Those are some of Gardner's more notable late-in-her-career films.

I don't believe any of those movies are in the list that I saved. The trailers, maybe, but certainly not the entire movies. But not everything is going to be free online.

Update to post: ON THE BEACH and SEVEN DAYS IN MAY are both You-Know-Where, but not in the list I saved earlier. I've saved them both separately.

 

[Popular Piggy Defying Gravity]

I don´t think that Ava was "bland" too, much less once she left behind her studio era. She became an incredibly strong character actress (see "Night of the Iguana" eg), and didn´t give a damn if she looked gorgeous or not (if the role demanded for it, of course).
When she was starting her career, her beauty was so unique that nobody saw beyond that. With a good director behind, she could give a quite remarkable performance. And the only thing I didn´t like of "The Barefoot Contessa" was that she didn´t actually look Spanish (unlike Rita Hayworth). The movie is a treasure and I´m sure it changes many people´s opinion about her. I´d have preferred that Mankiewicz went with the initial idea of the husband being gay and caught in the act with the chauffeur (not making this up!).

"Do you like my Esmeralda costume
for Halloween?"

La Pig looked more Spanish here...​