by Hariette Surovell
January 25th, will mark the 21st year anniversary of Ava Gardner’s death.
Ava had never entertained notions of stardom. She was an accidental star, one of the most unlikely candidates ever to enter the pantheon of Hollywood Goddesses.
Ava Lavinia Gardner was the youngest of seven children in a family of hard-luck “tabacky” farmers in prophetically-nicknamed Grabtown, North Carolina. One child perished in a fire, and the family somehow lost its inherited land, turning them into sharecroppers. Ava’s mother was overworked and overwhelmed by responsibilities, her father so austere, he might have been mute. Having been nominally educated in a one-room schoolhouse, Ava was only semi-literate, having read (with difficulty) a single book, “Gone with the Wind”. But she had an innately cheerful disposition, and she enjoyed her duty of picking the farm’s sticky red-brown crop, which she began smoking at the age of eight. She loved to go barefoot, and the gummy tabacky leaves left leaves stains on the soles of her feet that matched her reddish hair. While working alongside her father, she prayed for a simple word of praise from him—once a year, he’d call her “Daughter”, uttered simply but feelingly, and this made her heart soar. He died at 38, of chronic tabacky-related bronchial problems, and as he had refused all medical care, his demise was slow and excruciating. Ava’s widowed mother relocated to “the big city” of Rock Ridge, North Carolina, where she had been offered a job running a boarding house. Ava was a teenager, and had developed into an unworldly beauty with auburn hair, emerald eyes, prism-like cheekbones, an adorable dimple and a slender body with large breasts. Shy and sheltered, Ava never understood, nor did her mother explain to her, why her new body evoked hysteria, (albeit quite different kinds), in both Mom and the boarders (most of whom were sailors on leave.)
Rescuing Ava from the fate of being raped by the residents, sent away to a convent, or marrying young and moving into a trailer park was her sophisticated older sister, Bappie, who had somehow migrated to NYC and married a photographer. On a visit home, this awestruck, opportunistic older sister convinced Ava that she, too, belonged in the Big Apple, the city of endless possibilities for a genuine home-grown goddess. Bappie also tried to instill in Ava the desire to be molded into a “somebody”. Bappie’s husband took a photo of Ava and hung it in a store window, setting in motion a chain of events that led to the creation of a true Hollywood legend. An MGM employee spotted Ava’s image, contacted her with the news that he’d arrange for Ava to travel to Hollywood and be screen-tested. Ava’s North Carolina accent was abrasive to the refined ears of the elocutionists who tutored their stars in the “Mid-Atlantic” speech patterns of Mary Astor, and Ava could barely read a script…but not only was she gorgeous, she was self-deprecating, malleable, and willing to remain on contract for $75 a week. MGM said, why not, while Bappie, the designated decision-maker, foresaw movie roles, maids, mansions and minks. She divorced the photographer—her first act in preparation for upward mobility—and moved in with Ava. Bappie retained the roles of secretary, chauffeur and chaperone, and she cooked Ava the fatty, salty specialties and multiple-course meals so many Southerners crave for their entire lives. Ava spent five years collecting her weekly salary while only occasionally snagging a bit part. She first starred in the odd, illogical flop, “Whistle Stop”, which was ostensibly based on the brilliant novel by author Maritta Wolff. (a prolific genius whose entire oeuvre is out-of-print.) Ava’s fate changed yet again when Mickey Rooney got a glimpse of her in the MGM Commissary, doing an exaggerated triple-take replete with wolf-whistle. Ava wasn’t attracted to or even interested in puny Rooney, but he wined, dined, feted and gifted her so extravagantly and persistently that she finally agreed to marry him. The former child star had made MGM and himself multiple millions through his “Andy Hardy” series, in which he played a mischievous, wholesome kid in the fictional town of “Carvel”, where values were syrupy-sweet and vanilla-flavored. Now divorced six times, Rooney had become a compulsive gambler and freaky sex fiend (and, eventually, a bankrupt drug addict.)
Always “hard-y” Rooney boasted that the new bride orgasm’ed while losing her virginity. “She took to sex like a half-fucked fox in a forest fire,” he chivalrously informed her biographers. Other lovers concurred. “It felt like her pussy had something special in it, like it was a warm mouth,” Frank Sinatra fondly reminisced.
The hyperactive and impulsive Rooney, having attained his prize, couldn’t concentrate on the mundane details of domesticity—not when there were horses running in Santa Anita and buddies to golf with. Ava, lonely and needy, filed for divorce. She quickly rebounded by marrying musician/intellectual Artie Shaw, a renowned misogynist/womanizer/compulsive bridegroom (he outdid his predecessor by two wedded unions.) The honeymoon was short, as Shaw constantly criticized Ava for reading trashy romance novels, specifically “Forever Amber” by Kathleen Windsor (yet Shaw’s next wife was Windsor herself), for having a North Carolina accent, and for her lack of formal education. He sent her to his psychiatrist (whom Ava insisted “made her crazy”), and forced her to absorb the oeuvres of both Mann and Dostoyevsky. Shaw enthusiastically evinced his disdain for Ava in front of their sophisticated, swanky Hollywood high-life friends, at pool parties, Brown Derby dinners and evening soirees. When Shaw chastised Ava for curling up barefoot on an ottoman, her new best friend, Lena Horne defended the darling girl with the corn pone and molasses accent who called everybody “Honey.” Ava found Shaw’s verbal abuse easier to ignore if she drank a cocktail…or three. Soon, alcohol was playing the lead role in Ava’s personal drama…she wasn’t shy or self-conscious, she didn’t worry about her embarrassing Southern accent or her lack of an education, or, well, anything once she felt the liquor’s heat sliding down her throat. People who knew her well all described her as someone who was sweet, down-to-earth, friendly and loyal when sober, but who acquired a nasty edge once she got drunk. In a mere matter of months, Ava Gardner was almost always drunk.
Her high-profile marriages got her noticed by MGM. After her first major performance, as gorgeous, treacherous Kitty Collins in the Robert Siodmak film noir classic, “The Killers,” based on the Hemingway story, Ava Gardner received uniformly dazzling reviews. One could even argue that physically, Ava embodied the concept of noir–in Siodmak’s stark black and white movie, her face was all angular, no-nonsense planes, framed by distracting clouds of billowy black hair, with lips so lush they look kissable even as they spilled their treachery. Sleek and surely soft to touch, she was an aptly named “kitten”, replete with claws, the regal pet of a high-powered gangster, who let Burt Lancaster’s “Swede” admire her and then purred over his downfall. The competitive Shaw was infuriated by Ava’s triumph. He correctly intuited that once her newfound critics and fans saw Ava in Technicolor, with her jasper hair and forest-green eyes, they would be captivated anew, with Ava elevated into superstardom. He insisted that the two of them immediately leave “superficial, phony Hollywood” and move to New York City. Ava filed for her second divorce. Brilliant reviews and the forecast of a dynamic career notwithstanding, she felt like a total failure. Two busted marriages, and she was still in her early 20’s. What was a gal to do? Pour another martini.
Among the male control freaks who worshipped her (Howard Hughes was a major contender for husband #3), Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM, was the the highest-profile offender. Patronizing and paternal to his female contract players (when he wasn’t feeling them up), he placed them all on diets of amphetamines, cottage cheese, and “his mother’s chicken soup” (a commissary standard and object of ridicule.) Judy Garland, forced to endure The Mayer Misogyny diet throughout her childhood, remained bitter and obsessed about her deprivation throughout her brief life. (Freakily following tradition, daughter Liza Minelli married woman-hating weirdo David Gest, who rigidly forced her to lose weight by living on cottage cheese–no lapses permitted.)
Mayer was utterly smitten by Ava, the most beautiful star to enter the gates of his home-built heaven since Hedy Lamarr, but who was even sexier, as Ava lacked Lamarr’s Prussian hauteur, and was as earthy as the fields she had grown up in. She was naturally thin, with a waist the size of her heroine, Scarlett O’Hara. Eventually, the relentless studio head stopped pressuring her, and allowed her to eat the following foods daily, prepared by Bappie:
Breakfast:
Southern-fried chicken, grits, biscuits, gravy, coffee.
Lunch:
A large steak, veggies, potatoes, salad, apple-pie with ice cream, iced-tea.
Snack:
A milkshake. Cornbread dipped in cooked vegetable juices.
Dinner:
Another steak, with all the trimmings. Dessert.
Evening snack:
An omelette.
No matter how much alcohol she consumed at night, (more than the entire Rat Pack put away in a week?), Ava stuck to her diet, into her 40’s. Could the cornbread also have soaked up some of the alcohol? Whatever her secret, Ava stayed svelte.
Eventually, the major movie roles rolled in, like “Mogambo”, where Ava starred alongside her childhood crush, Clark Gable. Walking past an African extra in his native garb, Ava asked co-star Hollywood Goddess La Grace, “Gracie, have you ever seen a black cock?” and lifted up a random piece of cloth to demonstrate. Many years later, in Monaco, Kelly offered to reciprocate some sexual fun by matching Ava up with Aristotle Onassis. “I hear he likes to give his lovers a good whipping before he fucks them,” whispered the not-so-pristine princess, who had bedded almost all of her male co-stars, married or single, while a fellow MGM’er. When a press person dissed future husband Frank Sinatra as being “a 119 lb. has-been,” Ava defended him to the press by purring, “19 of those pounds are all cock!”
As success and mega-bucks materialized, Ava partied non-stop. After falling madly in love and lust with Frank Sinatra, Ava overcame her Shaw-induced trepidation about marriage. Frank, the very public Catholic Family Man, correctly predicted that there would be major fall-out if he were to divorce his wife. The outcry was cataclysmic. Frank’s fans, who felt as if they personally knew the spouse and children he had always shown off on television shows and at concerts, felt so betrayed that they boycotted him…and boycotted him. His career plummeted, and he was a has-been for two decades. Frank finally rebounded when he played “Maggio” in “From Here to Eternity.” Depressed by the disappearance of screaming bobby-soxers in sold-out venues, former super-star Sinatra stayed soused. Ava, by now a full-fledged alcoholic drank with him…and drank…
She was never “a happy drunk” (is anyone, really?), she was always irrational, unreasonable, even violent. Like many “functioning” alcoholics, she didn’t remember the vicious things she had said and done after she sobered up.
Ava’s roles kept coming. Her relationship with Frank was passionate, intense…and dependent on mutual alcohol consumption. Frank would fly two continents to be with Ava on a movie set, and as soon as he arrived, they’d celebrate by knocking back cocktails. Within minutes, Ava’s edginess surfaced. “Are you making eyes at that waitress with the tight ass?” she’d ask, an accusation masquerading as a question. “No, Baby, I’m looking at YOU!” Frank crooned. “Bullshit, you sonofabitch cocksucking bastard, you’re checking out all the chicks in this room!”
She’d throw her glass at his head (once incurring a permanent injury) and stalk out to get snockered elsewhere. And she drank as much as she ate, drank into a stupor. Her bedtime was 6 a.m. Her Black maid, Reenie, (Bappie was now re-married) woke Ava up at noon to eat the requisite grease and carbs. Satiated, Ava then re-visited dreamland until exactly 2 p.m., her wake-up time. Days began with gin and tonics, and she guzzled them all day and night long. This hardly made her isolated in Hollywoodland. On the set of “Night of the Iguana,” John Huston served the whole cast cocktails daily, starting at 11 a.m. He didn’t care if everyone got too sauced to do the shoot—there was always the next day, and he was always loaded himself. Ava requested gin straight, mixed with tequila, or poured it into half a coconut, to which she added ice and sucked out through a straw.
Richard Burton, no teetotaler he, began boozily succumbing to Ava’s charms, so Hollywood Goddess La Liz frantically flew down to the “Iguana” shoot to do immediate damage control. Liz wore her most seductive bikinis or loose tops without bras. “You could literally see the entire upper structure,” a cast member wrote in her diary.
Ava and Frank constantly broke up and then made up. They knew precisely how to inflict maximize emotional damage and lasting psychic pain. There were miscarriages and then there were abortions, the latter, never forgiven, performed out of spite.
Ironically, or perhaps karmically, for someone with a lifelong aversion to wearing shoes, Ava was asked to star in “The Barefoot Contessa”, filmed on location in Spain. Toreador! Bullfighters, muy macho! Ava slept her way through Spain’s national heroes, then the retirees, and finally, its promising up-and-comers. She divorced Frank and moved to the land of Sangria, fiestas and siestas, where she found an apartment in the same building as Juan Peron, his mistress and their roommate: cryogenically-frozen dead wife, Evita. Ava had also become obsessed with flamenco while filming “Contessa”, (sadly, she wasn’t a gifted dancer.) Every night, after a seven-course meal including enough alcohol to intoxicate the entire city of Madrid, she prowled the Spanish streets looking for gangs of gypsies. She brought them to nightclubs (footing the bill), where she performed her wild, flailing version of the Spanish national dance. When the last club closed, the group voyaged on to Ava’s apartment. She’d have sex with some of these strangers, while the rest of the revelers fulfilled the requirements of gypsyhood and stole her possessions. Juan banged the floor with his cane; his mistress screamed, Evita, well…
Ava’s attitude towards material things was erratic. She had treasured the many diamonds and sapphires which adoring men had given her. She grew hysterical if ever a necklace or brooch got lost. But while drunk, she often smashed rare items of Limoges crystal. A female friend constantly refused her offers of fistfuls of jewelry. During these epic Spanish nights, Ava’s love of sex, wine and flamenco superseded that of any emerald necklace Frank had lovingly placed around her lovely neck, murmuring that no stone could compete with the natural color of her eyes. After her jewelry box was emptied, she’d scour the city, looking for yet a new gang to hang out with, dance with, have sex with, and get robbed by.
Eventually, most directors refused to work with her, having heard tales of her peeing in the lobby of the Madrid Ritz (my friend Debby Annakin, daughter of director Ken “The Longest Day” Annakin, confirms that there is still a policy forbidding any film crew, including the most esteemed director or actor, from staying at that hotel, thanks to “The Ava Gardner Pee Rule”), of her wandering naked in a public park, of her flashing dignitaries, of her hurling platters filled with food at waiters and dinner companions. Yet she continued her daily consumption of bottles of gin, rum, tequila and vodka, now topped off with Spanish wine. Somehow, her amazing genes still kept kicking in…she looked only slightly blowsy at age 42 in “On the Beach.”
Ever self-conscious about her lack of formal education, Ava’s companionship was nonetheless sought after by the world’s foremost intellectuals. She attended bullfights with “Papa” Hemingway, who literally became her surrogate father figure; she was one of Robert Graves’ muses (he wrote about her in “The New Yorker”), and she was sculpted by Joseph Nicolosi. Rex Reed wrote a famous essay about arriving at her hotel room for an “Esquire” interview, which she kept prolonging, sending a limousine to Coney Island for dozens of Nathan’s hotdogs with onions, to be accompanied by bottles of Dom Perignon.
Eventually, the sweet little girl from Grabtown became abusive in all of her personal relationships, and, when making a movie, made over-the-top demands which would make today’s divas seem humble. Filming in Mexico, she requested that a lavish personal villa be built and furnished specifically for her—and it was. Increasingly indiscriminate about her lovers, she picked up and slept with waiters, bellhops, beach bums, bus boys, sometimes several simultaneously (as did Hollywood Goddess La Marilyn, but unlike Ava, the orgasmically-deprived blonde bombshell had never actually enjoyed the act).
Often, the men she made love to beat her, and Ava allowed this. Co-star Geoge C. Scott, who suffered from bi-polar disorder, tried to strangle her (and nearly succeeded) each time they had sex. The next day, her neck would be purple and swollen, her eyes bulging. Ava always received medical attention, consolation and sympathy, and, if filming commenced, tubs of concealing make-up was applied to her face; scarves tied around her neck. Scott was screamed at, chased and pummeled by the director and outraged fellow actors. Yet when night fell, and the booze kicked in, Ava let Scott back in to her hotel room, where the sex and strangling commenced anew.
While filming a tacky big-budget historical epic, “55 Days at Peking”, directed not by a conventional schlockmeister, but by indie-ish, methodiste Nick Ray, Ava, playing a Russian royal, grew squirm-worthy in her demands. Ray had built a full-scale 60-acre replica of Peking, circa 1900, in the plains outside Madrid, with Chinese/Asian extras (mostly waiters in Chinese restaurants) flown in from all over Europe to provide “the local Peking citizenry.” Whenever Ava deigned to appear on the set, she’d be blotto. On two separate occasions, she stopped the production, convinced that a Chinese dishwasher recruited for the gig had snapped her photo with a little Brownie camera. She then demanded that the offender be located, publicly humiliated, and fired.
Ava was especially irked after reading that a character in this script, the Empress Dowager, had made it official royal policy that visiting noblemen introduce themselves by kneeling down and kissing her bare “pudenda”. Why, Ava demanded, had they recruited her to play a boring baroness? The Empress Dowager, Ava proclaimed, was “My kind of woman!”
Frank Sinatra, a superstar once again, remained loyal to her. “Baby, you have the most beautiful ass ever created,” he’d murmur over the phone. Soon he’d be singing, “Let’s fly away”, and away he flew (across continents, wherever) to her movie set. The vodka stingers were poured. Toasts were made. Love re-surfaced, like snowdrops blooming as ice thaws. “Frank, you’re the only one for me. You’ll always be the only one.” More drinks got drunk. And more. Then the champagne arrived. “Compliments of the house, Miss Gardner, Mr. Sinatra.” “Who did you bribe to show off like this?” Ava suddenly sneered, green eyes flashing, nostrils flaring like a wild horse before a rainstorm. The customary accusations were thrown around. “Dumb bitch cunt!” Frank shouted. “Fucking Guinea Loser!” Ava shrieked, louder. Frank hightailed it to the airport before they even made it into bed.
Was Ava a gifted actress? When she signed on to become a member of M-G-M’s elite contract players, actors weren’t hired based on talent. This was before Brando, Method Acting, and the Auteur Theory, in the era when even directors were considered second-banana. In-house producers received in-house scripts and were shown the results of screen tests, and when they thought someone looked appropriate for a certain part, that newcomer would be given acting lessons and special coaching. Ava, while ranking #25 in the AFI List of the Female Legends of All Time, was never awarded an Oscar, although she was nominated for her clichéd role as good-time girl with heart-of-gold “Honey Bear” in “Mogambo.” Many critics are convinced that her oeuvre has been underrated. After eliciting her twisty, perverse performance in “Night of the Iguana”, John Huston believed her truest talent was as a character actor. I like her best in “Seven Days in May”, where she finally looks authentic—a faded beauty, moving fast into middle age, melancholy, worn at the seams, defeated by life, her own sorrow becoming Eleanor Holbrook’s and vice-versa. To Huston’s eternal regret, he never got a chance to work with her again after “Iguana.”
Finally tiring of her high-maintenance, self-loathing existence, and attempting to avoid the temptations of life in the toxic lane, Ava moved to England, craving solace in solitude. Like so many creatures of extremes, she suddenly went from hard-partying extrovert to agoraphobic. Initially, Ava accepted a few visitors: a handsome 18 yr. old who had delivered a package to her was tutored in advanced lovemaking for a year. She embarked on the occasional Lesbian liaison. But eventually, Ava found relationships with any humans other than her maid Reenie to be too demanding. The barefoot, tabacky-smoking girl from Grabtown, who had grabbed the gold ring (although no statuettes) and had been grabbed at by everyone from fans to Frank Sinatra, who had reigned supreme for decades as the most beautiful, exotic, photogenic and sexy goddesses in Hollywood history went into seclusion. Like La Marlene and La Greta, Ava Gardner spent her final years watching television, rarely venturing out of her apartment. Suffering a stroke, she was then diagnosed with Lupus. Ava Gardner died at the age of 68. The only male in her bedroom was Morgan, her cherished pet Welsh corgi.
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