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TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 8, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Star of the Month Ava Gardner
In the daylight hours, it's British Auteurs, a look at some of the great directors from the British Isles, like Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Asquith, Thorold Dickinson, and Michael Powell.Then in prime time, it's the second week of Star of the Month, Ava Gardner, with her 50s Star roles and then more of her roles from the 50s. Here's the official TCM description of December's Star of the Month:
She was stunningly beautiful and glamorous, yet earthy and uninhibited at the same time. Actress Ava Gardner — TCM’s Star of the Month for December — was one of the biggest silver screen icons. Once dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal” in a publicity campaign, her image was often distorted by the gossip columnists, news of divorces and Hollywood myths. Born Dec. 24, 1922, her legend is still discussed 100 years after her birth.
She was the “the good-bad girl, the tough-soft, hard-drinking, straight-shooting beauty who could keep up with any guy,” director Peter Bogdanovich wrote in a 2006 New York Times book review. Italian director Federico Fellini is said to have modeled Anita Ekberg’s character after Gardner in the film La Dolce Vita (1960). She was immortalized when she put her hands in the cement outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Cole Porter mentioned her in a song lyric.
But who was the real Ava Gardner?
To many, she was a loyal friend. When much of Hollywood stayed away from actress Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco — worrying they would upstage the bride — Gardner was one of the few actors who attended to support her friend, Gracie, according to Grace Kelly’s biographer.
In 1984, Debbie Reynolds couldn’t reach her daughter, Carrie Fisher. Reynolds knew Carrie was in her London hotel room, so she called Ava, who lived in London, to ask if she would check on Carrie. Carrie was having a difficult time during this period, and Reynolds was concerned she was in distress, Reynolds wrote in her autobiography.
“I’ll sure as hell take care of it,” Reynolds quoted Gardner in her book. Gardner went to Carrie’s hotel room, where she found her, called a doctor and stayed with Carrie until she was sure she was out of danger.
“You want a friend? You can’t do better than Ava Gardner,” said playwright Tennessee Williams. “Good Lord, do not ask her a question, any question, unless you want the unvarnished, peppery truth. She will level you with honesty, kindness, appreciation, open and pure love.” Williams said it took a lot to get on her bad side, but you didn’t want to get there.
Gardner was uninhibited. She didn’t like the restrictions that came with Hollywood and the publicity department. She purchased a home in Spain in 1955 and lived abroad for the remainder of her life.
“She never believed that the image they saw was what she really was,” said her close friend, singer Lena Horne. “And she had a big mouth like mine. We had no subtlety, no discretion and before we thought, we spoke, which in those days was not always the right thing to do.”
At her core, Ava Gardner remained an often shy, unpretentious woman from North Carolina.
“She was surprisingly shy, yet spoke her mind fearlessly (and often colorfully), who thought little of herself as an actress, who lived in a man's world yet managed not to be fooled into losing sight of who she was,” Bogdanovich wrote. “She remained, ultimately, free to be herself, no matter what the price.”
The girl from Grabtown, N.C.
On Christmas Eve 1922, the Gardner family welcomed Ava Lavinia Gardner, one of seven children born to Jonas and Mary (Mollie) Gardner. Jonas was a sharecropper, and though Ava said they were poor, she said she had a happy childhood. “If you're going to be poor, might as well be poor on a farm,” she told author Peter Evans in an interview.
The Gardners hit hard financial times after the family’s barn and cotton gin burned down in a fire. The family moved to Brogden, N.C., where Mollie was the caretaker of the Brogden Teacherage, a boarding house for teachers. When the teacherage closed in 1934, Ava moved with her parents to Newport News, VA., where her mother was a caretaker for a boarding house that catered to shipyard workers, according to the Ava Gardner Museum historians. Jonas Gardner died in 1938 while they were in Newport News. Eventually returning to North Carolina with Mollie, Gardner continued her education.
From Tar Heel to Starlet
Fate turned the Southern girl into Cinderella in the type of story that seems straight from a Hollywood script.
It was the summer of 1939 and 18-year-old Gardner was visiting her older sister Beatrice, known as Bappie, in New York City. Bappie’s husband, professional photographer Larry Tarr, photographed Gardner and displayed her photo in the window of his studio. Wanting Gardner’s phone number for a party, a man called Tarr’s photo studio asking for her contact information and claiming to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios. Rather than calling the man back, Larry Tarr hand-delivered photos to the MGM New York office, which yielded a screen test for Gardner, according to the Ava Gardner Museum historians.
Gardner’s screen test was with Marvin Schenck. “I don’t think he could understand a word I was saying. My accent was as Tar Heel as it gets,” Gardner said in an interview with Peter Evans. Though Schenck may not have been able to understand her Southern accent, he liked what he saw and delivered a silent screen test to MGM.
At 18, she was a North Carolina teenager traveling to Hollywood for a contract. However, when it was time to go west, her mother Mollie had to stay home, because she was ill. Bappie went in her place to chaperon.
Gardner didn’t find immediate fame in films. From 1941 to 1944, she appeared in uncredited roles. You might spot her as a carhop in Kid Glove Killer (1942) or a girl at a USO canteen in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944). Gardner’s first credited film roles were in the East Side Kids comedy, Ghosts on the Loose (1943), and the Dr. Gillespie film, Three Men in White (1944).
But what did get Gardner’s name in the headlines was her first marriage to one of Hollywood’s top film stars: Mickey Rooney.
Gardner first met Rooney while she was getting a tour of the MGM studio lot. She was brought on the set of Babes on Broadway (1941), where she met 21-year-old Rooney dressed as Carmen Miranda for a scene. From that moment, Rooney was smitten and called Gardner for a date until she relented. On every date, Rooney proposed marriage and every time, Gardner turned him down, according to Rooney’s autobiography. Until one day she agreed but said she wanted to turn 19 first, according to Gardner’s memoir. The two married on Jan. 10, 1942, and were divorced by May 21, 1943, the same day Gardner’s mother died of uterine cancer. Gardner was married a second time to clarinetist Artie Shaw in October 1945. The two were married a little over a year, divorcing in October 1946.
Stardom
After several glamorous bit parts at MGM, Gardner finally made her big break with Universal’s 1946 film noir The Killers, based on a story by Ernest Hemingway. Producer Mark Hellinger saw Gardner in the film Whistle Stop (1946) with George Raft and knew he had found his Kitty Collins, according to Burt Lancaster’s biographer. Directed by Robert Siodmak, the film was not only transformative for Gardner, but it was also the first film of actor Burt Lancaster.
“I liked Mark Hellinger at once, because I could tell he saw me as an actress, not a sexpot,” Gardner wrote in her memoir. “He trusted me from the beginning, and I trusted him. And he gave me a feeling of responsibility about being a movie star that I’d never for a moment felt before.”
While the roles that followed may not have been as meaty as Kitty in The Killers, she was now solidified as a star and — for better or worse — a femme fatale.
After that, she appeared in The Hucksters (1947) with Clark Gable, the film noir The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor and Charles Laughton and East Side, West Side (1949) with Barbara Stanwyck.
“In breaks during the filming of The Bribe, Charles Laughton … used to take me aside and read me passages out of the Bible, then make me read them back with the right cadences and stresses,” Gardner wrote in her memoir. “…He was the only one in all my film years who took the time and went out of his way to try and make an actress out of me.”
During this string of successes, Gardner starred in her first of three films with Gregory Peck, who became a lifelong friend. Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book The Gambler, the two co-starred in The Great Sinner (1949). The film’s cinematographer George Folsey said Gardner “behaved like the farm girl she was, without any pretense,” according to Peck’s biographer.
Peck and Gardner co-starred again in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), a Hemingway story that was only 17 pages long. To beef up the story for the film, screenwriter Casey Robinson wrote flashbacks dealing with the women in the life of Harry Street, played by Peck. One of those women is Cynthia, who Robinson wrote with Gardner in mind, according to Peck’s biographer. During this time, Gardner was married to singer and actor Frank Sinatra, who wanted Gardner with him in New York City for his club appearances. Gardner agreed to do the film if she could shoot her scenes in 10 days.
Gardner’s film role in a Technicolor musical was one that her close friend Lena Horne wanted: Julie LaVerne in Show Boat (1951). Julie is a woman with a black mother and a white father and was a character Horne performed in a vignette in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946). “The production code banned interracial romance on the screen, so the studio gave the part to my good friend, Ava Gardner,” Horne says in That’s Entertainment III (1994). “Though she was one of my few good friends, I was deeply disappointed that I didn’t get the part.”
Gardner told Horne that she didn’t understand why they didn’t cast Horne, because director George Sidney had Gardner memorize Horne’s version of Julie from Till the Clouds Roll By. “I know it (Horne not getting the role) weighed very heavily on Ava too,” said Show Boat co-star Marge Champion. The loss was something that Horne felt for many years, according to Horne’s biographer. Gardner also faced disappointment when her singing voice was dubbed.
Gardner continued to act with top stars, such as Robert Mitchum in My Forbidden Past (1951), Clark Gable in Lone Star (1952) and again with Robert Taylor in Ride, Vaquero! (1953) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). She was also photographed by famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff in the ethereal film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), co-starring James Mason. Film director Martin Scorsese says the film is like “entering a strange, wonderful dream.”
Gardner met one of her lifelong friends on the set of another film, Mogambo (1953), Hollywood newcomer Grace Kelly. The two bonded while filming on location in Africa. A remake of Red Dust (1932), Clark Gable reprises his role that he played in the original film. Gardner was cast in the role Jean Harlow played in the 1932 version, and she received her only Academy Award nomination for Mogambo.
The film’s director, John Ford, initially was unhappy with the casting of Gardner and was not shy to let her know it. However, after a rough start to filming, Ford eventually told her, “You’re damn good. Just take it easy.” The two got along for the rest of filming, Gardner wrote in her memoir.
During the filming of Mogambo, Gardner’s husband, singer and actor Frank Sinatra, received word that he won the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He and Gardner had campaigned for the role, and the casting revitalized his slumping career. Sinatra won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Maggio.
Gardner then won the highly sought after role of Maria Vargas in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The film was a commentary on the film business, like Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), which gave an inside look at stage performers. Gardner wrote in her memoir that she felt she understood the character, the no-name dancer who quickly rose to fame. Making this film wasn’t a pleasant experience, however, she also said some of the scenes were among her personal all-time favorites. She particularly enjoyed the flamenco dancing, a style of dance that she became passionate about in her free time.
Gardner ended the 1950s with her third and final film with Gregory Peck, On the Beach (1959). Based on the best-selling book by Nevil Shute, the film is about nuclear warfare, and while the rest of the world has been destroyed, only Australia remains. According to Peck’s biographers, he considered this one of Gardner’s finest performances,.
Stepping back
In 1955, Gardner purchased a home in Spain, where she loved the music and culture. It was a respite after life in Hollywood. She didn’t enjoy the restrictions of the film community or attention from the press.
Though she continued acting throughout the 1960s, her roles were less frequent, but also had more depth. In 1960, she co-starred with Dirk Bogarde in the Spanish Civil War drama, The Angel Wore Red (1960), playing a prostitute. In 1964, she co-starred in the political drama Seven Days in May, directed by John Frankenheimer.
She was directed by her longtime friend, John Huston, in the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, The Night of the Iguana (1964). Co-starring with Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, Gardner was initially worried she would be out of her depth as an actress. However, Huston convinced her to perform in the Williams adaptation, and he was pleased. “For my money, Ava’s performance in this film is the greatest thing she has done on the screen so far,” Huston said. Gardner in turn enjoyed working with Huston and acted in two more of his films: The Bible (1966) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972).
In 1968, Gardner moved to England, and though she acted in the 1970s and 1980s, she largely enjoyed a quiet life with her corgis. She appeared in some disaster films like Earthquake (1974) and City on Fire (1979). She also performed in a reoccurring role in the primetime soap opera, Knots Landing, in 1985. But in 1986, Gardner was forced to stop acting after suffering a stroke, which weakened the left side of her body, according to the Ava Gardner Museum. She passed away in England on January 25, 1990, at age 67 and was returned home to North Carolina for her final resting place.
Remembering Ava
Today, the myths and tabloid stories about Ava Gardner are still bandied around. Her romance and marriage to Sinatra (1951 to 1957) are still often discussed. But she was much more than the headlines. Ava Gardner’s great-niece Ava Thompson, co-trustee of the Ava Gardner Trust, would like her to be remembered for more than her beauty.
“She should be remembered as an accomplished actress … She became so familiar with the movie industry that by the time she was making her last film with MGM, The Naked Maja, she arrived in Italy to do her filming to find the movie set in disarray with no complete script,” Thompson said in an interview conducted by the Ava Gardner Museum. “She jumped in and was working in the production department to move the movie towards final production.”
Thompson, who was named for Gardner, also would like her aunt to be remembered for her generosity. In 1986, Gardner established the Ava Gardner Trust, which continues to contribute funds to various charities.
She was the “the good-bad girl, the tough-soft, hard-drinking, straight-shooting beauty who could keep up with any guy,” director Peter Bogdanovich wrote in a 2006 New York Times book review. Italian director Federico Fellini is said to have modeled Anita Ekberg’s character after Gardner in the film La Dolce Vita (1960). She was immortalized when she put her hands in the cement outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Cole Porter mentioned her in a song lyric.
But who was the real Ava Gardner?
To many, she was a loyal friend. When much of Hollywood stayed away from actress Grace Kelly’s wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco — worrying they would upstage the bride — Gardner was one of the few actors who attended to support her friend, Gracie, according to Grace Kelly’s biographer.
In 1984, Debbie Reynolds couldn’t reach her daughter, Carrie Fisher. Reynolds knew Carrie was in her London hotel room, so she called Ava, who lived in London, to ask if she would check on Carrie. Carrie was having a difficult time during this period, and Reynolds was concerned she was in distress, Reynolds wrote in her autobiography.
“I’ll sure as hell take care of it,” Reynolds quoted Gardner in her book. Gardner went to Carrie’s hotel room, where she found her, called a doctor and stayed with Carrie until she was sure she was out of danger.
“You want a friend? You can’t do better than Ava Gardner,” said playwright Tennessee Williams. “Good Lord, do not ask her a question, any question, unless you want the unvarnished, peppery truth. She will level you with honesty, kindness, appreciation, open and pure love.” Williams said it took a lot to get on her bad side, but you didn’t want to get there.
Gardner was uninhibited. She didn’t like the restrictions that came with Hollywood and the publicity department. She purchased a home in Spain in 1955 and lived abroad for the remainder of her life.
“She never believed that the image they saw was what she really was,” said her close friend, singer Lena Horne. “And she had a big mouth like mine. We had no subtlety, no discretion and before we thought, we spoke, which in those days was not always the right thing to do.”
At her core, Ava Gardner remained an often shy, unpretentious woman from North Carolina.
“She was surprisingly shy, yet spoke her mind fearlessly (and often colorfully), who thought little of herself as an actress, who lived in a man's world yet managed not to be fooled into losing sight of who she was,” Bogdanovich wrote. “She remained, ultimately, free to be herself, no matter what the price.”
The girl from Grabtown, N.C.
On Christmas Eve 1922, the Gardner family welcomed Ava Lavinia Gardner, one of seven children born to Jonas and Mary (Mollie) Gardner. Jonas was a sharecropper, and though Ava said they were poor, she said she had a happy childhood. “If you're going to be poor, might as well be poor on a farm,” she told author Peter Evans in an interview.
The Gardners hit hard financial times after the family’s barn and cotton gin burned down in a fire. The family moved to Brogden, N.C., where Mollie was the caretaker of the Brogden Teacherage, a boarding house for teachers. When the teacherage closed in 1934, Ava moved with her parents to Newport News, VA., where her mother was a caretaker for a boarding house that catered to shipyard workers, according to the Ava Gardner Museum historians. Jonas Gardner died in 1938 while they were in Newport News. Eventually returning to North Carolina with Mollie, Gardner continued her education.
From Tar Heel to Starlet
Fate turned the Southern girl into Cinderella in the type of story that seems straight from a Hollywood script.
It was the summer of 1939 and 18-year-old Gardner was visiting her older sister Beatrice, known as Bappie, in New York City. Bappie’s husband, professional photographer Larry Tarr, photographed Gardner and displayed her photo in the window of his studio. Wanting Gardner’s phone number for a party, a man called Tarr’s photo studio asking for her contact information and claiming to work for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios. Rather than calling the man back, Larry Tarr hand-delivered photos to the MGM New York office, which yielded a screen test for Gardner, according to the Ava Gardner Museum historians.
Gardner’s screen test was with Marvin Schenck. “I don’t think he could understand a word I was saying. My accent was as Tar Heel as it gets,” Gardner said in an interview with Peter Evans. Though Schenck may not have been able to understand her Southern accent, he liked what he saw and delivered a silent screen test to MGM.
At 18, she was a North Carolina teenager traveling to Hollywood for a contract. However, when it was time to go west, her mother Mollie had to stay home, because she was ill. Bappie went in her place to chaperon.
Gardner didn’t find immediate fame in films. From 1941 to 1944, she appeared in uncredited roles. You might spot her as a carhop in Kid Glove Killer (1942) or a girl at a USO canteen in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944). Gardner’s first credited film roles were in the East Side Kids comedy, Ghosts on the Loose (1943), and the Dr. Gillespie film, Three Men in White (1944).
But what did get Gardner’s name in the headlines was her first marriage to one of Hollywood’s top film stars: Mickey Rooney.
Gardner first met Rooney while she was getting a tour of the MGM studio lot. She was brought on the set of Babes on Broadway (1941), where she met 21-year-old Rooney dressed as Carmen Miranda for a scene. From that moment, Rooney was smitten and called Gardner for a date until she relented. On every date, Rooney proposed marriage and every time, Gardner turned him down, according to Rooney’s autobiography. Until one day she agreed but said she wanted to turn 19 first, according to Gardner’s memoir. The two married on Jan. 10, 1942, and were divorced by May 21, 1943, the same day Gardner’s mother died of uterine cancer. Gardner was married a second time to clarinetist Artie Shaw in October 1945. The two were married a little over a year, divorcing in October 1946.
Stardom
After several glamorous bit parts at MGM, Gardner finally made her big break with Universal’s 1946 film noir The Killers, based on a story by Ernest Hemingway. Producer Mark Hellinger saw Gardner in the film Whistle Stop (1946) with George Raft and knew he had found his Kitty Collins, according to Burt Lancaster’s biographer. Directed by Robert Siodmak, the film was not only transformative for Gardner, but it was also the first film of actor Burt Lancaster.
“I liked Mark Hellinger at once, because I could tell he saw me as an actress, not a sexpot,” Gardner wrote in her memoir. “He trusted me from the beginning, and I trusted him. And he gave me a feeling of responsibility about being a movie star that I’d never for a moment felt before.”
While the roles that followed may not have been as meaty as Kitty in The Killers, she was now solidified as a star and — for better or worse — a femme fatale.
After that, she appeared in The Hucksters (1947) with Clark Gable, the film noir The Bribe (1949) with Robert Taylor and Charles Laughton and East Side, West Side (1949) with Barbara Stanwyck.
“In breaks during the filming of The Bribe, Charles Laughton … used to take me aside and read me passages out of the Bible, then make me read them back with the right cadences and stresses,” Gardner wrote in her memoir. “…He was the only one in all my film years who took the time and went out of his way to try and make an actress out of me.”
During this string of successes, Gardner starred in her first of three films with Gregory Peck, who became a lifelong friend. Based on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s book The Gambler, the two co-starred in The Great Sinner (1949). The film’s cinematographer George Folsey said Gardner “behaved like the farm girl she was, without any pretense,” according to Peck’s biographer.
Peck and Gardner co-starred again in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), a Hemingway story that was only 17 pages long. To beef up the story for the film, screenwriter Casey Robinson wrote flashbacks dealing with the women in the life of Harry Street, played by Peck. One of those women is Cynthia, who Robinson wrote with Gardner in mind, according to Peck’s biographer. During this time, Gardner was married to singer and actor Frank Sinatra, who wanted Gardner with him in New York City for his club appearances. Gardner agreed to do the film if she could shoot her scenes in 10 days.
Gardner’s film role in a Technicolor musical was one that her close friend Lena Horne wanted: Julie LaVerne in Show Boat (1951). Julie is a woman with a black mother and a white father and was a character Horne performed in a vignette in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946). “The production code banned interracial romance on the screen, so the studio gave the part to my good friend, Ava Gardner,” Horne says in That’s Entertainment III (1994). “Though she was one of my few good friends, I was deeply disappointed that I didn’t get the part.”
Gardner told Horne that she didn’t understand why they didn’t cast Horne, because director George Sidney had Gardner memorize Horne’s version of Julie from Till the Clouds Roll By. “I know it (Horne not getting the role) weighed very heavily on Ava too,” said Show Boat co-star Marge Champion. The loss was something that Horne felt for many years, according to Horne’s biographer. Gardner also faced disappointment when her singing voice was dubbed.
Gardner continued to act with top stars, such as Robert Mitchum in My Forbidden Past (1951), Clark Gable in Lone Star (1952) and again with Robert Taylor in Ride, Vaquero! (1953) and Knights of the Round Table (1953). She was also photographed by famed cinematographer Jack Cardiff in the ethereal film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), co-starring James Mason. Film director Martin Scorsese says the film is like “entering a strange, wonderful dream.”
Gardner met one of her lifelong friends on the set of another film, Mogambo (1953), Hollywood newcomer Grace Kelly. The two bonded while filming on location in Africa. A remake of Red Dust (1932), Clark Gable reprises his role that he played in the original film. Gardner was cast in the role Jean Harlow played in the 1932 version, and she received her only Academy Award nomination for Mogambo.
The film’s director, John Ford, initially was unhappy with the casting of Gardner and was not shy to let her know it. However, after a rough start to filming, Ford eventually told her, “You’re damn good. Just take it easy.” The two got along for the rest of filming, Gardner wrote in her memoir.
During the filming of Mogambo, Gardner’s husband, singer and actor Frank Sinatra, received word that he won the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953). He and Gardner had campaigned for the role, and the casting revitalized his slumping career. Sinatra won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role of Maggio.
Gardner then won the highly sought after role of Maria Vargas in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The film was a commentary on the film business, like Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), which gave an inside look at stage performers. Gardner wrote in her memoir that she felt she understood the character, the no-name dancer who quickly rose to fame. Making this film wasn’t a pleasant experience, however, she also said some of the scenes were among her personal all-time favorites. She particularly enjoyed the flamenco dancing, a style of dance that she became passionate about in her free time.
Gardner ended the 1950s with her third and final film with Gregory Peck, On the Beach (1959). Based on the best-selling book by Nevil Shute, the film is about nuclear warfare, and while the rest of the world has been destroyed, only Australia remains. According to Peck’s biographers, he considered this one of Gardner’s finest performances,.
Stepping back
In 1955, Gardner purchased a home in Spain, where she loved the music and culture. It was a respite after life in Hollywood. She didn’t enjoy the restrictions of the film community or attention from the press.
Though she continued acting throughout the 1960s, her roles were less frequent, but also had more depth. In 1960, she co-starred with Dirk Bogarde in the Spanish Civil War drama, The Angel Wore Red (1960), playing a prostitute. In 1964, she co-starred in the political drama Seven Days in May, directed by John Frankenheimer.
She was directed by her longtime friend, John Huston, in the film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, The Night of the Iguana (1964). Co-starring with Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon, Gardner was initially worried she would be out of her depth as an actress. However, Huston convinced her to perform in the Williams adaptation, and he was pleased. “For my money, Ava’s performance in this film is the greatest thing she has done on the screen so far,” Huston said. Gardner in turn enjoyed working with Huston and acted in two more of his films: The Bible (1966) and The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972).
In 1968, Gardner moved to England, and though she acted in the 1970s and 1980s, she largely enjoyed a quiet life with her corgis. She appeared in some disaster films like Earthquake (1974) and City on Fire (1979). She also performed in a reoccurring role in the primetime soap opera, Knots Landing, in 1985. But in 1986, Gardner was forced to stop acting after suffering a stroke, which weakened the left side of her body, according to the Ava Gardner Museum. She passed away in England on January 25, 1990, at age 67 and was returned home to North Carolina for her final resting place.
Remembering Ava
Today, the myths and tabloid stories about Ava Gardner are still bandied around. Her romance and marriage to Sinatra (1951 to 1957) are still often discussed. But she was much more than the headlines. Ava Gardner’s great-niece Ava Thompson, co-trustee of the Ava Gardner Trust, would like her to be remembered for more than her beauty.
“She should be remembered as an accomplished actress … She became so familiar with the movie industry that by the time she was making her last film with MGM, The Naked Maja, she arrived in Italy to do her filming to find the movie set in disarray with no complete script,” Thompson said in an interview conducted by the Ava Gardner Museum. “She jumped in and was working in the production department to move the movie towards final production.”
Thompson, who was named for Gardner, also would like her aunt to be remembered for her generosity. In 1986, Gardner established the Ava Gardner Trust, which continues to contribute funds to various charities.
Enjoy!
6:00 AM -- The 39 Steps (1935)
1h 27m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A man falsely suspected of killing a spy races across Scotland handcuffed to the beautiful blonde who turned him in.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim
Before filming the scene where Hannay (Robert Donat) and Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) run through the countryside, Alfred Hitchcock handcuffed them together and pretended for several hours to have lost the key in order to put them in the right frame of mind for such a situation.
Director Cameo - Alfred Hitchcock: at around seven minutes, man tossing some litter as Richard and Annabella are about to board a bus outside of the music hall. Walking with him is screenwriter Charles Bennett.
7:30 AM -- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
1h 37m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A young woman on vacation triggers an international incident when she tries to track an elderly friend who has disappeared.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas
In order to get a realistic effect, Alfred Hitchcock insisted that there should be no background music except at the beginning and the end. Between those two points, the only music heard is the music sung by the musician outside the hotel, the music tune of Miss Froy, the "Colonel Bogey March" music hummed by Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), the dance music conducted by Gilbert in his hotel room, and the dance music when Iris (Margaret Lockwood) meets Gilbert in the train.
Director Cameo - Alfred Hitchcock: Near the end of the movie at Victoria Station wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette.
9:15 AM -- Pygmalion (1938)
1h 34m | Comedy | TV-G
A linguistics professor bets he can turn a flower girl into a lady by teaching her to speak properly.
Director: Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard
Cast: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson
Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay -- George Bernard Shaw, Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb (George Bernard Shaw was not present at the ceremony. When presenter Lloyd C. Douglas announced that Pygmalion has won the Oscar he joked "Mr. Shaw's story now is as original as it was three thousand years ago". Shaw's reaction to the award was not enthusiastic as he is quoted as saying "It's an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before - and it's very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England". Although popular legend says Shaw never received the Oscar, when Mary Pickford visited him she reported that it was on his mantle. When Shaw died in 1950 his home at Ayot St Lawrence became a museum. By this time his Oscar statuette was so tarnished, the curator believed it had no value and used it as a door stop. It has since been repaired and is now on displayed at the museum.)
Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Leslie Howard, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Wendy Hiller, and Best Picture
Anthony Asquith was active in the British film industry from the late silent period until the mid-1960s. As a director he was highly respected by his contemporaries and had a long and successful career; by the 1960s he was one of only three British directors (the others being David Lean and Carol Reed) who were directing major international motion picture productions. However, Asquith's proclivity for adapting plays for the screen caused an erosion in his critical reputation as a filmmaker after his death. He was faulted for what was perceived as his failure to focus, like his contemporary Alfred Hitchcock, on the cinematic. Asquith was known as an actor's director, and solicited some of the finest film performances from Britain's greatest actors, including Edith Evans and Michael Redgrave.
11:00 AM -- The Importance Of Being Earnest (1952)
1h 35m | Comedy | TV-G
A proper Englishman gets caught leading a double life.
Director: Anthony Asquith
Cast: Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave, Richard Wattis
The writer and director Anthony Asquith was the son of H.H. Asquith who, as Home Secretary, brought the charges of immorality which led to Oscar Wilde's imprisonment.
12:45 PM -- Gaslight (1940)
1h 24m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A turn-of-the-century bride moves into the house where her aunt was murdered and begins to fear she is going mad.
Director: Thorold Dickinson
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Frank Pettingell
When MGM remade the film with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, the studio attempted to have all prints of this earlier version destroyed. Fortunately, several prints escaped the fire (in fact, it is believed that director Thorold Dickinson surreptitiously struck a print himself before the negative was lost).
2:15 PM -- The Prime Minister (1941)
1h 34m | Drama | TV-G
England's Benjamin Disraeli proves he's a match for Europe's mightiest leaders when it comes to diplomancy.
Director: Thorold Dickinson
Cast: John Gielgud, Diana Wynyard, Owen Nares
This is a World War II propaganda film akin to The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) with Disraeli meant to represent Winston Churchill. The scene in which Disraeli observes Victoria receiving the news that she is now Queen was based on an 1880 painting by Henry Tamworth Wells.
4:00 PM -- 49th Parallel (1941)
2h 2m | War | TV-14
The crew of a stranded German U-boat tries to evade capture in Canada during World War II.
Director: Michael Powell
Cast: Leslie Howard, Raymond Massey, Laurence Olivier
Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Emeric Pressburger
Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Rodney Ackland and Emeric Pressburger, and Best Picture
Producer and Director Michael Powell forgot that Newfoundland was a Crown Colony, and not a part of Canada, and when they moved the full-sized submarine model there, it was impounded by Customs and Excise, which demanded that import duty be paid. The matter was finally resolved when Powell appealed to the Governor of Newfoundland, citing their work for the war effort. Newfoundland finally became a Canadian province in 1949.
6:15 PM -- Black Narcissus (1947)
1h 39m | Drama | TV-14
Nuns founding a convent in the Himalayas are tormented by the area's exotic beauty.
Director: Michael Powell
Cast: Deborah Kerr, David Farrar, Flora Robson
Winner of Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Jack Cardiff, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Alfred Junge
For the scenes depicting the villagers, writer, producer and director Michael Powell and his team had a ready supply of extras. As Powell wrote, "...when the war was just over, there was an immense floating population of Asians around London Docks, and we had no difficulty in building up a list of extras for the crowd scenes: Malays, Indians, Gurkhas, Nepalese, Hindus, Pakistanis, hundreds of them. We formed groups of different castes and races, and each group had a leader."
WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: STAR OF THE MONTH -- AVA GARDNER
8:00 PM -- The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
2h 8m | Drama | TV-G
A Spanish dancer becomes an international star but still longs to get her feet in the dirt.
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'brien
Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Edmond O'Brien
Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The character of Maria Vargas is said to be based on Rita Hayworth, who was actually offered the part. Hayworth was a Latina who later married a prince, Prince Aly Khan. However, some elements were taken from Ava Gardner's life as well. The stormy relationship between Maria and tycoon movie producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) is based on Gardner's own relationship with billionaire film producer Howard Hughes.
10:30 PM -- Mogambo (1953)
1h 55m | Adventure | TV-PG
In this remake of Red Dust, an African hunter is torn between a lusty showgirl and a married woman.
Director: John Ford
Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly
Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Ava Gardner, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Grace Kelly
Ava Gardner was pregnant at the start of filming, and as her pregnancy progressed she began to suffer greatly from the heat. Finally, she took a break in England, where she wound up in the hospital. Publicity flacks, who had not released news of her pregnancy, said she was suffering from anemia. A few years later, she would say that she had suffered a miscarriage, but in private she told the wife of cinematographer Robert Surtees that she had had an abortion. At that point in her relationship with Frank Sinatra, she hated him so much she did not want to bear his child.
12:45 AM -- Knights of the Round Table (1953)
1h 55m | Romance | TV-G
Queen Guinevere is torn between love for her husband and Sir Lancelot.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Mel Ferrer
Nominee for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Alfred Junge, Hans Peters and John Jarvis, and Best Sound, Recording -- A.W. Watkins (M-G-M Sound Department)
Robert Taylor mainly accepted the role of Lancelot because of the producers' insistence and because he wanted to work with Ava Gardner.
2:45 AM -- Bhowani Junction (1956)
1h 50m | Drama | TV-PG
An Anglo-Indian beauty falls for a British officer as her country fights for independence.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, Bill Travers
When Ava Gardner came to Lahore, there was only one reasonable hotel i.e. Falleti's Hotel. The suite in which Ava stayed has been named as "The Ava Gardner Suite". In its lounge one could see a beautiful large size, black & white portrait of a smiling Ava Gardner.
4:45 AM -- My Forbidden Past (1951)
1h 21m | Drama | TV-PG
A beauty with a skeleton in her closet seeks revenge on the suitor who jilted her.
Director: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas
Both Ann Sheridan and Polan Banks sued Howard Hughes for not respecting the contract clauses, replacing Sheridan with Ava Gardner on loan from MGM.
