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AV A Cr A It L) IN Ej It Temporary goddess
Quietly libidinal Ava Gardner replaced Rita Hayworth, in the late forties and early fifties, as Hollywood's leading love goddess. She was less sparkly than Rita, and her reign, coming just before Marilyn Monroe's, was a short one, but she had certain symbolic virtues that were not to be denied. She was billed in The Barefoot Contessa as "the world's most beautiful animal," and for once the billing was accurate, if not necessarily in its use of the superlative, then in summarizing the spirit of the star. There is indeed an animal quality about her sensuality. She is a proud, prowling, restless tigress, sure of her powers, yet confused about their proper uses.
It is not surprising that Ava Gardner reached her greatest popularity in a period when the nation itself seemed to lose its sense of direction and purpose. For the sum of her characteristics has always been that of slumbering greatness as a love object, not fulfillment. She seems in need of the magic wand that will awaken and synthesize all the qualities which, in various roles, she has evinced. She acts, in short, with the distracted air of a woman searching for something she cannot quite define.
Born in some place called Smithfield, North Carolina, she led an oversheltered, apparently loveless childhood, followed an older sister to New York with vague plans to become a secretary. Her sister's husband was a photographer and he used Ava for a model. An M-G-M scout saw her photo in a shop window and she became first a starlet, then Mickey Rooney's wife. Her first important role was The Hucksters (1946), in which she played a "palsy" former lover of hero Clark Gable. There has been something of the pal in most of her portrayals since. She is always the girl who goes to bed with the guy first, then discovers that she loves him. Her approach, you see, is all very modern.
The exotic Ava Gardner as a halfcaste Indian in Bhowani Junction.
Mogambo. Gardner repeated the role Jean Harlow created in Red Dust in 1932.