Incredible new book highlights career of a legendary actress
“THANK HEAVEN that she had been made immortal on film, so that we will never forget Ava Gardner’s sultry, sensuous look, her down-to-earth persona, her husk ymanner of speaking, and her vastly underrated talents as an actress.”
These words, written in this space upon the passing of Ava Gardner in 1990, leapt out at me as I came to the very end of a new book, “Ava: A Life in Movies.”
Written by Kendra Bean and Anthony Uzarowski, this is a lush, glossy celebration of Miss Gardner’s sensitive work as an actress and a tribute to her almost supernatural beauty.
This book is just packed with info, delivered in an accurate unsensational manner. Even more impressive is a collection of photos, many rare, that are jaw-dropping, along with lots of diverting onset candids and gorgeous glamour portraits.
The authors, well-published aficionados of film, live in Lon don,andlook to be rather you ng.Inthe introduction, they state:
“It was not our goal to write a definitive biography. Rather, our book aims to challenge the wellworn perception of her life and work by bringing together a new narrative perspective.” In this they succeed admirably. (Ava’s three short-lived marriages — Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, even Frank Sinatra — seem secon daryto what the authors intend — atributetoGardneranda closer look at the work she did.)
I’ve always thought of Ava as a fascinating, deeply unappreciated actress. For all her voluptuous allure, her presence onscreen often tended to be touchingly hesitant, vulnerable; a little off-ce nter.Thisgave her early MGM femme fatales more substance than they deserved. (”The Killers,” “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman,” “One Touch of Venus,” “East Side, West Side,” “Singapore,” “The Hucksters.”)
The subtleties of her approach imbued the performances of her maturity with an earthy melancholy that at times is simply breathtaking (”Bhowani Junction,” “On the Beach,” “Night of the Iguana,” SevenDaysinMay”“The Bible,” “Mayerling.”) She broughtthispot e ncyeven to her later TV work, in “A.D.,” “Harem” and her acclai medone -season guest stint on the nighttime soap, “Knots Landing.”
TODAY, Av ai s perhaps best remembered for the film “The Barefoot Contessa,” director Joseph L. Mankiewicz ’sov erly talky chronicle of Hollywood and the international scene. It is the sensual culmination of all the women she’d played up till then, and the touchstone for all the melancholy, drifting ladies of the world she would enact later.
It is Ava, and vaa lone who lifts the film out of the
Amurky sludge of Mank’s endless monologues. Everyone — even Humphrey Bogart — appears ridiculous and self-conscious, struggling with the material. But Gardner, who had not even wanted to do the movie, seamlessly embraces the role of a poor Spanish girl, lifted to stardom but doomed by her childish dreams of perfect love. Although it’s difficult to get through at times, “Contessa” is likely the best starting point, for a beginner, assessing Ava’s work.
Gardner w asn ominated for an Oscar for 1953’s “Mogambo,” an earthy, humorous appetizer to her even earth ier, funnier 1964 triumph in Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana.” (She just about wipesaverygoodRichard Burton off the screen!)
But after ‘53 there would be no more nominations. The sensation of her private life, her beauty , the so-called “ruin” of her beauty, seeped into the sensibilit iesofcri tics and the film industry. Afte r Ava left Hollywood (and the mess of her relationship with Frank Sinatra!) and began her nomadic travels, taking more interesting European work, critics tended to look at her films as mereex tensions o f her own life — home movies, so to speak.
This judgment was unfair. But it has lingered. Now, perhaps, with the luscious“Ava:ALifeinMovies” a rethinking, a new appreciation of Gardner will occur. This is a job for Turner Classic Movies and Criterion!