Knightsbridge Neighbors
Tennessee Williams is noted to have said, Ava Gardner’s “ego was centered, it seems to me, around her friendships. ‘I’m a damn good friend,’ she always said.” The value Ava assigned to friendship…
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Category: Ava's Friends
‘Greatest and most beloved friends:’ Dirk Bogarde & Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner and Dirk Bogarde first met on the set of their film The Angel Wore Red in 1959. While both actors personally considered the movie itself a disappointment, the production had a silver…
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Ava Gardner and Roddy McDowall: Loyal Friends
During a 1942 war bond rally at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles a 13-year-old British child actor named Roddy McDowall first met a 19-year-old, up-and-coming MGM contract-player named Ava…
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Celebrity Visitors to the Ava Gardner Museum
The first incarnation of the Ava Gardner Museum opened in the summer of 1981. Operating as a seasonal attraction, the Museum was housed in a building where Ava once lived in the rural community of…
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Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck: Great Old Pals
On the surface Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner seemed like unlikely friends, but over the course of their professional and personal lives, the two formed a deep, lasting relationship built on mutual…
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The Bribe: Noir and Romance
In 1949, Ava Gardner starred in her fourth film noir, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s The Bribe . After Ava worked on loan-out for United Artists’ Whistle Stop (1946) and then in Universal Studios’ films The…
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Lena Horne: Legend, Icon, and Friend
Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917. A talented triple-threat, she was a gifted actress, dancer, and singer as well as a civil rights activist and female trailblazer. Horne's career spanned over 70…
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I Remember Ava
Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24, 1922, in a community known as Grabtown near the town of Smithfield, North Carolina. According to Doris Rollins Cannon, author of the Ava Gardner biography…
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Creating a Character: Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro
“’Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngàje Ngài,' the House of God. Close to the western…
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The Author and the Actress: Ava Gardner’s Friendship with Ernest “Papa” Hemingway
“The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand.” – Ernest Hemingway – Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most well-known and celebrated authors…
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