When we speak of the magic of classic Hollywood, this does not refer to its idealism or positive influential dreams alone, but to the real-life stories of how actresses, actors, writers and directors ended up enhancing this uniquely fabulous creative industry, and in the process transformed their own lives, as well as the lives of others around the world.

One of the greatest and most original achievements of the United States of America is its Hollywood Film/Studio industry, out of which the collaborative and co-operative work of artists gave birth to sustained exploration of diverse human characteristics. One such elusive characteristic was the love goddess, and the unforgettable actress Ava Gardener defined its features and characteristics indelibly.

Apart from the well known stress and strain which an entertainer’s and artist’s life may exert on  domestic stability, Gardner’s broken marriages suggest something less negative about her romantic life, and more positive about what we have not discussed as yet, namely her magnetic attractiveness for men. THE LOVE GODDESS SCREEN IMAGE

Actresses qualify as love goddesses by the adoration of others, especially men; but this adoration is only interesting because it is,  in  most cases, not based on a personal relationship with the actress, but with the feminine image she portrays in screen roles. Nevertheless, those images/roles may possess both a personal truth for the actress, and generate various influences on male and female fans.

Those who do not count as real fans are those who become a lunatic fringe, possessive of the actress’s personal life, disagreeing with whom she socializes, marries or divorces, reading and believing every gossip tabloid, etc.

Ava Gardner, like other actresses, would experience such annoying attention to her personal life, but in the end it would not produce even a dent in her glorious artistic achievement preserved in cans of film, and their digital duplicates today.

AVA GARDNER’S HUMAN MERIT

One of the specific magical qualities of Hollywood is (or was?) the purely accidental, or random selection of someone to become an actress or actor. This was the beauty of the Studio System; huge, exciting, well run companies where individuals were groomed, taught elocution, fashion, art appreciation, literature, appreciation of quality music, etiquette.

This system was particularly useful in developing the love Goddess qualities, where one’s only initial merit is based on one’s body, one’s features, one’s human attractiveness, one’s evident temperament, and not some routine pre-fabricated, one-dimensional, certified proof that one has already attended some institutional class, passed some exams, acted on stage, etc.

Even  male actors may be launched on this basis alone; the terribly mean and fierce looking cowboy villain of the screen, Lee Van Cleef was randomly chosen and offered screen training based on his mean features alone, when he was already securely employed as an excellent accountant.

In real life, Van Cleef was well-known as a well-mannered gentleman.

Ava Gardner at age 17 or 18 accidentally found herself visiting New York for her older sister’s wedding, where her brother-in-law, a photographer, took a few pictures of her which ended up in the MGMs casting department.

Gardner was contacted and asked to do a screen test, which determines if one is not innately silly, and therefore capable of developing one’s personality beyond its physical attributes. Certainly Ava Gardner’s physical assets as a teenager caught the aesthetically sensitive eyes of MGMs cinematic professionals, but she had the ambition and ability to bring out of her inner self a stunning human vulnerability which, contrasting with her physical beauty, riveted viewers to her presence on the screen.

GARDNER’S DEBUT AND LOVE LIFE

1940 saw her debut in Hollywood, and a plethora of small roles followed, within which, by 1944, it was possible to discern her zesty curiosity for the arts, at first music, which is evident in films like ‘Swing Fever’ and ‘Music for Millions’.

By 1942, she was married to Mickey Rooney, the young song and dance star of MGMs 1940s entertaining studio system. This marriage did not last  too long, neither did her second marriage to Artie Shaw, the popular and intellectual leader of Swing jazz big bands, nor her third marriage to Frank Sinatra, which lasted from 1951 to 54, when they separated, but did not divorce until 1957.

Apart from the well known stress and strain which an entertainer’s and artist’s life may exert on  domestic stability, Gardner’s broken marriages suggest something less negative about her romantic life, and more positive about what we have not discussed as yet, namely her magnetic attractiveness for men.

It was not just that amazing oval face, the elusive dark eyes, that black hair, mostly short and thick, the slim bosom and waist, but contrasting ample hips, medium height, and flawless olive skin, but her serious demeanor, her curiousness about life itself, often about the male personality.
In short, her magnetism had men at her feet. None of her three husbands were very handsome men, but very interesting, creative men. In return for the doting interest which these artists had in Gardner, she increased her knowledge about the arts via the time spent with them.

Along with the self-confidence or egotism necessary to a screen-star’s career and life, Ava Gardner had the proof in her mirror that she was beautiful, and an asset to any man’s life. For some actresses this can lead to destructive narcissism, to others like her it leads to a generous sharing of their charms on and off screen, with men simply found interesting.

This is one of the daring social qualities of the cinematic love goddess.

GARDNER FINDS HER STYLE

In 1946, during her marriage to Swing master Artie Shaw, Gardner made the first film under Robert Siodmak’s direction which brought her special attention from critics and the public; it was the stylishly filmed ‘The Killers’, developed from a famous Ernest Hemingway short story.

It was a touchingly nihilistic Film Noir in suave black and white, with Gardner as a slick ‘femme fatale’ who double-crosses and deceives handsome Burt Lancaster, in this his first film.

Gardner played smoothly, perfectly among scheming vicious men in this film, but something else catches our less sensational attention; it is her distinctly personal chic sense of bohemian fashion.

Not all her films needed it, but this 1946 film launched Gardner in her signature style of male long-sleeved shirts rolled up to the elbows, sometimes in rustic check patterns in other films, tucked into skirt or trousers, or hanging outside, beatnik style, as in her last great classic film, John Huston’s ‘The night of the Iguana’ (1964). She would not repeat the Film Noir ‘femme fatale’ role; it was not her type of interaction or relationship with male protagonists.

Her next film ‘The Hucksters’ of 1947, with Clark Gable, demonstrated more the sort of off-beat, individualistic, zesty relationship she would begin to explore, especially well with Gable in two other films, ‘Lone Star’ of 1952, and the brilliant ‘Mogambo’ of 1953, one of her most characteristic roles and best film.

These relationships are steeped in the adventure of male and female coming to terms with each-other in unorthodox ways. But Gardner’s special individualism on screen would not be very obvious to serious critics who perhaps accepted studio promotion definitions of her as the new sensual siren who replaced the notorious Rita Hayworth.

GARDNER’S TROPICAL KNACK

The Goddess image would become a bit literal by 1948 when she starred in the little seen today film ‘ONE TOUCH OF VENUS’ as the Goddess Venus. But Gardner’s real distinction exists in those brilliant films set in tropical locations, like Asia in ‘SINGAPORE’ (1947);  ‘SHOWBOAT’ (1951), set in the American South; ‘RIDE VAQUERO’ (1953), set on the border of the US and Mexico;  ‘MOGAMBO’ (1953), set in Africa’s Kenya; ‘THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA’, set in Mediterranean Spain; ‘BHOWANI JUNCTION’ (1956), set in India; ‘THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA’ (1964), set on the Mexican seacoast.

The lush luster of original Technicolor achieved magic with Ava Gardner’s body and emotional pitch; it also did justice to her brilliant sense of fashion, her checkered and khaki shirts, satin dresses, scarves, etc. She moved us profoundly in ‘SHOWBOAT’, her face showing real emotional feeling for the heart-breaking theme of the lives of Mississippi labourers and entertainers on the river-boats, the black stevedores, and lure of fleeting sensual relationships strained by colonial inequality.

GARDNER IN ‘RIDE VAQUERO’

But ‘RIDE VAQUERO’ of 1953 truly brought out Gardner’s knack for exploring the personal and social power of sensual attraction .This is one of the most unique and deeply psychological Westerns ever made, where Gardner, the dedicated  frontier wife of Howard Keel, gradually falls for the reticent existential nihilistic cowboy named Rio, played suavely by Robert Taylor in one of his best roles.

We see the screen come alive in one of its greatest cinematic moments as Gardner’s hands creep up Taylor’s shirt with repeated questions he will not answer, and her yearning face and lips quiver with magnetic compulsion before kissing him fiercely in passion, after which he slaps her in shock at her infidelity, and the exposed realization of his latent homosexuality.
Few Westerns, except perhaps ‘ONE EYE JACKS’, can equal Gardner’s and Taylors stunning fashion in ‘RIDE VAQUERO’.

MOGAMBO

1953 was a peak year for Gardner’s talent, and her next film “MOGAMBO’, directed by John Ford, with stunning cinematography in Africa, brought out Gardner’s easy adjustment to the tropical wilds.

Going barefeet became another feature of her signature style, perhaps because she grew up dirt poor as a farmer’s daughter close to the American earth, and in ‘MOGAMBO’ which means ‘passion’, Africa becomes a metaphor for her relationship with primeval attractions.

In her role as the playgirl stranded in Africa she perfectly acts out director John Ford’s delight in contrasting a pandered Westernized woman in Africa’s wild earthy circumstances, where she now must rediscover her original organic feminine skills.

In one memorably scene, she muses on her new untamed environment, saying: “So this is the famous dark continent?”, and a nearby African tribesman mutters something in African which of course she does not understand, so she asks passing Clark Gable what the African said, and Gable with typical relish replies: “He says you can’t cook!” and walks away. Gardner would be justly nominated for an Academy Award for her role in ‘MOGAMBO’.