Ava Gardner’s life was defined by three marriages to three of the most famous men of her era, yet the story began far from Hollywood glamour. She was born on December 24, 1922, in Grabtown, North Carolina, a small farming community with no indoor plumbing, running water, or electricity. The youngest of seven children, her father was a tobacco farmer, and her family moved repeatedly through North Carolina and Virginia before settling in Rock Ridge. Her father’s death in 1938, when Ava was 15, left a lasting mark on her.
She enrolled in a secretarial program at Atlantic Christian College, but her life changed course in 1939 during a visit to her sister Beatrice in New York City. Her brother-in-law, a photographer, put her portrait in his shop window, and a clerk from MGM happened to notice it. She was offered a $50-a-week contract, arrived in Hollywood in 1941, and spent her first years in small, mostly uncredited roles. On her second day in Hollywood, while touring a set, she met Mickey Rooney, then at the peak of his career as MGM’s biggest male star.
He pursued her immediately and with intensity. Studio chief Louis B. Mayer initially objected to the relationship, fearing it would damage Rooney’s wholesome Andy Hardy image. Mayer eventually agreed on the condition that the wedding be small and private.
They married on January 10, 1942, in Ballard, California. Ava was 19 and wore a blue tailored suit with a corsage of orchids. The marriage quickly deteriorated. Rooney continued to perform constantly, gambled heavily, and was openly unfaithful, often leaving her alone at nightclubs while he played drums.
Their divorce was finalized on May 21, 1943, on grounds of mental cruelty. That same day, her mother, Molly, died of cancer. Ava later described it as the saddest day of her life. Her second marriage was to Artie Shaw, one of the most admired musicians and bandleaders of the era.
They met in 1944 through actress Frances Heflin, and Ava later said she fell in love with him almost immediately. She described him as the first truly intellectual man she had ever met. They married on October 17, 1945, at his Beverly Hills home. Ava was 22; he was 35 and on his fifth marriage.
The relationship was deeply damaging. Shaw showed off her beauty but repeatedly made clear in front of others that she was expected to listen rather than speak. He criticized her lack of education, insisted she enroll in university courses, and ordered her to see a psychoanalyst. When she curled up barefoot on a couch, he shouted that she was not in the tobacco fields anymore.
The marriage lasted one year and one week, with the divorce finalized on October 25, 1946. Despite the cruelty, she credited Shaw later with introducing her to literature, a love that lasted her entire life. She also took an IQ test after the divorce, in part to prove he had been wrong about her. Ava had first met Frank Sinatra in 1943, while still married to Rooney.
They did not become seriously involved until 1949. At that point, Sinatra’s career was faltering, his marriage to Nancy Barbato was collapsing, and Ava had become a genuine star following her breakthrough in The Killers. The affair became public and drew fierce criticism from the press, the Catholic Church, and Hollywood columnists. Sinatra was cast as a man who had abandoned his family; Ava was cast as the woman who had lured him away.
Nancy Sinatra refused a divorce for months, and the situation became a relentless media story. Nancy eventually granted the divorce on October 29, 1951. Ava and Frank married on November 7, 1951, in Philadelphia. Ava was 28.
It was a rushed ceremony; she wore a mauve cocktail dress and carried camellias. The marriage was volatile. Both were passionate, jealous, stubborn, and drank heavily. Friends described the relationship as two people more alike than was comfortable, with fights that were loud and public.
Hotels in London and nightclubs in New York remembered them. At the time of their marriage, Sinatra was at the lowest point of his career, essentially broke and suffering from a hemorrhage on his vocal cords. Ava was at her peak. She paid for his travel to Africa when she went to film Mogambo in 1953, covered his debts, and used her influence at Columbia Pictures to help him secure the role of Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity.
His performance won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1954 and revived his career. The revival shifted the balance. As his confidence returned, Sinatra became possessive and controlling, resenting her independence and her career. Ava was not built to submit to that.
During the marriage, she became pregnant twice; both pregnancies ended. She later spoke guardedly about this, noting in her autobiography that MGM contracts penalized stars for having children, and that she and Frank could barely take care of themselves. They announced their separation on October 29, 1953, but the divorce was not finalized until July 1957. In between, there were reconciliations and reunions, but the marriage was over.
After the marriage collapsed, Ava left Hollywood. In December 1955, she moved to Madrid. Spain suited her: the heat, the flamenco, the all-night culture, and the bullfights. She had first encountered the country while filming Pandora and the Flying Dutchman in 1951, and the people of Tossa de Mar later erected a bronze statue in her honor.
In Spain, she became involved with Luis Miguel Dominguín, one of the country’s most celebrated bullfighters, a friend of Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. The relationship drew extensive international press coverage and lasted from roughly 1952 to 1954, overlapping the final years of her marriage to Sinatra. Dominguín later said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but that what he liked more was her humor and directness. He married Italian actress Lucia Bosé in 1955, ending the affair.
Ava also became friends with Hemingway during this period, and she described his death in 1961 as one of the true losses of her life. Her career continued, but her relationship with MGM became increasingly strained. She had always pushed back against the studio system and feuded with producers. When her contract ended in 1958, she did not renew it.
She moved to London in 1968, partly for tax reasons and partly because the political climate in Spain had become less hospitable. She continued to work in films including The Night of the Iguana in 1964, Earthquake in 1974, and The Cassandra Crossing in 1976, as well as television such as Knots Landing. She also kept up a wide correspondence, read constantly, and remained devoted to her friends. Sinatra never fully left her life.
He sent flowers on her birthday every year after their divorce, and they spoke by phone and saw each other when his touring brought him near London. In 1986, Ava suffered two strokes that left her partially paralyzed, with limited use of her left arm and difficulty walking. The loss of independence was difficult to bear. She told old friends, including Mickey Rooney when he visited her in London, that she sometimes thought about not being around anymore, expressing grief over her confinement.
Sinatra arranged a medically staffed private plane to bring her to a specialist in the United States. Ava Gardner died on January 25, 1990, at age 67, of bronchial pneumonia, the result of a lifetime of heavy smoking. She was found in her London flat, with her longtime housekeeper Carmen at her side. Her body was flown back to North Carolina and buried in Sunset Memorial Park in Smithfield, next to her parents and siblings, less than a mile from the Ava Gardner Museum established with funds she had left for that purpose.
Her three marriages cost her in different ways. Rooney showed her what it felt like to be pursued and then casually discarded. Shaw taught her, cruelly, to take her own mind seriously. Sinatra gave her the closest thing she ever experienced to a genuine equal, and showed her both what that felt like and what it required to sustain.
Sinatra died in 1998. He had quietly paid for her funeral and for her medical care in her final years, and by all accounts he never stopped thinking about her. The American Film Institute ranked Ava Gardner number 25 on its list of the greatest female screen legends. A bronze statue of her stands in Tossa de Mar, Spain, and her museum in Smithfield draws visitors from around the world.
She is buried in the red clay of North Carolina among her own family. The last time Mickey Rooney spoke publicly about her was during a visit to her museum in April 2001, at 80 years old. He said that his heart was gone the moment he first saw her, and that she was one of the most memorable presences of his life.