Product Description
This item is a 10" X 12 1/2",black and white lithograph photo of actress Ava Gardner. The lithograph photo has been mounted on a 10" X 12 1/2" piece of photography paper.Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an Academy Award-nominated American actress. She is listed as one of the American Film Institute's greatest stars of all time.In 1941, a Loews Theatres legal clerk, Barnard "Barney" Duhan, spotted Gardner's photo in the Tarr Photography Studio on 5th Avenue in New York. The photo had been taken in 1939 by the proprietor, Ava's brother-in-law Larry Tarr, who was married to Ava's older sister, Bappie (Beatrice). At the time, Duhan often posed as an MGM talent scout to meet girls, using the fact that MGM was a subsidiary of Loews. Duhan entered Tarr's and tried to get Ava's number, but was rebuffed by the receptionist. Duhan made the offhand comment, "Somebody should send her info to MGM," and the Tarrs did so immediately. Shortly after, Ava, who at the time was a student at Atlantic Christian College, traveled to New York to be interviewed at MGM's New York office. She was offered a standard contract by MGM, and Ava left school for Hollywood in 1941 with her sister Bappie accompanying her. MGM's first order of business was to provide her a voice coach, as her Carolina drawl was nearly incomprehensible.Gardner was nominated for an Academy Award for Mogambo (1953), however she lost to Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday. Many thought Gardner's finest performance was as Maxine Faulk in The Night of the Iguana (1964), for which she was not nominated. (Grayson Hall, as the repressed Judith Fellowes, however, was nominated in the Best Supporting Actress category).Other films include The Hucksters (1947), Showboat (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), 1954's The Barefoot Contessa (which some consider to be her "signature film" which mirrored her real life custom of going barefoot), Bhowani Junction (1956), The Sun Also Rises in which she played party-girl "Brett Ashley", 1957), and the film version of Neville Shute's best-selling On the Beach, co-starring Gregory Peck.Gardner also showed her depth as an actress in 55 Days at Peking (1963)."Off-camera, she gave off sparks of wit, as in her assessment of John Ford, who directed her in Mogambo: 'The meanest man on earth. Thoroughly evil. Adored him!'" The lithograph photo has been autographed on the front by Ava Gardner with a fountain pen in black.........BOTH PHOTO AND AUTOGRAPH ARE IN EXCELLENT CONDITION...........
