Ava Gardner #1

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The Australian
WHEN Ava Gardner was in Australia filming Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, she was famously reported as saying that Melbourne was the right place to make a film about the end of the world.
Sadly, the comment was never made. My old friend Neil Jillett later disclosed publicly that he put the words into Gardner's mouth when working in the Melbourne office of Sydney's The Sun-Herald, confident from their playful context that his editor would spot the joke and query the story. Neil went on to be film critic of The Age -- he was one of the great stirrers and rufflers of feathers in this business -- and remains president of the Ava Gardner over-70s fan club, regularly updating its website.

Gardner was here in 1959 when the events depicted in Knowing begin to unfold. Knowing is another film made in Melbourne about the end of the world and its story, though rather more hopeful in the final moments than that of On the Beach, is nonetheless dire and inescapable. The setting is Boston and Melbourne is looking as bleak as possible. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology bears a strange resemblance to the Exhibition Building, but there's a fine autumnal moodiness to the setting that suits this fearful story. Knowing is the best futuristic thriller I have seen in a long while, perhaps since Blade Runner: gripping, intelligent, deeply frightening, and all its power achieved without gross horror effects or mindless violence.
I wish I could call it an Australian film. Much of the creative talent is home-grown. Egyptian-born director Alex Proyas lives in Sydney and most of the cast is Australian, with the exception of Nicolas Cage (whose opinions of Melbourne have yet to be reported). Production designer Steven Jones-Evans worked on Ned Kelly with Heath Ledger and Naomi Watts, and director of photography Simon Duggan worked with Proyas on his sci-fi thriller I, Robot, based on an Isaac Asimov story. I was pleased to hear the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs contributing something to the soundtrack.

 

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All About Jazz
In October 1945, Shaw married [COLOR=#28415c !important][FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][COLOR=#28415c !important][FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Ava [/FONT][COLOR=#28415c !important][FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]Gardner[/FONT][/COLOR][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] and about a month later folded the band. He also decided not to renew his RCA Victor contract. Newlywed Shaw wanted a break, but the honeymoon didn't last long. By early 1946, Shaw was assembling and rehearsing a 40-piece orchestra complete with [COLOR=#28415c !important][FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif][COLOR=#28415c !important][FONT=Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]woodwinds[/FONT][/FONT][/COLOR][/COLOR] and strings. He soon signed with Musicraft Records and by April finally was able to achieve his vision of a moodier, more Impressionistic sound. He also tapped into the arranging skills of Lennie Hayton, Sonny Burke and Dick Jones. Joined on tracks by Mel Torme and the Mel-Tones, Shaw in 1946 would lead one of his most ambitious and romantic bands.
But just prior to this supersized venture, Shaw fronted his final dance band, and the results as evidenced by this Spotlight set continue to hold up well

 

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Times Picayne

The Night of the Iguana (1964) John Huston directs Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon in the story of a quietly desperate defrocked cleric leading a group of middle-aged women on a bus tour of the Mexican coast.

 

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word press
Earthquake (1974)

It’s still 1974 and Heston takes a shot at another disaster film: “Earthquake.” In it he plays construction engineer Stuart Graff, estranged from his wife Remy (Ava Gardner) and is having an affair with the widow of a co-worker (Genevieve Bujold). One of the eponymous disaster flicks of the Seventies, it also stars Richard Roundtree, Victoria Principal, and Walter Matthau.

 

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cineexcellence

The Killers definitely fits well within the film noir genre. The story is convoluted, but was surprisingly easy to follow. Jim Reardon (Edmond O’Brien) works for an insurance company and is sent to look into the death of a man who was killed by two unknown gunmen. The Killers, based off of Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name, takes us on a suspenseful, intriguing murder mystery. It’s told mostly through the aid of flashbacks, and I have to wonder if the creators of the film were inspired by Citizen Kane. I love the way we’re dropped into the middle of the story and left to fill in the blanks. J.J. Abrams would have loved this film.
Burt Lancaster stars in his screen debut as The Swede, one of the main characters. I caught the end of Field of Dreams on TV the other night, which was his final film, so I find it fitfully ironic that I watched The Killers shortly after. Lancaster was by no means perfect in The Killers, but as his first role, he did a good job. He really pulls through with his raw emotionality in certain scenes.
And Ava Gardner is great as femme fatale Kitty Collins. She really brings a lot to her character. As a noir film I was pleasantly surprised at how the characters in the film had that rough and tough personality that we’re used to in the genre, but their sensitive, more fragile sides are also shown in different scenes as well. The Killers truly is a character driven story and it’s what makes it a great film. It’s about people that we learn to care about over time and we want to know the outcome. That said, I would have liked to see more motivation and development for certain characters

 

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seraphic secret
The love affair between Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra—and I'm using that term loosely—was a legendary tsunami of high drama. Both stars were emotionally immature with little impulse control. Both stars were alcoholics. And both had a history of affairs with equally unstable partners.
And so it should have been no surprise that The Voice and The Shape would meet and fall into a mad, torrid relationship punctuated by unbridled passion and equal doses of violence.
In Autumn of 1949 Gardner and Sinatra, not yet lovers, were both at the Palm Beach home of producer Darryl F. Zanuck. The liquor flowed, and the two stars locked in on each other like lethal missiles.
Ava said, “You're still married.”
Frank responded, “No, doll, it's all over. It is done.”
For hours they drank and flirted. Ava's career was going through the roof. Her smoldering role as the femme fatale in The Killers—one of the best noir movies ever—catapulted her into the Hollywood stratosphere.
For a shoeless farm girl from North Carolina with no father and little education, Hollywood stardom was a dangerous perfume. In a few short years Ava went from being a sensitive, prim and proper virgin to a notoriously loose, hard-drinking, hard-hearted woman.
Sinatra's career was in trouble. His records were not selling as they used to and MGM was anxious to let him go as his box office appeal faltered. Sinatra did not help himself by being obnoxious and hostile to the media.
Sinatra and Gardner exited Zanuck's party with a bottle of booze in hand. They clambered into Sinatra's Cadillac and putting pedal to metal, Sinatra roared into the night.
Driving along they passed the bottle back and forth.
Like two crazy kids, they were going nowhere fast.
Soon, they ended up in the small town of Indio. Sinatra pulled into the main street and parked. There he and Ava kissed and groped under the stars.
Taking a break from their make-out session, Ava tipped back her head for another long gulp of hooch. Sinatra leaned forward, opened the glove compartment and pulled out two .38 Smith & Wesson pistols.
Sinatra took aim at a street light and fired. Glass exploded. He aimed at another street light and hit it on the first shot.
Ava, a country girl who grew up around hunters, cried: “Let me shoot something.”
Sinatra grinned and handed her the second pistol. Whooping like a Confederate soldier Ava Gardner aimed at the twinkling stars and blasted away.
Frank stared at Ava, mesmerized, and knew beyond a shadow of doubt that he had finally found his soul mate. Here was the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, shooting up the inexplicable universe.
Ava downed more liquor, sighted down the barrel of the Smith & Wesson and fired into the window of a hardware store.
Ava shot the chambers empty and continued to shriek the rebel yell.
Sinatra put the huge Caddy into gear and headed back to Palm Springs. They didn't get very far before they heard a police siren.
Two small town cops approached with guns leveled.
Sinatra said to Ava: “Christ, what do these clowns want now?”
A few hours later, as Ava lay unconscious on a wood bench in the police station, a publicist from Los Angeles arrived by chartered plane with a big black bag that he handed over to the cops.
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were released. There was no paper trail and no publicity.
The two small town cops enjoyed a prosperous retirement.
In the morning, back in Palm Springs, Ava Gardner's sister, Bappie, was up having breakfast when Ava returned all rumpled and haggard and smelling like a speakeasy.
Bappie wanted to know where Ava was all night.
Ava replied: “I went out with Frank Sinatra. We had a wonderful time.”

 

[scriptgirl]

Film Discussion
Back in the gangster-glutted Twenties, Ernest Hemingway wrote a morbid tale about two gunmen waiting in a lunchroom for a man they were hired to kill. And while they relentlessly waited, the victim lay sweating in his room, knowing the gunmen were after him but too weary and resigned to move. That’s all the story told you—that a man was going to be killed. What for was deliberately unstated. Quite a fearful and fatalistic tale.
Now, in a film called "The Killers," which was the title of the Hemingway piece, Mark Hellinger and Anthony Veiller are filling out the plot. That is, they are cleverly explaining, through a flashback reconstruction of the life of that man who lay sweating in his bedroom, why the gunmen were after him. And although it may not be precisely what Hemingway had in mind, it makes a taut and absorbing explanation as unreeled on the Winter Garden’s screen.
With Robert Siodmak’s restrained direction, a new actor, Burt Lancaster, gives a lanky and wistful imitation of a nice guy who’s wooed to his ruin. And Ava Gardner is sultry and sardonic as the lady who crosses him up. Edmond O’Brien plays the shrewd investigator in the usual cool and clipped detective style, Sam Levene is very good as a policeman and Albert Dekker makes a thoroughly nasty thug. Several other characters are sharply and colorfully played. The tempo is slow and metronomic, which makes for less excitement than suspense.

 

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