Why It Was Tough For Ava Gardner To Find Roles That Fit Her
Ava Gardner is a peculiar actress from the golden age of Hollywood. Her name is familiar, yet if one were to try to answer what she was most known for or what her niche was, the answer would be difficult to come by. Her stunning beauty was arguably the stuff of legends. For the bulk of her career working under Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, her roles specifically focused on that legendary beauty, with the camera emphasizing her striking features to perfection.
As for the quality of her roles, that was another story. It's the kind of story that makes you crinkle your nose, throw up your hands in frustration, and put the book immediately back on the shelf.
To start with, Gardner was a difficult actress to find roles for. Earlier on in her career, she seemed destined to be the seductive siren type, landing back-to-back femme fatale roles in film noirs like "Whistle Stop." But as Hollywood transitioned from the late '40s to the '50s, the roles for women changed onscreen. Audiences wanted women who were easy on the eyes, but also actresses who people, especially men coming back from the war, could project themselves onto. Gardner didn't fit into that mold due to her imperious temper, but she also never succeeded in being cast as in intelligent roles.
Hollywood just didn't know what to do with Gardner. Looking back on her career, though, the failure to figure out her niche seems connected to her contract with MGM and their failure to properly nurture her talent.
'No burning ambition'
Gardner's striking appearance convinced MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer to sign her up for a seven-year contract despite a failed screen test. With her thick North Carolinian drawl and general lack of refinement, MGM put her through the ringer to sculpt an actress worthy of the big screen. They trained that distinctive accent out of her, taught her how to move, dance, and pose, the whole nine yards.
But, in the process, MGM trained out the natural feistiness from her personality and neglected to develop her acting abilities. This set the stage for Gardner's consistent struggle to find her acting niche in Hollywood and insecurities regarding her acting talent. It also snuffed out her interest in acting early in her professional career.
In Ava: My Story, Gardner explains that it wasn't until she was loaned out to Universal Pictures for "The Killers" that she finally felt the acting spark:
"Until I played Kitty Collins, I'd never worked very hard in pictures, never took my career very seriously. I felt no burning ambition to become a real actress. I was just a girl who was lucky enough to have a job in pictures. Playing Kitty changed that, showed me what it meant to try to act, and made me feel that I might have a little talent in that area after all."
What talent she had, though, was never nurtured by MGM. If anything, everyone except for MGM had an interest in helping the actress grow.
Iron-clad contracts
Eventually, MGM realized that there was something of merit in Gardner after they saw the success she had being loaned out to other studios. Capitalizing on her femme fatale success, they cast her in their own film noir feature, "The Bribe." It is here where she was exposed to the only person who genuinely seemed to care about her skills. In Ava: My Story, she reminisced:
"I only remember a single example of someone caring about the quality of my work. In the breaks during the filming of 'The Bribe', Charles Laughton, one of my co-stars, used to take me aside and read me passages out of the Bible, then make me read them back with the right cadences and stresses. He was a brilliant classical actor absorbed by his craft and loving it. And he was the only one in all my film years who took the time and went out of his way to try and make an actress out of me."
To further compound the issue, Gardner couldn't actively seek out roles in other productions due to her contract. Every decision had to be approved by MGM, and when it came to outside productions, MGM only wanted her in big roles. Anything less than a lead role was dismissed. Gardner ran into this problem once when Gregory Peck asked her if she was interested in participating in a theatrical production. When MGM found out that it wasn't a big role, they nixed the idea and she had no choice but to decline the offer.
Trapped in a thankless contract where MGM kept her under their thumb, all Gardner could do was wait until it expired.
From contract to freelance
You're probably wondering why didn't she just say no. The penalties written into the contracts of Hollywood stars of the day were usually enough to keep actors in line. That didn't stop actresses like Bette Davis and Rita Hayworth from trying, but typically the punishment for refusing to appear in a production was suspension. For Gardner, it was easier to ride out her contract without any fuss.
Her roles during this period were uninspired and curated by MGM once her femme fatale phase had run its course. She phased into playing mythological figures like the demigoddess Pandora and Guinevere, but her physical appearance also leant her to being cast as an exotic in films like "Show Boat" and "The Naked Maja." Remember this was the '50s, so insensitive casting like this was far more prevalent.
The final film on her contract was "The Naked Maja," and then Gardner was free. This didn't mean that she wouldn't be spared more shenanigans from MGM. Their micromanaging kicked into high gear when she freelanced with them on the disastrous "The Angel Wore Red." She took a significant break after the experience before shifting back to acting, where she'd go to star in "The Night of the Iguana" in a role that truly highlighted her at her best.
Knowing that she went on to find better roles after her contract with MGM ended, and taking into account her experiences working under MGM, the culprit of Gardner's role issues seems to point more towards the studio's over-involvement in her career. Her story isn't all that unusual for those who operated in Hollywood's old studio system, but I'll spare you that info dumping for another day.