Ava Gardner (1922-1990) American, Signed Letter Hollywood Memorabilia. Framed. Black-and-white headshot on left, a letter likely written to her ex-husband Frank Sinatra and signed by the actress on the right above, and an informative plaque on the right below. Seal of authenticity from Walt Disney World Co. attached bottom left. 

Overall Size: 17 1/4 x 23 1/4 in. 

Photo Size: 9 x 7 in. 

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on December 24th, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina. Initially well-off, the family fell on hard times during the Depression and moved to Newport News, Virginia to run a boarding house for dockworkers, and then to Wilson, North Carolina to run a boarding house for teachers after her father’s death in 1938. Gardner was visiting her sister in New York City in the summer of 1940 when her brother-in-law, a professional photographer, offered to take her portrait as a gift for her mother. He was so pleased with the results that he displayed the finished product in the front window of his photography studio on Fifth Avenue, and eventually submitted her information to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Based solely on her beauty,  Louis B. Mayer offered her a contract and place to live in Hollywood, where she moved in 1941. MGM forced her to work with a speech coach to get rid of her Carolina southern drawl, and arranged for singing lessons with Harriet Lee. She married co-star Mickey Rooney in 1942, but the marriage lasted less than a year. The same happened with her marriage to Artie Shaw from 1945 to 1946, and her longest marriage was to Frank Sinatra, from 1951 to 1957. After nearly thirty bit parts over a period of five years, she received critical acclaim for her femme fatale role in The Killers (1946), which finally launched her career. A series of successful pieces soon followed, including One Touch of Venus, Show Boat, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and Mogambo, which brought her a nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards in 1953. She spent the next decade as one of the most sought after leading ladies of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and lived much of it outside the United States, buying a home in Spain and later in London, England. Her last major leading role was in the critically acclaimed The Night of the Iguana (1964), based upon a Tennessee Williams play and directed by John Huston, for which she was nominated for both a Golden Globe Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. Facing growing health concerns and unable to have children after being forced to have two abortions by MGM, she moved to Tokyo, Japan in 1966, undergoing an elective hysterectomy to allay her worries of contracting the uterine cancer that had claimed the life of her mother. She returned to her London home the following year and worked sporadically in film for the rest of her life, with her final television appearance in 1986 in Maggie. She spent much of her later years advocating equality for African Americans, pushing for the desegregation of movie theaters and restaurants and becoming a member of the NAACP in 1968. After suffering a stroke in 1986 Sinatra arranged for treatment for her in the United States, and she returned to her home in England where she died on January 25th, 1990 of bronchopneumonia, a few weeks before her autobiography was published. The Ava Gardner Museum was built near her final resting place in Smithfield, North Carolina, and in 1999 the American Film Institute ranked Gardner 25th on its greatest female screen legends list.