AVA GARDNER
In the photography studio on New York’s 5th Avenue, an 18-year-old Ava Gardner picks up a wide-brimmed hat, places it over her chestnut hair and ties it neatly beneath her chin, hoping to mimic Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind. She then sits upon a wooden stool and smiles self-consciously as her brother-in-law, professional photographer Larry Tarr, takes frame after frame.
The photo shoot was intended as a bit of fun during her first trip away from her home state, North Carolina. But when that portrait was propped in the window of Tarr’s gallery, truly capturing Gardner’s bewitching beauty, it would change the trajectory of her life forever.
Her once modest aspirations of completing secretarial school, getting a nice, steady job and marrying a reliable man in her rural hometown would soon be swapped for a seven-year movie contract that would transform Gardner into the most captivating femme fatale
