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1-878086-89-8
$14.95 paperback
6 x 9
144 pages black-and-white photographs, appendix
Down Home Press
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At age nine, Ava Gardner went
to the Howell Theater in Smithfield, North Carolina, with her mother
Mollie to see her mother's favorite movie star Clark Gable starring as a
safari leader in Africa with Jean Harlow in Red Dust. Twenty
years later Ava would find herself in Jean Harlow's role in a remake of
that story Mogambo, with none other than Clark Gable.
That such a thing could
happen to a country girl from North Carolina was beyond the imagination
not only of Ava but of everybody who knew her. But people learned to
expect the unexpected from Ava. By 13, she'd decided she wanted to be a
movie star, and at 18 she joked with friends that she was going to marry
the biggest star in Hollywood. She did both, and went on to become one
of the most famous women of the 20th century.
How did a shy, tomboyish farm
girl do that?
Doris Rollins Cannon spent
years interviewing family, friends, teachers and others who knew Ava to
determine the forces that drove her, the values that guided her. She
found they were firmly grounded in her North Carolina roots.
"She endured in a
profession in which only the strong survive," Cannon writes.
"And she survived, not because she overcame her rural North
Carolina background, but because she drew her strength from it."
Much has been written about
Ava's legendary life, but the material in this book, never before told,
adds a new and moving dimension to her story. It includes letters and
photographs never before published.
about the author
Doris Rollins Cannon, a retired newspaper journalist, is chairman
emeritus of the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, North Carolina. She
lives in Clayton.
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