History Museums

The Ava Gardner Museum

Ava Gardner – Grabtown Girl
Young Tom Banks often teased a teenager waiting for the bus that would take her home from secretarial school in Wilson, NC. Tired of the incessant hectoring, the girl finally chased Tom down and planted a kiss on his cheek to shut him up. The year: 1939. The girl: Ava Gardner, later to be called “the world’s most beautiful animal.”

Time shift to 1941. Banks opens a newspaper and sees the girl’s picture and for the first time learns the identity of the overnight sensation.

The kiss spawned an obsession that would turn into one of the most extensive collections of celebrity memorabilia in the world. It is now in the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, NC. Let’s take a trip back in time to see what all the fuss was about.

Grabtown Girls Makes Good
Ava Lavinia Gardner was born in a rural community on Grabtown Road, seven miles east of Smithfield, NC on Christmas Eve 1922. Dirt roads and tobacco fields were her world. She was the youngest of seven children born to Jonas and Mary Elizabeth Gardner. Her father, a tobacco sharecropper, struggled to make ends meet. When Gardner was two, her family ran a boarding house for teachers at Brogden School to supplement their income.

They moved briefly to Virginia when Gardner was 13 so that her father could get work in the shipyards. Her father’s untimely death sent them packing to the Rock Ridge community in North Carolina where her mother again operated a boarding house for teachers.

The soon-to-be starlet graduated from high school in 1939 and began attending Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, NC.

Gardner visited her sister Beatrice – known as “Bappie” – in New York that year. Bappie’s husband, Larry Tarr, a professional photographer, took some shots of her and placed them in his studio window. A passing MGM employee saw the photo and sought out her phone number for a date. Larry Tarr contacted MGM and rushed photos of Ava to the New York office.  Ava returned several months later for a screen test and was offered a seven-year contract.

Legend has it Gardner told her mother, "I can stay here and be a secretary, or I can go to Hollywood and breathe the same air that Clark Gable breathes."

With sister Bappie in tow to manage her career, Gardner took off for Hollywood in 1941.  By 1947, she was playing opposite one of Hollywood’s greatest starts, Clark Gable. By then, she had already been married to actor Mickey Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw and was working her way through many of the day’s celebrities.

Her physical attributes – 37-22-35 according to movie publicists – always overshadowed her acting abilities and her keen wit. Gardner once said, “Deep down I’m pretty superficial.” However, she did receive an Oscar nomination in 1953 for her portrayal of Honey Bear Kelly in “Mogambo,” again opposite Gable.

At the zenith if her career in 1951, Gardner married a washed-up Frank Sinatra, who was the love of her life. Their stormy six-year marriage was the stuff of legends. Thinking she could ease the marital discord if Sinatra made a comeback, she lobbied Columbia Films, the producers of “From Here To Eternity” to cast him in the role of Maggio. Although this role earned Sinatra an Academy nomination for best supporting actor – which he won – the comeback was too late to save the marriage. After their divorce, Gardner moved to Europe where she lived for the remainder of her life. She never remarried.

Now, back to Dr. Tom Banks. The psychologist and his wife, Lorraine, living in Florida, assembled a huge collection of Gardner memorabilia.  In the early 1980s, Dr. Banks purchased the house where Gardner lived from age 2 to 13, and operated his own summer-only museum for nine years. Dr. Banks suffered a stroke at the museum in August of 1989 and died shortly thereafter.

Gardner died in London of pneumonia in 1990, and was brought back home to North Carolina for burial. In the summer of 1990, Mrs. Banks donated the collection to the Town of Smithfield where a permanent museum has been established for the Grabtown Girl.

The 6,400-square-foot museum contains theater posters, promotional photos by the movie studios, media coverage including photos and papers, numerous articles of her clothing, books about Gardner, family pictures and related artifacts, her acting awards, and many of her films on video tape. Visitors can also watch a video documentary about her life.

The Films of Ava Gardner

1942
We Were Dancing
Joe Smith American
Sunday Punch
This Time For Keeps
Calling Dr. Gillespie
Kid Glove Killer
   
1943
Pilot No. 5
Hitler's Madman
Ghosts on the Loose
Reunion in France
DuBarry Was a Lady
Young Ideas
Lost Angel
Swing Fever
   
1944
Music for Millions
Three Men in White
Blonde Fever
Maises Goes to Reno
Two Girls and a Sailor

1945
She Went to the Race

1946
Whistle Stop
The Killers

1947
The Hucksters
Singapore

1948
One Touch of Venus

1949
The Bribe
The Great Sinner
East Side, West Side

1951
My Forbidden Past
Show Boat
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

1952
Lone Star
The Snows of Kilimanjaro

1953
Ride Vaquero
The Band Wagon
Mogambo  (Academy Nomination for Best Actress)

1954
Knights of the Round Table
The Barefoot Contessa

1956
Bhowani Junction

1957
The Little Hut
The Sun Also Rises

1959
The Naked Maja
On the Beach

1960
The Angel Wore Red

1963
55 Days at Peking

1964
Seven Days in May
Night of the Iguana (Golden Globe nomination for best actress)

1966
The Bible

1969
Mayerling

1971
The Devil's Widow

1972
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
The Ballad of Tamlin

1974
Earthquake

1975
Permission to Kill

1976
The Bluebird

1977
The Cassandra Crossing
The Sentinel

1979
City on Fire

1980
The Kidnapping of the President

1981
Priest of Love

1983
Regina

added: December 30, 2008

updated: August 10, 2009