The story of Ava Gardner’s journey from small-town girl and Hollywood starlet is fascinating in itself and for the insight it gives into how the movie studios worked during the 1940s.
In one sense it’s a fairytale – the dream peddled by the studios and which persists to this day – of Cinderella capturing the heart of Prince Charming and metamorphosing into a princess (in Ava’s case the transformation of a North Carolina hillbilly into a Hollywood superstar). But it’s also an revealing account of the mechanics and drudgery that went on behind the scenes.
So let’s start by sketching out Cinderella.
A turbulent childhood
Ava is born on Christmas Eve, 1922 in Smithfield, North Carolina, the youngest of seven children. Her parents are sharecroppers who lose their property (it has no electricity, running water or indoor bathroom) when Ava is still young. As an aside, to get an impression of what the life of a sharecropper was like at the time of the Depression, look no further than the photos of Walker Evans, commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. Ava moves to Virginia with her family, then back to North Carolina as they eke out a living. Ava’s father dies when she is 15 years old.
1937. Ava Gardner age 15 looking poised and glamorous in this early portrait. Of all the pre-Hollywood shots, not forgetting Larry Tarr's image that brings...
These photos are incredibly rare and precious. They come from Ava’s personal collection and in most cases may be the only originals in existence.
Ava gets noticed
The rather simpering photo by Larry Tarr that brought Ava to Hollywood.
Fast forward to 1941 and Ava is visiting her eldest sister, Bappie (nickname for Beatrice), in New York. Bappie is married to Larry Tarr, a professional photographer. He offers to take Ava’s portrait and is so pleased with the result that he puts the photo in the front window of his studio on Fifth Avenue.
The photo catches the eye of Barnard Duhan, a Loews Theatres legal clerk who often poses as an MGM talent scout to meet girls (MGM is a subsidiary of Loews). As any red-blooded man would, Barnard goes into the studio to try to get Ava’s number.
Unfortunately for him, the receptionist tells him to get lost. As he’s leaving he says, “Somebody should send her info to MGM”, and that’s just what the Tarrs do.
Soon after, the 18-year-old Ava returns to New York to be interviewed at MGM’s New York office by Al Altman, head of MGM’s New York talent department. With cameras rolling, he directs her to walk towards the camera, turn and walk away, then rearrange some flowers in a vase. He does not try to record her voice because her Southern accent is so thick it’s impossible to understand. The die is cast.
Ava goes to Hollywood
Ava is accompanied to Hollywood by Bappie and Milton Weiss, a young man from MGM’s publicity department in New York who spends much of his working life escorting young beauties to Tinseltown (must be a tough job). At Grand Central, they board the Twentieth Century Limited to Chicago, where they change to the Super Chief. To entertain themselves, they play endless rounds of the card game, Pinochle. From the station, they take a taxi to MGM Studios, an empire in its own right presided over by Louis B Mayer.
Ava gets a makeover
Here’s what happens on Ava’s arrival, as described (with light editing by myself) in Ava, A Biography…
Ava Gardner is immediately whisked off to a small studio, made up, squeezed into a long black strapless evening dress supplied by the Wardrobe Department, and given a screen test. She has come to Metro on the strength of an earlier silent test which she had made in New York. Now she is required to speak. Aside from walking along a chalk line on the ground, sitting and standing, she answers off-camera questions about her family and her childhood in North Carolina. So thick is her Tarheel accent that should could be speaking a foreign language. But she is luck in one important respect: Lee Grames, the brilliant cameraman, happens to have been assigned to film the test and he makes the most of her dark beauty.
1945. Ava in MGM’s stills studio with Clarence Sinclair Bull.
A few hours later, Games’s black-and-white test is being shown in the executive screen room for Louis B Mayer himself. Mayer has the final word on perspective new additions to Metro’s “talent” list. It is Mayer who determines, on the basis of his famous intuition, how much time and effort Metro should invest in advancing the career of a starlet.
Mayer is not personally attracted to the new girl on the screen. His own taste runs to either Dresden Dolls or Refined Ladies. Though she moves awkwardly, and he cannot understand her, he is quick to note her lazy feline grace and her physical magnetism. “She can’t act, she can’t talk, but she’s terrific,” he tells George Sidney, who has the job of selecting new talent for the studio. “Give her to Gertrude [Vogeler, the studio voice coach] and Lillian [Burns, the dramatic coach] and let her have a year’s training. Then test her again.”
Soon after her arrival, Ava has her first interview with Benny Thau, the executive with overall charge of Metro talent. Thau is a small man who speaks so softly that you have to lean close to his mouth to understand what he is saying. He is also one of the studio’s most persistent girl chasers, with a button on his desk which automatically locks the door of his office. Unlike Mayer, he is stirred by Ava and, when she is on the point of terminating their interview, lunges forward to embrace her. She pushes him away sharply, but it is the string of colorful language she spits out that sends him reeling.
The routine for a Metro starlet’s first week would have done justice to boot camp. Together with Donna Reed and Kathryn Grayson, Ava is expected to arrive at 6:30 AM and report to Makeup. Under the supervision of Jack Dawn, the beauty wizard, her eyebrows are shaped, her cheekbones accentuated and the dimple in her cleft chin toned down. A hair-wave set is used to turn up her lashes.
Then Sydney Guilaroff takes over. The best-known hairdresser in the industry, he sets her hair off her face to show off the good bone structure and the high sweep of her forehead, topping it with a wave. The whole coiffure is lacquered firmly into pace.
The point of the beautification process is that starlets are on constant call as walk-ons and bit-part players in current productions. Indeed, these appearances are regarded a useful experience and good exposure.
The only cameras that Ava faces in those early days are the ones in the “Shooting Gallery,” the dingy studio where she poses, in various stages of undress, for top-class still photographers such as Clarence Bull. “Cheesecake” stills (more discreetly known as “leg art”) are a Hollywood institution and soon Metro is sending out half a dozen Ava Gardner pictures to the rotogravure press every week. Clarence Bull says “C’mon, Ava, let’s steam up the lens,” and she slips naturally into a series of sexy poses.
1941. This feels like the MGM version of The young sophisticate photo taken four years earlier. Everything is immaculate – gown, makeup, hairdo, pose, lighting....
1941. Ava Gardner, somewhat skimpily attired for tennis, takes a break between games. It's important to keep hydrated in that hot, California sunshine. And don't...
1941. Ava Gardner complies with all the makeup department's "improvements" – with one exception. She objects with a violent squawk when they try to pluck...
1941. Even Ava Gardner's to-die-for 34-20-36 figure isn't quite good enough for the MGM publicity machine and here you can see evidence of retouching along...
Within 24 hours of arriving in Hollywood, Ava meets Mickey Rooney.
I can remember that first meeting with Mick very clearly – probably because he was wearing a bowl of fruit on his head. At least that’s what it looked like. He was playing this Carmen Miranda character – do you remember Carmen Miranda? You probably don’t. She had a brief fame in the forties. She was a Brazilian dancer, a hot little number while she lasted. Mickey was playing her, complete with false eyelashes, false boobs, his mouth smothered with lipstick.
1941. Ava in bad company at an MGM Halloween party.
It was my first day in Hollywood. I was being hauled around the sets to be photographed with the stars. He came over to me and said, ‘Hi, I’m Mickey Rooney.’. He did a little soft-shoe shuffle kind of dance, and bowed to me. God, I was embarrassed. I don’t think I said a word. I might have said ‘Hello’ or something. I was overwhelmed. His Andy Hardy pictures made the studio millions and cost peanuts. So did his Micky and Judy [Garland] pictures. I wanted to ask for his autograph but I could barely open my mouth.
He [the MGM publicist who was escorting Ava] said, ‘Mickey, this is Ava Gardner, one of our new contract players.’. Mick did another quick soft-shoe shuffle and bowed even more elaborately, like a courtier or something. He loved an audience, of course. He was always at his best when he was in the spotlight.I just wanted the ground to open and swallow me up.
And the following year, Mickey and Ava get married. It will be another six years until Ava makes her breakthrough in The Killers. But that’s another story.
Want to know more?
Apart from the annotations and captions on the photos themselves, books have been my main sources here:
Hazel Brooks, model, pin-up and Hollywood star of the 1940s is all but forgotten now. Except for here…
‘Known among the wags of Hollywood as “The Human Heat Wave”’, as the caption of one of her publicity stills puts it, she was lucky in love but not in her career. Or perhaps, when push came to shove, her marriage was more important to her than her career.
Hazel Brooks’ MGM years and before
The story starts in 1941 and Hazel, age 17, is working as a model for New York’s two leading agencies of the period – Walter Thornton and Harry Conover. With her red hair, green eyes, high cheekbones and svelte figure she certainly has what it takes.
Hazel Brooks, 1944, ‘chosen by servicemen as the girl about whom they would like to dream’. Photo probably by Laszlo Willinger
So it’s not surprising that she’s ‘discovered’ by Arthur Freed, who has recently become head of his own unit at MGM and has quite a track record as a talent spotter. He is in the process of helping establish MGM as the leading Hollywood studio for musicals and will go on to produce An American in Paris, Singin’ in the Rain and Gigi. A couple of years after her arrival in Hollywood, he will cast Hazel as one of the 14 ‘glorified girls’ in Ziegfeld Follies.
When she arrives at MGM, the studio goes to work on her, one of the first steps being to send her for a photo session at the stills studio. An early sitting for Laszlo Willinger uses dramatic lighting and props to create some truly moody images, aspects of which seem almost to foreshadow Guy Bourdin. The three shots by Clarence Sinclair Bull a year or so later seem to be experimenting with different personas.
As with Ava Gardner, MGM can’t decide what to do with Hazel and she ends up with a series of bit-parts. But Alberto Vargas, pin-up painter extraordinaire, has no such doubts. In 1942 he uses her legs as inspiration for the perfect MGM glamour girl. The other features are Inez Cooper’s hands, Mary Jane French’s hair, Thea Coffman’s feet, Ruth Ownbey’s hips, Aileen Haley’s bust, Eve Whitney’s’ waist, Kay Williams’ arms, Kay Aldridge’s profile, Natalie Draper’s lips, Marilyn Maxwell’s ankles, and Georgia Carroll’s eyes.
In the meanwhile, though, Hazel meets Cedric Gibbons, head of MGM’s art department and the designer of the Oscar statue. Is it a coincidence that that the year she arrives, he divorces Dolores del Rio? Anyway, Hazel has a thing about older men and on 4 February 1943 the couple announce their engagement in Los Angeles Superior Court, where her $150-a-week MGM contract has to be approved by Judge Joseph W Vickers because she’s under legal age. He stipulates that one-tenth of her earnings be in vested in war bonds. The following year they marry. He’s 49, she’s 19 and eyebrows are raised.
Hollywood, 1944. The tilted camera angle, the bed-head with its exaggerated padding (Guy Bourdin would have loved it!) and the deep shadows combine to give...
Hollywood, 1944. Three years on from her sessions with Clarence Sinclair Bull, here’s another shot that’s high on drama with exaggerated perspective, a rather sinister...
Hollywood, 1945. Brought to Tinseltown age 17 by MGM, Hazel Brooks poses for Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of the Studio’s stills department. She’s no longer...
Hollywood, 1945. Clarence Sinclair Bull, head of MGM’s stills studio, uses dramatic lighting, a striking pose and mysterious foreground sculpture to create a striking portrait...
Hollywood 1945. The gold lamé dress, the textured background, the subtle lighting – a totally fabulous example of Hollywood image-making by Clarence Sinclair Bull. And...
In 1945 Hazel Brooks obtains her release from MGM and tests for Selznick. 18 months or so later, she gets her big break – she will be groomed as a star by The Enterprise Studios, a new independent production company co-founded by actor John Garfield alongside producers David Loew and Charles Einfeld. You can read the story, including some comments from Hazel herself, in The million dollar gamble.
The studio goes into marketing overdrive for the release of Body and Soul. By way of illustration, here’s an extract from an article in Showmen’s Trade Review, November 22, 1947.
The News Post ran a contest on the question, “What Type of Girl Do You Prefer,” using portraits of Hazel Brooks as the “body” type and Lilli Palmer as representative of the “soul” type. Two radio stations also ran contests, with theatre tickets as prizes. The “Body and Soul” records were exploited through window displays in 23 music shops. Department stores also came through with fashion windows. The campaign was one of the most widespread Saxton has staged in some time, and the results at the box-office were ample proof of its effectiveness.
Body and Soul is one of the all-time-great boxing movies, with Hazel cast as Alice, a ‘gold-digging tramp’, as Bosley Crowther characterizes her in his New York Times review. Bud Graybill, the stills photographer for the movie, captures some great noir shots in which she seems to relish letting her hair down and vamping it up for the camera – her modelling background coming to the fore perhaps.
Regardless, it sounds like Hazel enjoys flaunting what she’s got. In May 1947, vacationing in Hawaii she…
Took with her for the edification of the islanders, all of the top-revealing dresses and swim-suits that the Johnston Office prevented her wearing in Body and Soul…
And the following year, Cobina Wright in an article for Modern Screen called Banned in Hollywood reports that…
Along the French Riviera, the ladies are wearing what they call “diaper suits” for swimming. The suit consists of a trifle of material on the top, a trifle of material on the bottom, and an almost unbelievable amount of girl in between.
Incidentally, just because I’ve said Hollywood’s pretty conservative, and we don’t go for the diaper suit, doesn’t mean we don’t have our own exotic fringe. Take Hazel Brooks (the Body and Soul menace). I saw her lounging near Mr. Kent’s pool, all covered by a flesh-colored clinging leotard covered with skin-tight black lace.
1947. Hazel Brooks in full-on, femme-fatale mode with smouldering gaze and décolleté black dress decorated with an eye-popping baroque ornament. You just know there’s trouble...
1947. The room is crowded, the lighting moody, the atmosphere hot and sultry, the stakes high. And there's no doubting the centre of attention: Hazel...
1947. Femmes don’t come more fatale than this. Smouldering in a fitted, black-satin dress and perched on a white-sheepskin rug, Hazel Brooks gives the camera...
In 1948 Hazel Brooks stars as Daphne in Sleep, My Love, a Douglas Sirk melodrama that in terms of plot is a bit of a Gaslight rip-off. It is her only other major starring role. As Daphne, she’s another scheming bitch and in this case she likes to parade around in diaphanous garments. MGM might have struggled to figure out how to cast her but Triangle have no such problems.
One of the aspects that makes Sleep, My Love interesting is the way in which it illustrates the Hollywood studios’ attempts to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in 1940s America. According to IMDb:
In 1947, an amendment was made to the Production Code that cleared the way for the production and release of films dealing with drugs, and Hollywood wasted no time driving through the “drug” door. (Drugs still couldn’t be smoked or used free-will or for recreation, though.) While not the first film to take advantage of the drugs-can-be-used-when-essential-to-the-plot loophole, this Mary Pickford production for Triangle Productions made certain the use of a drug was most essential to the story of “Sleep, My Love.”
1948. Hazel Brooks casts a disdainful glance towards George Coulouris, which typifies her attitude towards his character in Sleep, My Love. He is taking instructions...
1948. Hazel Brooks, dressed to kill in a diaphanous outfit, makes an eye-popping entrance. The angular staircase, raking light and deep shadows add to the...
Hazel Brooks appears in a couple more films before leaving the movie industry. So why does her career stall? One factor is that though she looks terrific and is a competent actress, she doesn’t have the on-screen electricity or charisma of the likes of Lauren Bacall and Ava Gardner. But it could also have been down to the politics of Hollywood, to personal motivation and to luck.
According to long-time friend Maria Cooper Janis, Gary Cooper’s daughter, in the years after her retirement from films Hazel becomes a skilled stills photographer and works actively for a number of children’s charities.
In 1960, Cedric Gibbons dies. In 1967 history repeats itself. Hazel marries Rex Ross, Jr., a Beverly Hills surgeon and founder of the Non-invasive Vascular Clinic at Hollywood Hospital – he’s 58, she’s 40.
He will die in 1999, she in 2002 after a long illness.
Want to know more and Hazel Brooks?
Apart from the captions on the backs of some of the photos, my two main sources of information have been:
