Ava Gardner photographed by David Douglas Duncan, 1954.
Ava Gardner fixes husband Frank Sinatra’s bow tie at London’s Washington Hotel, December 9, 1951, prior to their leaving for the Coliseum Theater for the Midnight Matinee.
Ava Gardner in Spain, photographed by Norman Parkinson, 1953.
Ava Gardner being flawless in a sailor hat.
Frank had found a true partner in the opera that was his life. All his other women had been supporting players; Ava was a diva. Like Frank, she was infinitely restless and easily bored. In both, this tendency could lead to casual cruelty to others—and sometimes to each other. Both had titanic appetites, for food, drink, cigarettes, diversion, companionship, and sex. Both loved jazz, and the men and women, black and white, who made it. Both were politically liberal. Both were fascinated with prostitution and perversity. Both knew the bottomless loneliness that stalks the deep watches of the night: both distrusted sleep—feared it, perhaps, as death’s mirror. Both hated being alone. And behind every move each of them made lay a fine and regal contempt for the banal established order of the world. -James Kaplan, Frank: The Voice
