Ava Gardner at Home: The Golden Age It-Girl’s Off-Set Life in 10 Photos
Few stars embodied Old Hollywood glamour quite like Ava Gardner. Her smoldering screen presence and unmistakable sex appeal made the actor one of cinema’s ultimate sirens—an image studios pushed heavily to market her films. The press campaign for her 1954 picture The Barefoot Contessa went as far as to bill Gardner as “the world’s most beautiful animal.” While her beauty got the world’s attention, her talent cemented her legacy. The star earned an Academy Award nomination for her performance in Mogambo and delivered acclaimed performances in The Killers, Show Boat, and The Night of the Iguana. She brought the same passion and intensity to her personal life that she did to her performances; Gardner’s marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra—along with her turbulent, highly publicized love affairs—made her a fixture of gossip columns for decades.
Though she became an icon for her work onscreen and a paparazzi obsession for her personal life, Gardner, who grew up on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, always saw herself as a simple country girl trapped by a narrative she didn’t orchestrate. “Because I was promoted as a sort of a siren, and played all those sexy broads,” she wrote in her memoir, “people made the mistake of thinking I was like that off the screen. They couldn’t be more wrong.”
From Los Angeles and Palm Springs to Madrid and London (where she spent the latter years of her life), the homes Gardner inhabited offer a glimpse into the extraordinary life of a woman who never really leaned into the persona the world projected onto her.
A place of her own
Gardner purchased her first home in 1948, two years after her divorce from Shaw. Perched on a hillside along Nichols Canyon Road in Los Angeles, the modest 1,754-square-foot stucco house was painted pink and featured two bedrooms. The actor decorated the residence herself, tackling one room at a time and carefully selecting everything from the furnishings to the fabrics. Fan magazine Movieland captured the star sprucing up her living room, seen here for a 1949 feature.
Having a laugh on location
Gardner is pictured here in 1950 with her then lover, Frank Sinatra, and the wife of a film production executive, enjoying a carefree afternoon in Tossa de Mar, Spain. The actor was in the Costa Brava seaside town filming Pandora and the Flying Dutchman when Sinatra stopped by for a two-day visit. At the time, the singer was still married to his first wife, Nancy, and tabloids had only recently broken news of the Gardner affair. The romance quickly became one of Hollywood’s most closely watched scandals, and the turbulent relationship would eventually lead the pair to the altar.
Her final “I do”
Gardner and Sinatra married in November 1951, just days after the singer’s divorce from his first wife was finalized. The wedding would be the 28-year-old Gardner’s third and final trip down the aisle. Hoping to avoid the press, the couple exchanged vows before a small gathering of friends and family at a private home in Philadelphia. Their efforts proved unsuccessful, however, as photographers appeared outside the ceremony—tipped off, Gardner later suspected, by the caterers.
The Mayfair incident
Just over a month after exchanging vows, the newlyweds were photographed during rehearsals (seen here) for a benefit concert in London, where they would perform together onstage. During the trip, Sinatra reported the theft of a $10,000 diamond-and-emerald necklace and a $50 pair of gold cufflinks set with diamond chips from their room at the fashionable Washington Hotel in tony Mayfair. Although Scotland Yard investigated, the case was never solved. The incident later became the subject of speculation, with some suggesting that Sinatra—whose career was in a deep slump at the time—may have fabricated the theft amid financial difficulties. Whatever the truth, the hotel ultimately compensated the singer for the alleged value of the missing jewelry after he reportedly threatened to involve his insurance company. Gardner reportedly stated later on that she had no recollection of the missing jewels.
“Romantic jealousy was our poison”
Gardner and Sinatra’s relationship was far from idyllic. The pair carried on a highly publicized affair while Sinatra was still married, drawing the ire of both the public and studio executives. They loved and fought with equal intensity, their arguments becoming the stuff of Hollywood legend—complete with flying champagne bottles and, on one occasion, a gunshot fired into a pillow. “They were better suited as lovers than as spouses,” Sinatra's daughter Tina later wrote in her memoir. “My father was too obsessed to see that he and Ava were star-crossed.” Gardner always maintained that Sinatra was the great love of her life, but she also acknowledged that their shared tendency toward jealousy and possessiveness strained the marriage. “It was another sort of jealousy that ate into our bones,” she wrote in her memoir Ava: My Story. “Primitive, passionate, bitter, acrimonious, elemental, red-fanged romantic jealousy was our poison.” The two are shown en route to Kenya here in this 1952 snapshot, taken one day before their first wedding anniversary. In and around Nairobi, Gardner would film Mogambo, the performance that earned her an Academy Award nod for Best Actress.
Twin Palms
Twin Palms, the luxe Palm Springs estate Gardner shared with Sinatra, was “the only place we could ever really call our own,” she wrote in her memoir. Sinatra built the desert oasis in 1947 before the couple married, but it was the place the pair spent most of their time together, whenever their chaotic schedules permitted; they never bought any property together. Ol’ Blue Eyes commissioned architect E. Stewart Williams to design the single-story residence and named it after the pair of towering palm trees seen above. The modernist dwelling was designed for indoor-outdoor living and featured a piano-shaped swimming pool (pictured here)—a signature element that remains intact today. Twin Palms saw the couple’s highs and lows, including “the most spectacular fight of our young married life,” Gardner wrote, referring to an argument during which she moved from room to room packing her belongings while Sinatra followed behind, hurling them onto the circular driveway.
A lifelong love of corgis
When Sinatra gifted Gardner a Pembroke Welsh corgi for her birthday, the Killers actress developed a lifelong affection for the breed and kept one by her side for the rest of her years. The corgi pictured here in 1952 was Rags, the dog given to her by her then husband. Over the years, Rags was succeeded by another corgi of the same name, followed by Cara and, finally, Morgan. Morgan outlived Gardner and was taken in by her close friend Gregory Peck after the star’s death in 1990.
Crossing the pond
1955, when this image was taken, proved to be a pivotal year for Gardner. In December, she packed her belongings and left the United States for good. “I don’t know whether it was the weather, the people, or the music,” she wrote of Spain in her memoir, “but I had fallen head over heels in love with the place from the first moment I’d arrived years before.” The actor settled in La Moraleja, a leafy suburb just outside Madrid, and purchased a low-slung, ranch-style red-brick home set on two acres of lush grounds. Nicknamed La Bruja (“The Witch”), the property took its name from the flying witch on a broomstick perched atop its weather vane. Though Spain captured her heart, she would later move on to England, where she is shown in this photo.
London calling
Gardner is shown here in London taking a stroll with her Welsh corgi, Morgan. The actor moved to the city a year before this 1969 snap following a tax dispute with the Spanish government. Gardner felt comfortable in London because neither the press nor the citizens ever hounded her while walking the streets. “If Spain hadn’t gotten in the way,” she wrote in her memoir, “I might have moved there first.” Her Knightsbridge flat was her home base for 22 years. The dwelling’s floor-to-ceiling French doors, which opened onto a balcony overlooking the garden square, were here favorite feature. “Morgan uses one of them as his office,” she explained in her memoir, “barking salutations at everyone who passes by.”
34 Ennismore Gardens
Gardner’s historic unit was in a Victorian building just south of London’s famed Hyde Park. The Show Boat actor loved London and adored her flat even more: “My apartment in Ennismore Gardens suits me so well, I hate to leave it, even for a park bench,” she wrote in her memoir. Her residence spanned the building’s entire second floor, with a living area that took up the apartment’s full length and rooms that branched off of this main space. Gardner chose to furnish her rooms with Oriental antiques and lined her walls with photographs of special people in her life. The spacious living room featured two comfy armchairs flanking the fireplace. Ava remained in that apartment until her death in 1990 at age 67.