Word: ava
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Mogambo (MGM) is jampacked with Technicolor shots of such splendid animals as lions, leopards, gazelles and Ava Gardner. The curator of this photogenic zoo is Clark Gable, pictured as a tough, conscienceless "white hunter" who suffers a predictable attack of morality as the movie ends. Filmed in Africa, Mogambo borrowed its plot from the 21-year-old Red Dust (which also starred Gable, with the late Jean Harlow playing the Ava Gardner role). The dialogue seems to date back to an even earlier era than the original film...
Actress Gardner, cast as a sort of one-girl Friendship Club, arrives at Gable's African animal farm to keep a date with a maharaja. When she finds that her potentate has gone back to the Punjab, Ava companionably moves in with Gable, only to have her idyl interrupted by the arrival of a British anthropologist (Donald Sinden) and his aristocratic, susceptible wife (Grace Kelly). On safari, the camera keeps one travelogue eye on natives, chest-thumping gorillas and the lush African landscape, but concentrates mainly on a heavy-breathing triangle involving Ava, Gable and Grace. After 116 minutes...
Gable plays his he-man part with the bemused ease to be expected of a man who has done the same thing many times before; Grace Kelly's blonde beauty remains intact despite the remarkably silly lines she is made to say, and Ava romps delightfully with baby elephants and giraffes in the intervals between her pursuit of Gable...
...looked as if TV had made a major raid on Hollywood talent. Joan Crawford was on television playing the suffering wife of an unfaithful husband; Marilyn Monroe was cavorting on Jack Benny's show; Ava Gardner, as the mystery guest on a quiz program, was answering embarrassing questions ("Are you married and are you happy about it?"); Loretta Young, Ray Milland and Joan Caulfield were turning up each week on their own programs; Arlene Dahl, Ray Bolger, Agnes Moorehead and young Brandon De Wilde were beginning big TV roles...
After seven days of going their separate, well-publicized ways and living in different hotels, Crooner Frank Sinatra and his cinemactress wife Ava Gardner patched up their lovers' spat in his mother's New Jersey home. Later, when Ava caught Frankie's act at a Jersey nightclub, the New York Journal-American was pleased to report: "As their glances locked, thunder boomed and lightning flashed . . . The Voice unleashed a torrent of sound at the sultry Ava. Emotion poured from him like molten lava...