Word: ava
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...When Ava was assigned to play the goddess of love in One Touch of Venus, Sculptor Joseph Nicolosi was commissioned to do a statue of her. She began posing for him in a two-piece bathing suit, but he found that this interfered with his artist's conception of the foam-born one, so Ava obligingly removed the bathing-suit top. This, said Nicolosi, after working for a while, was better, but still not satisfactory. So Ava rolled the bottom of the suit down to G-string size, and Nicolosi turned out a magnificent, realistic statue. When a studio...
...reputation as Hollywood's most irresistible female grew apace. When Robert Mitchum was assigned to a picture with her, he cautiously called the studio's head, who had once gone around with Ava, and asked if it would be all right to start dating her. The boss pondered the matter for a moment and replied that, on the contrary, it was probably a good idea: "If you don't take her out, Robbie, people will just start saying you're a little queer...
Enter Frankie. The Gardner legend flourished-and so did her box-office value. Just 19 months ago Ava ran into Frank Sinatra at a party in Palm Springs (they had met for the first time years before). Ava and Frankie left the party together and, in high good humor, rode along the main street of nearby Indio, firing a revolver out of the automobile window...
Their friendship continued to be percussive. When she was making Pandora and the Flying Dutchman in Spain, and seemed to be taken with versifying Bullfighter Cabre, Sinatra went charging to Spain and figuratively tossed the matador out of the ring (Cabre claims he failed to keep Ava because he did not speak her language, and is now fiercely learning English...
Last month, after Frankie and Ava (and a dozen reporters) finished a cozy Mexican holiday (TIME, Aug. 13), Sinatra went to work in a Reno nightclub to make some money toward his forthcoming divorce (Cracked one Hollywood wit:"He's earning while he's yearning"). Ava stayed at nearby Lake Tahoe and came to hear him sing. Sinatra meekly told the press: "I think you can safely say that Miss Gardner and I will be married...