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Linda Darnell, 29, who started in pictures at 16 as "the most physically perfect girl in Hollywood" (her pressagent's tribute), rose through the obvious, slinky assignments to sex-with-humor (A Letter to Three Wives) and creditable straight acting (No Way Out). Her next: Saturday Island.
Virginia Mayo, 28, in the classic tradition of Hollywood cheesecake, whose body has been referred to by the Sultan of Morocco as "the most striking proof of God's existence." From bathing beauty parts she has recently been switched to juicier—and more heavily clothed—adventure roles. Her current: virtuous Lady Barbara in Captain Horatio Hornblower.
Most of the stars in this constellation rose, if not from rags to riches, at least from muskrat to mink. They are good-looking, by & large intelligent, hard-working and talented. Yet, in the telescopes of the stargazers, none of them shows up with that special and undefinable brightness that was the glamor of Hollywood's great stars.
Does Ava Gardner?
She is far from being the most beautiful babe in the Hollywoods (her mouth is a little too large). Her figure is not the best (she is a trifle skinny and by Hollywood standards her legs are only average). Certainly few people—least of all herself—claim that she is a good actress (though she likes to think of herself as a singer).** By Hollywood standards she lives modestly (salary: $2,000 a week), enjoys few luxuries except a maid and a Cadillac (a gift from Frankie).
Yet she seems to exude the kind of allure that sets the mysterious Geiger counters which measure glamor clicking like subway turnstiles. Says Starmaker David Selznick: "She is going to be a big star. She supplies the need and hunger of a kind of glamor girl. She has a genuine glamor atmosphere." Says an Italian movie fan: "I call her the aperitif. She stimulates me."
Three Lives. A Hollywood star lives at least three different lives. One is the life on the screen. There, Ava has consistently been the coldhearted, hot-blooded enchantress, low-voiced, slow-moving, a little sleepy, every man's dish and every woman's poison.
The second is life as chronicled in the gossip columns, which pretend to take the reader into the star's boudoir and living room. In this world, Ava emerges as a femme only slightly less fatale.
And then there is the real-life Ava.
Her face looks both inviting and expectant, as if she were forever waiting for something exciting to happen. She can curse like a truck driver. She makes no secret of the fact that she likes men. She proclaims her feeling for Frank Sinatra by wearing on a chain around her neck a miniature Oscar he gave her. She claims that women are not jealous of her, pays no attention to the fact that her women friends regard her as a bit on the calculating side. She is a farmer's daughter from Smithfield, N.C. (pop. 3,678). When Ava was two, her father lost his farm and became a tenant farmer. Ava loved to run about barefoot, and is still apt to appear at parties carrying her shoes. She climbed trees and smoked cigarettes behind the barn with the boys.