The actress Ava Gardner came to the Costa Brava, she saw, acted and won
her destiny was Tossa de Mar where she would shoot Pandora and the Flying Dutchman , of Albert Lewis . The movie is a hollywood rave which combines, in its first scenes, conversations in Catalan between local fishermen and a flamenco tablao in which a group of wealthy expatriates display lavish Beatrice Dawson costumes.
Ava, the “secret goddess” in the words of James Mason , is a femme fatale who watches without blinking as an admirer intoxicated by her charms commits suicide in front of her or causes a member of her entourage to plunge her racing vehicle into the waters of the Costa Brava .
Scene from 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman'
Her career, in full swing, would be consolidated during the time with films like The snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) or Mogambo (1953).
The year 1950 marked the beginning of his tempestuous adventure with Frank Sinatra , whom she would marry a year later. The difficulties of a relationship that caused more than one shot consolidated her affair with Spain. An isolated country, impoverished by the post-war period and suffocated by the regime's political repression, but without competition in the offer of anonymous nights and bullfighters , her great weakness. as she rolled Pandora Between Sinatra's visits she had time for her first trophy: Mario Cabre.
Ava Gardner in the bulls of Valencia
A few years later, in the barefoot countess of mankiewicz , Ava represented Maria Vargas , a dancer from the slums of Madrid who is discovered by the star system. María navigates with indifference in the café society and takes advantage of any opportunity to escape to a gypsy village, take off her shoes and dance.
The actress made the reverse trip . In 1954, the year the film was released, Ava acquired her first residence in Madrid: The witch, in La Moraleja . It is said that she arrived hand in hand with Hemingway and with her eyes on Luis Miguel Dominguin , but beyond her erotic impulses, it is likely that Ava wanted to take off her shoes, to be someone else.
It remains paradoxical that Franco's Madrid offered her the freedom she was looking for . Away from the spotlight, Ava created a universe that could be said to be inspired by the Carmen of Bizet. Like Carmen, like Pandora, She took and discarded lovers on endless nights . The only memory of the international public eye, of the airy and bubbling world of the barefoot countess, was the paparazzi, which she avoided at all costs.
The Madrid of tablaos of her, of the barrier of Las Ventas, of Riscal and of Chicote, has been reflected by Marcos Ordóñez in his book drink life and in the documentary The night that doesn't end of Isaki Lacuesta . But there is an episode that has gone unnoticed: her visits to Mallorca.
Albert Lewin and Ava Gardner
Betty Shire , a mutual friend, recommended the actress spend time on the island with the Graves. In her opinion, the rural atmosphere would give her a well-deserved rest, she could improve her Spanish and train in English poetry with Robert. Considering her lines in Spanish in the barefoot countess , the second point shows some sense, although the actress's penchant for poetry has never come to light.
Ava listened to her friend and traveled to Deià in 1955 , a year after establishing her residence in Madrid. The town of the Sierra de la Tramuntana must have been a remote place at that time. As the story reflects A toast to Ava Gardner , published in the new yorker , her visit produced a great expectation in the writer and mythographer Robert Graves. The story narrates how the arrival of the actress on the island reestablishes, in itself, a dispute between the partners of a furniture factory. There is something providential in his advent, as if it were a divine epiphany.
But the goddess, despite establishing a close friendship with the Graves, especially Robert, she preferred the night of Palma to the bucolic tranquility of Deià , and she seemed to show more interest in local wines than in English poetry.
After her visit to the José Luis Ferrer winery, in Binissalem, The actress was in such a drunken state that the winemaker invited her to dinner to avoid an imminent collapse of her. Nini Ferrer, her daughter, who came to join them in The backyard , a fashionable restaurant at the time, claims that the wine did not affect her beauty at all; that her presence, as Graves appreciated, was still divine.
Scene from 'Pandora and the Flying Dutchman'
Ava continued to visit Mallorca regularly . She went to Deià in December 1961 to celebrate his birthday. His weakness for uniforms seemed to persist, because he showed up at the barracks to invite one of the civil guards to the party. The young man was not in civilian clothes, so he showed up with tricorne and white gloves . Ava, fascinated, told him that he was wearing a beautiful uniform , she offered him a glass of wine and invited him to her yacht, which she had anchored in Sa Foradada . He refused, claiming that he was on duty. The actress replied that she was not intimidated by beauty and she walked away from her.
That would never have happened to Pandora, but life insists on eluding the demands of the script. Ava Gardner's affair with Spain fizzled out as the refuge of her cañí from her dissolved in a decade marked by blockbusters of oscillating quality. the trip was over.
In 1967 she sold her house on Calle Doctor Arce and settled in London. As he stated in her memoir, he wouldn't have changed a thing about those years: “the good and the bad, the night, the drunkenness, the dances at dawn, and all those not-so-great people I met and loved…”