Ava Gardner Movies

This biographical documentary depicts the life and loves of Ava Gardner, a country girl who took Hollywood by storm. Interviews, film footage and commentary on her marriages to Mickey Rooney and Frank Sinatra are all part of this country girl/city girl story. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

The made-for-TV The Long Hot Summer was based on the 1958 theatrical film of the same name-which, in turn, was based on two William Faulkner short stories. Don Johnson plays Ben Quick, a Southern drifter who is under suspicion as a "barn burner." Ben secures a job at the Mississippi mansion of town-boss Will Varner (Jason Robards). Varner's daughter Noel (Judith Ivey) and daughter-in-law Eula (Cybill Shepherd) vie for the handsome Ben's attention, while the patriarch's weakling son Jody (William Russ) seethes. When a few local barns are burned, Ben is the primary suspect-and no one is more suspicious than Noel. A murder trial and lynch mob both figure into the second half of the two-part The Long Hot Summer; the film originally aired October 6 and 7, 1985. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ava Gardner made her last theatrical film appearance in the German-Italian Regina. Gardner is cast as the Smothering Mom to end them all, determined to keep her middle-aged son Ray Sharkey tightly bound to her emotional umbilical cord. Gardner's husband Anthony Quinn bemoans her treatment of Sharkey, but is essentially powerless (we'd say impotent, but we're talking about Anthony Quinn here!) Regina wasn't released theatrically in the US, but has in recent years surfaced in an unrated (but very gamey) videocassette version. Need we add: this one is not for all tastes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

After Third World terrorists abduct the Commander-in-Chief, it's up to Secret Service head William Shatner to get him back in this thriller based on a novel by Charles Templeton. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

This bizarre entry into the disaster film genre concerns a group of hapless passengers aboard a transcontinental luxury train who are infected with a viral plague by a group of terrorists. Burt Lancaster plays military man Mackenzie, who wants to send the train across a rickety bridge so all the passengers will die, with Mackenzie reasoning the tragedy will give the terrorist movement a bad name. Among the passengers on the train trying to build up antibodies are Jennifer Rispoli Chamberlain (Sophia Loren); Nicole (Ava Gardner), who is embroiled in an affair with a younger man named Robby Navarro (Martin Sheen); and Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Richard Harris), a physician who wants to save the passengers but ends up duking it out with the terrorists. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The first official co-production between the United States and the Soviet Union, The Blue Bird was the third screen adaptation of the children's story by Maurice Maeterlinck about a pair of children, Tyltyl (Todd Lookinland) and Mytyl (Patsy Kensit), who leave home to search for the Blue Bird of Happiness. After spending some time wandering through a fantasy world and encountering The Night (Jane Fonda), The Cat (Cicely Tyson), Luxury (Ava Gardner), Father Time (Robert Morley), and The Oak (Harry Andrews), they meet The Queen of Light (Elizabeth Taylor) and discover that true happiness can be found right at home, with your family. As the box-office failure of the first two versions of this story proves, putting this sort of children's fantasy on film is tricky business, and despite a top-notch cast of American and Soviet talent and the directorial expertise of veteran filmmaker George Cukor, The Blue Bird had a notoriously difficult production, with the American and Russian crews not always understanding each other's working methods, the Soviet camera crew not knowing how to light African-American actress Cicely Tyson, and Jane Fonda often trying to engage the Russian crew members in political discussions. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Yet another in the stable of spy movies which depict espionage as a dirty business. Here, we have Dirk Bogarde heading the "Western Intelligence Liaison" his specific task is to keep the head of a radical third-world organization from returning to his country. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

Paul Newman plays the title role in John Huston's surreal, revisionist western as the infamous Texas hanging judge. Upon arriving in the tiny West Texas town of Vinegaroon, Roy Bean draws a moustache on a wanted poster of himself, marches into a saloon, and declares his presence. He is immediately robbed, beaten within an inch of his life, tied to a horse and dragged out into the prairie, then left to die. Rescued by a young Mexican girl, Maria Elena (Victoria Principal), Roy Bean heads back into town and murders everyone in the local saloon, declaring that he'll kill anyone of the same sort who turns up. He also sets himself up as the sole arbiter of law and order and renames the town Langtry, in honor of the legendary actress Lily Langtry (Ava Gardner). The community prospers as Judge Bean dispenses his own brand of frontier justice upon strangers passing by, robbing or killing anyone who tries to make their way through the town. But when Maria dies, Bean's old associates begin to turn on him, one at a time (in response to his constant harping on their wives, many of whom were former prostitutes) and Bean is forced to leave. Years later, Bean rides back into town, called back to the place to save his daughter from trouble - and finds that the community has been taken over by a shady character called Frank Gass (Roddy McDowall) - a circumstance that requires Bean to dispense his own unique brand of justice once again. Stacy Keach lends a neat comic turn to the film as Bad Bob, an albino gunslinger whose dining habits consist of chowing down on raw onion, drinking hot coffee from a pot, and demanding that an entire horse be cooked for his supper. John Milius (Red Dawn) scripted.
~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This romantic tragedy concerns the Archduke Rudolf (Omar Sharif) and his mistress, the Baroness Maria Vetsera (Catherine Deneuve), and their untimely demise at Mayerling, the sight of the Austrian royal family's hunting lodge. Rudolf verbally spars with his father Emperor Franz-Josef (James Mason) about wanting to implement progressive policies for his country. Ava Gardner plays his mother Empress Elizabeth. Rudolf also contends with the fallout from a loveless marriage with Princess Stephanie (Andrea Parisy). Respectful of the centuries-old Hapsburg family rule over Austria, Rudolf soon feels he is a man born at the wrong time in a country that will not realize the need for social reform. The Prince of Wales (James Robertson-Justice), later to become Britain's King Edward VII, provides the only comic relief with his dialogue. The deaths remain a mystery, but director Terence Young suggests the two lovers made a suicide pact when they decided they could not live in a world without love where the prospects for peace were dubious at best. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Adapted by Rod Serling from the best-selling novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles Waldo Bailey II, Seven Days in May was allegedly inspired by the far-right ramblings of one General Edwin Walker. Burt Lancaster plays General James M. Scott, who, convinced that liberal President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) is soft on America's enemies, plots a military takeover of the United States. Every effort made by President Lyman to find concrete evidence of General Scott's scheme is scuttled by political protocol, human error and accidental death. Ultimately, Lyman must rely upon the man who first uncovered the plot: Colonel "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas). John Frankenheimer's terse direction and Ellsworth Fredericks' stark black and white photography enhance the "docudrama" feel of Seven Days in May. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Samuel Bronston produced this extravagant blockbuster, shot in Super Technirama 70. Nominally directed by Nicholas Ray (who makes a brief appearance as the U.S. ambassador), Ray was taken off the film and replaced by the more pliable directorial touches of Andrew Marton. Charlton Heston stars as Maj. Matt Lewis, the leader of an army of multinational soldiers who head to Peking during the infamous Boxer Rebellion of 1900. As the film unfolds, the foreign embassies in Peking are being held in a grip of terror as the Boxers set about massacring Christians in an anti-Christian nationalistic fever. Inside the besieged compound, the finicky British ambassador (David Niven) gathers the beleaguered ambassadors into a defensive formation. Included in the group of high-level dignitaries is a sultry Russian Baroness (Ava Gardner) who takes a shine to Lewis upon his arrival at the embassy compound with his group of soldiers. As Lewis and the group conserve food and water and try to save some hungry children, they await the arrival of expected reinforcements, but the tricky Chinese Empress Tzu Hsi (Flora Robson) is, in the meantime, plotting with the Boxers to break the siege at the compound with the aid of Chinese recruits. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The slow pacing of this fanciful tale about the life and one reputed love of the Spanish artist Francisco Goya makes for an uneven drama. Anthony Franciosa is the artist, and Ava Gardner plays his paramour, the Duchess of Alba. While the Prime Minister of Spain schemes to betray his country to Napoleon's forces and the Spanish Inquisition is winding to a close (overplayed here) Goya is trying to survive the pangs of love he feels for the aloof Duchess. In reality, the artist was seriously ill during this period -- in the last decade of the 18th century -- and actually went deaf. But reality is set aside for high romance, as the pair of star-crossed lovers take center stage over art and politics. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

For its time, The Sun Also Rises was a reasonably frank and faithful adaptation of the 1926 Ernest Hemingway novel. Its main concession to Hollywood formula was the casting of star players who were all too old to convincingly portray Hemingway's "Lost Generation" protagonists. Tyrone Power heads the cast as American news correspondent Jake Barnes, who, after incurring a injury in WW I that has rendered him impotent, relocates to Paris to escape his troubles. Barnes links up with several other lost souls, including the nymphomaniacal Lady Brett Ashley (Ava Gardner), irresponsible drunkard Mike Campbell (Errol Flynn) and perennial hangers-on Robert Cohn (Mel Ferrer) and Bill Gorton (Eddie Albert). In their never-ending search for new thrills, Barnes and his cohorts trundle off to Spain, where they participate in the annual Pamplona bull run and act as unofficial "sponsors" of handsome young matador Pedro Romero (played by future film executive Robert Evans). Additionally, Lady Brett pursues a romance with Jake, despite her engagement to the dissolute Campbell. Filmed on location in Pamplona, Paris, Biarritz and Mexico, The Sun Also Rises was budgeted at $5 million; like many "big" pictures of the era, it tended to be hollow and draggy at times. The film's best performance is delivered by Errol Flynn, though it can be argued that, in taking on the role of the hedonistic, hard-drinking, burned-out Mike Campbell, he was merely playing himself. A vastly inferior version of The Sun Also Rises was produced for television in 1984. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi