- Ava Gardner adopts the confident poise of a non conformist
A lo-fi internet connection coupled with inventory lapses in both Laser and HMV has left me with a hard-nosed jones to watch Mogambo, the 1953 flick starring Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Clark Gable. After reading Ava Gardner’s memoir Ava: My Story, where she isolated the role in terms of one she wore as a second skin, as I turned the page I needed to see it like yesterday. (Plus the book is worth reading because it’s filled with vivid detail, including Gardner’s descriptions of the arguments if not battles she carried on with third husband Frank Sinatra, as well as candid assessments of the first two marriages to Mickey Rooney and Artie Shaw. Gardner’s memoir is so juicy it should come with a napkin). What most piques my interest about Gardner’s recollection of Mogambo is that the storyline takes a radical departure from the Hollywood playbook wherein so-called ‘Bad Girls’ such as her character Eloise Kelly seldom land the man and have the happy ending. Eloise, a tippling fast-talker, lands her guy over the prim Linda Nordley, played by Grace Kelly. (Have to admit that I was never a fan of Kelly. If she were on the Hollywood scene today, she’d be the type to marry Tom Cruise. She’s creepy and bloodless onscreen).
Traditionally, celluloid narrative arcs set for the ‘Bad Girl’ stock figure dictate she never gets the guy in the fade out. Trangressive women onscreen have existed to receive punishment, comeuppance, even death in order to underscore the normative morality culture proscribes, as the stuff of which conservative gender roles play a significant part. Whether uppity, slutty, boozy or back-talkers, all offending women have been served a lesson on film. Cinema screens have produced a sizeable catalogue of Bad Girls in need of correction, from Louise Brooks as Lulu in Pandora’s Box (1929); Bette Davis as Julie in Jezebel (1938); Joan Crawford’s Crystal Allen in The Women (1939); Elizabeth Taylor’s Oscar winning turn Gloria Wandrous in Butterfield 8 (1959) (a film which she—to her credit—referred to as a ‘piece of shit’); Ava Gardner later in Night of the Iguana; up to the plot resolution of Maeve Binchy’s Circle of Friends, audiences have become primed for the Bad Girl to be served a smackdown before the final scene.
There are two qualifiers which offer an alternative ending for Bad Girls on film: mistaken identity or reform, resulting in vindication or transformation for the lady in question. Rita Hayworth as titular Gilda set the gold standard for the conception of Emma Stone’s character Olive in Easy A, films featuring the message about the danger of hasty judgements of a lady’s character, but only when she hasn’t actually earned the defamatory slut shaming. Reformed Bad Girls, ladies ranging from Eliza Doolittle to Julia Roberts’ Pretty Woman share the same reformation-as-fairy tale ending, which reminds the Bad Girls that they just have to become whatever a man wants in order for their happy ending to be realised. Cue the eyeroll, right?
The elusive fourth option, to stay a Bad Girl and still get the man seems the point of Mogambo. Maybe we need to gather a film club to screen this rare gem?
Not sure why the older post stuck in the publishing queue, but anyway, the point of the post was to issue a call for interest in an Anti Room Film Club, where once a month we gather to have a contributor introduce a classic film and lead discussion. All are welcome!
Would love a film club! Keep us posted:)
I have had fierce arguments on this very issue with people who think that Thelma and Lousie has a feminist message. Hardly, if transgressing against the social norms leaves you with no option other than death.
Tricia, me too! The film’s heavy handed message is that friendships between women lead to criminality and an untimely death. Awful stuff, for sure.
I can’t decide which sounds better – the film or the juicy, salicious book! Can’t wait to see this, great post (and choice) Megan.
Sinead, HMV on Grafton re-stocked the film. At only 5.99! (They seem to have expanded their classic film selection which I was pleased to discover).
The film club will be brilliant!
Grace Kelly might have married Tom Cruise, though you’d have to wonder if he’d have had the nerve to ask her. But at least she didn’t marry Frank Sinatra.
Am pro-Film Club screening!
Oh crap, David, you have to read Gardner’s book then to find out what she had to say about Sinatra. An interesting take is the big year they both had in 1953, with him doing the Maggio role in “From Here to Eternity” (a film I adore with the incredible Montgomery Clift) and Ava in “Mogambo.”
Holly, yay! Let’s hope we have a strong crowd!
I think it’s worth noting that Mogambo is a remake of the much sexier pre-code film Red Dust in which Jean Harlow plays the “bad girl”. She is probably a prostitute, takes a shower in a rain tub and gets her man. It is great. In typical Hollywood style, the leading man is also Clark Gable, only approximately 20 years separate the two films… In the meantime, Mary Astor who played the Grace Kelly role had “graduated” to playing roles on TV after getting fed up playing sexless mothers in films.
Ah – The Last Seduction is the great exception to this. Not sure it is a cinematic masterpiece, but Linda Fiorentino’s character was my feminist icon in days of youth, basically for all of the reasons you mention above. The triumph of a Bogart-esque bitch. Fabulous stuff.
Great post, would love if there was a film club.
Emily.
Im a big AVA fan. Have just finished Lee Server’s bio of her and its well worth a read.