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This listing is for an 8x10 size picture of Ava Gardner and James Mason from the 1951 film Pandora and the Flying Dutchman.

Ava Gardner (December 24, 1922 - January 25, 1990) was an American actress.

Ava Lavinia Gardner was born in the small farming community of Brogden, Johnston County, North Carolina, the last of seven children of poor tobacco farmers; her mother was a Baptist of Scots-Irish descent, while her father, Jonas Bailey Gardner, was an Irish American Catholic.

Gardner made several movies before 1946, but it wasn't until she starred in The Killers that she became known as a movie star and sex symbol. She was married to Mickey Rooney at 19 years in 1941 (they divorced in 1943), then to Artie Shaw from 1945 to 1946, and to Frank Sinatra from 1951 to 1957. She was regarded as one of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood.

Gardner was nominated for an Oscar for 1953's Mogambo. She lost to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Many thought Gardner's greatest performance was as Maxine Faulk in The Night of the Iguana, for which she was not nominated. Grayson Hall, as the funny Miss Judith Fellowes, however, was nominated, in the best supporting actress category.

Gardner also had a recurring role as Ruth Galveston on the television series Knots Landing in 1985.

After a stroke in 1989, which left her partially paralyzed and bedridden, Frank Sinatra paid her medical expenses. She died of pneumonia in London, England at the age of 67 in 1990.

Gardner is interred in the Sunset Memorial Park, Smithfield, North Carolina; the town of Smithfield now has an Ava Gardner Museum.

James Neville Mason (May 15, 1909 – July 27, 1984) was an English actor who attained stardom in both British and American films.

Early life

Mason was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England to John and Mabel Mason; his father was a wealthy merchant. Mason had no formal training as an actor. He studied architecture at Cambridge University but got involved in the theatre in his spare time, before working at the Old Vic theatre in London and with the Gate Company in Dublin.

Career

From 1935 to 1948 he starred in many British quota quickies. A conscientious objector during World War II, he became immensely popular for his brooding anti-heroes in the Gainsborough series of melodramas of the 1940s, including The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady. In 1949 he made his first Hollywood film, Caught, and then went on to star in many more feature films and early TV shows. Nominated three times for an Oscar, he never won one.

Mason's distinctive voice enabled him to play a menacing villain as greatly as his good looks assisted him as a leading man. His roles include the declining actor in the 1954 version of A Star Is Born, a mortally wounded terrorist in Odd Man Out (1946), Brutus in the 1953 film of Julius Caesar, General Erwin Rommel twice, once in The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel in 1951, and in The Desert Rats (1953), Captain Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), a suave masterspy in North by Northwest (1959), a determined explorer in Journey to the Center of the Earth (also 1959) and Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962). One of his last roles, that of a corrupt lawyer in The Verdict (1982), earned him his third and final Oscar nomination.

Private life

In the late 1970s, he became a mentor to up-and-coming actor Sam Neill, who went on to have a successful career of his own.

Mason died as a result of a heart attack on July 27, 1984 in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was cremated, and (after a delay of 16 years) his ashes were buried in Corsier-sur-Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. His old friend Charlie Chaplin is in a tomb a few steps away.

Popular Culture

James Mason is often referred to in the comedic routines of British stand-up comic Eddie Izzard, where he is generally portrayed as an actor playing the role of God in some fictitious movie.

In 1991 Kelsey Grammer spoofed Mason as Captain Nemo in a skit while hosting Saturday Night Live. During the skit Nemo had to try to explain various units of nautical measurements while fighting off a giant squid.

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