By Judy Carmack Bross
“Uncensored. That would be my word for Ava Gardner. Definitely not my personality but quite liberating to turn that key each night.” Elizabeth McGovern, starring now at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in Ava: The Secret Conversations, the two-actor play she authored.
With her star turn now at the Studebaker as femme fatale actress Ava Gardner, in movie theaters with Downton Abbey: the Grand Finale where her character Cora Crowley, Countess of Grantham, drives the plot, and with a new album out on Spotify with her Sadie and the Hotheads band where she sings, plays the guitar and wrote the music, Elizabeth McGovern can be found all over Chicago at the height of her creativity.
Elizabeth McGovern as Cora Crowley, Countess of Grantham.
When she sat down with us Thursday, McGovern told us not only about Gardner but of Robert Redford who directed the 19-year-old Julliard student in Ordinary People and of a visit to her old home in Evanston where she spent her childhood. Her ash blonde hair in tendrils by her lovely face and her signature red lipstick perfect, McGovern, who now lives in England, is both beautiful and reflective, upbeat and warm.
With so many Chicagoans recalling Lake Forest sightings of Redford as he directed Ordinary People, McGovern told us how she remembered the movie legend who died September 16. It was McGovern’s first feature film role, playing the girl friend of Mary Tyler Moore’s troubled son acted by Timothy Hutton.
“Redford was an enormous movie star but there was an ease about him. He would create a feeling of relaxation and naturalness. I was studying in New York at the time and came in on the odd weekend to film,” she said. “There was absolutely no stress about it.”
On a day off from Ava McGovern headed to Evanston where she found her house on Hartzell street, known for its diverse architecture and friendly neighbors. “It really looked the same,” she said. “I went up to the door and knocked. The man who answered I think was surprised to see me. I didn’t go inside but it was fun to go back to my roots.”
The night before, Evanston friends of her mother had come to the theater to see her perform and were welcomed backstage with joy.
Descended from a family of diverse achievers including a Northwestern University professor who was perhaps the inspiration for Indiana Jones, an admiral, a diplomat, and a Congressman, McGovern moved from Evanston at 10 to Los Angeles when her father took a job teaching at UCLA School of Law. She studied at Hollywood High School before attending the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and graduating with a BFA in drama from Julliard prior to theater and movie roles that have never stopped coming. Nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actress one year after Ordinary People in Ragtime for her role as Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White’s ill-fated “girl in the red velvet swing”, McGovern has received Golden Globe and Emmy nominations.
Where Ava Gardner’s co-stars included Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Stewart Granger, Ray Milland, and Gregory Peck, McGovern’s are today’s glamor: Brad Pitt, Michael Caine, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Cage and Sean Penn to name a few.
“My favorite of Ava’s movies was Mogambo with Gable, my favorite of her co-stars,” McGovern said. “As a little girl in North Carolina in 1932 Ava had seen Clark Gable star in the same film which was then called Red Dust and co-starred Jean Harlow. Then it was her time to play the part with Gable. How many movie stars would have an opportunity like that?”
Those of a certain age remember from Photoplay magazines read as a child about Gardner’ marriages to Mickey Rooney, clarinetist Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra and hints of affairs with Howard Hughes and the matador Luis Dominguin as well a kinship with Ernest Hemingway whose The Sun Also Rises had Ava as his Lady Brett Ashley. In 1954 Dominguin said he had a “fierce wolf in a cage” when he had an affair with Ava while she was still married to Sinatra. The bullfighter described her as “the most beautiful woman I have ever seen”.
One of the lines in the current play captures Gardner’s glamor: “Liz Taylor was pretty, Ava was beautiful.
Ava Gardner, considered by some the most beautiful woman in the world.
Before her death in 1990, Gardner sat down with writer Peter Evans to talk about her life. Evans was more interested in intimate stories of her marriages and turbulent relationships than her life’s work. The actress barred the publication. His stories were published 25 years later with permission from Gardner’s estate and McGovern decided to write the play which also stars Aaron Costa Ganis playing both Peter Evans and Ava’s husbands.
McGovern told us that she worked on the play for eight years. “It wasn’t hard to write but I finally had enough confidence to pull all the ideas together. I started trying it in front of an audience and did lots of tweaking. Aaron Costa Ganis is inspiring in his role.”
With the excitement of theater audiences would a screenplay of Ava: The Secret Conversations be next? “I can’t really see it in movie theaters, it feels like it belongs in the theater.”
We asked her to tell us more about Ava.
“She was very true to her own instincts and ahead of her time in many ways. She felt a freedom to express her sexual appetite, she was very progressive and interacted frequently with the black community,” she said. “She was also a fabulous movie star with an absolute fire about her. Not to say that she didn’t deliver fine performances but the movie star quality and sensuality always came through in the golden age of movies.”
We couldn’t end the conversation without a curtsey to Cora Crawley. What about Downton Abbey we asked?
“I loved it and we were all so strongly bonded, but it is time to move into a different phase of the business and the next chapter in my life.”
She will be starring as Ava across the country through the end of 2025. She loves the title of her Sadie and the Hotheads new album on Spotify, “Let’s Stop Fighting.”
“An idea I would like to suggest to take us into the new year,” McGovern said.
