Oh, such a very late Christmas card "reveal"...!

Well, we knew it would be late...! I've been busy finishing work to be included in a show in Atlanta, for a gallery that's new to me. (Very exciting!) It was my year to come up with the Christmas/holiday card, and I just couldn't make time for it until the last minute. We've had a "Noir" wall calendar this year, so it's not much of a guess that the garish film posters it's illustrated with inspired the direction of the card. Rather than taking the precious time to create something from whole cloth this go 'round, I adapted the Belgian (?) poster made to promote the 1946 version of "The Killers".

I needed a little more room to work, so I expanded the image on the left side and the top. Ava Gardner's dress is blue in the original, but I adjusted it to a more Christmas-y green. And as I could not live with her pink ankle-strap sandals, I likewise tweaked their color. I gave the film's producing credit to Nicholas - O'Donnell+Little=O'Dittle - whose silhouette looms ominously in the background. And the director is a certain "P. Prévert", a reference to G's sometime performance persona, Penny/Prudence Prévert. The actor credits are a play on our first and middle names; G's actual first name is Eugenia, if you didn't know. I tried to find fonts that were close to the original, though I had to individually "shred" the ends of the letters in the main title. Then there's our usual gender reversals; I always look great as a redhead, I must say. And G looks particularly studly here. I think her masculine allure is only enhanced by that mustache, borrowed from none other than Clark Gable.

The loving, tragic Marie - Catherine Deneuve in "Mayerling", 1968

With Omar Sharif.

Released in 1968, Mayerling was already the twenty-five year old Deneuve's twenty-fourth film. The plot was based on a true incident: the double suicide in 1889 of the married Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary and his young mistress; Mayerling is the name of the hunting lodge where the tragedy occurred. Deneuve plays the unworldly, romantic Baroness Marie Vetsera, and her costar is Omar Sharif as the extremely troubled Archduke Rudolf. A still-dazzlingly beautiful Ava Gardner plays his every bit as troubled mother, the still-dazzlingly beautiful Empress Elisabeth, while James Mason impersonates the rigid and clueless Emperor Franz Joseph. Written and directed by Terence Young, lavishly produced, it's rather slow and a bit squishy; it's no great work of cinema, though I was quite taken with the film when I first encountered it, as a teenager. And, if I remember correctly, they don't completely bungle the history. From me, that's quite a bit more of a compliment than it might appear to be.

Ava Gardner as the Empress Elisabeth, and James Mason as the Emperor Franz Joseph.

The final scene is actually quite moving....

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Miss Gardner

It's not like I ever found her all that compelling as an actress or even what you might call just a beautiful "screen presence", but looking at Ava Gardner - at any age - always makes me feel rather shockingly heterosexual, if you catch my meaning. There was something more to her allure, though, than just an exquisite, sensual face and form. There was that thing about her that some woman have: she seemed both tough - emotionally and physically strong, resilient - and yet, when it suited her, vulnerable, yielding. But always on her terms. Earth mother, lazy witch; she seemed to know something that others don't. I also think she'd have been a great dame to sit with and talk to, world-weary and comfortable. Someone to tell you wry stories. To share a cocktail or three, a cigarette and laughter.

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After a previous post about Ava Gardner, celebrating her beauty in her later years, a kind blog visitor left this lovely, touching memory of her encounter with Miss Gardner:

"I was living in London during the mid '80s , studying at the Royal School of Needle Work on Hyde park, often having my lunch sitting on a bench there. One day a small dog decided I was its long lost best friend and started jumping all over me. The apologetic owner sat with me, asked if I minded if she lit up a cigarette and we laughed about the dog, Londoners, the weather, the latest politicians scandal etc. I felt sure we had met before and it was a good ten minutes before I realized it was Ava Gardner I was sitting with. She was perfectly lovely, aged and a little fragile but just as riveting as in her Hollywood heyday and so natural and down to earth. Sadly I never did see her in the park again, I learned sometime later that she had had several strokes around that time, perhaps that day was one of the last time she ever took her little dog for a walk in the park."