As Ben Mankiewicz introduced this 1946 film, he stated that Ava Gardner was born and raised in South Carolina. I could hear a collective shriek from outside my home in Cary, North Carolina. Ava Lavina Gardner was born in Grabtown, North Carolina, a small unincorporated tobacco farming community about nine miles from Smithfield. While growing up, her family lived in Newport News, Virginia, then Rock Ridge, North Carolina, where Ava attended high school, then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson, North Carolina. Today the Ava Gardner Museum is in Smithfield, North Carolina. Let's get the facts straight.
