On this day in 1922, Actress Ava Gardner is born in Smithfield, North Carolina.

Gardner was one of six children of a poor farmer. She planned to become a secretary but was discovered by accident at age 18. Her brother-in-law, a photographer, had taken her picture and somehow the photo made its way to MGM’s casting department. She passed a screen test in New York and, after months of grooming by the studio, began appearing in bit parts.

In 1942, she married Mickey Rooney but divorced him the following year. Her second marriage, to bandleader Artie Shaw in 1945, lasted two years. She appeared in 22 films in the first half of 1945 but didn’t became a star until 1946, when she appeared in The Killers with Burt Lancaster. Based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, the film told the story of the murder of an ex-fighter and featured the same theme song that would later be used in the TV series Dragnet.

Following the success of The Killers, Gardner became Hollywood’s reigning glamour queen. She was nominated for an Oscar in 1953 for Mogambo, in which she competed with Grace Kelly for Clark Gable’s interest. In 1951, she married Frank Sinatra. They divorced in 1957. She continued to make film and TV appearances through the early 1980s and appeared on the TV series Knots Landing in 1985. She died in 1990 at the age of 67.