Tribute to a Favorite Daughter

The museum that pays homage to a legendary Hollywood star began with a kiss on the cheek.

The year was 1939, and a 12-year-old boy named Tom Banks was busy one day teasing a 17-year-old girl awaiting her ride home from secretarial school in Wilson, N.C. The girl finally got fed up and planted a kiss on Banks right in front his friends, to his great embarrassment.

It wasn’t until two years later, when Banks was flipping through a newspaper, that he saw the girl’s photo and learned her identity. Her name was Ava Gardner, and she was on her way to a spectacular movie career that would make her a legend.

The teenager was smitten, and he spent the rest of his life pursuing a passion: collecting Ava Gardner memorabilia from every possible source.

Today, Banks’ remarkable collection is housed in the Ava Gardner Museum in Smithfield, N.C., his hometown of 11,510.

Gardner was born just outside of Smithfield on Dec. 24, 1922, the youngest of seven children, and her large family often drew her back to the area.

“Ava Gardner was always a small-town girl who enjoyed coming home to see family and friends,” says Billie Stevens, the museum’s curator. “The town always let her do that without treating her as a celebrity, and she appreciated that.”

Mary Helen Wyatt, a 58-year-old schoolteacher and a member of the museum’s board of directors, spent time with Gardner 44 years ago, recalling when the actress even let her try on some clothes.

“Later, Ava graciously met with my 13-year-old daughter,” Wyatt says. “What wonderful experiences for two young girls!”

Gardner never forgot Smithfield, but she did leave to make movies—61 of them—including such classics as Show Boat and The Barefoot Contessa, in a career that reached from the 1940s through the 1980s.

Meanwhile, Banks collection continued to grow, and he opened a small nonprofit museum in Gardner’s childhood home. When Banks, a psychologist, died in 1989, his widow donated the priceless collection to the town of Smithfield.

In October 2000, after another move and several years of uncertainty, the Ava Gardner Museum found a permanent home in a converted studio in downtown Smithfield.

The move marked a major change in the museum’s status, Stevens says. “I became the first full-time professional director, and we began to promote the museum aggressively.”

Today, about 1,400 visitors tour the museum each month. Inside, they see 15 large exhibit panels—mostly with photos, but including some dresses from her movies—that tell the life story of Smithfield’s most famous daughter. By way of orientation, visitors first watch a 17-minute video introduced by actor Gregory Peck, who appeared with Gardner in the 1949 movie The Great Sinner and remained friends with her for 40 years.

The exhibit begins with Gardner’s childhood and her early years as a Hollywood starlet, including her marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and Frank Sinatra.

Mickey Rooney, still performing at age 80, recently came to the museum for a look. “He remained friends with Ava, and I could tell that the exhibit brought back a flood of memories,” Stevens says. One of the most interesting exhibits tells of her visits to Smithfield, including her return home in 1949 to be honored at a country club dance and to receive the keys to the city.

“Ava never forgot her small-town roots and that’s why the local community has supported the museum so strongly,” Wyatt says of the residents who have donated money, sponsored benefits, and served as volunteers at the museum.

Ava Gardner died in 1990 and is buried in the Smithfield family plot. “Ava wanted a simple grave, so her plot looks just like the ones for the rest of her family,” Stevens says. “You would never know that she had been famous.”

On one of Gardner’s trips home, some friends invited her to see the museum, but it was locked. When someone in her party suggested that they get the key, Ava told them to forget it, stating, “I don’t have to see what’s in there; I lived it.”

Frequent contributor Ron Chepesiuk is a Rock Hill, S.C.-based freelance writer.

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