I suffered, I really suffered, with all three of my husbands. And I tried damn hard with all three, starting each marriage certain that it was going to last until the end of my life. Yet none of them lasted more than a year or two.

The following year Ava Gardner played her last great leading role in a superlative film The Night of the Iguana (1964) based upon a Tennessee Williams play and starring Richard Burton as an atheist clergyman and Deborah Kerr as a gentle artist traveling with her aged poet grandfather. He did not attempt to record her voice because her Southern accent made it almost impossible for him to understand her. When Gardner was seven years old the family decided to try their luck in a larger city Newport News Virginia where Mollie Gardner found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953). She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses considered one of the most beautiful women of her day. She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's Greatest female stars.