Ava Gardner

Having been entertained over the years by Barbara Stanwyck and Ava Gardner, I feel as though I have lost two family members. Last night I felt compelled to watch a videotape of "East Side, West Side" (1949), the only movie in which these two ladies appeared together. Barbara Stanwyck was truly one of a kind. She worked with all the great movie directors, and they all had nothing but praise for her talent, cooperativeness and willingness to help the less experienced. And then there's Ava Gardner--what vivid images come to mind!

For six years, Jorge Rivero has been Mexico's No. 1 box office attraction. So why is the veteran of 200 movies making his Los Angeles stage debut at the intimate Court Theatre in Eduardo de Filippo's romantic comedy, "Filumena"? "I have been wanting to do stage," Rivero said. "The last movies I have been doing have been action. I am not really an action guy. I handle it pretty good, but I am able to do other things pretty good. If you do action, all they (producers) think you can do is action.

AVA: My Story By Ava Gardner (Bantam: $19.95; 315 pp.). The nicest thing ever said about her, writes Ava Gardner, was George Cukor's calling her "a gentleman." It's easy to see why she liked the term; though Ava often drank into the wee hours, and addresses her readers as "honey," she never traded in her North Carolina farm-girl soul for the Hollywood model. Stardom, she writes, "gave me everything I never wanted," and she admits she wasn't a great actress despite good notices for films such as "The Sun Also Rises" and "The Night of the Iguana."

In "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," Paul Newman builds a shrine in the form of a tiny town and saloon dedicated to Lillie Langtry, as portrayed by Ava Gardner. According to legend, the colorful 19th-Century justice of the peace fell in love with a photograph of the English actress. In fact, "The Jersey Lily" never made it to Langtry, Tex., but at the end of the movie, Gardner appears briefly in the saloon in a climactic, ethereal sequence shot through a heavily filtered lens.