Entertainment
Hollywood’s sultry Christmas Eve Angel – and her India connection (Dec 24 is Ava Gardner’s 95th birth anniversary)
By Vikas Datta
With her exotic sultry looks, she was possibly one of Hollywood’s earliest ‘globalised’ leading ladies, playing roles spanning from a Spanish flamenco dancer to a Russian countess to a Biblical matriarch. Ava Gardner also appeared as a half-Indian character in the first Hollywood film realistically depicting India – on the cusp of Independence – then of the maharajas, the Great Game and tiger hunts.
And for good measure, Ava (1922-90), whose 95th birth anniversary falls on Sunday, is also known for a film that gave Bollywood the name of one of its most enduring villains – “Mogambo” (1953), set in Africa and co-starring Clark Gable and Grace Kelly.
With her dark brown hair contrasted by green eyes, her chiselled facial features comprising a dimpled chin and high cheekbones, voluptuous figure and a deep voice, Ava could have been typecast in one particular sort of role. But she was as exceptional – and atypical in her roles as her flamboyant life.
Born on Christmas Eve (which led to her Hollywood nickname) in a tobacco farm in North Carolina and youngest of seven siblings, she came into films in unique circumstances – through her photo displayed in the brother-in-law’s New York photo studio which, by and by, led to a screen test at MGM’s New York office.
“There wasn’t a thing that I could do. I couldn’t act… I had no training whatsoever. I was just a pretty little girl. But I loved the idea, because I loved movies,” she said later. And after the test, “…the director clapped his hands gleefully and yelled, ‘She can’t talk! She can’t act! She’s sensational!'”.
Offered a seven year contract by MGM, she left school for Hollywood in 1941. While MGM’s first task was to improve her diction as her southern accent was nearly incomprehensible, her first years were scarcely pathbreaking.
Out of her about 70 screen appearances, 25 were in the first five years mostly as an uncredited extra in small roles. As Ava later put it, “…. I played a lot of hatcheck girls, and did mob scenes, extra scenes, dancing scenes, just to have the experience of being on a set…. If the studio wanted a photograph to advertise a film they’d say, ‘Who is it that has a good pair of legs and a good pair of breasts and is pretty and not working?’ And it was always Ava because she was never working.”
She however came to prominence with her depiction of femme fatale Kittty Collins in the crime noir “The Killers” (1946), based on an Ernest Hemingway short story, expanded for the film.
This became a pattern of Ava’s film career. She had just read two books till she was 21 – the Bible and “Gone with the Wind” (though she made up for it throughout her life by self-improvement), but ended up appearing in many movies with a strong literary flavour – based on works of Hemingway (who also was a close friend), Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Tennessee Williams, Nevil Shute and John Masters among others.
A string of bigger films followed – “The Hucksters” (1947) with Clark Gable and Deborah Kerr, “One Touch of Venus” (1948), in which she plays the goddess of love, “The Great Sinner” (1949) and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1952) with Gregory Peck, “The Barefoot Contessa” (1954) with Humphrey Bogart and more.
It was “Bhowani Junction” (1956), in which Ava, playing Anglo-Indian girl Victoria Jones, wears a sari – as she has to decide between three men in her life – a British army officer (Stewart Granger), a fellow Anglo-Indian and an Indian railway official. The filmmakers wanted to shoot in India but the government wasn’t very accommodating, so they shifted base to Pakistan.
Her last prominent roles were in “The Night of the Iguana” (1964), opposite Richard Burton and “The Bible: In the Beginning” (1966) in which she played Sarah, wife of the Prophet Abraham, though she continued acting in smaller movies and even TV soaps. Asked why she did this, she said: “For the loot, honey, for the loot”.
While there is much more about her – her penchant for bawdy language and swearing (one reporter said it seemed like a competition between a sailor and a truck driver), fierce temper and free spirit, her tempestuous relationship with Frank Sinatra which included a spell of marriage and continued relations and more, it is her wit and humour that deserves mention.
Opining that “Deep down, I’m pretty superficial”, she was as dismissive of her time in the limelight: “What I’d really like to say about stardom is that it gave me everything I never wanted” and that “…. I never brought anything to this business and I have no respect for acting. Maybe if I had learned something it would be different. But I never did anything to be proud of.”
Many of us wouldn’t agree.
(Vikas Datta can be contacted at [email protected])
–IANS
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Entertainment
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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