Month: January 2018

ava-et-liz:

‘Of all of the pictures I’ve made, and honey, you better believe I have no idea exactly how much territory that covers, there’s no doubt that “The Barefoot Contessa” is the one that most people identify me with.
Some of my all-time favorite scenes appear in “The Barefoot Contessa,” especially the one where I had to perform a flamenco-style dance wearing a tight sweater and a cheap satin skirt, enticing my partner, luring him closer, swirling out of his grasp, taunting him with my body.

Not only was I getting more and more intoxicated by the romantic rhythms of flamenco, but this was the first time I’d ever danced in a film, so I practiced every night on those cold Roman floors for three full weeks. We shot the scene in an olive grove in Tivoli, outside Rome, with 100 gypsies beating time to a phonograph record. When the phonograph broke, they kept right on beating and that was the take we used.’ — Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story.