For nine decades, Our State has made its way into homes across North Carolina, the United States, and the world. To celebrate, every month this year, we’re paying tribute to the readers who inspire us, offering a taste of our earliest recipes, and revisiting old stories with new insights. Follow along to find out how our past has shaped our present.
If Molly Gardner had any doubts about her daughter Ava’s life in Hollywood, they were laid to rest in 1941, when she received a phone call from Ava and her new boyfriend — American box-office star Mickey Rooney.
“Hello, Mama, don’t worry. I’m taking good care of your two daughters,” Rooney told her, referring to Ava and her sister, Beatrice, who had accompanied Ava to Los Angeles.
Granted, 1940s Hollywood was a long way from Wilson County, but Mama Gardner seemed to take comfort in Rooney’s words, laughing happily as she shared the anecdote in a November 1941 issue of The State.
Things were happening fast for the young actress. Born in Smithfield, she and her family later moved to Wilson, where Ava enrolled in a secretarial program at Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College). But when her brother-in-law photographed her and displayed the portrait in the window of his New York City studio, the green-eyed brunette’s beauty led to a screen test with MGM. “She suddenly found herself on a train bound to Hollywood,” The State wrote.
And the proud folks in Wilson were already talking about forming an Ava Gardner Club, sending her a giant postcard signed by the entire city and hosting a premiere of Gardner’s first motion picture. Gardner went on to become one of the most glamorous actresses of her time, starring in such movies as Mogambo, The Night of the Iguana, and The Barefoot Contessa.
Of course, she never became a secretary, but in Tinseltown — and in her native North Carolina — she wrote her own story.
The Ava Gardner Festival will take place October 6-8 in Smithfield. For more information, visit johnstoncountync.org/ava-gardner.
Memories of spuds are firmly rooted in one chef’s mind, just like the Watauga County potatoes she once unearthed.
The poignant voices of gospel music seem to rise from the soil of eastern North Carolina. The genre’s lineage is as rooted to the land as the crops growing in its fields.
In winter, when the weather is just right, water turns ethereally symphonic — if you stop to listen.
Far away from the summer buzz, Corolla quietens into a sleepy, seaside village during the winter. Here, on this strip of sand, visitors find themselves immersed in the northernmost reaches of our state’s coast, where the coldest season is a chance to celebrate solitude.
