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The Ava Gardner Museum in historic
Downtown Smithfield, NC holds an extensive collection of artifacts from
Ava Gardner's career and her private life.
The initial collection was donated by the estate of Tom Banks who at the age of 12 years was kissed on the cheek by a young girl attending secretarial school in Wilson, NC. Two years later in 1941, Tom Banks opened a newspaper and saw a photo of Ava and learned her identity for the first time. In the years following, he and his wife devoted much of their lives to following Ava's career and assembling memorabilia from every imaginable source. In the early '80's Dr. Banks purchased the house where Ava lived from age 2 to 13, and operated his own Ava Museum during summers for nine years. Dr. Banks suffered a stroke at the museum in August of 1989 and died a few days later. Ava died 5 months later on January 25, 1990. In the
summer of 1990, Mrs. Banks donated the collection to the Town of Smithfield
being assured that a permanent museum would be maintained in Johnston
County, Ava's birthplace and final resting place. Since that time the Ava Gardner Museum Foundation has continued to aquire artifacts related to Ava's life and is comitted to preserving theses items and displaying them in an educational manner. |
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