"Ava Gardner as Metaphor"

In 1941, a girl climbed off a train in Los Angeles. She was the daughter of a North Carolina farmer and a housekeeper, had grown up bitterly poor, and had few prospects in life. But her older sister had married a man who owned photo shops in New York City. He had taken a picture of the girl and put it in the window of his Fifth Avenue store. An MGM office boy spotted it; she got a $50-a-week contract at the studio and a train ticket to the West Coast.

Read the rest of the John Podhoretz essay here.