On May 18th the Ava Gardner Museum will open the “Hemingway’s Heroine” Exhibit, showcasing Ava’s close friendship with Ernest Hemingway. This exhibit will feature, for the first time, a movie costume reproduction. Danielle Lynch, a fashion designer from Raleigh who has been inspired by Ava’s fashions, will recreate the iconic black satin, single- shoulder strapped dress Ava wore in “The Killers.”

“The Killers,” a 1946 film, is an intense, hard-edged, stylish film noir of robbery, unrequited love, brutal betrayal, and double-cross. MGM loaned Ava to Universal Studios to play femme fatale Kitty Collins with newcomer Burt Lancaster, and critics and movie audiences alike took notice of Ava’s performance. Her success in “The Killers” led to two more roles as Hemingway heroines, including Cynthia Street in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and Lady Brett Ashley in “The Sun Also Rises.”

Ava would meet Hemingway through famed bullfighter, Luis Miguel Dominguin, and they remained close friends for the next decade. Ava called him Papa, he called her Daughter, and after starring in her second adaptation from one of Hemingway’s works, he would remark, “Ava, the only two good things in it (‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’) were you and the hyena.”

Ava Gardner Museum Hours are Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, and Sun 2pm-5pm.