Ava Gardner
Hailing from South Carolina, Ava Gardner had a southern accent, which MGM apparently thought was incomprehensible at the time! Regardless, they still signed her, and after she worked for five years, her big break finally came when she starred in The Killers, a 1946 noir film. This started her rise to stardom, and she went on to have an impressive career in show business spanning fifty years. However, her smoking habit began catching up with her in the ‘80s and in 1986, she suffered emphysema and stroke, which eventually left her paralyzed. She died of pneumonia in 1990.
Ava Gardner
Hedy Lamarr
We think Hedy Lamarr is one of the most fascinating ladies on this list. When she depicted female orgasm in a film, she became iconic for being the first woman to do so, but she actually did more than that. When World War II broke out, she started working on the technique “frequency hopping,” which was used to solve problems with radio signal jamming interfering with the control of torpedoes by submarines. After she got the technique patented, it was unused for some time, but it still helped the invention of devices, both military and civilian.
Hedy Lamarr
