On pakistaniat.com, Owais Mughal looks back at Lahore through some stills of a movie:
This photo was taken on April 22, 1955 and it shows American actress Ava Gardner at Lahore Railway Station. She was in Lahore for the filming of Hollywood Movie ‘Bhowani Junction‘. When Ava came to Lahore, there was only one reasonable hotel in Lahore. It is still there – Falletis. The suite in which Ava stayed has been named after her – “The Ava Gardner suite”. In it’s lounge one could see a beautiful large size, black & white portrait of Ava Gardner smiling.
And a comment by someone who was there when the movie was being shot:
I was in Lahore when it was filmed and many of my college friends got hired as extras. One was Iftikhar Bhatti the Captain of our Rowing Club, who laid across the Tracks.
Yes the Duo stayed at the only high class Hotel in Lahore then – The Fallettis. We used to play Badminton at night in flood lights at 23 Cooper Road, at the back of the Hotel. One evening we saw a european couple at the gate watching us play so we invited them in. They were Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger and they had a good game with us. We invited them to come again the next evening and they said: Oh No. You will have 500 people here tomorrow.
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When doing my National Service (1958-1960) at Longmoor Military Railway, Hants. UK
I was told by more long serving sqaddies that some of the railway sequences in Bhowani Junction had been filmed there and that Ava Gardner had been on location there during the filming. In the small camp museum I remember seeing photographs of her and some of the locations on the military railway used during the filming