Following her high-profile separation from Frank Sinatra in 1954, Ava Gardner began a relationship with professional bullfighter Luis Miguel Dominguin, when she was spending more and more time in Spain. During that time, one day while she was in Madrid with Dominguin, she started to experience acute abdominal pain, and after rushing to the hospital, doctors diagnosed her with kidney stones. While she was in the hospital, Dominguin devotedly took care of her, stayed by her side as she endured the pain of passing the stones, and one day, while she was recuperating after the necessary surgical operation for removal of the kidney stones, he brought with him a special visitor to see Ava, his close friend Ernest Hemingway, affectionately called ‘Papa’ in those days, by those who knew him best.

By that time, Ava Gardner had already played her breakthrough role as the seductive Kitty Collins in Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), based on a short story of the same name, by Ernest Hemingway, and won the heart of the audience, including Hemingway, who was impressed by her performance. Later, she also starred in two more films, based on the novels of Hemingway, which included The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), and The Sun Also Rises (1957), and considered Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms as one of her most favourite books.

Naturally, Ava was delighted to meet the man whom she adored and idolised, and was absolutely floored that he made time to visit her in the hospital. She reportedly requested Hemingway to sit on the edge of her bed, and thus began a friendship between two people of different ages that would last until Hemingway’s untimely tragic death in 1961. They shared a close, non-romantic, but intense friendship based on their mutual love of adventure, passion for bullfighting, and alcohol. Incidentally, Hemingway once reportedly confessed to one of his close friends that Ava was the only woman who could out drink him.

Gardner admired Hemingway's intellect and worldliness, while he admired Ava for her tough yet feminine nature, lack of pretension, and glamorous "woman's woman" pleasing personality, who could keep up with his lifestyle. Their friendship was further strengthened with Hemingway supporting her through personal scandals and her divorce from Frank Sinatra.

During their long friendship, Ava Gardner often visited Hemingway’s estate in Cuba, where she liked to spend a few days leisurely in his hilltop villa Finca Vigía. Hemingway bought the villa from a Frenchman in 1939 as Pauline, his wife at the time, had refused to spend another night in a Havana hotel room. The marriage didn’t last, but the house remained an important fixture in Hemingway’s life, acting as a safe haven for him, and also for Ava Gardner. Covering a huge area of fifteen acres of wilderness, containing vegetable garden, vines, and a special species of mango that grows only in Cuba, the house, named villa Finca Vigía, was complete with a beautiful swimming pool.

It is believed that one moonlit night, while drinking with Hemingway, a tipsy Ava took off her clothes and swam naked in Hemingway’s presence in his pool in his villa in Havana. After watching her swim naked in the pool, the amused Hemingway famously instructed his domestic staff not to empty the pool, as he probably felt that the water in the pool was consecrated by the touch of her beautiful angelic naked body. Today, the dry pool with pale blue tiles, once the largest private pool in Cuba, and the iconic feature of the villa, located near the main house, where Ava Gardner once swam naked, is a special attraction for visitors, and is preserved as a part of Finca Vigía, now turned into a museum, containing the personal items of Hemingway, like his extensive library, typewriter, hunting trophies, and his boat.