Stars Who Went from RAGS to RICHES

THESE FAMED PERFORMERS RAISED THEMSELVES UP FROM NOTHING

Ava retired from acting in the 1980s and spent her final years in Spain and London.

AVA GARDNER

"When you are dirt-poor, and there is no way of concealing it, life is hell," said Ava, the last of seven children in a North Carolina farming family. As a child, she helped her father in the tobacco fields and ironed shirts in the boardinghouse her mother ran. Ava owned one pair of shoes, which were reserved for school and church. The rest of the time, she went barefoot.

TONY CURTIS

A child of immigrants, Tony only spoke Hungarian until he was 6. He grew up sharing a bedroom behind his father's tailor shop with his brothers in an unhappy home where his mother suffered from mental illness.

Tony was worth an estimated $60 million at the time of his 2010 passing.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS

The second child of an El Paso, Texas, carpenter, Debbie knew homelessness as a child. "We slept in the park before we had a house," she said, "and eventually we shared a home-my parents, my grandparents and five uncles, my family, all of us."

Debbie left a $70 million estate to her son, Todd, after her 2016 death.

LORETTA LYNN

Born into the coal mining town of Butcher • Hollow, Ken., Loretta was the second of eight kids. Her songs tell of her mother working until her fingers bled and her father shoveling coal to make "a poor man's dollar." The hardship continued after Loretta wed at 15. "I know what it's like to be pregnant and nervous and poor," she said.

The singer's huge ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., is a popular tourist attraction.

CARY GRANT

"I acted my way out of poverty," said Cary, who was born to an alcoholic father and mentally ill mother. The neglect of his early childhood grew worse after the disappearance of his mom when Cary was 11.