STARRING ROLE: SMITHFIELD LURES VISITORS AS THE BIRTHPLACE OF A FAMOUS HOLLYWOOD STARLET--BUT THE FORMER TOBACCO TOWN ON THE EDGE OF THE TRIANGLE LOOKS TO DEVELOP A LUSTER ALL ITS OWN.

• Author: Mims, Bryan
• Position: TOWNSQUARE: Smithfield

A goddess of Hollywood's Golden Age sets her gaze on New Yorkers bound for Boca Raton, Floridians bound for Philly, and the tens of thousands of other seatbelt-strapped travelers who pass this billboard beauty every day. She's a touch of silver-screen class among the visual clutter lining Interstate 95 leading into Smithfield.

This town of more than 12,000 people sits at one of those interstate super stops, the kind with familiar fast-food chains, truck stops and busy pay-at-the-pumps. Sprawling between exits 95 and 97 are the Carolina Premium Outlets, peddling everything from J.Crew sweaters to gourmet popcorn. Across the interstate is JR Discount Outlet, with billboards for miles in either direction boasting everything from "brassieres to chandeliers."

But it's that larger-than-life starlet, dead now for nearly 30 years, who lures curiosity-seekers off the interstate and across Brightleaf Boulevard, past the renowned hot dogs of Cricket's Grill, to a free two-hour parking spot by the Ava Gardner Museum.

"We bring them in and then we direct them around Smithfield," says museum director Lynell Seabold. Last year, as many as 6,000 people visited the museum dedicated to Smithfield's hometown star, Hollywood's go-to girl in the 1940s and '50s who acted alongside heartthrobs such as Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant. Gardner grew up down the road in a community called Grabtown before a chance photo shoot skyrocketed her to stardom. "We must get requests at least every day of a place to eat, a place to shop," Seabold says.

An out-of-state couple is doing that now, asking about SoDoSoPa, a barbecue restaurant that opened in August 2016 at South Third and Johnston streets. (The name is a reference to the animated TV show South Park.) SoDoSoPa serves up traditional dishes with a Southern flair, such as barbecue nachos and shrimp-and-grits topped with cracklins. It's one of several downtown restaurants and shops that have opened in the last four years, bringing a gentle urban touch to this town 30 miles southeast of the state's capital city.

Smithfield, like other communities in the coastal plain, once was a vibrant tobacco market. Back in the 1940s and '50s, so many warehouses lined U.S. 301 that it became known as Brightleaf Boulevard. The tobacco trade inspired the name for Carolina Packers, a company founded in Smithfield in 1941 whose reddish hot dogs are sold across the state.

Tobacco long ago faded as an economic force in Smithfield, but given...