From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rita Hayworth (October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987), was an American actress of Spanish and English descent who reached fame during the 1940s as the era's leading sex symbol. She was sometimes called "The Love Goddess" or "The Great American Love Goddess," and was celebrated as an expert dancer and great beauty.

 Biography

She was born Margarita Carmen Cansino, the daughter of Eduardo Cansino (Sr.) and Volga Haworth (sic) in Brooklyn, New York. The Cansinos, of Roma ancestry native to Spain, were a famous family of Spanish dancers working in vaudeville. Hayworth was trained as a dancer from childhood, and was on stage by the age of six.

Attracting the attention of film producers as part of the dance team "The Dancing Cansinos," Hayworth was signed first by Fox Studios in 1935, at the age of sixteen. When her option there was dropped, she freelanced at minor studios before signing with Columbia Pictures in 1937. After a name change from Rita Cansino to Rita Hayworth, two more years of working in B movies, and painful electrolysis to raise her hairline, Hollywood and the public began to take notice. Rita made a big splash as part of the ensemble cast headed by Cary Grant in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939). Soon she was in great demand and was borrowed by other studios like Metro Goldwyn Mayer for George Cukor's Susan and God (1940) with Joan Crawford. The title role in Raoul Walsh's The Strawberry Blonde with James Cagney followed in 1941. Finally her sizzling "other woman" part in Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941) with Tyrone Power solidified her new-found stardom.

Hayworth's fame as a beautiful  redhead arose from this Technicolor film. Incredibly photogenic, Rita was dazzling in Technicolor, and her head of long, flowing hair became her best remembered attribute. The "love goddess" image was cemented with Bob Landry's 1941 Life magazine photograph of her (kneeling on a bed in a silk and lace nightgown), which caused a sensation and became (at over five million copies) one of the most requested wartime pinups. During World War II she ranked with Betty Grable, Dorothy Lamour, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner as the pinup girls most popular with servicemen. Rita would also become Columbia's biggest star of the 1940s, under the watchful eye of studio chief Harry Cohn, who recognized her value. After she made Tales of Manhattan (1942) opposite Charles Boyer, Cohn would not allow Hayworth to be loaned out to other studios.

Hayworth's well-known films include the musicals that made her famous: You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942) (both with Fred Astaire, who wrote in his autobiography that Rita "danced with trained perfection and individuality"), My Gal Sal (1942) with Victor Mature, and her best known musical, Cover Girl (1944) with Gene Kelly. Although her singing voice was dubbed in her movies, Rita was one of Hollywood's best dancers, imbued with power, precision, tremendous enthusiasm, and an unearthly grace. Cohn continued to effectively showcase Hayworth's talents in Technicolor films: Tonight and Every Night (1945) with Lee Bowman, and Down to Earth (1947), with Larry Parks. Her erotic appeal was most notable in Gilda (1946), a black-and-white film noir directed by Charles Vidor, which encountered some difficulty with censors. This role — in which Hayworth in black satin performed a legendary one-glove striptease — made her into a cultural icon as the ultimate femme fatale. Alluding to her bombshell status, in 1946 her likeness was placed on the first nuclear bomb to be tested after World War II at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, as part of Operation Crossroads.

Hayworth gave one of her best peformances in the Orson Welles classic The Lady from Shanghai (1948), which failed at the box office in part because director/co-star Welles had Hayworth's famous red locks cut off and the rest dyed blonde for her role. Her next film, The Loves of Carmen (1948) with Glenn Ford was the first film co-produced by Columbia and Rita's own production company, The Beckworth Corporation (named for her daughter Rebecca). She received a percentage of the profits from this and all of her subsequent films until 1955, when Hayworth dissolved Beckworth to pay off debts she owed to Columbia.

Rita left her film career in 1948 to marry Prince Aly Khan and move to Europe, which caused a media frenzy, but after the marriage collapsed in 1951 she returned to America with great fanfare to film a string of hit films: Affair in Trinidad (1952) with favorite costar Glenn Ford, Salome (1953) with Charles Laughton and Stewart Granger, and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) with Jose Ferrer and Aldo Ray, for which her perfomance won critical acclaim. Then she was off the big screen for another four years, due mainly to a tumultuous marriage to singer Dick Haymes. In 1957, after making Fire Down Below with Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon, and her last musical Pal Joey with Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak, Rita finally left Columbia. She got good reviews for her acting in such films as Separate Tables (1958) with Burt Lancaster and The Story on Page One (1960) with Anthony Franciosa, and continued working throughout the 1960s. Hayworth made her last film, The Wrath of God , in 1972.

 Personal life

Naturally shy and reclusive, Hayworth was the antithesis of the characters she played. She once complained "Men go to bed with Gilda, but they wake up with me". She was close to her frequent co-star and next-door neighbour Glenn Ford.

According to Barbara Leaming's biography on Hayworth, If This Was Happiness, her relationships with men were often difficult due to the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she endured from her father at a young age. These revelations were made during interviews with Orson Welles in later years. She confided in him about the incest in particular, as well as several beatings. At one point in the biography Welles recalls that when Cansino tried to visit he would always have to throw him out. "He was a terrible man," Welles recalls. "And she really hated him. She couldn't deal with him at all."

Hayworth was married five times: first to Edward C. Judson (1937-1943), followed by actor-director Orson Welles (1943-1948, one daughter Rebecca Welles), to Prince Aly Khan (1949-1953, one daughter Princess Yasmin Aga Khan), then to actor-singer Dick Haymes (1953-1955), and finally to director James Hill (1958-1961). She also had a nephew named Richard Cansino.

 Final years

After about 1960, Hayworth suffered from extremely early onset of Alzheimer's disease, which was not diagnosed until 1980; she continued to act in films until the early 1970s and made a well-publicized appearance on The Carol Burnett Show near the end of her career. In 1977, Hayworth was the recepient of the National Screen Heritage Award (see above photo). Lynda Carter starred in a 1983 biopic of her life. She lived in an apartment at the San Remo in New York City.

Following her death from Alzheimer's in 1987 at age 68, she was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

One of the major fundraisers for the Alzheimer's Association is the annual Rita Hayworth Gala which are held in New York City and Chicago. Ms. Hayworth’s daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan has been the hostess for these events. Since 1985, the events have raised more than $42 million for the Association. ^[1]