RITA HAYWORTH
The Love Goddess
EARLY LIFE
Rita Hayworth was born
Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino on October 17, 1918 at New York Nursery
and Child's Hospital, in New York City. Her parents were Volga
Hayworth, of Irish and English descent, and Eduardo Cansino, who came
from Seville, Spain. At age twelve, a mature-looking Rita
joined Eduardo's stage act, in which she was spotted three years later
by Fox studio head Winfield Sheehan. Sheehan invited her to make
a screen test, and was eventually signed to a contract with Fox, where
she began taking acting and diction lessons with other starlets. Her
contract was dropped after five small roles, but expert, exploitative
promotion by first husband Edward Judson soon brought Rita a new contract
at Columbia, where studio head Harry Cohn I changed her name to Hayworth
and approved raising her hairline by electrolysis.
CAREER
After thirteen mainly minor
roles, Columbia lent her to Warner Brothers for her
first big success, The
Strawberry Blonde ; this was also the film in which her hair was dyed
a shade of red for the first time. Unfortunately, the film was made
in black and white. In 1941, Rita beat out dozens of actresses for
the prize role of Dona Sol in Twentieth Century Fox's Blood and Sand . The
success of this picture made Rita Hayworth Hollywood's hottest new star.
With her new star status came a new contract, dressing room and a
role oppositie Fred Astaire in You'll Never Get Rich . She
had begun her reign as queen of Columbia Pictures. Cover Girl , a Technicolor musical,
was one of the greatest hits of 1944, was followed up by Gilda , one of the most famous
movies of all time, and the movie for which Rita Hayworth is best known.
Her performance in this movie made such an impact that, depending
on which sources you read, either the name "Gilda," or Rita's picture was
put on the side of the atomic bomb that was tested at Bikini Atoll on
July 1, 1946. Rita later said, "I hate war...that whole bomb thing
made me sick to my stomach." After the film's release in 1946, it
began setting box office records and made Rita the most well known star
in the world.
To view Rita Hayworth's
complete filmography, check out www.imdb.com
!
FAMILY
About
the time she made My Gal Sal
, Rita was seeking a divorce from Edward Judson; it was granted on
May 22, 1942. Rita's love life took a positive turn when she entered
into a relationship with Orson Welles . On
May 27, 1943, during the filming of Cover Girl, Welles picked Rita up at
the studio and the two were wed. On December 17, 1944, Rita gave birth
to her first child, Rebecca. According to many friends and co-workers,
this period in Rita's life, when she was being courted by Welles, through
the early days of their marrage and Rebecca's birth, was the happiest. Unfortunately,
the two could not make their marriage work; they filed for divorce in 1946,
shortly after filming The Lady of Shanghai.
Rita met her second husband, Prince Aly Khan, at
a party in Cannes in 1948. The two wed on May 27, 1949, after one
of the most highly publicized courtships in history. Hayworth left
Hollywood and took up residence with her new husband in Europe; on December
28, 1949, in Lausanne, Switzerland, Rita became a mother again, this time
to daughter Princess Yasmin Aga Khan. Once again, Rita's marriage
was not the fairy tale it seemed to be; on March 25, 1951, Rita and her
two daughters set sail back to America on the luxury liner De Grasse. While
she and Khan briefly reconciled during 1952, it didn't last long; by January
1953, the couple was officially divorced.
To find out more about the life and career of Rita Hayworth, please
visit Gilda--Rita Hayworth:
The Love Goddess , an excellent website, and the source from which
I adapted this research.