Rita Hayworth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rita Hayworth

Hayworth in 1945
Born Margarita Carmen Cansino
October 17, 1918(1918-10-17)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died May 14, 1987 (aged 68)
New York, New York, U.S.
Years active 1926 - 1972
Spouse(s) Edward C. Judson (1937-1943)
Orson Welles (1943-1948)
Prince Aly Khan (1949-1953)
Dick Haymes (1953-1955)
James Hill (1958-1961)

Rita Hayworth (October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987), was a Spanish American actress who rose to stardom in the 1940s as the era's leading sex symbol. She was known as "The Love Goddess", and was celebrated as an expert dancer and great beauty.

Contents

[edit] Early career

Margarita Carmen Cansino, better known as Rita Hayworth, was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Spanish flamenco dancer Eduardo Cansino (Sr.) and English/Irish-American Ziegfeld girl Volga Haworth.

Hayworth was on stage by the age of six as a member of The Dancing Cansinos, a famous family of Spanish flamenco dancers working in vaudeville. Her father had performed in a dancing duo with his sister Elisa earlier in his career, and later he revived the duo with his daughter Rita as his dancing partner, performing in nightclubs in California and the Foreign Club in Tijuana, Mexico. At age sixteen, already an accomplished professional dancer, Hayworth attracted the attention of film producers and was signed by Fox Studios in 1935, where she appeared mostly in small roles.

[edit] From Cansino to Hayworth

After her option was not renewed by Fox, Rita Cansino freelanced at minor film studios before signing with Columbia Pictures in 1937.

At Columbia Rita Cansino was renamed Rita Hayworth, adding a 'y' to her mother's maiden name of Haworth. She also endured a long series of electrology treatments to raise the hairline on her forehead during this peroid. After two more years of minor roles, she gave an impressive performance in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939), as part of an ensemble cast headed by Cary Grant. Her sensitive portrayal of a disillusioned wife sparked the interest of other studios. Between assignments at Columbia Pictures, she was borrowed by Metro Goldwyn Mayer for George Cukor's Susan and God (1940) with Joan Crawford and Warner Brothers for the title role in Raoul Walsh's The Strawberry Blonde (1941) with James Cagney.

While on loan to Fox Studios for Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941) starring Tyrone Power, Hayworth achieved top stardom with her sizzling performance as the amoral and seductive "Doña Sol des Muire". This Technicolor film forever branded her as one of Hollywood's most beautiful redheads. Gene Tierney was originally intended for the role but was dropped by Darryl F. Zanuck when she eloped with Oleg Cassini. Carole Landis was the next choice for the role, but refused to dye her blonde hair red. Fox then borrowed Hayworth from Columbia and dyed her dark brown hair auburn. With this shade, her head of long, flowing hair soon became Hayworth's best remembered feature.

Hayworth in an evening dress by designer Howard Greer.
Hayworth in an evening dress by designer Howard Greer.

[edit] Career success

The "love goddess" image was cemented with Bob Landry's 1941 Life magazine photograph of her (kneeling on her own 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 Hayworth would also become Columbia Pictures's biggest star of the 1940s, under the watchful eye of studio chief Harry Cohn, who recognized her value. After she played another seductive adultress in Tales of Manhattan (1942) at Twentieth Century Fox opposite Charles Boyer, Cohn would no longer allow Hayworth to be lent 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 she "danced with trained perfection and individuality", and later cited Hayworth as his favorite dancing partner), the Technicolor My Gal Sal (1942) (again at Fox) with Victor Mature, and her best known musical, Cover Girl (1944) , her first Technicolor film at Columbia Pictures, with Gene Kelly. Although her singing voice was dubbed in her movies, Hayworth was one of Hollywood's finest dancers, imbued with power, precision, tremendous enthusiasm, and an unearthly grace. Cohn continued to effectively showcase Hayworth's physical beauty and talents in expensive Technicolor musical films: Tonight and Every Night (1945) a wartime romance with Lee Bowman, and in Down to Earth (1947), with Larry Parks, where she played the goddess Terpsichore.

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.

"No matter how bad the film, when Rita danced it was like watching one of nature's wonders in motion," Joseph Cotten once remarked in a documentary about her. Hayworth was so famed for her dancing that almost all of her subsequent films (mostly dramas at this point) included musical interludes and at least one dance number, usually choreographed by frequent collaborator Jack Cole, and later by Valerie Bettis (Hayworth's barefoot dance to calypso music in 1952's Affair in Trinidad) , among others. Along with the dance numbers in Gilda, Jack Cole choreographed one of Hayworth's best remembered dance routines, the samba from 1945's Tonight and Every Night, which Hayworth performed while pregnant with her first child, Rebecca Welles (daughter of Orson Welles). Rita also danced a traditional flamenco with her uncle Jose Cansino in The Loves of Carmen (1948). Hayworth was the first dancer to partner both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly on film — the others being Judy Garland, Vera Ellen, Cyd Charisse, Leslie Caron, and Debbie Reynolds.

Hayworth gave one of her most acclaimed performances in Orson Welles's moody film noir The Lady from Shanghai (1948), though it failed at the box office. The failure was in part attributed to the fact that director/co-star Welles had Hayworth's famous red locks cut off and the rest dyed blonde for her role. This was done without Harry Cohn's knowledge or approval, and he was furious over the change. 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). It was Columbia's biggest moneymaker for that year. 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.

[edit] Marriage to Pakistani Prince Ali Aga Khan

Hayworth left her film career in 1948 to marry the Pakistani Prince Ali Khan, who was the vice-president of the United Nations General Assembly representing Pakistan. He was also the son of Aga Khan III, the leader of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam. The couple moved to Europe, causing a media frenzy. Hayworth was off the big screen for four years. Later Joseph L. Mankiewicz, in writing and directing 1954's The Barefoot Contessa, was said to have based his title character, Maria Vargas (played on film by Ava Gardner), on Hayworth's life and her marriage to Aly Khan.

[edit] Divorce and later career

After the marriage collapsed in 1951, Hayworth returned to America with great fanfare to film a string of hit films: Affair in Trinidad (1952) a black-and-white Gilda re-tread with favorite co-star Glenn Ford, and then back in Technicolor for Salome (1953) with Charles Laughton and Stewart Granger, and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) with Jose Ferrer and Aldo Ray, for which her performance 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 Hayworth finally left Columbia. She got good reviews for her acting in such films as Separate Tables (1958) with Burt Lancaster and David Niven, They Came To Cordura (1959), with Gary Cooper and Tab Hunter, The Story on Page One (1960) with Anthony Franciosa, and Circus World (UK title Magnificent Showman) (1964), with John Wayne. She continued working throughout the sixties, and in 1972 she made her last film, The Wrath of God.

[edit] Personal life

Although Hayworth didn't like horses and thoroughbred horse racing, she became a member of the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club. Her husband Prince Aly Khan and his family were heavily involved in horse racing and Hayworth's filly Double Rose won several races in France and notably finished second in the 1949 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.[1]

Naturally shy and reclusive, Hayworth was the antithesis of the characters she played. She once complained, "Men fell in love with Gilda, but they wake up with me." With typical modesty she later remarked that the only films she could watch without laughing were the dance musicals she made with Fred Astaire.


Hayworth was married five times:

She also had a nephew named Richard Cansino, who is a voice actor in anime and video games; he has done most of his work under the name "Richard Hayworth".[citation needed]

Barbara Leaming claims in her Hayworth biography "If This Was Happiness" that as a child and teenager, Rita was a victim of sexual and physical abuse by her father.

[edit] Final years

Rita Hayworth in 1977.
Rita Hayworth in 1977.

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 1971 appearance on The Carol Burnett Show. Both of her brothers died within a week of each other in March 1974, saddening her greatly, and causing her to drink even more heavily than before. In 1976 in London, Hayworth was removed from a flight during which she had an angry outburst while traveling with her agent, an event which attracted much negative publicity. In 1977, Rita Hayworth was the recipient of the National Screen Heritage Award (see 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 disease in 1987 at age 68, she was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California; location: Lourdes Grotto, Lot 196, Grave 6 (right of main sidewalk, near the curb). Her marker includes the inscription "To yesterday's companionship and tomorrow's reunion."

One of the major fund raisers for the Alzheimer's Association is the annual Rita Hayworth Gala, which is held in New York City and Chicago. Hayworth's daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, has been the hostess for these events, which since 1985 have raised more than $42 million for the Association.[2]

[edit] Filmography

[edit] As Rita Cansino

  • Anna Case in La Fiesta (Short subject, 1926, Unconfirmed)
  • Cruz Diablo aka The Devil's Cross (Uncredited, 1934)
  • In Caliente (1935) (scenes deleted)
  • Under the Pampas Moon (1935)
  • Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935)
  • Dante's Inferno (1935)
  • Piernas de Seda aka Legs of Silk (Uncredited, 1935)
  • Paddy O'Day (1935)
  • Professional Soldier (Uncredited, 1935)
  • Human Cargo (1936)
  • Dancing Pirate (1936)
  • Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)
  • Rebellion (1936)
  • Old Louisiana (1937)
  • Hit the Saddle (1937)
  • Trouble in Texas (1937)

[edit] As Rita Hayworth

[edit] References

  1. ^ Love's Long Shot. Time (Oct. 17, 1949).
  2. ^ Rita Hayworth Galas. Retrieved on 2006-09-29.
  • Kobal, John. Rita Hayworth: The Time, the Place, the Woman (1977). ISBN 0-393-07526-5.
  • Morella, Joe and Epstein, Edward Z. Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth (1983). ISBN 0-385-29265-1.
  • Nericcio, William Anthony. "When Electrolysis Proxies for the Existential: A Somewhat Sordid Meditation on What Might Occur if Frantz Fanon, Rosario Castellanos, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Sandra Cisneros Asked Rita Hayworth Her Name at the Tex[t]-Mex Beauty Parlor." in Tex(t)-Mex: Seductive Hallucination of the "Mexican" in America
  • Ringgold, Gene. The Films of Rita Hayworth: The Legend and Career of a Love Goddess (1974). ISBN 0-806-504-390.
  • "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption"
  • Band: The White Stripes; Album: Get Behind Me Satan; Song: Take, Take, Take; "I was shocked to look up and see Rita Hayworth there in a bar so seedy." The song describes the interaction between the singer, Jack White and Rita Hayworth. (2005)

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:


Persondata
NAME Hayworth, Rita
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cansino, Margarita Carmen
SHORT DESCRIPTION actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1918
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn, New York
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1987
PLACE OF DEATH Manhattan