No. 1 box office star for Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, she was Fred Astaire's favorite dance partner, and pictures of her were paraded around the world by American soldiers during World War II. All this at a time when Hispanic-Latino children still attended segregated schools and only a decade had passed since the "repatriation" program, with which the United States sent 2 million Mexicans back to their country, stating that it " stole" American jobs.
The job dried up for Rita Hayworth in the 1960s, when some problems appeared in her memory and her speech. In Hollywood, it was believed that Rita was an alcoholic. It took two decades for her to be diagnosed, in 1980, with Alzheimer's. This increased global awareness of a hitherto almost unknown disease.
Classic film buffs know Hayworth from her role in the 1944 musical "Cover Girl," and the film "Lady From Shanghai" (directed by her second husband, Orson Welles). But her signature role came in 1946's “Gilda.” Critics of that film said, “Rita Hayworth establishes herself as a dramatic star” in her first major non-musical role. She was born in Brooklyn and began taking dance classes at age 3. The family moved to Southern California and she began performing at age 12 with her Spanish father in an act called Dancing Casinos.
Discovered by Winfield Sheehan of Fox Film Corporation, she landed a small role in the 1935 film "Dante's Inferno" at the age of 16. Other minor roles followed, and in 1937, promoter Edward Judson married her and took over her career, signing a seven-year contract with Columbia. Judson and Columbia frontman Harry Cohn changed her aesthetic and gave her elocution classes. They also changed her name to Rita Hayworth. The studio downplayed her Hispanic heritage, but they couldn't lie about it; she had already made 10 films under the name of Rita Cansino.
After divorcing Orson Welles in 1948, Hayworth married Prince Aly Khan, whom one entertainment magazine described as "one of the richest men in the world, an international playboy and son of the spiritual leader of millions of Muslims." This was not a traditional Hollywood wedding. In 1989, two years after Hayworth's death at age 68, a biography by Barbara Leaming was published, revealing that most of Rita's health problems she had suffered by part of his father when he was young.
Aside from her on-screen legacy, she achieved literary immortality for herself thanks to Stephen King's novel "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption," in which her pinup proves surprisingly important to the prisoners.
Hayworth began showing Alzheimer's symptoms when she was 40 years old. She was diagnosed in 1980 and her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, has been holding events to raise awareness about the disease ever since. Every year the annual Rita Hayworth Gala fundraiser is held in Manhattan.
