Rita Hayworth is also known as Margarita Carmen Cansino. She was born in New York in 1918, the year World War I ended and the Spanish flu killed many people. In fact, it is estimated that the disease killed more people in one year than the conflict did in the previous four years. Rita was the daughter of two dancers: Volga Hayworth - of Irish and English descent - and the Andalusian Eduardo Cansino Reina - who was related to the writer Rafael Cansinos Assens.
With her father, Rita Hayworth began to dance professionally when she was barely thirteen years old, although, in some interviews, she pointed out that since she was very young she was constantly rehearsing and studying dance. She also said that this was something that she did not like, but that she felt intimidated by her father, so she never rejected him.
Rita arrives in Hollywood two years later. Her incredible beauty and talent did not go unnoticed by the producers and film executives of 20Th Century Fox. She began as a member of the Spanish Ballet and began to participate in supporting roles in films thanks, in part, to the support of a Spanish diplomat, Lázaro Bartolomé and Lopez de Queralta. Rita Hayworth thus began a career that would lead her to become the S symbol of the forties (especially thanks to the film Gilda) and to be currently considered one of the twenty most important stars in the history of cinema.
Life and Work of Rita Hayworth
As we told you, Rita Hayworth reached the height of her fame in the 1940s, appearing in 61 films over almost 37 years. During her stardom, she was nicknamed "the goddess of love" and was one of the famous femme fatales, with her the film industry shone; although her personal life was involved in heartbreak, deceit, and abuse by men.
When she was starting out, her father was the artistic partner in the dance shows, however, he was a S abuser and exploiter. For Rita Hayworth this was a traumatic event in her life, it controlled everything about her and forced her to do shows without rest. To escape her father's control, she accepted her first job in the 1935 film Dante's Inferno, a small role that brought some income to her livelihood. Subsequently, already 18 years old, Rita Hayworth married Edward Judson, a man who functioned as her manager and who, later, forced the actress to make numerous changes to her physical appearance so that she would be more "accepted" by the public. Like Marilyn Monroe, this actress had to make many changes in her life to adapt to the dynamics of Hollywood.
Her marriage to Edward Judson was a stormy affair. According to an interview she recounted: "He helped me with my career and he helped himself with my money." This man got her a contract with Columbia, but he demanded that she turn over some of her property to him. After her divorce, Rita Hayworth was left broke. However, she would quickly recover.
Although Margarita Carmen Cansino changed her name to Rita Hayworth, her relations with Spain continued in force. The actress, who began playing supporting roles in B-movies, became more visible acting in films directed by Howard Hawks and Charles Vidor, but gained star status when filming in 1941, alongside Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell, the famous Blood, and Sand, based on the homonymous novel by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. As a curiosity, with this film, she became the highest-paid actress in the cinema. As of this year, her fame and popularity would not stop growing and her conversion into one of the great erotic myths of the 20th century would be consolidated five years later, with her participation in the Charles Vidor film, Gilda.
We can add a curious note, and in our eyes, an exaggeration: in this film, she does a very brief striptease (she barely removes a long glove) but it was enough to launch her as a S symbol and for the Catholic Church to ban the film in several countries. , like Spain, for considering it "seriously dangerous". With the arrival of Gilda, Rita Hayworth was never the same again, her character surpassed her reality.
In her extensive film career, which lasted until the early seventies and was interrupted due to the advances of Alzheimer's disease, Rita Hayworth would have a new encounter with Spanish culture, even if it was through a free and Hollywood version of the Prosper Merimée's novel, Carmen. In 1948, she starred in The Love of Carmen, another Charles Vidor film, which also starred her Gilda co-star, Glenn Ford, and which has been considered by some critics as one of Rita Hayworth's best film performances.
Fun facts about Rita Hayworth
Rita was married 5 times. She with Edward Hudson, at 18, Orson Welles, Prince Ali Khan with whom she had a daughter, Yasmin Aga Khan, actor Dick Haymes, and director James Hill.
The film Gilda was such a boom that the image of Rita was placed in the atomic test bomb dropped by the US on the Bikini Islands in the same year as the film's premiere (1946). Rita was very incensed because she was a deep and convinced pacifist. She was nicknamed "The Atomic Bomb".
In 1972 Rita left the cinema. Soon after, she began to suffer from Alzheimer's. At that time she was not yet diagnosed and they confused it with alcoholism. She was in the care of her daughter Yasmine. She died in 1987 of Alzheimer's at age 68 in her Manhattan apartment.
Rita Hayworth is ranked 19th (according to the American Film Institute) on the list of the 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time.
