And the stars are watching ...

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Rita hayworth
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Rita hayworth, New York 1918 -1987

Part I

"Let's face it, a large part of my life has been influenced by the photograph of a woman in negligee, kneeling on the bed, with a winning smile on her mouth. The most seductive female image to come out of Hollywood in all the history of cinema".


That woman was Rita Hayworth and we could not have chosen a better introduction than an American critic's sincere confession to present a character who was much more than a Hollywood star. The critic's words were spoken on 14 May 1987, when the world was informed that the actress had passed away at her daughter Yasmine's home in New York.

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And the photo he referred to was a famous shot from the magazine Life in 1941. A photo that led a magazine editor, Winthrop Sargent, to christen Rita Hayworth "The American Love Goddess", the American Goddess of Love. A photo that the Yankee soldiers took with them on all fronts, and which was even glued to the atomic bomb. It was then that another nickname was coined, the red atomic bomb. After the war she became the most desired woman by men all over the world, becoming a sex bomb for her curvy body and her movements during the filming of her films.

Rita Hayworth and Hollywood

The world of cinema was at her feet, but Rita Hayworth never really loved that world. The image of sex symbols tired her quickly. "I know he hated Hollywood studios with all his mightSaid director Rouben Mamoulian, who directed it in Blood and Sand. "Hollywood had created Rita Hayworth, and Rita Hayworth didn't like what she had become. She has always felt like a slave to the system, she has always hoped to prove her talent in other ways".

Her second husband, Orson Welles he thought that: "She has never been offered a role up to her abilities”He stated a few years ago. "My The Lady from Shanghai was also not the right vehicle". Hayworth often repeated: "Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn held me like a slave. It kept me from being myself. It was also his idea to put my photo on the atomic bomb". But in Hollywood, then, and perhaps not only then, these were the rules. Thus was built the myth of the Goddess of Love, the official pin-up of the Second World War.

There was no longer Rita Hayworth, nor Margarita Cansino, her real name, but she only existed Gilda. His phrase is famous: "Men sleep with Gilda and wake up with me".

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His Biography

Margarita Carmen Cansino was born in New York on October 17, 1918. She made her debut at the age of 13 in a Mexican night-club, as a dancer. Daughter of art, her Irish mother, Volga Haworth, is a Ziegfeld dancer. The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of plays produced on Broadway from 1907 to 1931. They were clearly inspired by the Folies Bergère in Paris. His father, Edoardo Cansino, from Spain, is a famous dance teacher. At 17, with the name of Rita Cansino, he started working for Fox. The year of the turning point and of the first real success is 1941, when he interprets "Strawberry blonde”By Roul Walsh.

It was the president of Columbia, Harry Cohn, who created his stage name, Rita hayworth. Still in the same year, she plays the part of Donna Sol, in "Blood and sand"By Robert Mamoulian and two films with Fred Astaire,"The unattainable happiness"By Sidney Lanfield and"You have never looked so beautiful”By William S. Seiter. But the film that consecrates her to the myth is from 1946, "Gilda”By Charles Vidor, opposite Glenn Ford, in which she plays the role of a dark lady. The hint of striptease, when she takes off her long gloves to the rhythm of "Put the blame on mame" and "Amado mio", make her known all over the world, so much so that the name Gilda will be written on the atomic bomb detonated on the Bikini atoll.

Her husband Orson Welles

Orson Welles, her second husband, directs her in "The lady from Shanghai”(1946), where Rita's famous red hair is cut and dyed platinum. The actress plays the role of a cold killer. In 1948 he shoots "Carmen's loves”By Charles Vidor and in the same year he married Prince Alì Khan in Europe, met on the Côte d'Azur and their daughter Yasmine was born from their union. In 1953 he interpreted "Rain"By C. Bernhardt and in 1957"Pal Joey”By G. Sidney, alongside Frank Sinatra. The following year he plays with Burt Lancaster “Separate tables”In which he gets an Oscar nomination.

In 1967 he played in Rome "The adventurer”By Terence Young, based on Conrad's novel of the same name. With the end of her fifth marriage to producer James Hill, weary Hayworth, disappointed in Hollywood, falls ill with the then almost unknown Alzheimer's disease for which she was believed to be an alcoholic, which puts her in a state of complete incapacity. Daughter Yasmine is assigned the guardianship of her mother and on May 14, 1987, at the age of sixty-nine, Rita Hayworth died in New York in the home of her daughter who set up a foundation in memory of her mother, a foundation for research and treatment of Alzheimer's.

Article by Stefano Vori

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