Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918May 14, 1987) was an American actress, dancer, and pin-up girl. She achieved fame in the 1940s as one of the top stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and appeared in 61 films over 38 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe Hayworth after she became the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the second top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II, after Betty Grable.
Hayworth is widely known for her performance in the 1946 film noir Gilda, opposite Glenn Ford, in which she played the femme fatale in her first major dramatic role. She is also known for her performances in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Strawberry Blonde (1941), Blood and Sand (1941), The Lady from Shanghai (1947), Pal Joey (1957), and Separate Tables (1958). Fred Astaire, with whom she made two films, You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), once called her his favorite dance partner. She also starred in the Technicolor musical Cover Girl (1944), with Gene Kelly. She is listed as one of the top 25 female motion picture stars of all time in the American Film Institute's survey AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hayworth received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1645 Vine Street in 1960. It has been speculated by friends that she was Romani, but this has never been confirmed and she referred to herself as "just another dirty-faced Mexican kid." In academic journals, in an article focused on ethnic represenation in Hollywood, she is described as "Latin" and "Spanish-Irish American." Her father was from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a town near Seville, Spain. Her father was Spanish-born. Her mother, Volga Hayworth, was an American of Irish and English descent who had performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. The couple married in 1917. They also had two sons. Her maternal uncle Vinton Hayworth was an actor.
Eduardo Cansino wanted his daughter to become a professional dancer, while her mother hoped she would become an actress. Her paternal grandfather, Antonio Cansino, was a renowned classical Spanish dancer. He popularized the bolero, and his dancing school in Madrid was world-famous. Antonio Cansino instructed his granddaughter in her first dance lesson. Hayworth later recalled, "From the time I was three and a half... as soon as I could stand on my own feet, I was given dance lessons." She said: "I didn't like it very much... but I didn't have the courage to tell my father, so I began taking the lessons. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood."
She attended dance classes every day for a few years in a Carnegie Hall complex, where she was taught by her uncle Angel Cansino. In 1926, at the age of eight, she was featured in La Fiesta, a short film for Warner Bros.
In 1931, Eduardo Cansino partnered with his 12-year-old daughter to form an act called the Dancing Cansinos. Her hair was dyed from brown to black to give her a more mature and "Latin" appearance. Since under California law Margarita was too young to work in nightclubs and bars, her father took her with him to work across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. In the early 1930s, it was a popular tourist spot for people from Los Angeles. Her biographer, Barbara Leaming, wrote that her mother may have been the only person to know of the abuse; she slept in the same bed as her daughter to try to protect her. Leaming wrote that the abuse contributed to Hayworth's difficulty in relationships as an adult.
Hayworth took a bit part in the film Cruz Diablo (1934) at age 16, which led to another bit part in the film In Caliente (1935) with the Mexican actress Dolores del Río.
Career
Early career
During her time at Fox, Hayworth was billed as Rita Cansino and appeared in unremarkable roles, often cast as the exotic foreigner. In late 1934, aged 16, she performed a dance sequence in the Spencer Tracy film Dante's Inferno (1935), and was put under contract in February 1935. While on loan to Warner Bros., Hayworth appeared as the second female lead in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), opposite James Cagney. Although Astaire made 10 films with Ginger Rogers, his other main dancing partner, Hayworth's sensuality surpassed Rogers' cool technical expertise. "Rita's youthful exuberance meshed perfectly with Fred's maturity and elegance", says Levinson.
thumb|upright=1.5|Iconic 1941 photograph of Hayworth for [[Life (magazine)|Life magazine]]
In August 1941, Hayworth was featured in an iconic Life photo in which she posed in a negligee with a black lace bodice. Bob Landry's photo made Hayworth one of the top two pin-up girls of the World War II years; the other was Betty Grable, in a 1943 photograph. For two years, Hayworth's photograph was the most requested pin-up photograph in circulation. In 2002, the satin nightgown Hayworth wore in the photo sold for $26,888.
In March 1942, Hayworth visited Brazil as a cultural ambassador for the Roosevelt administration's Good Neighbor policy, under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. During the 1940s Hayworth also contributed to the OCIAA's cultural diplomacy initiatives in support of Pan-Americanism through her broadcasts to South America on the CBS "Cadena de las Américas" radio network.
thumb|left|upright=.7|Hayworth on the cover of Stardom magazine, March 1942
In 1943, she was suspended without pay for nine weeks because she refused to appear in Once Upon a Time.
Peak years at Columbia
Hayworth had top billing in one of her best-known films, the Technicolor musical Cover Girl, released in 1944. The film established her as Columbia's top star of the 1940s, and it gave her the distinction of being the first of only six women to dance on screen with both Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. "I guess the only jewels of my life", Hayworth said in 1970, "were the pictures I made with Fred Astaire ... And Cover Girl, too."
thumb|Hayworth and choreographer [[Jack Cole (choreographer)|Jack Cole in Tonight and Every Night (1945)]]
For three consecutive years, starting in 1944, Hayworth was named one of the top movie box-office attractions in the world. She was adept in ballet, tap, ballroom, and Spanish routines. Cohn continued to showcase Hayworth's dance talents. Columbia featured her in the Technicolor films Tonight and Every Night (1945) with Lee Bowman and Down to Earth (1947) with Larry Parks.
thumb|Hayworth in [[Gilda (film)|Gilda (1946)]]
Her sexy, glamorous appeal was most noted in Charles Vidor's film noir Gilda (1946) with Glenn Ford, which caused censors some consternation. The role, in which Hayworth wore black satin and performed a legendary one-glove striptease, "Put The Blame On Mame", made her into a cultural icon as a femme fatale.
The fourth atomic bomb ever to be detonated was decorated with a photograph of Hayworth cut from the June 1946 issue of Esquire magazine. Above it was stenciled the device's nickname, "Gilda" - the name of the film in which she was starring at the time - in two-inch black letters.
thumb|left|Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai (1947)
In 1947, Hayworth's new contract with Columbia provided a salary of $250,000 plus 50% of films' profits.
Hayworth's performance in Welles's 1947 film The Lady from Shanghai was critically acclaimed.
Also in 1947, Hayworth was featured in a Life cover story by Winthrop Sargeant that resulted in her being nicknamed "The Love Goddess". The term was adopted and used as the title of a biopic and of a biography about her. In a 1980s interview, Hayworth said, "Everybody else does nude scenes, but I don't. I never made nude movies. I didn't have to do that. I danced. I was provocative, I guess, in some things. But I was not completely exposed."
Hiatus and return
thumb|left|upright=1.0|Hayworth and [[Aly Khan at their wedding reception in the garden of the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, 1949]]
In 1948, at the height of her fame, Hayworth met Aly Khan. They were married on May 27, 1949. Hayworth left Hollywood and sailed for France, breaking her contract with Columbia. An Ismaili Muslim suggested that Rita take the name Rehmat Khanum, meaning "Lady of the Blessings of the Almighty".
In 1951, Columbia alleged it had $800,000 invested in properties for her, including the film she had walked out on that year. A 1951 article in the British periodical The People called for a boycott of Hayworth's films:
After the collapse of her marriage to Khan, Hayworth returned to Hollywood to star in her "comeback" picture, Affair in Trinidad (1952), which again paired her with Glenn Ford. Director Vincent Sherman recalled that Hayworth seemed "rather frightened at the approach of doing another picture". She continued to clash with Cohn and was placed on suspension during filming. Hayworth refused to report for work because she objected to the script.
Hayworth continued to star in a string of successful pictures. In 1953, she had two films released: Salome with Charles Laughton and Stewart Granger, and Miss Sadie Thompson with José Ferrer and Aldo Ray. She was off the big screen for another four years, mainly because of a tumultuous marriage to the singer Dick Haymes. During her marriage to Haymes, she was involved in much negative publicity, which significantly lessened her appeal. In 1955, she sued Columbia Pictures to be released from her contract, but asked for her $150,000 salary, alleging that the filming failed to start on Joseph and His Brethren (1961) when agreed. The film was later filmed in 1961 by a foreign company as The Story of Joseph and His Brethren (film). Cohn expressed frustration with Hayworth in a 1957 interview with Time magazine: