RitaHayworth

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RITA HAYWORTH

There are many types of female beauty, and in the 1940s Rita Hayworth epitomised vivacious beauty.

In "You Were Never Lovelier" Rita makes her entrance by striding into a room energetically. Yet she is exuberantly feminine. Later, when flirting with Fred Astaire, her face is full of life, and when they dance, she personifies high spirits. Indeed Rita was one of the few dancers to pass the Astaire test. (When Fred Astaire dances with someone, whom do you watch? Fred Astaire or the girl?) There was an energy about Rita, in her face and in her movements, that set her apart from contemporaries like Betty Grable and Lana Turner. In "Affectionately Yours", a deservedly forgotten comedy, Rita wipes Merle Oberon off the screen. Oberon, the female lead, comes across as cold and self-loving; Hayworth radiates warmth and humour.

Yet Rita was never 'pushy' on screen, her personality was never assertive, her sex appeal was never blatant. Those apparent contradictions - her temperament being lively while her personality was modest, her beauty being conspicuous while her sex appeal was subtle - made Rita Hayworth not only more glamorous than other stars, but also more interesting.

Rita had started as Margarita Cansino, the dancing daughter of Eduardo Cansino. Fred Astaire was later to say that Eduardo was a brilliant dancer and a friend he had known for years. Eduardo trained his daughter, and in 1936 Eduardo and Rita worked on the Hollywood movie "Dante's Inferno". Rita stayed in Hollywood, working for three years under a minor Columbia contract in a variety of B features. She got her big break opposite Cary Grant in "Only Angels Have Wings", directed by Howard Hawks. Her impact was so strong that all Hollywood took notice, including Columbia boss Harry Cohn who decided he would make Rita a star.

http://www.lovegoddess.info/Rita%20Hayworth%20revised.htm

The "love goddess" image was cemented with Bob Landry's 1941 Life magazine photograph of Hayworth 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. Also in 1941 Rita made the cover of Time Magazine, her image drawn by famed pin up artist George Petty. 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 might have been dubbed in her early movies (disputed), Hayworth was one of Hollywood's finest dancers, imbued with power, precision, tremendous enthusiasm, and an unearthly grace.^{[citation
needed]} 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, and executed a range of dance styles, including modern, with impressive mastery.

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. Although she contributed to both compositions and fine singing, she has rarely been accredited for her musical talent. 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.

MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Hayworth

Rita Hayworth

The great silver screen siren Rita Hayworth is considered one of the most iconic women in American cinema's history. Known as The Love Goddess and/or The Great American Love Goddess, Hayworth enjoyed a long and illustrious career in Hollywood. Here are few random tidbits and highlights from that career and life:

Born Margarita Carmen Cansino in 1918, Hayworth's ethnicity was traced to Spanish and Irish roots. She got an incredibly early start in entertainment, performing by age six with the popular vaudeville act, the Cansinos, a troupe of Spanish dancers. She remained with the family group until she was discovered at sixteen and signed to Fox Studios in 1935.

An illustration of her appeared on the cover of the November 10, 1941 issue of Time magazine, in a thigh-revealing black ball gown, striking one of her famed dancerly poses.

MORE: http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/public/default.asp?t=1&m=1&c=34&s=264&ai=94959

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RITA AS A PAPER DOLL

SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR

COVER GIRL

GILDA

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