Website: A Tribute to Rita Hayworth
Margarita Cansino was born in 1918, but Rita Hayworth was born in 1935 during her official movie debut in Dante's Inferno. She's only on-screen for a two-minute dance sequence, but it got her started on the road to fame and fortune. Dancing was what Rita loved--she had done it since her childhood, when she toured with her father as the Dancing Cansinos. However, it was the movies that made Rita Hayworth a household name, as well as the nation's "Love Goddess".
She was in Tijuana in 1934, dancing with her father, when she was seen by a Fox studio production chief, who liked what he saw. She was only 16, but he signed up the shy Cansino for a screen test. A year later she danced her two minutes in Inferno. Around this time, Rita met the man who would become her first husband, a shady man named Ed Judson. Judson took on his young bride as a project, and all but forced her to get electrolysis done to change her hairline, which completely altered her appearance
In 1939 she landed her first "A" picture role, in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings. She wasn't movie gold, but it led to the eventual casting in 1941's Blood and Sand, a film which showed that 22-year-old Rita could act and wasn't just some "B-grade" starlet.
Then in 1945, she began work on the film which would make her a legend: Gilda. The role of Gilda permanently defined who Rita was, and the rest of her life, she was constantly measured against this celluloid image. In fact, Hayworth herself once said, "Men fall in love with Gilda and wake up with me."
She had long since divorced Judson, who proved to be a lousy husband to Rita, a woman constantly seeking the approval of men. Judson controlled her, cheated on her, stole her money and basically destroyed any love Rita had for him. But Rita had found love--with second husband Orson Welles. Theirs was not always a happy marriage, but it did produce a daughter, Rebecca. They also worked together, in the film The Lady From Shanghai, which was written and directed by Welles. Rita, ever trying to escape the Gilda stereotype, was encouraged by Welles to cut her hair short and dye it platinum blonde. However, it didn't play well to audiences, and the film bombed.
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