![]() ![]() But it was Cohn who gave gave her a new hair color, makeup that changed her from a toothy child to a glamour girl, and a new name-Rita Hayworth. She signed a contract with Darryl Zanuck in 1935, and as Rita Cansino played in about 10 low-budget movies. It was there that Hollywood discovered the dark-haired, slightly plump little girl of 17 who, with a little streamlining, was to become Rita Hayworth. A series of stage appearances led to extended engagements in nightclubs in Tijuana, which was a favorite playground of the movie crowd during the 1930s. Trained from childhood as a dancer, Miss Hayworth was hardly into her teens when she became her father’s dancing partner. ![]() 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, the daughter of Spanish dancer Eduardo Cansino and Volga Haworth, who with a slight change in spelling provided her daughter her professional name. Miss Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino on Oct. After the disease was diagnosed, Miss Hayworth in 1981 was placed under the care of Princess Yasmin, who now heads Alzheimer’s Disease International, the research and support group for sufferers and their families. That was Alzheimer’s disease, a debilitating condition that degenerates brain cells and destroys memory and the ability to read, write or speak. Though she sometimes drank heavily, according to biographers, alcohol turned out not to be her main physical problem. Early in her career, she began having a drink to relax before her scenes and by the late 1970s, reports of her supposed alcoholism were widespread. Stardom could never mask the nervous insecurity that followed Miss Hayworth all of her life. In the 1960s, interviewers painted a picture of Miss Hayworth as a sporadically employed movie star, living in her Beverly Hills mansion and feeling imprisoned by the image Hollywood had given her. She once explained the problem by saying, “Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me.” She said her marriages failed because no man would give her what she really wanted-a quiet home life. Miss Hayworth had five husbands, including Orson Welles, singer Dick Haymes and Khan. ![]() Rouben Mamoulian, her director in “Blood and Sand,” once said: “She made you believe in both her beauty and her ability whenever she was on the screen.” “She was a real creature of the movies, possessing the quality of involving the audience in her problem, like all the greatest stars,” director George Cukor once said of Miss Hayworth. With an exuberant beauty that came alive before the cameras, Miss Hayworth was ideal for the Hollywood system that manufactured stars through grooming, publicity and carefully planned buildups. They included “Blood and Sand,” “Tales of Manhattan,” “Cover Girl,” “Gilda” (the seductive siren who became her film signature), “The Lady from Shanghai,” “Salome,” “Miss Sadie Thompson,” “Pal Joey,” “The Story on Page One” and “The Money Trap.” Her last film was “The Wrath of God” in 1972. And it was not until she left Columbia and began to age that she gained recognition from critics as a serious actress in such independent films as “Separate Tables” in 1958, in which she was praised for her sensitive portrayal of a tormenting wife, and “They Came to Cordura,” a 1959 drama that cast her as a prisoner being transported across the desert.ĭuring a 37-year career, she made 61 films-about half of them before she achieved stardom in 1941 in the light musical, “You’ll Never Get Rich,” with Fred Astaire. Miss Hayworth professed to despise the roles she was assigned there-the vivacious beauty and saucy seductress. But Cohn said he only wanted her to do her job. She insisted that Cohn had her dressing room bugged and made her punch a time clock even though she was his biggest star. “I was really in deep slavery,” she said later of her tenure at Columbia, adding that she was suspended so many times for refusing roles that she lost count. ![]()
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