She was 12 years old when she dropped out of school to dance in Tijuana's hot bars. She was entertaining tourists from Los Angeles, wearing make-up, a cotton bra, and high heels, 20 years older than her age.
Her father, Eduardo Cansino, introduced his little daughter Margarita as his wife and wanted to hook her up with an influential Hollywood producer and put the gold mine into operation as soon as possible.
The whole world learned two years after her death when biographer Barbara Leaming revealed: that Rita Hayworth was an incest victim. After the shows she performed with her father under the name 'Dancing Cansinos', she was repeatedly raped, sexually abused, beaten, and forced to work.
Although she finally managed to escape at the age of 18, life was never kind to her. Gilda was not the 'goddess of love' of the whole world, the global phenomenon whose picture was even placed on the atomic bomb, the sexiest object of desire of the sexual fantasies of an age. She was a heavy alcoholic, a wounded, insecure, damaged soul. The title of Leaming's biography, published in 1989, was named after the sentence that best described his life: 'If This Is Happiness'.
Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American actress. She achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars, appearing in 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term "The Love Goddess" to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II.
Margarita, who ran away from her father at the age of 18, married 41-year-old Eddie Judson. Judson was the snake of the nights, the jackal of the corners of opportunity, one of the cruel, syrupy wolves that the show world chewed up. Young Rita was wrong about this man she took refuge in, thinking she would protect her. Instead of protecting his young wife, Judson was forcing her to sleep with paid producers, blatantly marketing her, and beating her if she did not do what she wanted. For a while, Rita did whatever her husband wanted without protesting. His childhood traumas, combined with a deep sense of guilt, had stained his soul. She thought that sex was the only way to compassion, care, and love. It was as if his body did not belong to him, but was an independent limb under the control and service of others. But one day, she gathered all her strength and refused to sleep with Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia Pictures, whom she arranged, thinking that Judson had hit the nail on the head. Cohn was fascinated by this young 'Latina'. He even developed a deep obsession with her. While he was looking for an actress who could compete with the big stars of studios such as MGM and Warner Bros, which took the lion's share of Hollywood in the 1940s, he came across Rita Cansino, who, although impressive, was of Spanish origin. The studio was looking for an American girl from head to toe. In this state, Rita Cansino could only show off her flamenco skills in a few musicals (and she rocked her skirts a lot in the first films of her career).
THREAT, VIOLENCE AND FEAR
Cohn told Rita to take her mother's maiden name, Hayworth, dye her hair red, and have plastic surgery to correct the Mickey Mouse hairline on her forehead that revealed her Latino genes. He was re-creating her, stripping her of all her ethnicity, and shaping the new goddess of America's dreams. She was a completely different woman when she appeared opposite Cary Grant in her first major studio movie, 'Only Angels Have Wings' (1939).
When the path to fame opened up, Judson's appetite was whetted. While he was acting as Hayworth's manager, he was also confiscating every penny she earned. He once threatened to burn her face and 'hurt her body very badly' if she didn't find $12,000 immediately.
The marriage, which was filled with violence and fear, ended in 1941. When she got divorced, she had no money other than a few dollars in her pocket. Even in her most glorious years, she could never forget the days when she would feed himself at her friend Hermes Pan's house.
While the Second World War was raging, the greatest consolation of American soldiers was a photograph published in the August issue of Life magazine in 1941. The caption below the picture read, “Rita Hayworth, in her own home, in her own bed.” The picture became one of the most famous pin-up shots of the 20th century. Hayworth, in her lacy silk nightgown, with her hair tossed around, was looking over her shoulder at a lucky person that we can only complete in our imagination, in the most iconic pose of shy eroticism. This photo, which was later placed on the atomic bomb, attracted the attention of another person in Manhattan. Orson Welles, who was busy with his radio show at the time, said "I will marry this woman" as soon as he opened the magazine.
“MEN WENT INTO BED WITH GILDA AND WOKE UP WITH ME”
Welles was different from the penniless, dishonest, cruel men who entered Hayworth's life. Although a giant megalomaniac and indescribably neurotic, he was a well-educated, talented, intelligent, and uniquely humorous man. Although Hayworth looked like a goddess descended from Olympus on the screen, she was like a shy cat behind the camera. His self-confidence was almost zero. She saw everyone as superior to herself and could not get out of the vortex of insecurity she fell into.
She was right when she famously said, "Men went to bed with Gilda and woke up with me." Gilda's red fire only burned Rita's insides. Despite everything, Welles fell in love with this wounded, restless, and deadly beautiful woman. As promised, they got married in 1943. Welles was a charismatic man, 2 meters tall, with a deep voice, who impressed everyone with his presence the moment he walked through the door. He ate and drank as befitted his giant size. Alcohol and drugs were the poison of the couple throughout their marriage to Hayworth. Trying to suppress her grief, Rita began to feel closer to the bourbon bottle than her husband.
Welles was constantly in debt with his crazy projects and movies that failed at the box office. Despite this, he was spending money madly, investing his wife's earnings in his strange ideas, other women, and lavish holidays. Rita, who was already suffering from paranoia, jealousy, and insecurity, was going crazy when she saw the love of her life's fling with Judy Garland, his orgies with young dancers, and the gossip in the magazine columns. Years later, in one of his last interviews, Welles would tell how Hayworth drank madly at midnight, drove on mountain roads as if she was thirsty for her life, destroyed the furniture in the house during her nervous breakdowns, and that the slightest incident turned into a matter of life and death. They divorced in 1947 after their first and last film together, 'The Lady From Shanghai'.
But of course, things were not easy. Love triangles, inheritance cases, accusations, evasions, and lies, worthy of Hollywood scandals, have occupied the headlines for a long time. Before divorcing her second husband, Hayworth began a secret relationship with the famous playboy Prince Ali Khan. His father, Aga Khan, was the spiritual leader of millions of Muslims and the ruler of a huge kingdom. The spice of the scandal was not only Hayworth's ongoing marriage but also the fact that Ali Khan had not divorced the mother of his two sons.
CAPTURED PRINCESS
Despite her boss Harry Cohn's $1.2 million lawsuit, condemnation messages from all over the world, and attacks from journalists, they got married in 1948, in a ceremony attended by 40 people on the French Riviera.
But the princess's life was not for Hayworth. Years later, she told her co-star Frank Langella, "I felt like I was in prison." “Two men were waiting in front of the door, lying on top of each other, to prevent me from leaving the room. I didn't want to live in a place where people kissed my skirts. What in God's name is that?! What nonsense! I had no intention of being a fucking princess anyway. Finally, I went to my elderly father-in-law. He loved me. 'Look, father, give me my children and I will leave your life. I said, 'I don't want anything.'
Of course, it wouldn't be that easy again. When they divorced in 1951, citing 'excessive violence', she found herself in a brutal battle of succession. Her struggle for her daughter Yasmin would turn into one of the most devastating events over the years.
Rita Hayworth had two more marriages in the 1950s and 1960s when she completely severed her ties with cinema. The situation has not changed in these either. Men after money, rude husbands who beat her insecurity even more, unhappy, vile relationships...
Tragically, perhaps it was her mind playing tricks on her that she started to struggle with Alzheimer's from her 40s onwards. She erased everything she wanted to forget since her childhood by watching Central Park from the window of his daughter Yasmin's house in Manhattan. The disease, which was long confused with alcoholism, was diagnosed only in 1980. On her deathbed, she didn't know her daughter, who gave up everything to take care of her. Her father's breath, her husband's hand clinging to her thin neck, and her only love of smelling other women in her hair, were erased from her mind.
Rita Hayworth could not wake up from the coma she entered in 1987 at the age of 68. Happiness perhaps found him in the darkness of the last chapter of his life.