Age, Biography and Wiki
Rita Hayworth was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York. She rose to fame in the 1940s and was active until the 1970s. Her life was marked by both professional success and personal challenges, including a high-profile marriage to Prince Aly Khan and struggles with Alzheimer's disease, which led to her death on May 14, 1987, at the age of 68.
| Occupation | Film Producer |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 17 October 1918 |
| Age | 106 Years |
| Birth Place | New York City, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | U.S |
| Date of death | 14 May, 1987 |
| Died Place | New York City, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Rita Hayworth stood at a height of 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm). Details about her weight and other measurements are not widely documented.
In 1948, at the height of her fame, Hayworth met Prince 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 local name of Rehmat Khanum, meaning "Lady of the Blessings of the Almighty".
Biographer Barbara Leaming wrote that Hayworth aged prematurely because of her addiction to alcohol and also because of the many stresses in her life. "Despite the artfully applied make-up and shoulder-length red hair, there was no concealing the ravages of drink and stress", she wrote of Hayworth's arrival in New York in May 1956 in order to begin work on Fire Down Below, her first film in three years. "Deep lines had crept around her eyes and mouth, and she appeared worn, exhausted – older than her thirty-eight years."
| Height | 5'6" |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Hayworth was married five times: to Edward Judson, Orson Welles, Prince Aly Khan, Dick Haymes, and James Hill. Her marriages were often tumultuous, with notable incidents including a public assault by Dick Haymes in 1955. She had two children, Yasmin Aga Khan with Prince Aly Khan and Rebecca Welles with Orson Welles.
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: Eduardo Jr. and Vernon. Her maternal uncle Vinton Hayworth was an actor.
Eduardo Cansino wanted his daughter to become a professional dancer, while her mother hoped that she would become an actress. Her paternal grandfather, Antonio Cansino, was renowned as a classical Spanish dancer. He popularized the bolero, and his dancing school in Madrid was world-famous. Antonio Cansino instructed Rita Hayworth 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 noted "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."
In 1927, her father took the family to Hollywood. He believed that dancing could be featured in the movies and that his family could be part of it. He established his own dance studio, where he taught such stars as James Cagney and Jean Harlow.
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. Because she was working, Cansino never graduated from high school, but she completed the ninth grade at Hamilton High in Los Angeles.
Hayworth later confided to Orson Welles that her father began to sexually abuse her as a child when they were touring together as the Dancing Cansinos. 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 experienced by Hayworth as a young girl contributed to her difficulty in relationships as an adult.
Cansino 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. She danced with her father in such nightspots as the Foreign and the Caliente clubs. Winfield Sheehan, the head of the Fox Film Corporation, saw her dancing at the Caliente Club and quickly arranged for Hayworth to do a screen test a week later. Impressed by her screen persona, Sheehan signed her to a six-month contract at Fox under the name Rita Cansino, the first of two name changes during her film career.
Cohn argued that her image was too Mediterranean, which limited her to being stereotyped in "exotic" roles that were fewer in number. He was heard to say her last name sounded too Spanish. Judson acted on Cohn's advice: Rita Cansino became Rita Hayworth when she adopted her mother's maiden name, to the consternation of her father. Therefore, Cohn argued, people were more likely to regard her as a classic "American". With Cohn and Judson's encouragement, Hayworth also changed her hair color to ginger red hair and had electrolysis to raise her hairline and broaden the appearance of her forehead. Hayworth appeared in five minor Columbia pictures and three minor independent movies in 1937. The following year, she appeared in five Columbia B movies. In 1939, Cohn pressured director Howard Hawks to use Hayworth for a small, but important, role as a man-trap in the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, in which she played opposite Cary Grant and Jean Arthur.
Hayworth had two daughters and two grandsons, one by each daughter. Her older daughter, Rebecca Welles, was the daughter of Hayworth's second husband, Orson Welles. She had a son, Marc McKerrow, in 1966; Marc was placed for adoption at birth. Rebecca Welles died in 2004. McKerrow had three children and died at age 44 as a result of complications from a nocturnal seizure related to a serious car accident that he had when he was 21 years old. Marc is featured in the 2008 documentary Prodigal Sons.
Hayworth filed for divorce from him on February 24, 1942, with a complaint of cruelty. She noted to the press that his work took him to Oklahoma and Texas while she lived and worked in Hollywood. Judson was as old as her father, who was enraged by the marriage, which caused a rift between Hayworth and her parents until the divorce. Judson had failed to tell Hayworth before they married that he had previously been married twice. When she left him, she had no money.
Hayworth also had an intermittent, long-term relationship with Glenn Ford, which started during the filming of Gilda in 1945, and continued through each other's numerous marriages. Their relationship is documented in the 2011 biography Glenn Ford: A Life by Ford's son, Peter Ford. Peter revealed in his book that Hayworth became pregnant during the filming of The Loves of Carmen and traveled to France to get an abortion. Ford later moved next door to her in Beverly Hills in 1960, and they continued their relationship until the early 1980s.
On July 7, 1954, his ex-wife Nora Eddington got a bench warrant for his arrest, because he owed her $3,800 in alimony. Less than a week earlier, his other ex-wife, Joanne Dru, also got a bench warrant because she said he owed $4,800 in child support payments for their three children. Hayworth ended up paying most of Haymes's debts.
Hayworth began a relationship with film producer James Hill, whom she went on to marry on February 2, 1958. He put her in one of her last major films, Separate Tables. This film was popular and highly praised, although The Harvard Lampoon named her the worst actress of 1958 for her performance. On September 1, 1961, Hayworth filed for divorce, alleging extreme mental cruelty. Hill later wrote Rita Hayworth: A Memoir, in which he suggested that their marriage collapsed because he wanted Hayworth to continue making movies, while she wanted them both to retire from Hollywood.
In his autobiography, Charlton Heston wrote about Hayworth's brief marriage to Hill. One night, Heston and his wife Lydia joined the couple for dinner at a restaurant in Spain with the director George Marshall and the actor Rex Harrison, Hayworth's co-star in The Happy Thieves. Heston wrote that the occasion "turned into the single most embarrassing evening of my life", describing how Hill heaped "obscene abuse" on Hayworth until she was "reduced to a helpless flood of tears, her face buried in her hands". Heston wrote that the others sat stunned, witnesses to a "marital massacre", and, though he was "strongly tempted to slug him" (Hill), he left with his wife Lydia after she stood up, almost in tears. Heston wrote, "I'm ashamed of walking away from Miss Hayworth's humiliation. I never saw her again."
Orson Welles noted Hayworth's problem with alcohol during their marriage, but he never believed that her problem was alcoholism. "It certainly imitated alcoholism in every superficial way", he recalled in 1983. "She'd fly into these rages, never at me, never once, always at Harry Cohn or her father or her mother or her brother. She would break all the furniture and she'd get in a car and I'd have to get in the car and try to control her. She'd drive up in the hills suicidally. Terrible, terrible nights. And I just saw this lovely girl destroying herself. I admire Yasmin so much."
Yasmin Aga Khan spoke of her mother's long struggle with alcohol: "I remember as a child that she had a drinking problem. She had difficulty coping with the ups and downs of the business ... As a child, I thought, 'She has a drinking problem, and she's an alcoholic.' That was very clear, and I thought, 'Well, there's not much I can do. I can just, sort of, stand by and watch.' It's very difficult, seeing your mother, going through her emotional problems and drinking and then behaving in that manner ... Her condition became quite bad. It worsened and she did have an alcoholic breakdown and landed in the hospital."
Yasmin Aga Khan spoke of her mother's disease: It was the outbursts. She'd fly into a rage. I can't tell you. I thought it was alcoholism – alcoholic dementia. We all thought that. The papers picked that up, of course. You can't imagine the relief just in getting a diagnosis. We had a name at last, Alzheimer's! Of course, that didn't really come until the last seven or eight years. She wasn't diagnosed as having Alzheimer's until 1980. There were two decades of hell before that.
In July 1981, Hayworth's health had deteriorated to the point that a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that she should be placed under the care of her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan of New York City. Hayworth lived in an apartment at The San Remo on Central Park West adjoining that of her daughter, who arranged for her mother's care during her final years. When asked how her mother was doing, Yasmin replied, "She's still beautiful. But it's a shell."
In 1983, Rebecca Welles arranged to see her mother for the first time in seven years. Speaking to his lifelong friend Roger Hill, Orson Welles expressed his concern about the visit's effect on his daughter. "Rita barely knows me now," Welles said. He recalled seeing Hayworth three years before at an event that the Reagans held for Frank Sinatra. "When it was over, I came over to her table, and I saw that she was very beautiful, very reposed looking, and didn't know me at first. After about four minutes of speaking, I could see that she realized who I was, and she began to cry quietly."
The Rita Hayworth Gala, a benefit for the Alzheimer's Association, is held annually in Chicago and New York City. The program was founded in 1985 by Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, in honor of her mother. She is the hostess for the events and is a major sponsor of Alzheimer's disease charities and awareness programs. As of August 2017, a total of more than $72 million had been raised through events in Chicago, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida.
| Parents | |
| Husband | Edward C. Judson (m. 1937-1942) Orson Welles (m. 1943-1947) Prince Aly Khan (m. 1949-1953) Dick Haymes (m. 1953-1955) James Hill (m. 1958-1961) |
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Net Worth and Salary
At the time of her death in 1987, Rita Hayworth's net worth was approximately $10 million. Adjusted for inflation and considering her enduring popularity, some estimates suggest her net worth could be equivalent to around $30 million today.
Notable Salaries:
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. In 1947, Hayworth's new contract with Columbia provided a salary of $250,000 plus 50% of films' profits.
Hayworth's next film, The Loves of Carmen (1948) with Glenn Ford, was the first film co-produced by Columbia and Hayworth's production company, The Beckworth Corporation (named for Rebecca, her daughter with Welles). It was Columbia's biggest moneymaker that year. She received a percentage of the profits from this and all her subsequent films until 1954, when she dissolved Beckworth to pay off debts.
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). Harry Cohn expressed his frustration with Hayworth in a 1957 interview with Time magazine:
In 1936, at age 18, Hayworth married Edward C. Judson, an oilman turned promoter who was more than twice her age. They married in Las Vegas. Judson, who helped launch her acting career, was a shrewd businessman, but domineering. "He helped me with my career", Hayworth conceded after they divorced, adding "and helped himself to my money." She alleged that Judson compelled her to transfer a considerable amount of her property to him, and she promised to pay him $12,000 under threats that he would do her "great bodily harm".
From the start of their marriage, Haymes was deeply in debt to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). When Hayworth took time off from attending his comeback performances in Philadelphia, audiences sharply declined. Haymes's $5,000 weekly salary was attached by the IRS to pay a $100,000 bill, and he was unable to pay his pianist. Haymes's ex-wives demanded money while Hayworth publicly bemoaned her own lack of alimony from Aly Khan. At one point, the couple was effectively imprisoned in a hotel room for 24 hours in Manhattan at the Hotel Madison while sheriff's deputies waited outside, threatening to arrest Haymes for outstanding debts.
Career, Business and Investments
Hayworth's career spanned more than four decades, with over 60 film credits. She was not only an actress but also a talented dancer and producer. Some of her most notable films include Gilda (1946), Pal Joey (1957), and The Loves of Carmen (1948). She was also involved in producing several films, including The Loves of Carmen and Affair in Trinidad.
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.
In 1980, Hayworth was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, which contributed to her death in 1987 at age 68. The public disclosure and discussion of her illness drew attention to Alzheimer's, and helped to increase public and private funding for research into the disease.
While Gilda was in release, it was widely reported that an atomic bomb that was scheduled to be tested at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands would bear an image of Hayworth, a reference to her bombshell status. Although the gesture was undoubtedly meant as a compliment, Hayworth was deeply offended. Orson Welles, then married to Hayworth, recalled her anger in an interview with biographer Barbara Leaming: "Rita used to fly into terrible rages all the time, but the angriest was when she found out that they'd put her on the atom bomb. Rita almost went insane, she was so angry.... She wanted to go to Washington to hold a press conference, but Harry Cohn wouldn't let her because it would be unpatriotic." Welles tried to persuade Hayworth that the whole business was not a publicity stunt on Cohn's part, that it was simply homage to her from the flight crew. On the June 30, 1946, broadcast of Orson Welles Commentaries, Welles said of the imminent test, "I want my daughter to be able to tell her daughter that grandmother's picture was on the last atom bomb ever to explode."
"Hayworth might be worth ten million dollars today easily! She owned 25% of the profits with her own company and had hit after hit and she had to get married and had to get out of the business and took a suspension because she fell in love again! In five years, at two pictures a year, at 25%! Think of what she could have made! But she didn't make pictures! She took two or three suspensions! She got mixed up with different characters! Unpredictable!'"
In 1948, Hayworth left her film career to marry Prince Aly Khan, a son of Sultan Mohammed Shah, Aga Khan III, the leader of the Ismaili community of Shia Islam. They were married on May 27, 1949.
When Hayworth and Dick Haymes first met, he was still married and his singing career was waning. Haymes was desperate for money because two of his former wives were taking legal action against him for unpaid child support. His financial problems were so bad that when he tried to return to California, he was arrested.
The public disclosure and discussion of Hayworth's illness drew international attention to Alzheimer's disease, which was little known at the time, and it helped to greatly increase federal funding for Alzheimer's research.
Social Network
Rita Hayworth's social media presence is primarily managed posthumously through fan sites and official accounts dedicated to her legacy.
Cohn began to build up Hayworth in 1940 in features such as Music in My Heart, The Lady in Question, and Angels Over Broadway. That year, she was first featured in a Life magazine cover story. While on loan to Warner Bros., Hayworth appeared as the second female lead in The Strawberry Blonde (1941), opposite James Cagney.
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 later 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."
Hayworth received good reviews for her performances in Separate Tables (1958), with Burt Lancaster and David Niven, They Came to Cordura (1959) with Gary Cooper and The Story on Page One (1960). She was meant to be in Summer of the Seventeenth Doll with Lancaster but both withdrew after the original play failed on Broadway. She continued working throughout the 1960s. In 1962, her planned Broadway debut in Step on a Crack was cancelled for undisclosed health reasons. In 1964 Circus World was released, in which John Wayne was her co-star and for which she received a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actress in a dramatic role. The Money Trap (1965) paired her, for the last time, with good friend Glenn Ford.
"I used to have to punch a time clock at Columbia. Every day of my life. That's what it was like. I was under exclusive contract, like they owned me ... I think he had my dressing room bugged ... He was very possessive of me as a person, he didn't want me to go out with anybody, have any friends. No one can live that way. So I fought him ... You want to know what I think of Harry Cohn? He was a monster." Hayworth resented the fact that the studio had failed to train her to sing or even to encourage her to learn how to sing.
Education
Details about Rita Hayworth's formal education are limited. She began her career in show business at a young age, performing with her family in vaudeville and later transitioning to film.
