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Rita Hayworth: Orson Welles
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Talented, complex and alluring, actress Rita Hayworth reached the pinnacle of Hollywood success when she starred in Gilda in 1946. Since then, she's been affectionately called the Love Goddess. But Rita was far more than that, as she attempted to find happiness with such mercurial men as Orson Welles and Prince Aly Aga Khan and became a mother. Kim Basinger narrates this engaging documentary that attempts to explain the woman behind the legend.
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The enduring allure of Rita Hayworth is examined in this celebratory documentary on the renowned actress and dancer. Along with an in-depth overview of the career of Hollywood's "Love Goddess," the program ... explores Hayworth's tumultuous personal life and how her films continue to resonate with audiences. Includes rare footage and interviews, as well as insights from family, friends and co-stars. Narrated by Kim Basinger. 81 min. Soundtrack: English; archival footage; filmography; interviews; photo gallery. Also includes the bonus feature "Trouble in Texas" (1937), starring Hayworth and Tex Ritter.
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Hayworth's career began to wane. After making the movies Affair in Trinidad (1952), Salome (1953), and Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), she once again entered a marriage (1953-1955) that would prove to be unsuccessful as well as destructive. This fourth husband, the singer Dick Haymes, "beat her and tried to capitalize on her fame in an attempt to revive his own failing career," said Barbara Leaming, a Hayworth biographer, in People. While Hayworth came out of her temporary retirement after her divorce to make Fire Down Below (1957), which met with some positive reviews, she had only a supporting role in the film Pal Joey (1957). Failing to maintain her glamour, this movie was Hayworth's final appearance as a contracted actress.
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After about 1960, Hayworth suffered from extremely early onset of Alzheimer's disease, which was not diagnosed until 1980. She continued to act in films until the early 1970s and made a well-publicized 1971 appearance on The Carol Burnett Show. Both of her brothers died within a week of each other in March 1974, saddening her greatly, and causing her to drink even more heavily than before. In 1976 in London, Hayworth was removed from a flight during which she had an angry outburst while traveling with her agent, an event which attracted much negative publicity. In 1977, Rita Hayworth was the recipient of the National Screen Heritage Award (see photo). Lynda Carter starred in a 1983 biopic of her life.
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Hayworth's particular mystery can be seen on Nov. 24 in Blood and Sand (1941; and shown in a gorgeously colored nitrate print) and The Lady From Shanghai (1948). The former, with Hayworth as a Carmen character, is the tale of a bullfighter (Tyrone Power) having his manly essence sapped. Like shadows to a rainbow is then-husband Orson Welles' famed noir, set in Acapulco and San Francisco, not Shanghai. The much-imitated finale at dawn in San Francisco's sinister Playland by the Beach captures her in a maze of mirrors--perhaps Welles' typically grim comment on what is must have been like to be Rita Hayworth.
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In 1946 Rita was directed by her husband in "The Lady From Shanghai". By this time Orson Welles had established that he was his own worst enemy, and quite unable to resist antagonising people who could damage his career. Certainly Welles seems to have set out to infuriate Harry Cohn. (The marriage to Rita was already crumbling, and this may have influenced Welles.) First, Welles wrote a screenplay that is incomprehensible. Then he cast Rita as a murderous villainess. Not yet content, he demanded that Rita's hair be cut short and bleached white.
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Orson Welles