Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1942)

She married Edward Judson for a powerful reason. It's the same one that's causing their divorce BACK in the lazy early Thirties, when you could still do such things, I went one afternoon to the Inn at Caliente for late lunch. You could sit there in the patio, basking in the hot Baja California sun, sipping red wine and watching the small grey desert doves hopping about after crumbs; also sometimes the entertainers who lived and worked at the hotel would come in for a drink, looking quite ordinary and not at all like the glittering figures they would be after dark. I did not even recognize the Cansinos that day — The Dancing Cansinos, Eduardo and his daughter Marguerita — until a man at the next table pointed them out to his companion. "She's veiy young, but she has the figure already," he said. "You see, there by the fountain. Stay tonight and watch them. Someday she may be great, so the critics say. . . ." Just a few days ago, when I read that Rita Hayworth was divorcing her graying, oil-man husband, Edward Judson, the picture of Rita as she was that afternoon at Caliente flashed into my mind; a dark, Spanish-looking, overdressed girl with black hair growing close over the temples, a mouth too wide for beauty. Not a The Story of A Daring Fight for Freedom BY mhm PAHKER pretty girl, but exciting somehow. She had sat with her father, listening when he spoke, nodding, sometimes answering. But her eyes, eager and a little wistful, were more interested in the people around her. I remembered, too, the next time I had seen Marguerita Cansino, in 1940 when her new success had reached its first peak and everyone was saying, "Get a load of that Hayworth woman — she's out of this world." We were a group of photographers and writers, come to the Colonial house in Westwood that Eddie had just built for her. She was late, but Judson kept us amused until she came downstairs, finally. The last visible trace of Marguerita Cansino, the Caliente entertainer, was gone. Here was a stunning girl, wearing one of those expensively simple black dresses that seem to hide, while subtly revealing, the body beneath. Her skin, almost swarthy that other time, was golden now; her hair was auburn and it no longer grew over her temples — the line of her forehead was widened, changing the entire structure of her face. She went directly to Judson, like a child presenting herself for inspection. "All right?" she asked. He considered her for a moment, from head to foot. Then, smiling, he pointed at the jeweled clasp she had pinned at the low V of the dress. "That belongs over there," he told her, indicating where. She changed it immediately. "Now you are perfect," he added. "We can begin." The photographers reached for their equipment, and we began. WHEN Rita Hayworth said goodby to Ed Judson a few weeks ago she was taking, at long last, the final step on her pathway to freedom, a road she chose long ago. Eduardo Cansino, a Latin and a good Catholic, had reared his daughter in the oldest of Spanish traditions. He had provided her with a duenna so that she might never go about unaccompanied, unwatched. He had refused her permission, when she was through with childhood, to accept invitations from or make engagements with men, even boys of her own age. He had decided that she would be a dancer, had taught her to dance, and there it was. She married Ed Judson when she was seventeen, because she believed she loved him but also because, although he was more than twice as old as she, he offered a means of escape, JULY. 1942 27