Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1958)

THE LOVE GODDESS Continued from page 40 did marry: “All that she ever wanted to do was slip into something comfortable and stay around the fireside. Excitement? She was just a homebody.” Dick Haymes, the man she shouldn’t have married: “I don’t know what I’ll do without Rita. She’s wonderful. I can’t go on without her. I’m in love with her. A man is only in love once. If she divorces me, I don’t know what I’ll do!” But few could be certain that they know her today. The Rita Hayworth who has added still another man to the list of those who have, in succession, always been at her side to mould, shape and guide her: James Hill, forty-one, brilliant, ruggedly handsome producer, partner in the independent film company of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, and the boss of her new film, “Separate Tables.” Their courtship was totally different from Rita’s past romances. There was none of the hoopla, none of the headlines, until news of their marriage plans leaked out. Then Hill, for whom it is a first marriage, was “surprised and distressed.” He and Rita had hoped to make all the wedding arrangements before breaking the news. They wanted a dignified wedding, “one which my parents can attend,” Hill explained. And James Hill is quite unlike the other men in her life. If he lacks the glamour and excitement of Orson Welles, Aly Khan and Dick Haymes, he has something much more important — stability and maturity. Those who felt that Rita was always too easily swayed by surface charm were surprised at her wise choice. They should not have been. For Rita Hayworth has come a long, long way. The disappointment of her father lies 39 years behind her now. The tears of Dick Haymes and the charm, passion, and arrogance of Aly Khan lie behind her, too. They share the same half-forgotten past with a four-year-old girl’s Spanish blouse damp and wilted from long hours of learning to dance in the bedroom of a Brooklyn apartment; with castanets flashing from the stages of endless theaters; with four marriages that cost her $100,000 and left her broke but not broken; with night on the Mediterranean and champagne for breakfast in Africa and twenty-four hours locked in a New York hotel room because two deputy sheriffs were waiting for her husband in the corridor outside. She returned to Hollywood, to live in a quiet house on a quiet California street with her two daughters — thirteen-year-old Rebecca Welles and eight-year-old Yasmin Khan, fortieth generation descendant in a straight line from the Prophet Mohammed. She seldom entertained. Her dates with Jim Hill were frequent but decorous, and they attracted little notice. She owned no yacht. No turtles with lighted candles on their backs swam in her pool. No champagne was drunk from satin slippers in her living room. At home, she indulged her natural tendency towards blue jeans, chewing gum and putting her feet up on the coffee table. Today when she is shown newspapers with the name of “Marilyn Monroe” or “Jayne Mansfield” strewn across the front page, there is no jealousy in her voice as she says, “Marilyn and Jayne can have the headlines. I’ve had enough! From now on the only headlines I want are on my acting.” In the past year she has made two movies, “Fire Down Below” with Robert Mitchum, and “Pal Joey” with Frank Sinatra. Five years of almost total absence from the screen have added an inch or two to her waistline, but they have not tarnished the copper of her hair or extinguished the steaming promise of her eyes and mouth which led 100,000 GI’s to carry her picture across the battlefields of World War II. Perhaps it was one of those GI’s who gave the most definite definition of Rita Hayworth: Sitting in the mud of a clearing hacked by machetes out of the Philippine jungle and watching “Cover Girl” on a rain-coated movie screen, he drawled, “Ah’m tellin’ you, son, that Rita Hayworth, she shore is all woman!” Many men have felt that way about Rita Hayworth. They seem to sense that — like the essence of woman — she has always chosen to let her heart rather than her head rule her life. Her choices have often been unwise. She decided to marry Dick Haymes (“Partly because he needed her,” says a friend) after she knew much of the trouble that he was in with creditors and the United States Government. She lost $5,000 a week in salary sticking defiantly to him until his problems were settled. It was only then — after he was out of trouble — that she left him. From almost the day of her birth, men have dominated Rita Hayworth’s life. They have taught her how to dance and what books to read and changed the color of her hair and selected her clothes. They have taught her how to walk and how to talk and how to give parties for an exKing of England. P 74e 'Sarwe Big Success Story of the Year What Makes a Happy Marriage? By MARJORIE LORD PCcu DAVID and RICK NELSON DODY GOODMAN TAB HUNTER • JERIL DEANE Says one friend who has known Ritj for nearly all of the twenty years sh< has been in Hollywood, “Rita has alway: been like an empty wine glass waiting tc be filled or a violin on which anyone whc came by could play a melody. She hac no real ambition or inner drive to be ar actress. If the men in her life had nol moulded and pushed her, she wouldn’t b< where she is today.” And — even today — Rita Hayworth i: occasionally a little uneasy about th« place where she does find herself. Al least, she says a trifle wistfully, “What I’d really like to be is a painter and not have to be sold as sex or always remember tc keep my stomach tucked in. But I guess that will never be . . .” It never has been. Starting with her father, men have purposely worked to turn Margarita Carmen Cansino into the girl who became known as the Love Goddess, a symbol of sex and glamour for four of the seven continents. For generations Eduardo Cansino’s Spanish ancestors had been dancers. Since he was burdened with a daughter, he could at least make her into a dancer to be proud of. The lessons began when Margarita was four years old. Except for a desire to be an explorer so that she could travel the world that lay outside) Brooklyn, Rita remembers little else about childhood. “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse,” she says. “That was my girlhood.” Dancing was hard work, and she did not like it much “but I didn’t have the courage to tell my father, so I began taking the lessons.” She became a mod erately good dancer — then a good one. By the time she was fourteen, she was good enough to join the family act. In stead of finishing high school, she clicked her castanets and tossed her jet black, tightly curled hair across a dozen stages. Eduardo Cansino paid little attention until the day he looked up and “All of a sudden I wake up. Wow! She has a figure! She ain’t no baby any more.” He took her to the casino at Agua Caliente for a four-week solo engagement. The casino kept her for two years. From there, her father brought her to Hollywood for dancing specialties in two or three movies. She followed obediently. But this was as far as her father was able to propel her. And there — on the fringes of Hollywood — she might have stayed if she had not met Edward Judson. Margarita Cansino was seventeen years old when Ed Judson telephoned her one day and told her he had seen one of the movies in which she had danced and asked for a date. Margarita had danced for hundreds of men, but she had never gone on an unchaperoned date in her life. “I’m sorry, but I don’t go out with men my father hasn’t met.” Judson called again. This time he asked to speak to Eduardo Cansino. He asked politely if he might spend the evening with Cansino and his wife. Judson was forty years old — 'tall, thin, and sophisticated. All of the Cansinos were overcome by his sophistication and style. At that time he was a salesman for foreign cars. The foreign cars weren’t selling well, but Judson was still a born promoter and salesman. He married Margarita and promoted her to Hollywood stardom. Like all of the men in Rita’s life, he began by changing her and teaching her. The first changes were external ones. The black hair was turned red and sent cascading across her shoulders. Her hairline was altered. The Spanish name was dropped and the dancing shoes neatly placed in the bedroom closet. They were not to be taken out again until she had made a name for herself as a badish-good I 76 all in the February TV RADIO MIRROR at all newsstands