Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

newcomer, Joseph M. Schenck, who for ten years produced her pictures and made her a star. “Daddy,” she called him and to “Daddy” she confided the ambition of her life. “I want to succeed!” she told the dependable Mr. Schenck one night, strolling along under the pepper trees. “I want to get to the top because I want luxury.” Within a couple of years she had luxury, she was collecting emeralds and diamonds like a child turned loose in a candy shop. From DuBarry to Camille, Norma played the great heroines, pitting herself against the world for love. Norma once said. “Our constant association with romance on the screen makes love a part of our lives. We need it and the companionship that goes with it. Love is a different thing with us than it is with most people.” When she said that, she had been married to Schenck almost ten years, they were still called “Hollywood’s ideal couple.” But he was too involved in business to always give her the companionship she craved. More and more, Norma was seen with Gilbert Roland, whom she had picked from the extra ranks in 1925 to play Armand to her Camille. Roland was her constant escort, they traveled together to Europe and to Honolulu — but when Norma finally divorced Schenck it was to marry George Jessel. At that point she retired from the screen and prepared to enjoy life. During their five-year tempestuous marriage, Georgie made six transcontinental trips to win Norma back after temporary estrangements, finally lost her in divorce. (Norma joined her sisters, who had also been teenage actresses, in the divorce court. Natalie had just divorced Buster Keaton and Constance had just divorced Townsend Netcher, her third.) Wed for love— finally In 1946 Norma married a man whom she loved and respected — Dr. Carvel James, a navy surgeon and war hero. She had been his patient and then his lab assistant, before the war. For him she retired from the screen, still a very beautiful woman, and at last knew a woman’s life. Mary Pickford, also retired from the screen, found her life finally with Buddy Rogers. Joan Crawford, after thirteen years alone, found hers briefly with executive Alfred Steele until his death. Liz Taylor knew a woman’s life briefly with Mike Todd and has been unhappily seeking such a life ever since his death. Jean Simmons seems to have found hers with Dick Brooks. They were luckier than Rita Hayworth, who also married early and put her career in the hands of an older man. Rita had been dancing with her family from the age of six. By the time she was sixteen, the dark, chubby, beautiful senorita was rattling her castanets and stamping her flirtatious feet as dancing partner to her handsome dad, Eduardo Cansino, in the floor show at the Caliente Club, where he hoped she’d be seen by film executives. She was. Winfield Sheehan of the old Fox Film Company saw The Cansinos and offered her a film test. During that first year in Hollywood, Rita bicycled four inches off her hips, studied dramatics, practiced dancing with her father, appeared P in six pictures — and dated no one. Shy, quiet, unambitious, she probably would never have made it save that her father took her by the hand to the studio every morning. “People said I was too strict, I should allow her more contact with men or she’d rebel,” Eduardo Cansino once said. “But she seemed quite content.” Then one night Edward Judson, a suave, balding auto salesman as old as her father, phoned to say he’d seen her on the screen and could he take her to dinner? Within ten minutes he was at the house, chatting with her mother and father, and he did indeed take Rita to dine. During that first evening he convinced her that she could become a good actress. “It was warm, pleasant oil he poured in my ears,” she said. Edward Judson became her business manager, he selected her wardrobe, dyed her hair red. got her parts, demanded high salaries and “convinced me I was helpless without him.” The girl who had been fiery and provocative on screen from the first, now found herself married to a man who regarded her “only as an investment.” Six years later Rita Hayworth began to chafe under the protection she'd longed for. She divorced Judson, rebelled against parental and marital sheltering and set out to become the gayest, dancingest girl in town— just as she was on screen. With Victor Mature she closed Ciro’s and the Mocambo. She dated Steve Crane and Tony Martin, David Niven, Howard Hughes and Orson Welles. To criticism she retorted boldly, “In Spain where my father comes from and in Mexico where I’ve lived, a girl’s worth is judged by the number of her suitors.” She announced her engagement to Vic Mature, but Vic went into the Merchant Marine and Orson Welles snatched her from her brief fling (less than a year) of freedom. Characteristic of the poor little love goddesses seems to be a total inability to judge their lovers or the potential of happiness with those lovers. Rita adored Orson Welles, he was her mentor, but she couldn't have weighed her chances for happiness with a man whose talent amounted to genius and who gave himself heart and soul to his own creativity. He only worked, he never played, he stayed up all night writing. The love goddess divorced him in 1947. shortly after “Gilda" was released and Rita became the most publicized girl in the world, the darling “ You want to know why Vm late — OK — / stopped at the Waldorf to have cocktails with Jackie Kennedy .” of the GI’s. She went to Cannes, hoping to see Orson and instead met Aly Khan, the gay charmer, the cultured prince. Not long after, she phoned her father. “Daddy, come over,” she said. “I want you to meet somebody.” (It was a message reminiscent of the telegram Lana sent her mother the night she was married to Artie Shaw. “I’m married, honey. Love, Lana.” In neither case did the nymph mention to whom.) Rita was “Baby Darling” Had Rita studied the script she might have found flaws in her Prince Charming. He had, to begin with, an obligation to an empire. He also had a great flair for living, an unbelievable charm and energy galore. He drove his motor cars at a hundred kilos an hour, sometimes with his feet rather than his hands on the wheel. (When he died, it was at the wheel of a fast car.) Lovely women he found irresistible — even when he was married to Rita, said the rumors. Katherine Dunham, for example; Heidi Beer, wife of a European band leader, for example; Nancy Masseroni, of Boston society, for example. Rita herself really had no taste for the lavish life and not for a moment was she equipped to handle her husband’s Chateau de l’Horizon as her mother-in-law. the Begum, handled the Aga’s household. “I will order, Baby Darling,” Aly always said. There was no question that “Baby Darling” loved her prince, but she did not love his life, and a life is different from a movie script. It goes on and on and on. And one pattern marks the lives of all these onceteenage love symbols. Can you imagine them on screen without a man in the picture? Well, they can’t imagine themselves off screen without him, either. They must have a man, must find a marriage, they've never developed the muscles for standing on their own feet or quietly pausing to get their life back in focus. Natalie Wood jumped from Bob Wagner to Warren Beatty. Liz went from Todd to Fisher to Burton. Frantic for security, needing to be needed, dependent on the aphrodisiac they tasted too soon and found sweet — they throw themselves from one romance to the next. Rita turned her back on her royal life and her royal prince and threw herself into blue jeans and slightly uncombed marriage to singer Dick Haymes. Haymes was broke and living in a lakeside cabin in Nevada. How Rita could have seen strength in him is a mystery. He was probably the most harassed man in the world at that point, he was being sued by numerous plaintiffs on financial matters, was fighting deportation to Argentina on charges of avoiding military duty, being sued for back income tax and bickering over his divorce from Nora Eddington. Perhaps little Rita felt that they were both victims of society, for she was fighting Aly over Yasmin’s custody and Yasmin’s financial settlement, there were rows with the studio and a charge of child neglect. But she clung to Dick for a miserable couple of years until she couldn't stand it anymore. After Haymes, producer Jim Hill. After her divorce from Hill, Gary Merrill. With Gary she has trotted barefoot and carefree, or bitterly bickering, around the world. One of the most beautiful women