Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1951)

Should Rita Change? (Continued, from page 46) as chauffeur, butler, bodyguard and what have you. Rita paid $112 a day for her bungalow, and spent most of the time sunbathing on the sun porch. Girls from the beauty salon gave her pedicures, manicures and hair-dos on the sun porch, not to interrupt her sun bathing. All her meals were served in the bungalow and Room Service reported her as “most gracious.” Then, just before Rita went back to Nevada, she leased lawyer David Tannenbaums’ three-acre estate on Alpine Drive — which cost her per month what the hotel had cost per week (with an option to buy). She hauled out of storage her silver, dishes, linens, books, records and favorite pieces of furniture. It looks as if Rita intends to stay a while — in spite of what she told a reporter in Nevada. Said Rita at that time, “Naturally, wherever I went with my husband I was constantly being interviewed, and that is why it’s good to be in Nevada away from all that. I like it so much, I intend to stay here after the divorce. I really do.” In Nevada Rita also told photographer Bob Landry, “I’m going back to work to care for myself and my family. I haven’t any overwhelming desire, really, to be an actress any more.” She made no bones about the fact that her bank balance was depressingly low. DURING her fabulous fling with Prince Aly Khan, thirty-two-year-old Rita became a well-publicized international figure. Just like Barbara Hutton and Doris Duke. Barbara blows her nose and it’s news. Doris eats a macaroon and it’s news. Just so with Rita; everything she did made the gossip columns, often the headlines. But there’s a difference! Barbara and Doris are “poor little rich girls”; Rita is a “poor little famed girl.” Barbara and Doris have had to care not a whit what the public thought of them. Whatever they may do will affect in no way their positions in society or their fantastic incomes. If the public reprimands them after a naughty escapade, all they have to do is shrug and say, “Drop dead.” Rita, on the other hand, is neither economically nor socially secure. Her father didn’t strike it rich. The money she worked hard for as a screen star has been spent. She has to care what the public thinks of her actions. All of which is why, at least until her divorce is final, Rita is doing no romancing of any kind. She, or her advisers, feel she might easily estrange her public. No one, apparently, is quite sure what the public reaction towards her is, after her international romance with her Moslem prince, their much publicized marriage, the equally publicized birth of Yasmine on December 28th, 1949, and their divorce less than two years later. Rita, who needs public favor now in order to insure that big, fat salary of $6,500 a week, figured out this equation fifteen years ago, about the time she was being promoted from B to A pictures. “I hate this glass-house treatment,” she said to an interviewer. “Makes you feel like a race horse in a paddock before the race. Everybody’s hoping you’re going to win.” And then she hastily added, “But it would be even worse if they didn’t care whether you won or not.” Naturally a number of the Hollywood eligibles called Rita when she arrived in Hollywood, among them Kirk Douglas. But she dated none of them. When someone asked her whom she was dating, she said, “I’m only dating married couples.” The reported Gilbert Roland dating, which was given so much space in the BE FASHION-WISE — ACCENT YOUR EYES PREFERRED BV LOVELY GIRLS THE WORLD OVER SHADOW • EYEBROW PENCIL • MASCARA This is the fragrance of incomparable freshness . . . that makes you seem younger, lovelier to be near, every day. Tweed Bouquet. Splash it on lavishly from head to toe. 3% oz., $1.25 Tweed Toilet Essence. New idea in fragrance . . . longer lasting than toilet water, less costly than perfume. 2 oz., $2.50 Tweed Perfume. Your favorite fragrance in its most lasting form. oz., $5.50 (all plus taxi & PARIS • LONDON • NEW YORK in the r 93