When Margarita Cansino entered the world on October 17, 1918, her father wasn’t happy. “I was terribly disappointed,” said dancer Eduardo Cansino. “I had wanted a boy. What could I do with a girl?”
As Rita Hayworth, she would become a favorite pinup of soldiers during World War II and one of the most popular actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age, with films including Cover Girl, My Gal Sal and Gilda. To get there, she endured a tragic childhood and the grooming of several unscrupulous men. “It’s easy to say that she was a victim,” Adrienne McLean, author of Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom, exclusively tells Closer. “But she had a lot more strength than we like to think she had.”
She needed it. Eduardo, who had immigrated to the United States from Spain to make his fortune, enrolled his daughter in dance classes at age 3. “As soon as I could stand on my own feet, I was given dance lessons,” said Rita, whose mother, Volga Hayworth, had been a Ziegfeld Follies performer. Before long, Rita was dancing onstage with her parents. Though she had two younger brothers, it was a lonely life. “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse,” Rita said. “That was my girlhood.”
Eduardo moved their family from New York to California in 1927. Although Fred Astaire admired his dancing, Eduardo would never become a film star due to his accented English. He pulled Rita out of school when she was 12 to dance with him on the gambling boats of California and at Tijuana’s casinos. With her hair dyed black and makeup to make her appear older, Eduardo passed Rita off as his wife.
“After Eduardo had drunk and gambled away their earnings, he would send her out to catch fish for dinner,” wrote Barbara Leaming in the biography If This Was Happiness. “If she returned empty-handed, he punished her with his fists.”
Several biographers have also said that her father was sexually abusive to Rita. “There were plenty of signs that it was a creepy relationship,” says McLean.
Rita Hayworth: Becoming a Goddess
In 1935, a Fox producer saw Rita performing at the Caliente Club in Tijuana and offered her a role as a Spanish dancer in Under the Pampas Moon. She followed it with small parts in other films that accentuated her exotic appearance: Charlie Chan in Egypt and Dante’s Inferno.
Two years later, she eloped with Edward Judson, a promoter 22 years her senior, who promised to make her a star. “I married him for love, but he married me for an investment,” Rita said. “For five years he treated me as if I had no mind or soul of my own.”
Under Judson’s tutelage, she adopted her mother’s surname, had her hairline lifted by electrolysis, her teeth capped and her tresses dyed auburn. “He was a car salesman, so he was a sort of hustler, but he knew how to make products,” says McLean. “He helped her become visually Americanized, and that does make a difference for her.”
Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia Pictures, signed Rita to a contract and pressured the director of 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings to put Rita in the film starring Cary Grant. In return, Cohn expected Rita to show her appreciation. Judson was in favor of the affair — but Rita refused. “I’m never afraid of anybody, not even Harry Cohn,” she said. “Why should I be afraid of him? I made a lot of money for him.”
Cohn, who wasn’t used to taking no for an answer, became so obsessed with Rita that he hid microphones in her dressing room on the lot. “She and Glenn Ford would hang out, knowing it was bugged and make noises and say things they knew would make Harry Cohn’s head explode,” says McLean. “In many ways, she was Cohn’s ideal. The woman he could never have.”
As Rita’s star began to rise, so did her confidence. In 1940, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine. A photo from the article of Rita kneeling on a bed in a nightgown would become one of the most widely distributed pinups of all time. A year later, she starred opposite Fred Astaire in the musical You’ll Never Get Rich — and a star was born.
“She learned steps faster than anyone I’d ever known,” Fred gushed. “I’d show her a routine before lunch. She’d be back right after lunch and have it down to perfection.”
By 1942, Rita had become the toast of Tinseltown, making a sizable $6,500 a week. She finally felt brave enough to leave Judson, who made physical threats to hurt or disfigure her whenever he felt she’d stepped out of line. “She never had any role models, so she didn’t have any idea what a good marriage should be,” says McLean.
Rita freed herself by paying Judson $30,000 to sign the divorce papers. The deal left her virtually penniless, but the peak years of her career were yet to come. “As she got older, she got a little more guts,” her friend Roz Rogers said. “Underneath she grew. She got stronger and stronger and was able to survive.”
