POST A PUP SUNDAYS
Post a Pup Sundays is here, so post anything pup related or a photo of your beloved fur baby. This week we focus on Rita Hayworth's life and her love for dogs.
Margarita Carmen Cansino was born in New York City on October 17th, 1918, and died in New York City on May 14th, 1987. To the world, she is better known as screen siren Rita Hayworth one of the biggest stars of Hollywood Classic Films. She was famous for her undeniable beauty, dancing ability, intense charisma, glamour, her husbands and lovers, and, later, bringing awareness to a forgotten disease called Alzheimer's.
Her father, Eduardo Cansino, a professional dancer, hailed from a town near Seville, Spain, and was of Romani descent. Her American mother, Volga Hayworth, had been in the Ziegfeld Follies, so becoming an entertainer and dancer was in her blood. Sadly, Rita did not have a happy childhood, and much of the tragedy that haunted her entire life stemmed from the trauma she experienced at the hands of her father, who had been a demanding abusive bully who had violated and traumatized her so terribly that she carried the pain throughout her tragic life. It defined her, and she could never escape her demons which caused her to make poor choices with the men she picked and her escape through alcoholism.
Initially, she was supposed to compete against Mexican actress Dolores Del Rio and play roles as an exotic beauty. Rita was marketed using her birth name Margarita and played in a string of B movies that didn't take off, but the studio and her first husband believed she had potential and decided there just weren't enough roles for dark ethnic types. They agreed that she get electrolysis to move her hairline higher and dye her hair her signature, deep copper. Thus Margarita became Rita Hayworth using her mother's maiden name as her own, and she started landing roles and getting noticed with her new All-American sensual looks and a name that wiped her Spanish heritage out of the picture. It wasn't long before she was a huge star making a long list of hit movies starring with the most sought after leading men of that era.
However, she didn't enjoy the studio system. She had made an enemy of the head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, who resented that she rebuffed his advances and never slept with him. They fought constantly, and she rebelled against his attempts to control her, but this did not stop him from promoting her career. All of her biggest films happened with Columbia, including the film that defined her image; Gilda. Fred Astaire may have starred in nearly a dozen movies with Ginger Rogers; when asked who his favorite dancing partner was, he named Rita. She was alluring and explosive, learned her steps quickly, and complimented his image because he was older and more reserved, and they played off of each other well. Freedom from Columbia came in 1957 after her last musical, Pal Joey, was released.
Underneath her bombshell image, she was shy, quiet, tormented, tragic, and self-destructive, going from toxic relationship to toxic relationship, choosing men who would mistreat her, perhaps resenting that she was not the pin-up girl they thought she was or worse, wanting Gilda not anticipating Rita was nothing like her bold, seductive image. Two quotes speak to how this made her feel. She said, "Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities." and "I naturally am very shy ... and I suffer from an inferiority complex." She married five times, most notably to Orson Welles, who she claimed was the love of her life, and Prince Aly Kahn, who had been her escape. She gave birth to a daughter during each marriage-Rebecca Welles and Yasmin Aga Kahn. Her lovers included Victor Mature, David Niven, Kirk Douglas, Howard Hughes, and several of her leading men, and she had a 40-year off-and-on affair with Glen Ford.
An area of life that is not immediately associated with Rita Hayworth is politics. Yet, she was a Democrat all her adult life, an active supporter of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, and an admirer of FDR. She was the Cultural Ambassador to Brazil in 1942 for the Roosevelt administration, and she did broadcasts to South America on the Cadena de las Américas network. Later in 1944, she campaigned for FDR, who was elected for a fourth term.
One of her great tragedies was her lifelong struggle with alcohol abuse. Because of this, no one noticed that she was deteriorating and had early-onset Alzheimer's; people thought it was her alcoholism that had ravaged her abilities. By the 1970s, she could longer remember her lines and had to feed her a line at a time since she couldn't recall anything longer. In one instance, she didn't even recognize her daughter Rebecca. Finally, in 1980 Rita was diagnosed, and her daughter Yasmin stepped up and cared for her until the disease took her life in New York City in 1987. Rita Hayworth had been only 68 years old she died.
Despite all that she suffered, Rita found comfort with the dogs that she had throughout her adult life. One of them that she was constantly photographed with was a cocker spaniel named Pookles. Pookles had been a gift from Orson Welles to keep her company while he was away making films. Rita adored her dog and can be seen in dozens of photos with the pup. She later had a Doberman named Francesco, another cocker spaniel, a German Sheperd, dachshunds, and others I can't find photos of.
*Cocker Spaniels are affectionate, open to small children and strangers, highly trainable, and likely to be right next to their owners, They were originally hunting dogs and still have those instincts, but this breed is not aggressive and likes the company of other dogs.
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