a sinister-looking kid
Rita Hayworth in You’ll Never Get Rich (1941)
Rita Hayworth on the set of The Lady in Question (1940)
Orson Welles & Rita Hayworth
Happy 94th Birthday, Rita Hayworth
(October 17, 1918 - May 14, 1987)
“She just threw herself into things, and when you see the abandon with which she would dance, all you know is you want to watch her. And you’ll watch her in almost anything - you’d watch her wearing a paper bag. You’d rewind and watch it again, and rewind and watch it again.”
-Nicole Kidman
Fred Astaire & Rita Hayworth in You Were Never Lovelier, 1942.
During the filming of Gilda, Harry Cohn, who was obsessed with Rita Hayworth and endlessly lusted after her, began to suspect that something was up between his two stars; a situation that made him very agitated. Cohn learned that Glenn and Rita did not go home after work but hid out together in Rita’s dressing room until later in the evening. One day the studio boss summoned Glenn to his office to talk about it.
Glenn described their meeting:
I went to see him. He was very unpleasant. He demanded to know what Rita and I were up to — he knew exactly how long we were in the dressing room together. When I told him we were rehearsing and just having a couple of drinks at the end of the day, he snorted that he wasn’t going to keep the studio open all night anymore, and we were to go right home after work.
The situation became ridiculous. We found out that Harry had planted listening devices in the dressing rooms. We were both furious. But then we decided to play a joke on Harry. Just for Cohn’s microphones we acted out a scene like we could never have gotten away with in the movie. I’d start groaning, “Oh Rita…come on, baby, give it to me!” And Rita would moan back, “Oh, Glenn, that’s great…yes, yes!!” Rita would repeat the refrain from the song “Amado Mio” from the film, “Love me forever and let forever begin tonight.”
Harry never picked up on our mischief. Sometimes we’d have to rush out of the dressing room because we were laughing so hard and didn’t want the microphones to pick it up.
