Rita Hayworth's life was never very easy, but she made the world a better place by brightening the lives of millions of people with her talents. Although she was one of the most stunningly beautiful redheads of all time, she wasn't just a pinup; she was a great actress and an amazing dancer.
Fred Astaire once said that Hayworth, not Ginger Rogers, was his favorite
dancing partner. He speculated that she was probably more professional
than he was. They only danced together in "You Were Never Lovelier" and
"You'll Never Get Rich."
Year Title Length Available 1935 Under the Pampas Moon 1:18 1935 Charlie Chan in Egypt 1:12 + 1935 Dante's Inferno 1:28 1935 Paddy O'Day 1:13 1936 Human Cargo 1:06 1936 Meet Nero Wolfe 1:13 1936 Rebellion 1:02 1937 Trouble in Texas 1:09 1937 Old Louisiana 1:00 1937 Hit the Saddle 1:01 + 1937 Criminals of the Air 1:01 1937 Girls Can Play 0:59 1937 Shadow 0:59 1937 Game that Kills 0:55 1937 Paid to Dance 0:56 1938 Who Killed Gail Preston? 1:01 1938 There's Always a Woman 1:21 1938 Convicted 0:58 1938 Juvenile Court 1:00 1938 Renegade Ranger 1:00 * 1938 Homicide Bureau 0:58 1939 Lone Wolf Spy Hunt 1:07 1939 Special Inspector 1:05 1939 Only Angels Have Wings 2:01 1939 Music in My Heart 1:10 1940 Blondie on a Budget 1:13 1940 Susan and God 1:57 1940 Lady in Question 1:17 1940 Angels over Broadway 1:18 * 1940 Strawberry Blonde 1:38 * 1941 Affectionately Yours 1:30 1941 Blood and Sand 2:03 1941 You'll Never Get Rich 1:28 * 1942 My Gal Sal 1:43 1942 Tales of Manhattan 1:59 1942 You Were Never Lovelier 1:37 * 1943 Show Business at War 0:17 * 1944 Cover Girl 1:47 1945 Tonight and Every Night 1:32 + 1946 Gilda 1:50 * 1947 Down to Earth 1:41 1948 Lady from Shanghai 1:21 * 1948 Loves of Carmen 1:39 1951 Champagne Safari 1:00 1952 Affair in Trinidad 1:38 1953 Salome 1:45 * 1953 Miss Sadie Thompson 1:31 * 1957 Fire Down Below 1:50 * 1957 Pal Joey 1:52 1958 Separate Tables 1:38 * 1959 They Came to Cordura 2:03 * 1960 Story on Page One 2:03 1962 Happy Thieves 1:28 1964 Circus World 2:18 * 1965 Love Goddesses 1:10 + 1966 Money Trap 1:31 1966 Poppy Is Also a Flower 1:40 1967 Rover (L'Avventuriero) 1:43 1971 Sons of Satan (I Bastardi) 1:42 1971 Road to Salina (Route de Salina) 1:36 * 1971 Naked Zoo 1:18 1972 Wrath of God 1:51
It's amazing how small she was, isn't it? You'd never know it from her films. When I went to Mann's Chinese Theater in Hollywood to see her handprints, I couldn't believe it. They couldn't have been more than about four inches long. Later that day, I found this publicity photo and saw how small she looked at the director's chair, even on tiptoes. Click on this thumbnail to see her hand and footprints in front of Mann's:You can click on any of the thumbnails below for more pictures of Rita. I found most of these during the Hollywood trip mentioned above. You can also check out my painting of Rita in the Flight Jacket Paintings department. Click on "Departments" below to go there. Check my home page, too. There are a few more pages accessible from there that aren't on the departments page.
This group of pictures was added 4-Jan-1996:
Will anyone ever surpass her wonderful smile? I don't think so.
Notes: All of these pictures were taken in the '40s, the color one where she's wearing the blue gown being the latest (probably about the time of her film "Down to Earth," 1947). The guy with her in a few of these is, of course, Fred Astaire. Although they appeared in only two movies together, "You Were Never Lovelier" and "You'll Never Get Rich," he once said Rita was his favorite dancing partner. The 11/10/41 Time magazine cover is a Petty painting. He's also famous for his Esquire paintings of the '30s. The baby in Rita's arms is Rebecca, her daughter with Orson Welles. That picture's from 1946.
One of my hobbies is painting flight jacket paintings, and I've done one of the upper left thumbnail above. Click on the following picture to visit the page of my flight jacket artwork:
Many folks ask where they can obtain posters of Rita Hayworth. Besides original movie posters (expensive at $150-500), like this one I got in a now-defunct shop in Atlanta a few years ago:
You can also find much more reasonably priced reprints of the original "Gilda" one-sheet:
One place you can look for a Gilda reprint for sale is http://www.us.imdb.com. If you do a search for the title Gilda and then pick the first match, one of the icons refers you to posters, and there's an e-mail address for the Nostalgia Factory in Boston, which can possibly help you find the reprint. You can also use http://www.altavista.digital.com and use this in the search field (with the quotation marks):
That will return many hits. I believe one of the first ones will be for a Gilda reprint for sale. To limit the number of hits returned, you might try adding something like +purchase onto the end to find pages that include all three phrases.
There are also some poster-sized prints of very nice airbrush paintings of Rita Hayworth by Philip Castle, a noted British magazine cover artist who also does aviation-related art. I have both of these:
These are only available in a signed, numbered series limited to 350 total prints, and are $179 each from Pacific Wave Publishing (near San Francisco). You can reach them at 415-389-WAVE or pacwavepublishing@yahoo.com. Pacific Wave also has these two Marlene Deitrich and Jane Russell prints:
