Rita Hayworth

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

 

  1. Carol Borland, Mark of the Vampire, 1934. Hayworth tested. So did Borland. And she seemed, well, easier with the star, Bela Lugosi. Of course, she did. She had worked  with his Draculaon stage. Just too shy to  mention it…
  2.  Barbara Stanwyck, A Message To Garcia, 1935.  Head Fox Darryl Zanuck chased Franco-Italian beauty Simone Simon  with a seven-year Fox contract (the first of his many French.. er.. discoveries. He then rushed her before the cameras work with only a smattering of English for her LA debut – as a Spanish girl!  She was swiftly replaced by Rita Cansino (later known as Rita Hayworth), then she was sidelined by Stanwyck.(Twenty-one years after SS, Allégretlaunched another French icon in Future vedettes  and En effeuillant la marguerite– BB. Brigitte Bardot). 
  3. Loretta Young, Ramono, 1936.    Fox production chief Winfield Sheehan found Margarita Cansino,  clipped  her  to Rita, nurtured her debut, Dante’s Inferno at age 16, and other tiny roles, preparing her for this biggie. But the big story here is that production was delayed  when  Loretta Young’s doctor  lied about her suffering stress  by making two 1934 films back to back.  Truth was Hollywood’s Goody Two Shoes (aka Atilla The Nun!) was pregnant after an affair with Clark Gable during Call of the Wlld. She took off to recuperate, said she fell in love with and adopted a baby girl she noticed in an orphanage on her travels. And everyone believed her! Well, maybe not Mrs. Gable. The daughter, Judy Lewis, revealed all in her 1994 book Uncommon Knowledge.
  4.  Margo, Lost Horizon, 1937. Frank Capra resisted Columbia tyrant Harry Cohn’s insistence that Rita play Maria.“King” Cohn gave her a hard  time, not for resisting his advances, but for having a pimpish husband, Eddie Judson – he offered her around.
  5. Doris Nolan, Holiday (UK: Free To Live/UnconventionalLinda),  1938.    By the time director George Cukor tested her as Katharine Hepburn’s snobby sister, Cansino was re-named Hayworth and in B movies and, by George, too inexperienced for the role, so let’s hear it for unknown Doris… for beating Hayworth (and Joan Bennett) to Hepburn’s chic sister. Two years later, Cukor called Rita back for Susan and God.
  6. Hedy Lamarr,Boom Town, 1939. After ten films  as Rita Cansino, the fiery Rita was changing her name – and her game. She tested for Karen Vanmeer. And Hayworth’s day would come within a year – dancing with Fred Astaire in You’ll Never Get Rich.
  7. Veronica Lake, I Wanted Wings, 1939. Paramount had siren Sally written for Hayworth, but Columbia would not play ball.The role was inappropriate! Susan Hayward, Patricia Morison and Lana Turner were chased until Constance Keane became Sally under her new name… Veronica Lake. The New York Times said she had “little more than a talent for wearing low-cut gowns.”  She sure got better.
  8. Mary Astor,The Maltese Falcon, 1940. Who didn’t want to be Brigid O’Shaugnessy: “I’ve been bad, worse than you could know.”  She was the film noir Scarlett O’Hara and three of the potential Scarlett women were in the mix: Joan Bennett, Paulette Goddard, Brenda Marshall. Also delighted at being seen were:  Hayworth, Ingrid Bergman, Olivia de Havilland,  Betty Field, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Janet Gaynor. The rest were livid about not being good enough for bad Brigid… and her just desserts. “If you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years,” Bogie’s Sam Spade tells her.  “I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.”
  9. Ruth Hussey, Our Wife, 1940. How a screen couple evolves…  Arthur and Cary Grant in 1938 became  Young and Grant in ’39,  Grant and Rita in ’40… finally, Hussey and Melvyn Douglas. Not the same chic at all.
  10.  Veronica Lake, I Wanted Wings, 1940.    Producer Arthur Hornblow could not obtain Hayworth for femme fataleSally. Instead, he was made miserable – like the entire unit – by Lake’s tardiness. She had to be ordered to stay put on-set, if not she went walkabout and  it took hours to find her.  Mitchell Leisen put himself through this again when re-directing  a Wingssequence  for an insert for Hold Back The Dawn, featuring three of his wingers: Lake, Brian Donlevy,  Richard Webb.

  11. Janet Blair,  Two Yanks in Trinidad, 1941.    The Yanks were Pat OBrien and Brian Donlevy,  two shady customers joining the Army on  the lam from the law and order folks. Blair (20) won the beauty in  the beasts’ sandwich from Hayworth (23) and Claire Trevor (31!).
  12. Hedy Lamarr, Tortilla Flat, 1941.    For the John Steinbeck creation of Dolores Emngracia “Sweets » Ramirez, MGM wanted to borrow Hayworth. The exact reponse from Columbia czar Harry Cohn would, as per usual, have been unprintable.While head Brother Jack Warner was perfectly willing  to loan John Garfield. Co-star Spencer Tracy was noticed forever slipping into Lamarr’s tailer.  Romance?  No, work. That is to say working on the boxes of chocolates he hid there  from eyes prying into his weight!
  13. Alexis Smith,  Gentleman Jim, 1941.      Not even Raoul Walsh could always get his own way…  He wanted the delightfully hammy Barry Fitzgerald as boxer Jim Corbett’s father,  Phil Silvers for fun,  plus Hayworth or Ann Sheridan for romance. Walsh made do with  Alan Hale, Jack Carson, Alexis Smith and  managed to keep  Errol Flynn as Corbett. 
  14. Virginia Dale, Holiday Inn, 1941.     He already had Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby, but director Mark Sandrich wanted the moon….  Hayworth and Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayyworth for their gals. Listen up, snarled the Paramount suits, Astaire and Crosby are pricey enough, OK?  (Fred actually worked two weeks for free, including 38 takesof his patriotic, post-Pearl Harbour  firecracker routine).
  15. Janet Blair, Two Yanks in Trinidad, 1941.     Rita and Claire Trevor were also seen for the nightclub chanteuse caught between Pat O’Brien and Brian Donlevy as two hoods turned US spies in the B thriller nonsense. Within seven years, Blair had quit movies. “Because I was always getting parts where I’d be the girl who says, ‘Oh, Red!’ in a Skelton movie.”
  16. Janet Blair, My Sister Eileen,  1942.      By now, Columbia chieftain Harry Cohn had superceded her father and husband  in controlling  her  fame – after the famous Bob Landry shot in Life, August 11 1941, made her a favourite GI’s pin-up,  second only to Betty Grable during WWII.
  17. Lucille Ball, Best Foot Forward, 1942.      When Columbia’s crude czar Harry Cohn couldn’t get Hayworth and Shirley Temple for a film of the Broadway hit, he let MGM buy him outfor $150,000.  Enter: Ball as herself – boosting her career by being a cadet’s senior prom date at the Winsocki Military Academy.
  18. Marlene Dietrich, Follow the Boys, 1943.  Almost everyone turned up for Universal’s morale-booaster for the GIs abroad and the folks back home: the Andrew Sisters, WC Fields, Jeanette MacDonald, George Raft… and Orson Welles doing his  magician stuff, aided  by his wife.. er, Rita was a no-show. No matter, he simply rang his pal, Marlene.
  19.  Laraine Day,Mr Lucky,1943.     Cary Grant wanted her for his first film after marrying Barbara Hutton. He contented himself by filling the script full of personal parallels  – including aspersions on his manhood.
  20.  Janet Blair, Once Upon A Time, 1943.   The pitch: A cash-strapped theatre producer promotes a nine-year-old lad’s… dancing caterpillar.  But onlv dances to “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby!”   Humphrey Bogart-Rita Hayworth stopped shooting it in January. Three days later, Brian Donlevy was tired of WWII films and swopped roles with Bogie here and in Sahara.Then, Rita simply refused to continue. Shooting stopped again, Cary Grant offered his services opposite Janet Blair in April. They all wished they hadn’t!
     
  21. Shirley Temple, Kiss And Tell, 1944.     Columbia spent two years negotiating for the rights to F Hugh Herbert’s play – for Hayworth. And then for Temple – loaned by David O Selznick, despite worries that the role  was too sexy for the ex-moppet. Poor old DOS…  She was sweet 16 at the time. And  wed her first husband, John Agar, a month before the 1945 premiere!
  22.  Gene Tierney,Leave Her To Heaven, 1945.      First, Tallulah Bankhead, then Hayworth flatly refused the trashy John M Stahl melo. With yet another of Hollywood’s Shakesperian titles (Hamlet).  New York Times critic Bosley Crowther  called  “Miss Tierney’s petulant performance of this vixenish character… about as analytical as a piece of pin-up poster art.”
  23.  Lizabeth Scott, Dead Reckoning, 1946.    Hubby comes first… Bogart’s mysterious chanteuse  Dusty Chandler was supposed to be Hayworth.  Except  hubby Oson Welles had other plans. Such as  directing and co-starring with her inThe Lady From Shanghai.  PS Reckoningwas better.
  24. Betty Grable,When My Baby Smiles at Me, 1947.    In 1944, Columbia bought re-tread rights to Paramount’s 1937 Burlesqueas the 1944 producer debut of Al Jolson, himself. Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nuttin’ yet –  for Al, the one, the only star, was Hayworth. Apparently, she said: Make it not so.  

  25. Hedy Lamarr, Samson and Delilah, 1948.  
    Cinemperor Cecil B DeMille’s 1935 plan had been had Henry Wilcoxon with Joan Crawford, Larraine Day, Dolores Del Rio, Paulette Goddard, Jane Greer or Miriam Hopkins.   Next in line, producer David O Selznick envisaged Kirk Douglas and Marlene Dietrich… By ’48, CB got serious.  He sought a mix of Vivien Leigh, Jean Simmons and “a generous touch of Lana Turner” from among… Jeanne Crain, Linda Darnell, Rhonda Fleming (the Queen of Babylon, 1954), Ava Gardner, Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver!!), Susan Hayward (1951’s Bathsheba), Rita Hayworth (the future Salome), Jennifer Jones (St Bernadette in 1943), Patricia Neal, Maureen O’Hara, Nancy Olson (too demure), Jean Peters, Ruth Roman, Gail Russell, Ann Sheridan, Gene Tierney… even such surprises as comical LucIlle Ball (!) and song ‘n’ dancer Betty Hutton.  Plus the Dominican Maria Montez (perfect!), Italian Alida Valli and two Swedes: Viveca Lindfors and Marta Toren.  But CB had already fancied Lamarr for his unmade epic about the Jewish queen Esther (played by Joan Collins in 1960).  Here’s a Samson review signed Groucho Marx: “No picture can hold my interest where the leading man’s bust is larger than the leading lady’s!”

  26.  Paulette Goddard, Anna Lucasta, 1949.  Variety said, as only Variety could, it was “no bowl of wheaties for the kiddies.” Future movie scenarist and producer Philip Yordan wrote his play about a Polish family in 1936 – and could never get it produced until it staged by the American Negro Theater in the basement of the 135th St. Library in Harlem with an a Black cast.. Five years on, the family becam4 Polish again  with  Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward and Rita Hayworth battling for the teenage  Anna – won by Godard at 39… She  had played her in the first white family version in Paris.   Eartha Kitt headed the Black movie in 1958 opposite Sammy Davis Jr.’s first  Dramatic role. Both stars had helped finance e the production. 

  27. Judy Holliday,  Born  Yesterday,  1950.  
    Columbia’s crude chief Harry Cohn spent the first $1m for a play – written for Jean Arthur – as a Rita Hayworth vehicle.  As she swanned around  Europe with the Aly Khan,  Cohn preferred Arthur, Alice  Faye, Paulette Goddard, Gloria Grahame, Celeste Holm, Evelyn Keyes, Marie McDonald, Marilyn Monroe, Jan Sterling, Lana Turner  – anyone other than  “the fat Jewish broad,”  the understudy who had made the play a hit. Katharine Hepburn waged a campaign to change Cohn’s mind, by virtually turning Judy’s support role in Tracy and Hepburn’s Adam’s Ribinto the most elaborate screen test. An act of generosity unsurpassed in  Hollywood history.   Cohn gave in, gracefully. “Well, I’ve worked with fat assess before!” He paid a meagre $4,500 to the actress who   did the impossible – and wrested Oscar from Bette Davis in All About Eveand Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvdon March 29, 1951 Judy also won  Kate for a lover – Hepburn’s final lesbian affair at a mere 43.

  28. Deborah Kerr,From Here To Eternity,1953. 
  29. Gloria Grahame, Human Desire, 1954.    After Marlon Brando refused – angrily – director Fritz Lang tried to re-unite Gilda’s Rita and Glenn Ford. Except, please Mr Harry Cohn, she had just married the third of her four husbands, singer Dick Haymes… Mr Cohn was not best pleased! Then again,  this was no classic like the original:  French realisateur Jean Renoir’s La bête humaine, 1938. So, Lang re-united Ford and Grahame from his own Big Heat, 1947. Brando was still right: crap!
  30.  Ava Gardner, The Barefoot Contessa,1954.      Refused to play, in essence, herself. Maria Vargas was based on Rita, Anne Chevalier, Linda Darnell, andAva’s 1951 Pandora  Reynolds.  Ava thought it was all her and certainly followed it in her life-style.

  31.  Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sang et lumières, France-Spain, 1954.     Prodigious dialoguist-turned-auteur Michel Audiard (129 scripts in 36 years) suggested Rita but Zsa Zsa was cheaper and handy, while cashing in on her Moulin Roguetriumph. She had, in fact, been in his previous comedy, L’ennemi public n° 1, with Fernandel. “She came with all the caprices of a Hollywood star,” recalled  co-star Daniel Gélin, who had also been hoping for Rita. “And she spoke Michel’s dialogue like  [the French-dubbed] Stan Laurel.”
  32.  Elizabeth Taylor, Giant,1955.
  33.  Marlene Dietrich, Witness For The Prosecution, 1956.    As if he didn’t have enough  trouble settling upon his hero (Kirk Douglas, Gene Kelly, Jack Lemmon, etc), Billy Wilder considered both Rita  and Ava Gardner  for the titular Christine Vole.  Their Cockneyspeak would have  been no less horrendous than Marlene’s.
  34.  Kim Novak, Pal Joey, 1957.    After Columbia tyrant “King” Cohn  saw the success of the Gene Kelly-Rita Hayworth team in the Cover Girl musical, 1944, they were promised Joey. Sadly, it took another 15 years to make the film by which time Kelly (whose initial breakthrough was in the original 1940 Broadway show) was bound to MGM. Hayworth was now given  the older woman, with “the new Rita” as the younger.
  35.  Dorothy  Dandridge,  Porgy and Bess, 1959.    Columbia’s hated  czar, Harry Cohn, wanted  – incredibly – to do it in black-face.  With Fred  Astaire as  Sportin’  Life opposite Al Jolson’s Porgy and Rita Hayworth’s Bess!  Said the Gershwin brothers:  “Get outa here!”  Columbia gave up and sold its rights to Fox which, correctly, wanted Lena Horne and then sold it all to be Samuel Goldwyn’s final production…with Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davos Jr. Perfect!
  36.  Belinda Lee, The Story of Joseph and His Brethern, 1960.     “Bigger than  Salome!” It was Harry Cohn’s biggest dream and greatest grief (made two years after his funeral). Rita Hayworth fled when he would not cast her thirdhusband, singer Dick Haymes, as Joseph. (Although not a US citizen, Haymes was disliked in Hollywood for avoiding WWII service).  Her lawyers said not starting in March 1955 breached her two-film contract and asked for $250,000.  Cohn was furious.  “When you came here, you were a nothing, a nobody. All you had were those two big things and Harry Cohn,” he berated her  in his usual affable mode. “Now you just got those those two big things.” And, frankly, Cohn   wanted to milk them some while she was on the right side of 40.
  37. Geraldine Page, Sweet Bird of Youth, 1961.  Scripter-director Richard Brooks wanted Garbo and no one else as the Hollywood hasbeen  Alexandra Del Lago  – think Norma Desmond with a star with a Tennessee Williams spin – Alexandra Del Lago spin. She did not agree, of course. Brooks tried Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth,  Lana Turner, plus Greek Melina Mercouri and  Austrian Maria Schell – before realising no one  could match Geraldine Page from the 1959 Broadway play – which also featured her husband, Rip Torn. Their Big Apple postbox was marked Torn Page!
  38. Anne Baxter, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (UK: Summer of the 17th Doll; US: Season of Passion), Australia-UK-US, 1961.   According to Tony Harrison’s Australian Film & TV Companion,Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth andJames Cagney were supposed to head the screen version of Australian Ray Lawler’s play. Instead, it was Ernest Borgnine and John Mills as the sugarcane-cutters spending their annual five month Sydney vacation with their mistresses: Anne Baxter and Angela Lansbury.Rita and Burt didn’t work in his company’s Seperate Tables,either. She was wed to his business partner, James Hill, at the time.
  39. Angela Lansbury, Harlow, 1965.    Joan Fontaine, Rita Hayworth (!), Patricia Neal and Shelley Winters – they all fled from playing Jean Harlow’s mother in one of the trashiest Hollywood biopix ever made.  The only true elements in this one were the names of Harlow, her second husband, her mother, stepfather and agent (who’d helped write the Irving Schulman book). The rest was 250% bullshit. Marilyn Monroe threw up when reading a previously rotten Fox version. “I hope they don’t do that  to me  after I’ve  gone.”  They  did.  With equally dumb tele-movie caricatures to equal those of the not one but eventually two Harlow horrors. Ginger Rogers’ final role was as the mother (refused by Judy Garand and Eleanor Parker) in the rival production – no better.
  40. Eleanor Parker, The Oscar, 1966.    As the talent scout who discovers  Stephen Boyd – an  upstart on his uppers – opposite (at the time) Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Jean Seberg.

  41. Anne Bancroft, The Graduate,1967.     
  42. Vanessa Redgrave, Isadora, 1968.     By 1955, Rita was back in  Europe, squired  by Egyptian-born Paris producer Raymond Hakim.  His Isadora Duncan biopic  (not  a bad idea, except Rita was  a better dancer –  “remarkable,” said Astaire)  was side-swiped by Harry Cohn’s  New York litigation against her  for quitting Joseph  under  the orders of husband Dick Haymes.  
  43.  Debbie Reynolds, What’s the Matter with Helen? 1970.      Tragically, the great Rita was in the  first  stages of Alzheimer’s.  Reynolds jumped at the horror role – turned down by the great Joanne Woodward! – and even put $800,000 into the pot as (uncredited) co-producer.  
  44.  Sylvia Miles,Heat, 1972.      Andy Warhol had this thing about old-timers. He talked, lengthily, with Rita about making what is the nearest thing to a film emanating from The Factory – his version of Sunset Blvd. Warhol told screenwriter John Howell to keep Rita in mind.  Director George  Cukor warned her off it – far too much nude sex between the ageing screen queen and gigolo Joe Dallesaandro. “I createdher,” said Sylvia. “I had a history, evil ex-husbands, and a rotten daughter… There was no script. I wrote every line I said, making it up as I went along, which is what life is, behaviour is. Most good actors can’t really do that… behaving.”
  45.  Kim Novak, Tales That Witness Madness, 1973.       As proved on her last film,  Wrath of God, Hayworth was ill – the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease (undiagnosed for some 20 years!). This  then was the only time that Harry Cohn’s Rita  Mk  II stood in for Mk I, 15 years after Cohn’s death, 19 years after he yelled “Get me another blonde who can be a star” and started grooming “that fat Polack.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Birth year: 1918Death year: 1987Other name: Casting Calls:  45