Margarita Cansino to Rita Hayworth By

Margarita Cansino to Rita Hayworth A Comparison with Dolores Del Rio By: Urmi Chatterjee Final Paper “I loved the movies of Dolores Del Rio and also Lupe Velez. I didn’t fantasize that I would ever become a star like them, but I also didn’t think that I couldn’t make it with the name I was born with.” This quotation from Rita Hayworth, originally from a 1960’s interview with her for a Spanish magazine called Cinemundo that had interviewed Hayworth in the 1960’s is quoted in an article1 written by Adrienne McLean, who has done an extensive amount of research on Hayworth’s life, particularly the meaning of her star image at Columbia Pictures. What is incredibly revealing, and yet poignant, about this quote by Hayworth is that it sums up her life in an industry where she, a completely ordinary woman, was pushed and shoved to, not abandon, but manipulate a large part of her physicality and cultural identity in order to transform herself into an image that was lusted after by her audience and those who were closest to her. The women she mentioned in this quote, Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez, were actresses with different ethnic and racial backgrounds as well. In fact, Hayworth was constantly compared to Del Rio; at the early stages of her career at Fox, when she was given the opportunity to star in the remake of Ramona, which was Del Rio’s most famous character, it was expected that she 1 McLean, Adrienne. ""I'm a Cansino" Transformation, Ethnicity, and Authenticity in the Construction of Rita Hayworth American Love Goddess." Journal of Film and Video, October 1992, 8. 1 would follow in the actress’ sultry footsteps. What is most poignant about this quote is the fact that while Hayworth did proceed to become one of the most famous icons, far more so than that those she idolized, like Del Rio, that defined terms like sultry. However, the “Love Goddess”, unlike Del Rio and Velez, lost her name in the process. There are several scholars and academics who have already covered almost every aspect there is to Rita Hayworth’s name and image that made her the Love Goddess, McLean being in the forefront with some of the most thorough studies on her exoticness as a dancer and the fabrication of that exoticness that gave her that term in the first place. In her book Being Rita Hayworth, Mclean discusses the nature of Hayworth’s ‘agency’ when it came to controlling both her public and private image. One of the ways she does this is by comparing the relationships between the image Hayworth eventually adopted, her characters, like Gilda, and who she used to be, Margarita Carmen Cansino. She was one of the first researchers who took the revelations about Hayworth’s relationships with the men in her personal life and her career and disclosed how they were a part of her constructed image. She elaborates on how Hayworth’s image as the American Love Goddess was a passive one and how this had a unique appeal to other women, thus selling her image even more. This image of Hayworth’s was used by the industry, which involved Columbia Pictures, over the years to pursue its own goals through films at the expense of what Hayworth wanted. Interestingly, some of these films were Gilda, The Lady from Shanghai, and An Affair in Trinidad- the films that really put Hayworth in the limelight as the American Love Goddess. Similarly, another scholar, Priscilla Ovalle, in her article “Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race”, discusses the topic of Hayworth’s racial mobility, essentially 2 meaning the interchangeable nature between Hayworth’s persona as an American woman and her persona as the riveting Spanish dancer she had learned to be all her life. Those around her were able to carefully manipulate her mobility by blurring the lines between whiteness and non-whiteness, resulting in a highly racialized exoticism and sexuality2 that was projected onto the characters in her films that “shifted the depictions of female sexuality” and turned her into the sex-symbol she was considered to be. Barbara Leaming, on the other hand, goes more into Hayworth’s story as a whole. She writes in depth about Hayworth’s relationship with her father and how that contributed to her allowing herself to be controlled by men later on in her life. Previously, Leaming had written a biography on Orson Welles, who was Hayworth’s second husband. “Orson Welles: A Biography” stemmed from what Welles once told her about the destructive elements in Hayworth’s life that could have been a result of the psychological damage that she had faced as a victim of incest. By reading Leaming’s take on Hayworth’s life and career, it seems that very little credit can be given to Hayworth at all for her star image as she became a dancer because of her father and a star because of her first husband Eddie Judson and the head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn. Leaming, in fact, mentions that Hayworth's stardom was the result almost entirely because of the publicity initiated by these three central figures in the initial stages of her career. Gilda, for example, was a film that sealed her identity in the industry as a sex-symbol and a siren and made Hayworth one of Cohn’s most prized possessions. When it was released in 1946, the film was publicized as Hayworth’s first dramatic role. And, it was through this film and The 2 Ovalle, Priscilla. "Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race." Dance and the Hollywood Latina, 2011, Chapter-4. 3 Lady from Shanghai in 1948 that started this discourse on her as a complex figure of eroticism and decency, ethnicity and Americanness, a devoted mother, a dancer, a comedian, and a pinup girl. Considering almost all journals and books speak of Hayworth and analyze her in similar ways, it is important to examine the ‘exoticness’ that she embodied and the complexities associated with that word, especially when it came to her as a star. The reason this is important to look at is because it makes the public’s exposure to her star image of an all-American glamour girl, or rather the fabrication of it, more comprehensible. The fabrication of her image from Margarita Cansino to Rita Hayworth is touched upon quite often, be it through scholars like Leaming, McLean, or Ovalle. They have each discussed how this complex image, of Hayworth as the embodiment of someone who was both ‘exotic’ and American, came to be and what led up to it; the “whiteness” that Hollywood was built upon and surrounded by, the subordination that women were subjected to in the industry in terms of selling their image, and the immense power that men had not only in the industry, but even in a domestic setting, over women. Looking at Hayworth in this light, it is obvious that the American patriarchal society had an immense and powerful impact in moulding her into who she eventually became in the industry. Their authority and involvement in her life and career changed her in a way that today the name Rita Hayworth is said to be born of men.3 Going back to the quote of Hayworth where she said that she never imagined becoming a star like Del Rio, but also did not believe she would become who she was with the name Margarita Cansino, it seems worth comparing the two icons. 3 Vincent, William. "Rita Hayworth at Columbia: The Fabrication of a Star." Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio, 2015, 118-28. 4 While analysing the career trajectory of Del Rio, there are many parallels with that of Hayworth’s. “The Invention of Dolores Del Rio” by Joanne Hershfield studies Del Rio’s role in Hollywood as a Mexican actress who was in the top bracket of actors the industry, where the majority of people obviously were not those of color. What is really eye-catching in this book is the way Hershfield explains how Hollywood was, and perhaps still is, a platform where a female actress becomes a ‘star’ when her femaleness, youth, wealth, sexual availability, virginity, whiteness or foreignness are open to interpretation to a range of possible meanings.4 What is more interesting to note, keeping in mind that Del Rio’s career was a little more than a decade before Hayworth’s, is that all of those factors gave way to the audience accepting Del Rio, a latina actress, as an icon. And while she was just as much exoticized as Hayworth, she didn’t have to lose her name in the process. The blurred lines between her whiteness and non-whiteness became a highly racialized exoticism and sexuality that was projected onto the characters in her films, which shifted the depictions of female sexuality in Hollywood at the time and certainly at the films being made at Columbia Pictures. Why was this impact so great that Rita Hayworth is said to be born of men while an icon like Dolores Del Rio retained hers, despite having a career path similar to that of Hayworth’s in terms of an ‘exoticised’ icon? Was she, perhaps, able to take anything away from Del Rio’s career? While both were exoticised, was Hayworth’s racial manipulation somehow worse even though her career was after Del Rio’s, and if so, did that have something to do with the Hollywood mentality regarding race in general or specifically that of Columbia Pictures? 4 David William Foster and Joanne Hershfield, "The Invention of Dolores Del Río," Chasqui 32, no.

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