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. 2 ​ ​ ​ (2003).

5

According to an article by J.E Smyth, “Organization Women and Belle Rebels:

Hollywood’s Working Women in the 1930’s”, between the events of the first and second-wave feminism, the 1930’s is often looked at as a period of female empowerment for American women, and only a handful of historians and scholars look at this era as a time where Hollywood promoted and supported the women in their industry both on and off-screen during the studio era.5 Popular historians and filmmakers, such as Frederick Lewis Allen, remembered this as a time where women displayed strength and resourcefulness, both in front of and behind the camera, to create some of the most notable and memorable films of Hollywood’s “Golden Age”.

Katharine Hepburn, for example, had said the “ordinary women’s experiences and attitudes over work had fundamentally changed” and that the average American woman was a display of “competence that would help shoulder the family’s responsibilities when her father’s or husband’s income has stopped”6. This part of Smyth’s article particularly intriguing because of it how it relates to Hayworth- it doesn’t. Certainly, Hayworth did create notable films. She was an icon. And she most certainly did shoulder the responsibilities and dreams of her father,

Eduardo Cansino, and her first husband, Eddie Judson. But it is precisely the latter that brings it back to her relationships with the various men in her life and how she didn’t ‘shoulder’ these responsibilities willingly. She was forced to. Hayworth stood as the human representation of a malleable piece of metal that could be bent into shape of a man’s choosing.

5 Smyth, J.E. "Organization Women and Belle Rebels: Hollywood's Working Women in the 1930's." ​ Hollywood and the Great Depression, 2016, 69. ​ 6 Smyth, J.E. "Organization Women and Belle Rebels”, 75. ​ ​ 6 Therefore, while J.E Smyth looks at the positive flux of work being produced by independent women in Hollywood in the 30’s, Hayworth, despite being one of the more significant female figures in the studio-era and an actress in the 40’s when they certainly should have been more empowered than before, did not have this independence since she was dictated by men during all walks of her life. Men such as Eduardo Cansino, her father, Eddie Judson, her first husband, Harry Cohn, the mogul of Columbia Pictures, Orson Welles, her second husband, etc. controlled this independence that heavily contributed to the constant changes, fabrications, and manipulations Hayworth’s body and mind were subjected to in order to create what can only be called an exoticized product7.

In this research, Hayworth’s life will be divided into different stages and be how and why her relationships with men at these stages had an impact in initiating and contributing to the progression from Margarita Cansino to Rita Hayworth will be closely examined. And while it will discuss whether or not her name and her career can be considered solely hers or as one that was co-owned by several members of a patriarchal system who saw an investment more than they saw a woman, it will be comparing aspects of her career to that of Del Rio’s in order to create a parallel between two foreign, specifically hispanic, actresses and the cost of racial manipulation in different decades of Hollywood.

Something that has been evident from reading biographies of Rita Hayworth, such as

Barbara Leaming’s, “If this was Happiness”, is that her process of fabrication began early in her life- as early as when she was twelve years old. William Vincent writes about how the

7 Ovalle, Priscilla. "Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race. Chapter-4. ​ ​

7 “disjunction between her public image and private self-image was formed early”8 and was formed because of her relationship with her father.

Hayworth’s relationship with her father, his controlling nature, his dominance over her every action, and the incest she was subjected to is recorded extensively. A critical part of why

Hayworth willingly subjected herself to years of being strung along by powerful men is that her relationship with Eduardo Cansino groomed her as a sexually provocative on-stage persona.

Hayworth, after the first phase of her career as a dancer, spent a large part of her life depending on older men and was constantly anxious to satisfy by handing them control over her life.

Leaming records Hayworth’s early life by describing the nature of Eduardo Cansino, who had once said in an interview in 1941 “Jesus! She has a figure! She ain’t no baby anymore!

We can’t wait around here, I think. The time has come to start her off.”9 He was describing her when she was more or less twelve years old. Leaming contrasts this quote with an image of

Hayworth in 1931 posing in a stage costume that made her look like a “roly-poly little girl” trying to play dress-up with her mother’s clothing. Something about this comparison between

Eduardo’s quote and the innocent image of Hayworth is perturbing because it was only two years later, when she was fourteen, that an image of her would be described as a “buxom, sultry-looking girl of fourteen” by Life Magazine in 1947.10 ​ ​ Eduardo Cansino’s life as a dancer meant he constantly uprooted his family from one state to the other in search of better opportunities that gave him and his sister the name “The Dancing

8 Vincent, William. "Rita Hayworth at Columbia: The Fabrication of a Star." 118-28. ​ ​

9 "Behind Glamor Are Scars Of Incest." Tribunedigital-chicagotribune. November 14, 1989. ​ http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-11-14/features/8901310071_1_eduardo-cansino-barbara-leaming- orson-welles. 10 Sargeant, Winthrop. "The Cult of the Love Goddess in America." Life Magazine, November 10, 1947, ​ ​ ​ 81. 8 Cansinos”. However, after relocating to California, and due to his sister leaving the act, he lost the appeal he once had and one that he would retrieve years later with his daughter’s assistance.

Leaming explains how Hayworth once recalled her thirteenth birthday being on the border that crossed over to Tijuana, a place where Eduardo dressed her to look like a local

Spanish girl so audiences would believe them to be a couple11. The location where they performed so disreputable in nature that Hayworth could have been purchased for an evening of pleasure, and Eduardo had later explained how protective he was of his child to prevent her from coming into harm's way. But, Leaming asks an important question- what kind of parent would restrict his thirteen year old daughter from school to dance in a town like Tijuana in the first place?12

In an interview with People Magazine, Leaming remembered a conversation she had with

Hayworth’s second husband Orson Welles:- “I kept hearing stories about how much Rita hated ​ her father. People explained that she resented having to go to work as a young girl and had never gotten over it. But this was a sweet woman who would forgive anything. Then, when Orson started telling me about her rages and personality changes, I knew there had to be something else there. One day it just clicked, and I asked him about incest. That incredible voice broke. And he said, yes, it was true.”13

Hayworth’s childhood can be described as the epitome of a perfect patriarch, orchestrated by her father whose every demand and need came before everyone else’s. The protection that he

11 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth. London: Sphere, 1990. 14. ​ ​ ​ 12 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness. 16. ​ ​ ​ 13 "A Candid New Biography Tells of the Shocking Childhood That Destroyed Rita Hayworth." ​ PEOPLE.com.http://people.com/archive/a-candid-new-biography-tells-of-the-shocking-childhood-that-de stroyed-rita-hayworth-vol-32-no-20/. 9 talked about with respect to Hayworth is notably appalling, because in Tijuana perhaps the person who she needed this protection from was her father14. The changes her father put her through, be it removing her from school, subjecting her to immense pressure of growing up quickly to become a performer, and finally using her for sex, explains the puzzling details of why

Hayworth consistently welcomed similar men into her life who used her to their advantage and changed her according to their pleasure.

Leaming describes how incest is the “ultimate betrayal” by a parent on their child due to the scarring psychological impact, which in Hayworth’s case can act as the initial explanation for her willingly letting herself being victimized by those who wrongly wielded the power the patriarchy had given them. It can be said that Eduardo, along with choreographing Hayworth’s every dance move, choreographed her entrance and visibility in Hollywood through her role as a dancer in the film “Dante’s Inferno” (Harry Lachman, Fox Films, 1935). It is interesting to note ​ ​ ​ ​ that the reason Hayworth became a dancer in the first place, and the events leading up to her role in Dante’s Inferno, was because of the strings on her being pulled by her father. ​ ​ In this film, she played a dancer in one scene. Most importantly, she looks very different from the image the American audience was later exposed to through films like Gilda or An Affair ​ ​ in Trinidad. It was also around this time that Eddie Judson began his extensive work on changing ​ her appearance and her name. Closely looking at this dance sequence, the woman moving across the screen is clearly Margarita Cansino and not Rita Hayworth. Her jet black hair is neatly pulled back into a bun, which contrasts her hair color and style in her later films. There’s something

14 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness. 17. ​ ​ ​ ​

10 about her facial expressions that are far more innocent and naive, again contrasting her femme fatale persona in later years.

In 1948, in fact, Spencer Tracy, who starred in the film, had said “Rita Hayworth’s first film was Dante’s Inferno, the last one I made at Fox under my old contract and one of the worst pictures ever made anywhere, anytime. The fact that she survived in films after that screen debut ​ is testament enough that she deserves all the recognition she is getting right now”15. This film led to Hayworth getting cast in other films like “Paid to Dance” (Charles C. Coleman, Columbia ​ ​ Pictures, 1937.) as an underpaid dance hall hostess. This eventually started to give her more visibility and entered her into a phase of her life that began moulding her into what can be called the initial stages of the transition from Margarita Cansino to Rita Hayworth, credited to her first husband, Eddie Judson.

Dolores Del Rio was discovered in Mexico by a filmmaker named Edwin Carewe, which parallels that of Hayworth’s discovery and creation in terms of being introduced to the industry by men. And while she wasn’t discovered as a dancer, one can’t help but compare Hayworth’s dance sequence in Dante’s Inferno to that of Del Rio’s in Birds of Paradise (King Vidor, RKO ​ ​ ​ Radio Pictures, 1932), where she plays the daughter of a Native American chief. The sequence is riveting as Del Rio directs the male gaze towards her onscreen, and most likely offscreen as well.

She moves her figure to the steady beat of a drum, carefully shot with medium close-ups of her hips and then extreme-close ups of her face.

15 Ringgold, Gene. The Films of Rita Hayworth: The Life and Career of an American Love Goddess. ​ ​ ​ Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1974. 64 11 Interestingly, a year before the release of Birds of Paradise, Photoplay Magazine ​ conducted a search in 1931 for the “most perfect feminine figure in Hollywood”16. At the time, this particular magazine was the reigning one for what was considered to be ‘good taste’, so having judges unanimously decide that Del Rio had the best ‘feminine figure’ in Hollywood certainly made her an enigma because there were certain parameters that defined female beauty and femininity in Hollywood then, parameters measured by race. During a social time where there was a lot of talk regarding racialized sexuality, a foreign actress, latina in particular, being chosen as the epitome of beauty by this magazine is interesting note especially if compared to the article on Hayworth by Life Magazine about a decade later, where she, a Spanish woman, was declared the beautiful American Love Goddess.

Del Rio’s position in the industry and in American popular culture challenged, but did not entirely displace, the negative stereotypes surrounding Latinas. In America, this certainly was a time where racism was incredibly active, but, like that example, she was celebrated as one of the most beautiful women in the United States, as was Hayworth later. It was her foreignness that defined her attraction. She was repeatedly put in films with exotic locations, had exotic clothing, and constantly responded to, as mentioned by Hershfield,17 who and what an exotic woman was.

In The Invention of Dolores Del Rio, in fact, Hershfield stated that at the time of Del ​ ​ Rio’s career being ‘Spanish’ meant that you were from an aristocratic background, as most

Europeans were white, which was good for the industry and promoting oneself as a star.

Mexicans, like Del Rio, were regarded as the ‘other’. They mostly played bandits or those who

16 Fletcher, Adele Whitely. "Who Has the Best Figure and Why?" Photoplay, March 1931. 35-36 ​ ​ ​ 17 Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores Del Rio. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2000. xii. ​ ​ ​ 12 were lower to the white population in terms of status. In fact, most latinas were advised to change their names if they wanted to get ahead in Hollywood. But, evidently, Del Rio’s case was a paradox. Hollywood exploited foreign ancestry and pandered to the audience’s fascination and desire for exoticism, so Del Rio was considered exotic and sultry, but was just as big of an icon as Hayworth. The difference was that she put herself above the status of the ‘other’ in

Hollywood by retaining her foreign identity. Somehow, the paradox applied to Hayworth as well, but in a different way- her Spanish identity, something that was apparently considered aristocratic, ended up being the one thing that she was told would hinder her from reaching her potential as a star.

“You’re lucky you're not too well-known at Hollywood. Because you’re going to start all over again and this time the right way. Here’s the way we ought to plan it: Step No. 1 will be self-improvement. Step No. 2 will be self-display. Step No. 3 will be making a name for yourself. Step No. 4 will be getting all the right roles and keeping you smack before the public so that you’ll be hot at the box office”. Eddie Judson, Hayworth’s ambitious and shrewd businessman of a husband, uttered these words as quoted in From Cansino to Hayworth to ​ Beckworth in Adrienne McLean’s book.18 What his plan clearly sounded like are careful steps, or

“business strategies”, to sell a commodity. Ovalle’s article on Rita Hayworth mentions her transformation, which didn’t take place overnight, as a studio’s decision to market her as a star who wasn’t just limited to her Spanish and dancing background. But what isn’t mentioned by

Ovalle, which is in talked about at great length by Leaming, is the fact that while the studio did

18 McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick, ​ ​ ​ NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. 31 13 make a decision to change her, the man that enforced this change time and time again was Eddie

Judson.

“I married him for love, but he married me for an investment. From the beginning he took charge, and for five years, he treated me as if I had no mind or soul of my own”19 Hayworth had once said. But at the time, people had known her as the “Trilby to his Svengali”. Judson, as recorded by Leaming, had regarded Hayworth as his own, personal creation. This not only boosted his ego, but was one of his main means of financial support. Hayworth, due to the abusive and dominant nature of her father, had already become malleable. Judson, from studying him, seems to have paralleled that figure in ways that were more emotionally abusive. According to Leaming, he had concocted rules to improve her behavior, which had resulted in Hayworth looking at him as not only her husband, but as somewhat of a father figure- the one that she had known all her life. Judson harshly enforced on Hayworth the image that he had imagined for her, which her submissive nature followed through with; she was made to lose weight and lower her voice, which she seemingly struggled with.

One of the physical aspects of Hayworth that is brought up so often is her hairline and hair color. Judson began re-creating his wife after Harry Cohn had rejected her image and

“dismissed her from his thoughts”20 after her appearance as Sue Collins, a softball player who eventually gets murdered by poisoning, in the film “Girls Can Play” (Lambert Hillyer, ​ ​ Columbia Pictures, 1937). Looking at Hayworth’s following films; “The Shadow” (Charles C. ​ ​ Coleman, Columbia Pictures, 1937), “The Game that Kills” (D. Ross Lederman, Columbia ​

19 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness”. 39. ​ ​ ​ ​

20 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness”. 36. ​ ​ ​ ​

14 Pictures, 1937), Paid to Dance, “Who Killed Gail Preston” (Leon Barsha, Columbia Pictures, ​ ​ 1938), “There’s Always a Woman” (Alexander Hall, Columbia Pictures, 1938), “Convicted” ​ ​ ​ (Leon Barsha, Columbia Pictures, 1938), “Juvenile Court” (D. Ross Lederman, Columbia ​ Pictures, 1938), “The Renegade Ranger” (David Howard, RKO Pictures, 1939), “Homicide ​ ​ Bureau” (Charles C. Coleman, Columbia Pictures, 1939), “The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt” (Peter ​ Godfrey, Columbia Pictures, 1939), “Only Angels Have Wings” (Howard Hawks, Columbia ​ Pictures, 1939), there is a slow, but noticeable, change that takes place, which is that Hayworth’s hairline starts to recede upwards and her hair color starts becoming lighter.

One of Hayworth’s long time companions, Bob Schiffer, apparently said that she was the reflection that men wanted because that’s how they made her, and unfortunately, that’s the way she thought it was meant to be21. An important figure that Judson had frequently, and strategically, associated himself with was a hairdresser who worked for Columbia Pictures by the name of Helen Hunt. What was special about this woman was the fact that she had the ear of

Harry Cohn. Leaming notes that both Hunt and Judson described Hayworth’s hairline as

“terrible” and paints a heartbreaking image by describing how she quietly listened as both discussed what could be done with her- eventually settling on electrolysis, an intense cosmetic process that lifted hairlines to provide women with a broader forehead, requiring multiple sessions that Hayworth feared going to because of the extreme pain it caused. The ‘terrible’ part about her hair was the fact that it was jet black and that her hairline made her forehead look small, which were known as hispanic features.

21 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness. 39. ​ ​ ​ ​

15 Ovalle mentions how Hayworth’s original hair color, a dark raven tone, automatically meant ‘ethnic’ roles, alluding to the fact that being ethnic resulted in second-caliber roles.

Having lighter hair meant “carrying the cultural cachet of cinematic Americanness”22, which, for

Judson, meant good business. In fact, he once told her “in business, a man doesn’t wait for people to discover what he wants to sell. He advertises”.23 However, because blondes were

“brimming” in Hollywood, Judson decided on changing Hayworth’s hair color to a bright, exclusive, auburn. Ovalle states that this highlighted Hayworth’s “sexualized and independent persona”.

Hershfield, on the other hand, quotes Indonesian filmmaker Fatimah Tobing Rony, “the exotic is always known”24 and argues with that statement by saying that it is also ambiguous since the terms ‘exoticism’ and ‘foreignness’ sometimes don’t go hand in hand and function ahistorically. So while Hayworth had to undergo these changes because Judson and Cohn possibly believed that it was this ‘known’ exoticism about her that would act as an obstacle in her career, the possible ambiguity also surrounding both these terms were elements that led to the admiration the audience had for Del Rio. Hershfield states that she was known through her sexual appeal, fashion, and makeup, which eventually led to her becoming the “style and cult figure of exoticism that was sought after and emulated. In fact, there was an Armand

Advertisement featuring her that said “a dark skin may be your greatest attraction- you may even be hiding it with light powder.”25

22 Ovalle, Priscilla. "Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race." Chapter-4. ​ ​

23 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness. 41. ​ ​ ​

24 Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores Del Rio. 9. ​ ​ ​ ​

25 Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores Del Rio. 10. ​ ​ ​ 16 It is widely known that after Hayworth’s electrolysis treatment, Columbia Pictures mogul

Harry Cohn, took a special interest in her that resulted in a distinct separation, as noted by

Mclean, of a person, Margarita Cansino, from a image, Rita Hayworth. Along with the contract that she had signed with Columbia Pictures, this distinction assured that the studio had an economic hold over Hayworth. More disturbingly, with the contract that Hayworth had signed,

Cohn had a legal claim over the product that was Rita Hayworth. McLean says “whether

Hayworth had any substantial control over her public image matters less to me than the discursive signs of contestation over the meaning of that image”. She argues this by citing

Richard Dyer and his belief that a star is a “reconciler of contradictions” through something called “magical synthesis”, which essentially means that it is a form of unity that is made possible because the ‘star’ is “one person with a real existence as an individual in the world.”26

On some level, therefore, Margarita Cansino and Rita Hayworth were still one in the same despite everything physically describing the former being stripped away from the latter.

McLean refutes Dyer when she demonstrates that in actuality Hayworth was nothing without her contradictions because she existed as two people who she seemed unable to reconcile. Once asked whether she wanted to be the next Dolores Del Rio, Hayworth responded by saying “I want to remain Rita Cansino. If I become a star, I want to do so in my own right, and not because I imitated somebody else. I believe that most of my people have made the mistake of trying to be some other picture personality, thereby losing their own identity completely.”27 But, McLean also brings up the fact that Hayworth was troubled that her eventual

26 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, 45. ​ ​

27 McLean, Adrienne. ""I'm a Cansino". 49. ​

17 name change didn’t bring her the roles she wanted, those that would put her at the top as an actress, since she “expected wonders to happen” after replacing Cansino with Hayworth.

The Loves of Carmen is one such film that is relevant in comparing the two icons and in ​ exemplifying the point about Hayworth and her contradicting identities. Del Rio first made this film (Raoul Walsh, 1927) where she played a gypsy. She stands out in the film quite strikingly as she flirts with a guard while playing with her long black tresses and showing off her ‘exotic’ facial features, thus convincing the audience of her Romani background. Hayworth did a remake of this film (Charles Vidor, 1948), through her own production house called Beckworth corporations, and she plays a gypsy as well. But sadly, she doesn’t quite look like one. Her ​ pairing with Glenn Ford was really popular, as she had already done films with him like Gilda ​ and An Affair in Trinidad. Reviews by Weekly Variety and The Hollywood Reporter regarded ​ ​ her as ‘gypsy that has never been so fascinating or so tempting’ and that her Carmen was

‘strutting, posturing, fiendishly clever, and beautiful as dawn’. Bringing it back to the initial quote of Hayworth on Del Rio, she did become as big as Del Rio, but for her playing this role as

Margarita Cansino would not have sold as well as her playing it as Rita Hayworth.

Her being the iconic Rita Hayworth in this role makes her dance sequence in this film is heartbreaking. Hayworth uses her skills as a Spanish dancer, choreographed by her father, and glides across the platform in a ravishing purple dress. She personally has a Spanish background, her father in fact also had a Romani background, and yet in The Loves of Carmen, she looks ​ ​ more like the American Love Goddess when she really should have been looking like that dancer from Dante’s Inferno.

18 Dyer’s term “magical synthesis” makes more sense in this regard, by bringing into light the trouble Hayworth had with the reconciliation of her two personas; how she tried to produce a film that would highlight her background, but ended up promoting her American image even further. What Hayworth said about not wanting to lose her identity by changing her name certainly came from a part of her that clung to the identity she was born with, but with forces like

Judson and Cohn who consistently pushed her in the direction of stardom, she made herself into a product and collaborated with them to “overcome her type”.

Hayworth’s stardom, firstly, was entirely in Cohn’s hands. He had originally feared that the intersection of her femininity and ethnicity would restrict and limit her as an actress, but once it was understood that this intersection could be exploited into becoming a commodity, he decided to turn her into a star. As William Vincent notes, Cohn didn’t only make money on

Hayworth but also benefited financially from her growing stardom28 because her femme fatale ​ image in films like Gilda and Only Angels Have Wings rapidly heightened her image as a sex ​ ​ ​ object that resulted in the infamous pin-up images she featured in during the war and was also put on bombs that were dropped on enemy territories. While this further defined what the name

Rita Hayworth stood for, it made Cohn value her for how immensely this was profiting

Columbia Pictures.

In her article, J.E Smyth’s mentions how in the late 1930’s actresses like Katharine

Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Luis Rainier, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Kay Francis, Greta Garbo, and Dolores Del Rio, played strong female leads that contributed to their agency in being liberated women in Hollywood. Katharine Hepburn, in fact, was given the title of “Box Office

28 Vincent, William. "Rita Hayworth at Columbia” 118-28. ​ ​

19 Poison” for playing the kind of roles she did. What is fascinating and ironic is how Hepburn, who was given this title, and even Del Rio, were looked upon as symbols of feminine strength that redefined Hollywood in several ways. But Rita Hayworth, who was given titles like the

American Love Goddess and played the role of the femme fatale, was somehow not independent ​ ​ in her own right, but had an independent persona that was being wielded by the driving forces of a patriarchal studio system.

How far did the authority of this patriarchy push Margarita Cansino to transition into Rita

Hayworth? And was Rita Hayworth born of men? It is evident that the male figures in her life, be it her father, her husbands, or her bosses, manipulated her image in several ways for their own benefit. What is tragic is the fact that in the process of being used for economic and financial gains, Hayworth ended up embodying and representing not just the American Love Goddess, but also the idealized images and fantasies of men like Eduardo Cansino, Eddie Judson, and Harry

Cohn, despite playing roles in films that gave her sexual agency that would, in many ways, be praised in feminist circles.

It is difficult to say whether Del Rio or Hayworth had it better or worse in terms of racial manipulation in the industry. What is interesting, however, is that Del Rio never had to abandon her identity being a decade ahead of Hayworth, which contradicts what we mean today by the term ‘progression’. Ideally, progression requires us to move forward and be more accepting as human beings. But Columbia Pictures, being a production house, obviously saw more financial worth in Rita Hayworth than in Margarita Cansino. The argument that McLean presented on the word ‘exotic’ is perhaps the key word in this context, since it is a term that is truly ambiguous.

20 As already discussed, it created a paradox for them both. The ambiguity of this word, through its embodiment of complex elements like race, sexuality, and foreignness, combined with the aspect of financial gain more or less made both Hayworth and Del Rio victims of

Hollywood’s racial exploitation. Looking at Del Rio, a lot about the way her exoticism was perceived by the audience seems to translate to her image being fetishized, as seen in films like

Birds of Paradise, Loves of Carmen, and Ramona (Edwin Carewe, 1928). While Hayworth ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ wasn’t fetishized, since her image was completely changed to that of an American woman, her exoticism was still exploited, and for that very reason. For example, it was acceptable for her to play a gypsy in Loves of Carmen because of her Spanish background, despite not looking like ​ someone with one. It was this constant back and forth between her two irreconcilable identities that made her a sex symbol and one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood at the time, similar to Del Rio during her time in the industry. At the end, it seems that Margarita Cansino consistently worked incredibly hard to be Rita Hayworth since it was what was demanded of her, though it didn’t bring her much personal satisfaction-: “I always thought that if I ever get good reviews, I’d be happy. But it’s so empty, it’s never what I wanted. Ever. All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know. To be loved.”29 And while it wasn’t the kind of love she always desired, the public did truly adore their American Love Goddess.

29 Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness. ​ ​ ​ 21

Bibliography

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. ​ ​

2.Ovalle, Priscilla. "Rita Hayworth and the Cosmetic Borders of Race." Dance and the Hollywood Latina, ​ ​ ​ 2011, Chapter-4.

3.Vincent, William. "Rita Hayworth at Columbia: The Fabrication of a Star." Columbia Pictures: Portrait ​ ​ of a Studio, 2015, 118-28. ​

4.Smyth, J.E. "Organization Women and Belle Rebels: Hollywood's Working Women in the 1930's." ​ Hollywood and the Great Depression, 2016, 66-83. ​

5."A Candid New Biography Tells of the Shocking Childhood That Destroyed Rita Hayworth." ​ PEOPLE.com.http://people.com/archive/a-candid-new-biography-tells-of-the-shocking-childhood-that-de stroyed-rita-hayworth-vol-32-no-20/.

6.Leaming, Barbara. If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth. London: Sphere, 1990. ​ ​ ​

7.Ringgold, Gene. The Films of Rita Hayworth: The Life and Career of an American Love Goddess. ​ ​ ​ Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1974.

8.McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick, ​ ​ ​ NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.

9.Hershfield, Joanne. The Invention of Dolores Del Rio. Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota P., 2000. ​ ​ ​

10.Sargeant, Winthrop. "The Cult of the Love Goddess in America." Life Magazine, November 10, 1947, ​ ​ ​ 81. 22

11.Fletcher, Adele Whitely. "Who Has the Best Figure and Why?" Photoplay, March 1931. 35-36 ​ ​ ​

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