Trivia

Along with Veronica Lake, Julie London and Lauren Bacall, she was one of four inspirations that helped create the character Jessica Rabbit.

When she died, it was her former Paddy O'Day (1936) co-star Jane Withers who delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

Director Rouben Mamoulian said of her to "Vogue", "On the screen, if an actor can move, he needs little else for a successful career. Hayworth moved better than anyone else I have ever seen in film. The camera responded to her movement as it did to Garbo's intelligence and Chaplin's mime.".

On May 27, 1949, she married Prince Aly Khan. Many people forget that Rita, not Grace Kelly, was the first movie star to become a princess.

Knocked out two of Glenn Ford's teeth during their fight in Gilda (1946).

Her dancer father, Eduardo Cansino, himself the son of a dancer, came to New York from Spain in 1913 with sister Elisa. He had Andalusian ancestry.

Pregnant 26-year-old Rita Hayworth entered St. John's Hospital, in Santa Monica, California, on Friday, December 15, 1944. It had been selected because this hospital was known for the privacy it afforded celebrities. Two days later, she gave birth to her first child by Cesarean section, a healthy 7-pound (3.175 kilogram) girl who was named Rebecca Welles. The child's father was her second, and later ex-husband, Orson Welles, and the child's godfather was Frank Sinatra who was a good friend of the couple.

She was the producers' first choice for Casablanca (1942), but they couldn't get her and were fortunate to settle for Ingrid Bergman.

In the early 1940s, she replaced Jean Arthur as the top female star at Columbia Pictures. Coincidentally, the two stars share the same birthday (October 17).

She was the first bombshell to appear on one of the posters in The Shawshank Redemption (1994). (The other two were Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch).

Monsignor Peter Healey, who delivered the funeral Mass for Rita Hayworth in 1987, noted that he had received calls from many people across the country who remembered Miss Hayworth's sweetness and graciousness. ''Rita, in her suffering, continued to bring beauty and love to the world,'' he said. He read a passage from ''The Prophet'' by Khalil Gibran in which Miss Hayworth had underlined the words ''I am in the heart of God.''.

Both she and last husband, James Hill, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease.

Cousin of Ginger Rogers and niece of actor Vinton Hayworth.

One of the few actresses to have danced with both Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly in the movies, other actresses that have also done this includes Judy Garland, Cyd Charisse, Vera-Ellen, Debbie Reynolds and Leslie Caron.

Charlton Heston wrote about Rita Hayworth's brief marriage to James Hill. Heston and his wife Lydia joined the couple for dinner in a restaurant in Spain with the director George Marshall and Rex Harrison, Hayworth's co-star in "The Happy Thieves." Heston wrote in his memoir that the occasion "turned into the single most embarrassing evening of my life", describing how Hill heaped "obscene abuse" on Hayworth until she was "reduced to a helpless flood of tears, her face buried in her hands". Heston writes how they all sat stunned, witnesses to a "marital massacre" and though he was "strongly tempted to slug him" (Hill), he instead simply took his wife Lydia home when she stood up, almost in tears. Heston wrote, "I'm ashamed of walking away from Miss Hayworth's humiliation. I never saw her again.".

Publicist Henry Rogers, hired by Eddie Judson to promote his wife, said of him, "It seemed to me that Eddie would have sold his wife to the highest bidder if it would have advanced her career.".

Some legends say the Margarita cocktail was named for her when she was dancing under her real name in a Tijuana, Mexico nightclub.

Fred Astaire recalled how gifted and quick she was in learning the most advanced routines-often learning the steps in the morning, mulling over them during lunch, and after lunch performing the dance without a single mistake.

Became the first public face for Alzheimer's. During the 1960s she began forgetting her lines. The people around her thought it was due to drinking. Looking back it is believed she was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.

The annual Rita Hayworth charity gala, managed by daughter Princess Yasmin Khan, raised US$1.8 million in 1999 (US$2.76 million in 2018 dollars) alone for the Alzheimer's Association. Alzheimer's disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. In most people with Alzheimer's, symptoms first appear in their mid-60s. Estimates vary, but experts suggest that more than 5.5 million Americans may have Alzheimer's.

The famous red hair was not her natural color (which was black). When she was signed, studio heads decided that her hairline was too low on her forehead, and she underwent years of painful electrolysis to make it higher.

In December 1949, pregnant 31-year-old Rita Hayworth was living in Switzerland with her third husband, Aly Salomone Khan, When she was due to give birth, they planned to have a police escort to the Montchoisi Clinic in Lausanne but Rita went into labor at 3:00 AM on Wednesday, December 28th and Aly panicked and drove her to the clinic. Rita was in labor for seven hours and gave birth to a 5.5-pound (2.49-kilogram) girl who was named Yasmin Aga Khan Yasmin Khan.

Rita Hayworth's cook, Dorothy Holmes, stated that "Rita Hayworth's best friend was Dinah Shore, the singer. I loved Dinah, because she had a lovely disposition. Dinah Shore would send a limousine over to Rita's house and she would be chauffeured to Dinah's personal racquet club or golf club, wherever Dinah would share a few friendly drinks.".

Under of the influence of second husband Orson Welles, Rita began to read classic literature. While pregnant in 1944, she was very impressed by Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" and named her firstborn daughter Rebecca after the novel's heroine.

The Maria Vargas character (played by Ava Gardner) in the 1954 Joseph L. Mankiewicz film The Barefoot Contessa (1954)) was based on her.

Her first (uncredited) appearance on film was with the dancing Cansino family in a Vitaphone short La Fiesta (1926).

In 1977, Rita Hayworth went to England and later to Italy where she accepted The Rudolph Valentino Award in Bari. Margo Hammond wrote in "Variety" magazine, "After a dramatic entrance up the center aisle of the opera house amid flashing spotlights, strains of Richard Strauss's 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' and thunderous applause, a dazed Rita accepted the award telling the audience: 'This is the happiest moment of my life.' ".

Her own singing voice is heard in the introductions to her songs (otherwise dubbed by Jo Ann Greer) in Pal Joey (1957).

The famous Bob Landry photo of Rita in "Life", 11 August 1941, p. 33, made her the number 2 soldier pin-up of World War II.

Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn only began taking interest in Hayworth as star material after she began undergoing painful electrolysis treatments (at the urging of husband Eddie Judson), which drastically altered her hairline and appearance.

She appeared in five movies with classic leading actor Glenn Ford: Affair in Trinidad (1952), The Lady in Question (1940), The Loves of Carmen (1948), The Money Trap (1965) and Gilda (1946).

According to the book "Debrett Goes to Hollywood" by Charles Kidd, Rita was descended on her mother's side from an Allyn Haworth, whose family was reputed to be descended from the town of Haworth in West Yorkshire. Haworth is also famous as the home of the Bronte sisters.

Subject of The White Stripes song "Take, Take, Take" from the album "Get Behind Me Satan".

The image of her face was glued onto an A-bomb which was dropped on the Bikini Atoll during a test in 1946.

In 1946, an expedition into the wilderness of Canada's unexplored Headless Valley came across an abandoned trapper's shack. In it the expedition found three things: a candle, a can of beans, and a picture of Rita.

It was James Hill, her fifth husband, who recognised her true talent as a comedienne. He tried to encourage her to do more comedy, but she felt that it was too late and instead began to resent him for pushing her into more work.

In 1962, she left the leading role in the three-act Broadway stage comedy "Step on the Crack", after three weeks of rehearsal because she realized the play still needed a great deal of rewriting. The play opened in the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City on October 17th and closed the next day after one performance.

On May 15, 1987, President Ronald Reagan issued the following statement on the death of Rita Hayworth: "Rita Hayworth was one of our country's most beloved stars. Glamorous and talented, she gave us many wonderful moments on stage and screen and delighted audiences from the time she was a young girl. In her later years, Rita became known for her struggle with Alzheimer's disease. Her courage and candor, and that of her family, were a great public service in bringing worldwide attention to a disease which we all hope will soon be cured. Nancy and I are saddened by Rita's death. She was a friend who we will miss. We extend our deep sympathy to her family.".

The choreographer Jack Cole said this of Rita Hayworth: "Rita was a lonely person, you always felt that about her. She'd sit around with the girls during rehearsals, but mostly by herself, not stand-offish, just lonely. But always a lady." He also said, that "She's a Spanish teenager really who's hardly ever grown up. Unless she got somebody around to say 'Don't do this! Don't do that/Eat! Don't eat/If you're bored go to bed, get plastered,' she's like a teenage girl who does whatever amuses her. I like Rita Hayworth, she's a very nice lady. One of the few nice ones in movies to work with.".

Jane Withers said the 1935 film "'Paddy O'Day' is one of my favorite movies ... [When making 'Paddy O'Day'] I visited the 'Charlie Chan in Egypt' set next door to me. And on the set was a [16-year-old] beautiful girl who was dancing ballroom with her partner in a film. I was only eight but I felt so strongly about this girl - she was just dynamite. I asked to meet her, her name was Rita Cansino. She was painfully shy. She said 'I just love to dance and I'm just thrilled to be in the movies.' I said,'Have you ever acted?' and she said, 'Oh no, I've never acted, I'm a dancer.' I said, 'You don't need to learn acting, it just has to be in your heart.'" Just before filming started Jane held Rita's hand and prayed with her and that small kind gesture resulted in a lifelong friendship. Withers gave the eulogy at Hayworth's funeral in 1987 and she recalled during the eulogy that Rita Hayworth suffered from stage fright early in her career. Ms. Withers also said "she always had so much enthusiasm in her dancing that when I found out how shy she was, I was startled.

Her mother's ancestry was Irish, with small amounts of English, Scots-Irish/Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, Bohemian Czech, Dutch, and German.

Mother, showgirl Volga Hayworth (sometimes spelled Haworth), met Eduardo on Broadway in 1916; they married 1917.

Alzheimer's disease had been largely forgotten by the medical community since its discovery in 1906. Medical historian Barron H. Lerner wrote that when Rita Hayworth's diagnosis was made public in 1981, she became "the first public face of Alzheimer's, helping to ensure that future patients did not go undiagnosed." In July 1981, Hayworth's health had deteriorated to the point that a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that she should be placed under the care of her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan. Her daughter took Rita back to New York City where she lived in the San Remo Apartments at 145-146 Central Park West in Manhattan. Until she became bedridden, Rita spent a good deal of time seated in an armchair, gazing straight ahead. As time went by, Rita was silent most of the time but occasionally, she would utter one or two, odd enigmatic sentences, e.g., one time she said "He used to do that. He told me how to do that" but nobody knew what it meant. In February 1987, she fell into a semi coma and died three months later on Thursday, May 14, 1987 at age 68. Rita's remains were flown to Los Angeles, California and a funeral Mass for her was held on Monday, May 18, 1987, at the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd located at 505 North Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills. Pallbearers Glenn Ford, Ricardo Montalban, Cesar Romero, Tony Franciosa, Don Ameche, Hermes Pan and agent Budd Burton Moss, walked before the white lily- and tulip-draped wooden casket to the altar. Rita's daughters, Rebecca Welles and Yasmin Khan walked behind the coffin. Fred Astaire, who starred with Rita in two musicals, was absent and unable to take his place as a pallbearer due to ill health; he died 39 days after Rita's death. More than 500 mourners, including film greats, fans, relatives and friends, crowded into the church to hear Rita Hayworth eulogized as a "sweet, kind, gentle lady" who was actually shy away from the cameras. This recollection of Miss Hayworth, was given by Jane Withers, a child actress in the 1930s and a friend of Miss Hayworth. Internment was at Holy Cross Cemetery, located at 5835 West Slauson Avenue in Culver City. Rita's grave is immediately to the right (east) of the Grotto, beneath the white statue of a praying angel, grave #15. Her headstone includes her daughter's Yasmin Khan Princess Yasmin Aga Khan's sentiment: "To yesterday's companionship and tomorrow's reunion.".

Was named #19 Actress, The American Film Institutes 50 Greatest Screen Legends.

Was portrayed by Lynda Carter in Rita Hayworth: The Love Goddess (1983).

Rita Hayworth checked into Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, in April 1977 to treat her excessive drinking and improve her mental health. Her friend, Mac Krim, stated that she successfully continued to avoid alcohol after she came home, but based on her behavior caused by the Alzheimer's disease, people still often assumed she was drunk.

During World War II, Rita made a single USO tour in 1942 and managed to visit six military camps giving thousands of autographs before coming back from Texas, where she was reported to have nervous breakdown that was full fledged due to over enthusiasm. She also appeared on a number of radio shows with Bob Hope and Armed Forces Radio Service programs like "Command Performance" (at least five shows), "GI Journal" and "Mail Call." Rita also worked at the Hollywood Canteen which operated at 1451 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood between October 3, 1942, and November 22, 1945, as a club offering food, dancing and entertainment for servicemen, usually on their way overseas. Even though the majority of visitors were U.S servicemen, the canteen was open to servicemen of allied countries as well as women in all branches of service. A serviceman's ticket for admission was his uniform, and everything at the canteen was free of charge. Rita was one of the most beautiful and regular volunteers who donated their services at the Hollywood Canteen by serving food and dancing with the servicemen. She also became active in collecting scrap metal, as well as promoting war bonds for the war effort. For Rita Hayworth, just like the other starlets in performing for the U.S. soldiers in different capacities, the task were at times overwhelming making them to be fatigued and break down.

In World War II, YANK magazine was published weekly by the U.S. Army for all branches of the U.S. military. The writers were enlisted men and they wrote stories about World War II and sketched cartoons poking fun at service life like G.I Joe and Sad Sack. As a "morale booster," one of the most popular parts of the magazine were photos of a pin-up girl usually clad in a bathing suit or some form of seductive attire. Rita Hayworth's picture appeared in the 7 July 1944 edition of the magazine.

Chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars" in film history (#54). (1995)

In 1947, started her own production company, "Beckworth Corporation" (formed from syllables of her daughters name, Rebecca, and her own surname). It was dissolved in 1954 under advice from her fourth husband, Dick Haymes.