{"id":107848,"date":"2015-10-06T18:43:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T22:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=107848"},"modified":"2015-10-06T18:59:21","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T22:59:21","slug":"i-feel-i-am-an-actress-i-feel-i-have-talent-rita-hayworth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=107848","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I feel I am an actress. I feel I have talent.&#8221; &#8211; Rita Hayworth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/lSdc4kMpWwU\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nWonderful 1967 interview with Rita Hayworth, on <i>Gilda<\/i>, the old star system, and being stereo-typed. Hayworth was grateful for what <i>Gilda<\/i> did for her (she became the biggest star in the world &#8211; and she was alREADY beloved by American GIs the world over because of her famous pin-up that then showed up in the Stephen King story). <\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita.jpg\" alt=\"rita\" width=\"1015\" height=\"1264\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-107850\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita.jpg 1015w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita-80x100.jpg 80w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita-161x200.jpg 161w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/rita-321x400.jpg 321w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1015px) 100vw, 1015px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nBut she had mixed feelings about <i>Gilda<\/i> too. It really was a defining role. Leaving a dent in the earth like a huge meteor. After <i>Gilda<\/i>, those were the types of roles she was offered, it was seen as ALL she could do. Rather ridiculous, really, since Hayworth didn&#8217;t come out of nowhere in <i>Gilda<\/i>. She had already been working and dancing in Hollywood for almost 10 years at that point. She had been great and tough and sexy in a smallish (but very memorable) part in Howard Hawks&#8217; <i>Only Angels Have Wings<\/i> (1939), where she has a great scene stumbling around in a bar late at night, holding a bottle of wine, looking for a corkscrew, and laughing at a stern Cary Grant, &#8220;Lock the doors, Judith&#8217;s lost her equilibrium.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280.png\" alt=\"tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-107853\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280.png 640w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280-100x75.png 100w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280-200x150.png 200w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/tumblr_ly6d0tGsH51r1yyado8_1280-400x300.png 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>She had some major successes in big musicals in the early-mid 40s, starring Fred Astaire, or Gene Kelly &#8211; where she was absolutely wonderful, and a phenomenal dancer. <i>Gilda<\/i> represented a complete change, a change that shattered the rosy-cheeked ingenue. Startling. Bold. Radical. Unforced. Maybe a more appropriate reaction to Hayworth in <i>Gilda<\/i> would be, &#8220;Wow. I just saw her tap-dancing and grinning in a movie just last year. And now this? This woman can do ANYTHING.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda.jpg\" alt=\"mame black strapless 6 rita hayworth gilda\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-107856\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda-100x75.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda-200x150.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/mame-black-strapless-6-rita-hayworth-gilda-400x300.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<i>Hayworth in &#8220;Gilda&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\n <i>Gilda<\/i> exploded Rita Hayworth into the stratosphere (where she remains today). She fought against the influence of &#8220;Gilda&#8221; for the rest of her life (and gave some wonderful performances afterwards: <i>Sadie Thompson<\/i>, <i>Separate Tables<\/i>. And of course I probably saw her on that Carol Burnette Show sketch when I was a kid.) A troubled and shy woman whose death came far too early, she had a pretty sad end as she descended into dementia  (Hayworth was the first star to go public with her battle with Alzheimer&#8217;s: it brought huge awareness to the disease). <\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the personal life dramas overshadow the work, especially with bombshell sex-symbols unfortunately. It&#8217;s all part of that uneasy (or it seems uneasy to me, so uncomfortable are we still with freely expressed female sexuality) and vested interest in boxing those types of women in, tossing them out when they get old, diminishing their accomplishments, lessening the meaningfulness of their impact. Honestly, what is more meaningful than a Movie Goddess? <\/p>\n<p>So much of the earlier footage of Hayworth is just newsreel-y stuff and posed publicity photos so I was so happy to find this small interview clip.  Smart, thoughtful, grateful, and honest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wonderful 1967 interview with Rita Hayworth, on Gilda, the old star system, and being stereo-typed. Hayworth was grateful for what Gilda did for her (she became the biggest star in the world &#8211; and she was alREADY beloved by American &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=107848\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1279,290],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107848"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107848"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107860,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107848\/revisions\/107860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}