If This Was Happiness:Hayworth: Biography of Rita Hayworth

by Barbara Leaming (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.37

  Following her biographies of Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, the author offers an account of the life and film career of the Love Goddess whose smouldering image hid a tragic secret which fame and love affairs with glamorous men could do nothing to heal. If this was happiness , said Orson Welles, imagine what the rest of her life had been! Margarita Cansino was a shy child, thrust into the sordid limelight by her ambitious father as his dancing partner. His exploitation and abuse set a pattern for life. Her name was changed to Rita Hayworth and her film career took off, but her personal life remained a failure: five disastrous marriages, including those to Welles and Aly Khan, short-lived love affairs with men such as David Niven and Howard Hughes, a drawn-out custody battle for her daughter Yasmin accompanied by accusations of child neglect, and finally the long slide into Alzheimer's disease, agonizingly mis-diagnosed as alcoholism.