Rita Hayworth: The Twenty-Four Hours a Day Gilda

Gilda. A Film Noir that is most famous for the one star…Rita Hayworth. In my book, she places the number one spot for the femme fatales in Hollywood history. In dramas, Hayworth’s roles usually consist of the “other woman”, archetypal evil seductress, and a femme fatale.  Dyer refers to her as “the object of desire [that] is unknowable and treacherous” (93). Certain elements in Rita Hayworth’s image, such as her long wavy hair, elongated legs, rouge lips, fit the generic femme fatale. A “positive charge” is given to the character of Gilda by the actress Rita Hayworth. Overall…the gal has charisma. She is a “Love Goddess” of Hollywood. However, this film and the many before & after, has influenced her image towards men, and her life.

"I think all women have a certain elegance about them which is destroyed when they take off their clothes."-Rita Hayworth

Margarita Carmen Cansino trained as a dancer in early childhood, and later danced with her Spanish father, Eduardo Cansino. Her knowledge and skill of Latin American style of dance became part of her image—“It is not just her star status that gives Hayworth her presence in the film. It is also her position as an identification figure, and her dancing” (96). This style of dance was viewed “primitive” and “authentic erotic expressivity”(97). Hayworth’s solo numbers in Gilda: “makes it possible to read her dancing in terms of eroticism for herself as well as for the spectator” (97). Every heterosexual man during this time must have been hooting and hollering at the screens when the famous “Put the Blame on Mame” performance was occurring. It was a soft strip tease. In the film, Gilda, “…her dance numbers are important movements in which the film dwells on her, sexuality” (98). This sexuality can be viewed as a praise of her own body and others rejoicing in it too, or “male heterosexual enjoyment of the character (surrender rather than control)” (98). Did this film, and possibly other’s too, make Hayworth viewed as a sex object for the male viewer?

“Gilda: I can never get a zipper to close. Maybe that stands for something, what do you think?”

-Gilda (1946)

Rita Hayworth behind all the glamor and praise was longing for someone to love her…for her.  Rita Hayworth, referring to men, said "They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me." The character of Gilda never left her shadow throughout all of her life. Every man, whether husband or not, viewed her as that sexualized femme fatale. She admitted herself, “No one can be Gilda 24 hours a day”. In Adrienne L. McLean’s book, Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (2004), Hayworth’s childhood abuse and influence from her father demolished the areas of love, sex, and motherhood in her life. Her father told her to use “sex to get and hold attention” and “play sexually provocative roles” (67). Added onto that, she played roles that fit those criteria. From femme fatales roles, pin-up, and photographs…people only “saw her only as a sex goddess or as an object of men’s manipulation” (67). Hayworth once said, "Basically, I am a good, gentle person, but I am attracted to mean personalities." It was part of her nature.

This view and lifestyle took a toll on her life. Barbara Leaming writes in her biography, Hayworth If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth (1989) “despite the artfully applied make-up and shoulder-length red hair, there was no concealing the ravages of drink and stress. Deep lines had crept around her eyes and mouth, and she appeared worn, exhausted, older than her thirty-eight years." Mentioned in Wikipedia article on Hayworth, her daughter, Yasmin Aga Khan wrote about her drinking problem: “‘Well, there's not much I can do. I can just, sort of, stand by and watch.' It's very difficult, seeing your mother, going through her emotional problems and drinking and then behaving in that manner; her condition became quite bad. It worsened and she did have an alcoholic breakdown and landed in the hospital.”

It all winds down to this:
“All I wanted was just what everybody else wants, you know, to be loved.” -Rita Hayworth
To be loved as herself.