Gilda

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As a woman, I am constantly bombarded with different ideals of what beauty is. While most people think that beauty is exemplified by the models in the fashion industry, I've always found myself striving to look like one of the old starlets on the big screen… essentially meaning that I’d rather be a Monroe than a Moss. From Marilyn to Mansfield, Elizabeth Taylor to Sophia Loren, I would spend hours researching their lives, who they were, and how they solidified themselves as legends on the silver screen. More than any of them though, I was most captivated by Rita Hayworth.

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I first discovered her when I first watched The Shawshank Redemption. For those of you who have yet to see it, I highly recommend it. The movie as a whole is absolutely fantastic; however, there is one scene in particular that gets me every time. There is a part where Andy comes into the auditorium while Gilda plays in the background. You see the audience, full of males watching the screen intently, anxiously, almost like they’re waiting for something. Andy sits behind Red to ask him a question to where Red tells him to hold on because his favorite part of the movie is coming up.  The camera cuts back to the screen where Rita Hayworth, in her negligee, flips her hair and emerges on the screen like some sort of goddess.

The response?

The room literally explodes in a chorus of whistles, claps and laughter. I mean, this is literally a room full of murders and bank robbers going weak in the knees over a woman. One  woman. Gilda.

Watch the scene yourself. I’m not dramatizing the explosiveness at all…

From that moment on I started to research more about her. How could a single woman do a hair flip and bring the entire male population to their knees? It was absolutely fascinating.

Film is film. Film is meant to dramatize events, so I thought that Shawshank dramatized the response to the Hayworth-mania.

Naturally, I was wrong.

 It turns out that Rita Hayworth was the “It” girl of the late 40’s. Before Monroe, Taylor, Bardot, and Welch…there was Rita.

Unlike the 50’s and the 60’s, the 40’s were not a pop culturally dominated time.  Whereas in the 50’s we tend to think Rock N’ Roll, Marilyn Monroe, and Diners; in the 40’s it was all about WWII. For that reason, I think that is why Rita isn't as popular as other starlets; but she was definitely as, if not more, powerful. Even today there are subtle traces of her in a lot of movies and shows. One of the most obvious is in Jessica Rabbits performance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , it makes a reference to Hayworth’s strip tease scene in Gilda.

Believe me when I say that Rita’s performance in Gilda took the world by storm. She was the entity of what a woman was: Abrupt, sharp, strong, but at the same time a femme fatale, gentle, and incredibly beautiful. She was every mans fantasy. 

Before Gilda, Rita Hayworth had also become a sex symbol; a pin up girl that ultimately fueled Gilda’s success. Along with gracing the walls of thousands of military men , and lighting Hollywood up with one of the most successful film of the late 1940’s (grossing at $3,750,000); Rita Hayworth earned her nickname “The Love Goddess” (Conelrad). 

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With money, power, fame, and beauty it seemed as though Hayworth might have had it all. But like all starlets, there was an immense downside to her explosive fame.

A gentle soul outside of her acting career, a huge wave of disturbance shook up her life when “Gilda” and her image were stenciled onto the side of the first atomic bomb detonated after WWII. Rita, who was outraged on the thought of her face on the side of a mass killing weapon wanted to go to Washington to protest the dropping. However, Columbia advised her not to do that, arguing that it would make her “unpatriotic”.  She had lost control over her power. Her popularity became so overwhelming that people were essentially allowed to put her image on anything, regardless of her consent. 

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It was through this fame that she eventually  started to lose herself. So while the world raved about Gilda, Rita Hayworth was being pushed to the side.

Denied singing lessons, getting fired over her refusal for certain movie roles, Hollywood was cashing on Rita to essentially to just stand there and look pretty. They wanted Gilda, not Rita.

This notion eventually overtook her personal life. Rita is once quoted famously for saying “They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me.” Even books quote her husband, Orson Welles for deeming Rita  as “incapable of being anything but a surface to admire or desire.” (McLean).

Gilda was a role that defined her. Even though she had numerous other films, she was always Gilda; and that stayed with her until her death.

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What really affects and draws me to Rita Hayworth is that while  reading her story, you really get an essence of the cost of immortality. As humans, I believe that we strive to make a mark on the world--to leave something behind so that when we are gone, we have evidence that we actually did exist.  Like Monroe, Rita too was overshadowed by her image.  But it was this image that allowed her to become immortal. Looking up to these women, I've noticed this pattern of trade: to be a legend, one must compromise themselves to fit into their image. I can’t speak for Rita, and I can’t be sure if it was worth it enough for her. But with this trade, she did get her immortality. There will not be a generation that does not eventually happen upon her name, recognize her face, imitate her hair flip, and become enchanted with her charm.

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SOURCES USED:

1.    Sitz, Ben, and Bill Geerhart. "Atomic Goddess: Rita Hayworth and the Legend of the Bikini Bombshell." Weblog post. Conelrad. Blogger, 3 July 2011. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.

1.      McLean, Adrienne L. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2004. Project MUSE. Rutgers University Press, 2004. Web. 3 Nov. 2013.