Rita Hayworth, born Margarita Carmen Cansino, on October 17, 1918 and died May 14, 1987 was an American icon of the silver screen and a accomplished dancer. She achieved fame during the 1940s as one of the era’s top stars, and was the top pin-up girls for GIs during World War ll. She appeared in a total of 61 films over 37 years. The press coined the term “The Love Goddess” to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. Hayworth was married five times.

Her first marriage was to Edward C. Judson, an oilman turned promoter who was twice married and as old as her father. He became her manager for months before he proposed. Judson had been trying to get her modeling and acting jobs before their marriage; afterward he encouraged her to sleep with studio executives to promote her career. They eloped in 1937, when Rita was only 18, and filed for divorced on February 24, 1942, with a complaint of cruelty after Judson compelled her to transfer a considerable amount of her property to him, and she promised to pay him $12,000 under threats that he would do her “great bodily harm”. After the divorce Rita would say, “he helped me with my career and helped himself to my money.”

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Her second marriage was to director and actor, Orson Wells who pursed her after seeing sultry photograph taken of her. The married on September 7, 1943, during the run of The Mercury Wonder Show. All wasn’t serene, Welles thought he was marrying a sex goddess, not a clinging, insecure woman. Within two years of the marriage he was romancing other women. They had a daughter Rebecca in 1944, but that could not keep the marriage together. Hayworth would go on to say that Welles did not want to be tied down, “During the entire period of our marriage, he showed no interest in establishing a home. When I suggested purchasing a home, he told me he didn’t want the responsibility. Mr. Welles told me he never should have married in the first place; that it interfered with his freedom in his way of life.” On November 10, 1947, she was granted a divorce that became final the following year. Hayworth called Welles the “great love of her life”

Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles on their Wedding Day in 1943.

Rita Hayworth with Orson Welles and his daughter
Christopher Marlowe Welles from a previous marriage at home in 1945.
© Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

In 1948 after a failed relationship with Howard Hughes she fled to Europe for an abortion of his child while there she meet playboy Prince Aly Khan, a son of Sultan Mahommed Shah, Aga Khan III, the leader of the Ismaili sect of Shia Islam.  Hayworth left her film career to marry Prince Aly Khan, they were married on May 27, 1949. Khan loved Rita and tried to be good to her but her fear of abandonment and his womanizing ways would cause problems in the marriage and ended in divorce after her was spotted with other women. In the midst of a custody battle of there daughter Yasmin who was born in 1949, the prince said he wanted her to be raised as a Muslim; Hayworth wanted the child to be raised as a Christian. Hayworth rejected his offer of $1 million if she would rear Yasmin as a Muslim from age seven and allow her to go to Europe to visit with him for two or three months each year. Hayworth filed for divorce from Khan on September 2, 1951, on the grounds of “extreme cruelty, entirely mental in nature.” 

Rita Hayworth with Prince Aly Khan on their Wedding Day in May 1949.

When Hayworth met Dick Haymes, he was still married, having financial problems and his singing career was waning, while she was still in a custody battle over her daughter. Hayworth ended up paying most of Haymes’s debts and when she showed up at the clubs, he got a larger audience. He thought marry her would help his career. Not long after meeting Hayworth, the U.S. officials initiated proceedings to have him deported to Argentina for being an illegal alien. He hoped Hayworth could influence the government and keep him in the United States. When she assumed responsibility for his citizenship, a bond was formed that led to marriage. The two were married on September 24, 1953, at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas, and their wedding procession went through the casino. Hayworth and Haymes relationship was abusive, after a tumultuous two years together, Haymes struck Hayworth in the face in 1955 in public at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles. Hayworth packed her bags, walked out, and never returned. The assault and crisis shook her, and her doctor ordered her to remain in bed for several days. Hayworth was short of money after her marriage to Haymes. She had failed to gain child support from Aly Khan. She sued Orson Welles for back payment of child support which she claimed had never been paid. This effort was unsuccessful and added to her stress. 

Hayworth’s fifth and final marriage was to film producer James Hill, whom she went on to marry on February 2, 1958. He got her in one of her last major films, Separate Tables. But the marriage was troubled, Hayworth would have sudden rages and outburst. One night their home, Hayworth hurled a candelabra at Hill, narrowly missing his head. This behaviour was likely the beginning of Alzheimer’s disease, which she was diagnosed with in the 1980s and would suffer for the rest of her life. On September 1, 1961, Hayworth filed for divorce, alleging extreme mental cruelty. Hill later wrote Rita Hayworth: A Memoir, in which he suggested that their marriage collapsed because he wanted Hayworth to continue making movies, while she wanted them both to retire from Hollywood. In his autobiography, Charlton Heston wrote about Hayworth’s brief marriage to Hill. One night, Heston and his wife Lydia joined the couple for dinner at a restaurant in Spain with the director George Marshall and the actor Rex Harrison, Hayworth’s co-star in The Happy Thieves. Heston wrote 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 wrote that the others sat stunned, witnesses to a “marital massacre”, and, though he was “strongly tempted to slug him” (Hill), he left with his wife Lydia after she stood up, almost in tears. Heston wrote, “I’m ashamed of walking away from Miss Hayworth’s humiliation. I never saw her again.”

Rita Hayworth had an unhappy life, five marriages to men who used and abused her, who thought they were marrying a goddess, when what they were marrying was an insecure woman who just want to be loved and protected. She deserved so much better.