If This Was Happiness

If This Was Happiness by Barbara Leaming

Reviewed by Gerti

Rita Hayworth was an actress before my time, but I had seen her in various movies over the years, including films where she acted with top-notch male stars like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire. I also knew a little of her personal life - she had been married to other famous men, like Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan, but I never knew that she was married more often than that (and to some real rats!) or that she had been sexually abused as a child by her father. All these things and more are the hot topics in Barbara Leaming’s biography of Hayworth, whose real name was Margarita Cansino.

The title gives away the gist of the book, though, as Hayworth’s life was filled with more unhappiness than one person should have to deal with. Starting with the sexual abuse which started when Rita had to be her father’s dance partner in their vaudeville shows, Rita became the breadwinner for her family after she got into movies. Studio head Harry Cohn tried to control her life after that. She tried to get married thinking that would get her away from being a puppet to her family and Columbia Pictures. However, her first husband, Eddie Judson, used her as a cash cow, as did her last husband, Dick Haymes, part-time crooner and crook.

The only real happiness Rita is said to have had is with second husband Orson Welles, but even he is surprised that she could have considered their short union to have been a happy one. He was quite a playboy, as was her third husband, Prince Aly Khan the millionaire son of the Aga Khan. She had children with both Welles and Khan, but never spent much time with the girls. Welles ignored his daughter with her, Rebecca, almost completely. Aly engaged in seemingly endless lawsuits to see his daughter, Yasmin, but by that point Rita was paranoid about his stealing the girl away since he was abroad more often than in the US.

Perhaps that paranoia was part of her incipient Alzheimer’s disease, but perhaps it was attributable to her drinking. The girls eventually become wards of the state because Rita and her man of the moment couldn’t be bothered to keep them around, and she left them with a babysitter of sorts who let them be dirty and unsupervised. A funny way for a Princess to grow up! It’s strange to see Rita looking disheveled and disoriented in the pictures from this period in her life. But Alzheimer’s would gradually claim her mind, and she became unable to make movies, or even to make public appearances. Fortunately for her, daughter Yasmin took care of her in her later years, as she was unable to care for herself.

The biography is anything but happy reading, as poor beautiful but uneducated Rita is always having terrible things happen to her. It makes you think about what it really means to be a “Love Goddess” (her nickname) and a Hollywood star, with everyone you meet trying to use you for your body, money or fame, rather than helping to make your life happy and fulfilling. A truly tragic story.