[7] Hayworth is widely known for her performance in the 1946 film noir Gilda, opposite Glenn Ford, in which she played the femme fatale in her first major dramatic role.

Her father, Eduardo Cansino, was Spanish, but of Romani (gypsy) descent[8][9][10] from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a little town near Seville, Spain.

Winfield Sheehan, the head of the Fox Film Corporation, saw her dancing at the Caliente Club and quickly arranged for Hayworth to do a screen test a week later.

[23]: 32–33  Sensing her screen potential, salesman and promoter Edward C. Judson, with whom she would elope in 1937,[23]: 36  got freelance work for her in several small-studio films and a part in the Columbia Pictures feature Meet Nero Wolfe (1936).

In 1939, Cohn pressured director Howard Hawks to use Hayworth for a small, but important, role as a man-trap in the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings, in which she played opposite Cary Grant and Jean Arthur.

[29][30] Bob Landry's photo made Hayworth one of the top two pin-up girls of the World War II years; the other was Betty Grable, in a 1943 photograph.

[33] In March 1942, Hayworth visited Brazil as a cultural ambassador for the Roosevelt administration's Good Neighbor policy, under the auspices of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.

[34] During the 1940s Hayworth also contributed to the OCIAA's cultural diplomacy initiatives in support of Pan-Americanism through her broadcasts to South America on the CBS "Cadena de las Américas" radio network.

[citation needed] Her sexy, glamorous appeal was most noted in Charles Vidor's film noir Gilda (1946) with Glenn Ford, which caused censors some consternation.

The role, in which Hayworth wore black satin and performed a legendary one-glove striptease, "Put The Blame On Mame", made her into a cultural icon as a femme fatale.

[12] While Gilda was in release, it was widely reported that an atomic bomb that was scheduled to be tested at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands would bear an image of Hayworth, a reference to her bombshell status.

Orson Welles, then married to Hayworth, recalled her anger in an interview with biographer Barbara Leaming: "Rita used to fly into terrible rages all the time, but the angriest was when she found out that they'd put her on the atom bomb.

[12] The film's failure at the box office was attributed in part to Hayworth's famous red hair being cut short and bleached platinum blonde for the role.

Because she was still legally married to second husband Orson Welles during the early days of her courtship with the prince, Hayworth also received some negative backlash, causing some American fans to boycott her pictures.

After the collapse of her marriage to Khan, Rita Hayworth was forced[clarification needed] to return to Hollywood to star in her "comeback" picture, Affair in Trinidad (1952) which again paired her with Glenn Ford.

By the time she returned to the screen for Fire Down Below (1957) with Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak had become Columbia's top female star.

She received good reviews for her performances in Separate Tables (1958), with Burt Lancaster and David Niven, They Came to Cordura (1959) with Gary Cooper and The Story on Page One (1960).

For instance, an article in the British periodical The People called for a boycott of Hayworth's films: Hollywood must be told its already tarnished reputation will sink to rock bottom if it restores this reckless woman to a place among its stars.

[citation needed] Hayworth confided to Orson Welles that her father began to sexually abuse her as a child when they were touring together as the Dancing Cansinos.

There isn't any amount of money in the entire world for which it is worth sacrificing this child's privilege of living as a normal Christian girl here in the United States.

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.

[23]: 337–338  In November, she agreed to complete one more movie, the British film Tales That Witness Madness,[23]: 343  but because of her worsening health, she left the set and returned to the United States.

"Despite the artfully applied make-up and shoulder-length red hair, there was no concealing the ravages of drink and stress", she wrote of Hayworth's arrival in New York in May 1956 in order to begin work on Fire Down Below, her first film in three years.

"[95] In July 1981, Hayworth's health had deteriorated to the point that a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court ruled that she should be placed under the care of her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan of New York City.

[96] Hayworth lived in an apartment at The San Remo on Central Park West adjoining that of her daughter, who arranged for her mother's care during her final years.

[39] Pallbearers included actors Ricardo Montalbán, Glenn Ford, Cesar Romero, Anthony Franciosa, choreographer Hermes Pan, and a family friend, Phillip Luchenbill.

[111] The press release added that Hayworth's daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, the Alzheimer's Association of Greater Los Angeles, and numerous prominent personalities of stage and screen were supporting the Moss campaign.

In the Sicilian scenes of the film The Godfather, the bodyguard of Michael Corleone is heard shouting the name "Rita Hayworth" to GI's passing by in jeeps.