The Lady from Shanghai – the weirdest great movie ever made

2018-01-16 By aenigma

The Lady from Shanghai – hallucinatory, baffling, sinister, brilliant, twisted. All of those adjectives apply to this flawed masterpiece by one of cinema’s great magicians. Or, in the words of Dave Kehr, the weirdest great movie ever made.

The Lady from Shanghai has become something of a cult for movie buffs, particularly for connoisseurs of film noir. It’s full of originality, strangeness and atmosphere. But the film we see today is very different from the one that Orson Welles, its writer, director, producer and co-star, envisioned. And the story behind it has enough twists and turns to form the basis of a movie in its own right.

If you’ve never seen the movie, now’s the time to find out what you’ve been missing. If you have a blu-ray player, try to get hold of the Mill Creek Entertainment transfer.

Spoiler Alert!!! Let’s begin with the main characters and the plot of the film itself. So, stop reading now if you’ve never seen The Lady from Shanghai and want to watch it without knowing the plot in advance.

The Lady from Shanghai – characters, plot and things to look out for

1947. Rita Hayworth as Elsa Bannister in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

There are five main protagonists in The Lady from Shanghai:

Michael O’Hara, an unemployed freelance sailor who acts as the film’s narrator. Orson Welles cast himself in the role, assuming a less-than-convincing Irish accent. For all that, his wistful voice-over imbues the film with a sense of overwhelming sadness, world-weariness and resignation.
Elsa Bannister, the drop-dead gorgeous lady from Shanghai with a murky past and a great deal on her mind. This role marked a radical departure from those previously played by Rita Hayworth.
Arthur Bannister, Elsa’s husband whose brilliant legal mind is in stark contrast with his pitiful, crippled body. He’s played with “hawk-like malevolence” by Mercury Player Everett Sloane, who made his screen debut in Citizen Kane. And indeed Arthur Bannister, like Charles Foster Kane, is full of despair despite his success.
George Grisby, Arthur Bannister’s sweaty, bulging-eyed, leering legal partner, obsessed with the atom bomb and the end of the world. He has a habit of calling people “fella,” presumably a reference to Nelson Rockefeller, who had recruited Welles to create It’s All True (a film comprising three stories about Latin America), only to terminate the project before it came to fruition. Glenn Anders’ performance in the role all but steals the show.
Sidney Broome, a private detective hired by Arthur Bannister to spy on Elsa. This marked Ted de Corsia’s screen debut and he went on to play a number of villains in movies including Jules Dassin’s terrific The Naked City (1948).

The Lady from Shanghai has a tortuous, labyrinthine storyline. At the beginning, it’s easy to follow. But as the film moves towards its shattering (literally!) climax, the intrigue careers out of control, piling plot-twist on plot-twist. Perhaps things would have been spelled out more clearly had the film not been cut by an hour and subjected to numerous retakes and edits. But even before that happened… after the preview showing, Harry Cohn, Columbia’s president, offered to pay anyone in the room US$1,000 if they could explain the storyline. So perhaps it was always Welles’ intention to take his audience for a ride.

The following sequence of stills should help you to make sense of the plot. The synopsis in the captions draws on a much longer and rather brilliant one at Filmsite.org.

Note: stills 5 and 8 have been cropped from portrait to landscape format so as not to disrupt the grid.

One of The Lady from Shanghai’s most striking aspects is its cinematography – in particular its use of wide-angle lenses to caricature faces, notably those of Grisby and Bannister; startling camera angles (such as the vertiginous vantage point along the coast from which we see Grisby explain his plot to Michael); and deep focus, which disorients the viewer by giving equal weight to foregrounds and backgrounds. There are also many virtuoso passages. Five of the most remarkable are:

The cruise with its sweltering, claustrophobic, voyeuristic atmosphere and the allusions to Elsa’s siren character via the name of the yacht (Circe) and the shots of her reclining on the rocks and singing.
The picnic in the jungle with its air of doom, desire and venom, culminating in Michael’s extraordinary speech:

Do you know, once off the hump of Brazil, I saw the ocean so darkened with blood it was black, and the sun fadin’ away over the lip of the sky. We put in at Fortaleza. A few of us had lines out for a bit of idle ﬁshin’. It was me had the ﬁrst strike. A shark it was, and then there was another and another shark again, till all about the sea was made of sharks, and more sharks still, and the water tall. My shark had torn himself away from the hook, and the scent, or maybe the stain it was, and him bleedin’ his life away, drove the rest of them mad. Then the beasts took to eatin’ each other; in their frenzy, they ate at themselves. You could feel the lust of murder like a wind stingin’ your eyes, and you could smell the death, reekin’ up out of the sea. I never saw anything worse, until this little picnic tonight. And you know, there wasn’t one of them sharks in the whole crazy pack that survived.

The aquarium, which provides such a disconcerting setting for Michael’s clandestine meeting with Elsa.
The outrageous court scene, which makes a hilarious mockery of the legal system.
The Fun House and Hall of Mirrors that Welles created for the film’s dénoement.

The Lady from Shanghai – how it came about

In 1945 Welles found himself in a predicament:

I was working on Around the World in 80 Days [a stage musical based on the Jules Verne novel] and we found ourselves in Boston on the day of the premiere, unable to get the costumes from the station because $50,000 was due and our producer, Mr. Todd, had gone broke. Without that money we couldn’t open. I called Harry Cohn [head of Columbia Studios] in Hollywood…”

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ENDANGERED .. Orson Welles in a dramatic scene from Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which he stars with Rita Hayworth.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles as Michael O'Hara in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Orson Welles in The Lady from Shanghai

A caption on the back of the photo reads:

ENDANGERED .. Orson Welles in a dramatic scene from Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which he stars with Rita Hayworth.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

According to Welles, he made the call from a drugstore and when Cohn asked him what the film would be about, he grabbed a novel from a nearby shelf and read out the synopsis on the back. However, Welles was a master of creating his own mythology and the truth is a bit more prosaic. The film is based on Sherwood King’s novel, If I Die Before I Wake. Years earlier, producer William Castle had sold the movie rights to Columbia on the condition that he would be involved should a film be made. He subsequently produced a treatment and set it to Welles, who responded:

About If I Should Die – I love it … I have been searching for an idea for a film, but none presented itself until If I Should Die and I could play the lead and Rita Hayworth could play the girl. I won’t present it to anybody without your OK. The script should be written immediately. Can you start working on it at night?

But why did Harry Cohn go along with the idea, given that at the time Welles was pretty much persona non-grata in Hollywood. Citizen Kane (1941) had done a pretty effective character assassination job on newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, setting Welles up as a threat to the establishment. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) had gone over budget and failed to recoup its investment. It’s All True was terminated before completion and never saw the light of day. Welles went some way to redeeming his credibility with The Stranger (1946), which came in under budget and proved a modest commercial success.

Perhaps Cohn felt that for the money Welles wanted it was a risk worth taking. Or perhaps he didn’t want to upset Hayworth, his biggest star, by turning down her husband even though the marriage was on the rocks. Besides, the pairing of Welles and Hayworth as the leads could be an intriguing prospect for audiences.

The Lady from Shanghai – Welles’ ambition

Rita Hayworth's million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Flash bulbs pop as Rita Hayworth has her tresses shorn by Columbia’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, for her starring role in ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ a Columbia picture. Orson Welles, Rita’s husband, is her co-star as well as producer and director of the film.”

The first thing Welles did was have Hayworth’s trademark long red hair bobbed and dyed “topaz blonde.” And he made it into a media event, inviting the press to come along and witness the makeover for themselves. It was not what Harry Cohn had in mind for his biggest star and he was furious. In spite of that, the studio released a whole series of shots of the event to the press.

Gossip columnist Louella Parsons (who had it in for Welles ever since he parodied her boss, William Randolph Hearst, in Citizen Kane) claimed that with The Lady from Shanghai he had deliberately and maliciously set out to destroy Rita Hayworth’s career. She then asserted that Welles was “washed up.”

It’s difficult to know what impelled Welles to such a controversial move. He may well have felt ambivalent, even vindictive, about his marriage, and there’s certainly a case to be made for seeing the whole movie as a misogynistic, not to say toxic, farewell to Hayworth. And yet… Is Elsa nothing more than a cold-blooded, scheming femme fatale? It’s tempting to jump to that conclusion. But it’s also possible to see her, like Gilda, as a victim – a woman in a man’s world who’s been exploited her whole life and who is now so desperate she’s prepared to take matters into her own hands.

Back to the haircut and it’s likely that, however he felt about his marriage, with his director’s hat on Welles saw the need for a completely new look that would disassociate Hayworth in audiences’ minds from her previous roles. It was an early symptom of the way in which Cohn’s and Welles’ ambitions for the movie diverged. Cohn was looking for a box-office hit. Welles wanted to produce “something off-center, queer, strange,” according to a memo he sent Cohn, by giving the film a nightmarish feel and striving for performances that were “original, or at least oblique.

Orson Welles with Rita Hayworth just before she has her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles with Rita Hayworth before her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with husband Orson Welles just before having her tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles will co-star with her as well as produce and direct it for Columbia Pictures.

Helen Hunt about to embark on Rita Hayworth’s million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with Columbia’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, just before having her tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Rita’s husband, Orson Welles, will co-star as well as produce and direct it for Columbia Pictures.

Helen Hunt giving Rita Hayworth a million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth is shown here with locks of hair in her hands while Columbia’s chief hair-stylist, Helen Hunt, continues to cut away Rita’s tresses for her role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which she has her husband, Orson Welles, as co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth admiring her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth and husband, Orson Welles, seem pleased with Rita’s new hair style. Rita had her long tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles is her co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth admiring her million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

MILLION DOLLAR HAIRCUT .. Rita Hayworth and husband, Orson Welles, seem pleased with Rita’s new hair style. Rita had her long tresses shorn for her starring role in “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Welles is her co-star. He is also producer and director of the Columbia picture.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth’s million dollar haircut for The Lady from Shanghai

1946. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

THE WORLD’S FIRST TOPAZ BLONDE! Glamorous Rita Hayworth, as this photo shows, has submitted to the ministrations of Columbia Studio’s chief hair stylist, Helen Hunt, to acquire a new coiffure for her forthcoming starring picture, “The Lady From Shanghai.” With 18 inches snipped from her crowning glory, and her titian locks changed to a new blonde called topaz blonde, it is a new and vibrant Rita who faces the cameras these days. “I just didn’t want to stay ‘Gilda’ forever,” Rita explains when asked the reason for the change in her hairdo.

Characteristically, Welles was hugely ambitious for the film. For the opening scene, set in Central Park, he planned the longest dolly shot ever filmed. involving huge arc lights, a sound boom and a 20-foot camera crane, which followed Elsa Bannister’s carriage for nearly a mile. That was just the beginning. He also planned to shoot most of the film on location, something pretty much unheard of in Hollywood at the time since seemingly every cinematic need could be catered for by the vast studio lots and soundstages. For Welles that would have been just too obvious and easy. Plus, shooting on location would have been a great way of escaping Cohn’s surveillance – the mogul bugged Welles’ office at Columbia, as he had Glenn Ford’s dressing room when Gilda was being filmed.

And then there were the sets and set pieces, the two most celebrated being the Fun House (a great set for a fashion shoot – Rita’s wardrobe is by Jean Louis) and the Hall of Mirrors. The inspiration for the former were the expressionist images of the German silent movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). According to Rob Nixon:

Stephen Goosson designed an elaborate set with sliding doors, distorting mirrors and a 125-foot zigzag slide from the roof of a studio sound stage down into a pit that was 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 20 feet deep. For one shot simulating Welles’ point of view as he hurtled down the slide, Lawton and camera operator Irving Klein slid the entire length of it on their stomachs with the camera on a mat. The director himself spent more than a week from 10:30 at night until 5 in the morning painting the set.

The Hall of Mirrors was designed with the help of special effects wizard Lawrence Butler and contained almost 3,000 square feet of glass. Some of the mirrors were two-way, others had holes through which the camera crew could shoot.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

WHITE FOR EVENING … Rita Hayworth, co-starring with Orson Welles in Columbia's "The Lady From Shanghai" wears this lovely white marquisette creation by designer Jean Louis against the background of an amusement park "fun house." It is there that one of the most dramatic sequences of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

PLEATS ARE NEW … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this black dinner dress featuring the new pleated skirt, which is embroidered in amber beads. The dress may be worn with the accompanying V scarf as a tie-on sash or as a head covering.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DRESSY BLACK … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this smart black wool suit designed by Jean Louis. The fashion interest in this lies in the contrast between the dull of the fabric and the shiny satin trim. This shot was taken on the “fun house” set, where one of the most dramatic moments of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Rita Hayworth fashion shot, The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DRESSY BLACK … Rita Hayworth, in her next Columbia picture, “The Lady From Shanghai,” wears this smart black wool suit designed by Jean Louis. The fashion interest in this lies in the contrast between the dull of the fabric and the shiny satin trim. This shot was taken on the “fun house” set, where one of the most dramatic moments of the picture takes place.

Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

When it came to cinematography, Welles and his director of photography, Charles Lawton Jr, decided to use low-key interior lighting and natural light wherever possible. For outdoor skies and transitions between outdoor and indoor scenes they employed filters. And they exploited wide-angle lenses to lend distortion to close-ups. Shooting on board a yacht was always going to be a challenge – the sort of thing Welles loved. So he and Lawton did a series of experimental test shoots to determine how to deal with the problem of over-exposure – the light meters struggled to cope with the glare of the sea and sky. They also turned the lack of space on the yacht to their advantage by creating cramped, claustrophobic compositions. And for the aquarium scene they got seriously tricksy. First they shot the fish-tanks separately. Then they enlarged the resulting film and used it as the background for the close-ups of Michael and Elsa, making the sea creatures appear super-size and super-sinister.

The Lady from Shanghai – a disaster in the making

Rita Hayworth takes time to relax during the filming of The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “RELAXATION .. Lovely Rita Hayworth relaxes at home after an arduous day at Columbia Studios, where she is working in ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ with Orson Welles, but her Chinese lounging robe and slippers still retain the Oriental motif of her current film.” Photo by Ned Scott.

Shooting began in autumn 1946 in locations including Acapulco, San Francisco and New York as well as Columbia Studios – for details and photos take a look at Reel SF. For the Acapulco shoot, which took more than 35 days, Welles rented Errol Flynn’s yacht, and Columbia sent 40 technicians and more than six tons of equipment.

Even under the most favourable circumstances, the location shoot was never going to be straightforward. The jungle picnic scenes were filmed close to a crocodile-infested river. Poisonous barnacles had to be scraped off the rock from which Elsa dives into the ocean. A spear-wielding Mexican swimming champion had to be employed to swim off-camera to protect Hayworth from deadly barracuda.

But it was as if the shoot was cursed. In Mexico, the cast and crew were plagued by problems, many of them detailed by producer William Castle in his diary. During the day, the temperature was sweltering. At night, clouds of poisonous insects swarmed around the arc lights, sometimes rendering them useless. Histamine poisoning from an insect bite caused such swelling to one of Welles’ eyes that he couldn’t open it. And half the crew went down with dysentery. Meanwhile, Hayworth was sick throughout the shoot, collapsing both In Mexico and in San Francisco, and halting production for a month.

Worst of all, on the first day of shooting, assistant cameraman Donald Ray Cory, working bareheaded in the blazing sun, had a heart attack and died. Rumour has it that Errol Flynn, who insisted on captaining his boat and was regularly drunk and abusive, wanted the body dumped into the ocean in a duffle bag. The crew ignored him, discreetly put the corpse ashore and hushed the incident up.

And then there were problems Welles brought on himself by his way of working. He would rewrite the script from day to day so everyone ended up confused. And as a director he would give his actors a hard time. Sometimes he deliberately upset them to get nervous, edgy performances. Other times he would cause them to forget their lines and improvise on the spot. By all accounts, it was not a happy project.

Welles never viewed the rushes; he just shipped them straight off to Columbia. There they were reviewed by Viola Lawrence, the studio’s chief editor. As a firm advocate of using close-ups and highlighting actors’ eyes to convey drama and emotion, she was horrified to discover that the rushes contained no close-up shots of Hayworth. She reported this to Cohn, who sent orders to rectify this. On location, Welles refused to do so. Back on the studio lot, he caved in. On Cohn’s orders, he also added the scene of Elsa singing on the yacht.

The Lady from Shanghai – from bad to worse

The rough cut of the film was based on an editing concept outlined by Welles. It ran approximately 155 minutes. But Welles’ contract with Columbia left it up to the studio to decide who would edit the final cut. Their choice was Lawrence, who had previously worked on Rita Hayworth vehicles Cover Girl and Tonight and Every Night, and would go on to work on Down to Earth, Affair in Trinidad, Salome, Miss Sadie Thompson and Pal Joey.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

GLAMOUR – Rita Hayworth wears a revealing black evening gown in Columbia’s “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which she and Orson Welles are co-starred.

Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE – Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, “The Lady from Shanghai,” in which Orson Welles is her co-star.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai.

Rita Hayworth, publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth wears a sexy black evening gown in The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Homer Van Pelt.

Taking her orders from Cohn, she cut about 55 minutes from the movie, including the opening dolly shot in Central Park, much of the Chinese opera sequence and most of the Fun House scene – all highlights of the original concept; the fashion shoot above shows just how weird and wonderful the set was). Quite apart from the damage done to the storyline, the continuity of Welles’ long takes was disrupted by the insertion of close-ups, and the result is a bewildering hotchpotch. Welles accepted some responsibility for the fiasco but pushed most of the blame onto Lawrence’s editing.

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads: “CAP’N RITA .. Rita Hayworth, in a fetching nautical outfit, takes over the helm of the big schooner yacht Zaca, which was chartered by Columbia Pictures from its owner, Errol Flynn, for location scenes off tropical Mexico for ‘The Lady from Shanghai,’ in which Rita stars with Orson Welles.” Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

What he was most upset about was what became of the soundtrack. He’d wanted to use sound to unsettle the audience – for example by fading in voices so quietly that viewers would have to strain to make out what was being said. Traces of what he intended are evident in the grating voices of Bannister and Grisby and the final dialogue in the Hall of Mirrors.

After the success of the songs, Amado Mio and Put the Blame on Mame in Gilda, Cohn insisted on retrofitting a song into The Lady from Shanghai. The result was Please Don’t Kiss Me, commissioned from the same team – Alan Roberts and Doris Fisher (with Hayworth’s singing voice once again dubbed by Anita Ellis). The song itself is a class act. What absolutely isn’t is the way in which it is exploited as the background track for pretty much the entire movie, replacing the original score by George Antheil. Welles was incensed:

The only idea which seems to have occurred to this present composer is the rather weary one of using a popular song – the “theme – in as many arrangements as possible. Throughout we have musical references to “Please Don’t Kiss Me” for almost every bridge and also for a great deal of the background material. The tune is pleasing, it may do very well on the Hit Parade — but Lady from Shanghai is not a musical comedy.

The Lady from Shanghai – from box office failure to cult

When The Lady from Shanghai was completed in 1946 Columbia got cold feet. They were worried that it would bomb at the box office and anxious to protect Hayworth’s image. So they chose to hold it until after they’d released Down To Earth (1947) – a much more commercial movie. The Lady from Shanghai ran first in Europe (1947), where it was generally well received, before finally opening in the US in 1948, seven months after Welles and Hayworth were divorced. The studio did nothing to push the film, allowing it to be shown as the bottom half of double bills.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth, as Elsa Bannister in The Lady from Shanghai, chats on the phone. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth poses in a killer, black-satin gown by Jean Louis for a publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth as Elsa Bannister, dressed by Jean Louis to kill in The Lady from Shanghai.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. Rita Hayworth sports her dramatic new haircut in this publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

JACKETS FOR MOTORISTS … Lovely Rita Hayworth, who is currently working in Columbia’s “The Lady From Shanghai,” has found the ideal coat. Made of broadtail, it is designed after the Navy “P” jackets, its length and fullness allowing complete freedom.

Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth publicity shot for The Lady from Shanghai

1947. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TOPAZ BLONDE .. Glamorous Rita Hayworth, who appears as a topaz blonde in her latest Columbia picture, "The Lady from Shanghai," in which she and Orson Welles co-star.

Photo by Robert Coburn.

Contemporary critics were pretty disparaging. Bosley Crowther opened his review for The New York Times with:

For a fellow who has as much talent with a camera as Orson Welles and whose powers of pictorial invention are as fluid and as forcible as his, this gentleman certainly has a strange way of marring his films with sloppiness which he seems to assume that his dazzling exhibitions of skill will camouflage.

John Carter’s review for The New Yorker was in a similar vein: “The penny-dreadful aspects of The Lady from Shanghai are obvious, but the film is nevertheless often remarkable.” While William Brogden, in Variety wrote:

The Lady from Shanghai is okay boxoffice [sic]. It’s exploitable and has Rita Hayworth’s name for the marquees. Entertainment value suffered from the striving for effect that features Orson Welles’ production, direction and scripting. Script is wordy and full of holes which need the plug of taut story telling and more forthright action.

So The Lady from Shanghai sank without trace and for many years was regarded as one of Welles’ great failures. In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, he remembered how:

Friends avoided me. Whenever it was mentioned, people would clear their throats and change the subject very quickly out of consideration for my feelings. I only found out that it was considered a good picture when I got to Europe. The first nice thing I ever heard about it from an American was from Truman Capote.

More recently, though, not least thanks to the advocacy of François Truffaut, critical opinion has swung behind The Lady from Shanghai, with Dave Kehr in his review for the Chicago Reader dubbing it “the weirdest great movie ever made.” Flawed masterpiece is probably the best description of the film, which in many respects makes it a whole lot more interesting than a perfect masterpiece (if such a thing even exists).

Want to know more about The Lady from Shanghai?

Ava Gardner and Orson Welles on the set of The Lady from Shanghai — 1947. The pixie looks like he belongs to the Fun House – hence the suggestion that this photo was taken on the set of The Lady from Shanghai, supported by Welles’ suit and haircut. This is an incredibly rare image – apparently sthe only photo of the two stars together.

There are some brilliant analyses and critiques of The Lady from Shanghai available online.

Filmsite Movie Review has some good background and an excellent, detailed plot synopsis.
Brian Phillips provides a combination of background fact and insightful observations in his piece for Grantland, Through a Glass, Darkly: ‘The Lady From Shanghai’ and the Legend of Orson Welles.
Chris Justice offers a similar combination of background and analysis, well worth reading at senses of cinema.
Among a series of articles at TCM, Why The Lady from Shanghai is Essential by James Steffen & Rob Nixon and Behind the Camera on The Lady from Shanghai by Rob Nixon stand out.
Stories Behind The Screen has some great anecdotes about the making of the film.
Doug Bonner’s piece, The Lady from Shanghai – If You’re Confused, You’re Supposed To Be, is particularly strong on Orson’s and Rita’s relationship and its influence on the film.
Reel SF covers the locations with then and now shots together with interactive maps of Acapulco and San Fransisco.

Cover Girl – fashion goes to the movies

2017-05-26 By aenigma

Cover Girl is a 1944 movie in which Hollywood embraces the business of fashion. It offers an opportunity to take a look at the modeling businesps, then burgeoning but still in its infancy. And it provides a showcase for the fashions of the day and the talents of Rita Hayworth and a bevy of models.

It’s a bright spectacle with songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin, costumes by Travis Banton, Muriel King and Gwen Wakeling, choreography by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, and that special early-Technicolor lushness. Donen would go on to direct Funny Face, another musical about the world of fashion, with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn as its stars. Funny Face would help to cement the reputation of Paris after World War II as the world capital of fashion.

Anita Colby

1943. Anita Colby is an extraordinary lady. Currently she's a model, a movie star and an agent. But she’s ambitious and talented and will go...

Cecilia Meagher

1943. Cecilia Meagher began modeling in 1936 when she was barely 17 years old. In the early 1940s she signed with Conover models. In 1942,...

Leslie Brooks

1943. Leslie Brooks started her career around 1940 as a model. In 1941 she signed with Columbia and had a makeover: she changed her name...

Peggy Lloyd

1943. Peggy was adopted age five by Harold Lloyd, a famous comedian, a shrewd investor and the richest man in Hollywood. Despite the family’s wealth,...

Eileen McClory

1943. Eileen McClory is a vivacious, cute, girl-next-door type, so has just the kind of looks and personality that Harry Conover likes. So when she...

Betty Jane Hess

1943. Betty Jane Hess began modeling in 1938, when she was barely 17 years old. Like many aspiring models, she competed in various pageants and...

Dusty Anderson

1943. Dusty started out as Ruth Anderson from Toledo, Ohio. Harry Conover spotted her in New York “doing some designing”, decided that the name Ruth...

Jinx Falkenburg

1943. With her hazel eyes and lithe figure, Jinx Falkenburg is one of America’s highest-paid cover-girl models during World War II and, with her husband...

The plot of Cover Girl is both pure fantasy and pretty banal. A Brooklyn nightclub owner loves his principal dancing girl. The dancing girl loves the nightclub owner. But the dancing girl has a driving ambition to become a famous cover girl… Bear in mind that while the world of Cover Girl might feel like it has nothing to do with reality, former Vogue editor Rosamond Bernier would recall:

Vogue was something in those days. I came in my first morning and saw all the editors at the typewriters wearing hats with veils and big rhinestone chokers and earrings. I looked with absolute wonder!

To give you a flavour, here are three extracts from the movie.

1. Put Me To The Test

Set to Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin’s Put Me To The Test, this number is one of the movie’s highlights: two phenomenally athletic and graceful dancers, a treacherous set (different levels, stairs, a ramp) and no quick cutting to mask mistakes. The supporting girls and the costumes are the icing on the cake.

2. The shoot

So they’ve hammed it up for the movie, but this scene offers a light-hearted insight into the art behind the stills photography that is such a focus for aenigma. We see the make-up artist (remember Perc Westmore – the makeup king of Hollywood?), the hairdresser, the dapper photographer and his assistant, and the final product – the magazine itself.

3. The cover girls and round the mountain

We’re in the Wheaton Theatre. The curtain goes up and an enormous lens is lowered onto a podium in the middle of the stage. Through the lens we see each cover girl in turn enter from the left and watch her pose full-length and close-up. Her session ends with a glimpse of the magazine cover on which she appears. The whole thing has a nice pace and wit.

It's followed by the wonderful "round the mountain" scene in which Rita Hayworth dances down and back up a cloud-shrouded Art Deco mountain peak. In this version, the original soundtrack has been replaced by a Madonna mash-up with Victor Cheng.

Cover Girl – the business of modeling

In 1944, the modeling business in the US is dominated by two agencies.

Andrea Johnson, Powers model — Mid-1940s. Andrea Johnson, John Robert Powers model.

John Robert Powers has blazed the trail. In the 1920s as an out-of-work actor he finds himself using his network to help photographers find models. He spots a business opportunity and sets up shop. As he later recalls, he:

…had their pictures taken, made up a catalogue containing their descriptions and measurements, and sent it to anyone in New York who might be a prospective client – commercial photographers, advertisers, department stores, artists.

The depression that follows the 1929 stock market crash enables him to broaden his talent pool by attracting debutantes whose families are on their uppers. At the same time he works hard to make the business respectable. His success changes the social status of models. Society hostess extaordinaire Elsa Maxwell says that she might give a party without debutantes but she wouldn’t dream of doing so without inviting a few Powers Girls.

The 1940s see Powers basking in the light of success and publicity and expanding his business portfolio. He has a radio show and writes a regular syndicated newspaper column, Secrets of Charm. Warner Bros release The Powers Girl (1943), a movie about two sisters living in New York and aspiring to become high-profile models. And Powers Girls are hired by the Hollywood studios and go out with and marry the rich and famous.

In 1941 Powers publishes the first of many books, The Powers Girls. Promising “The story of models and modeling and the natural steps by which attractive girls are created,” it’s partly a behind-the-scenes look at the agency, partly a beauty and grooming guide, and partly a marketing piece. In 1943 he launches a correspondence course, including “practical hints about what men really do and don’t like.” Meanwhile, his wife begins teaching charm courses covering grooming, diction and coiffure, the first step along the road to a nationwide chain of John Robert Powers Schools. But Powers has taken his eye off his core modeling business and this provides an opening for a new competitor.

Harry Conover begins his career in the modeling business as a model and works for John Robert Powers before deciding to set up in competition. He’s handsome, suave and unscrupulous, taking with him models Anita Colby, Phyllis Brown and her boyfriend, who agrees to invest in the start-up. The boyfriend is Gerald Ford and in 1974 he will become President of the US.

Harry differentiates his agency from that of his erstwhile employer by promoting a different kind of model. He mocks the Powers Girls as “Adenoid Annies, rattling bundles of skin and bones.” Focusing on preppies and campus queens, he pioneers a new type of model – “the windblown outdoor girl”, in the words of Bob Fertig his head of promotion. Conover calls these recruits Conover Coeds, then Cover Girls – and that’s where Columbia’s Cover Girl gets it inspiration and title. While, taking his cue from Hollywood, Conover develops a habit of rechristening his models – including his future wife.

In 1941, the winner of a Miss Atlantic City contest turns up at the agency. She introduces herself to Conover: “I’m Jessica Wilcox.” “You’re Candy Johnson,” he replies. “And your rate is $5 an hour.” He later shortens her name from Johnson to Jones because she has trouble remembering the longer version. By 1943, thanks to her looks and his promotion – including candy-striped outfits and calling cards – she is a top model. And in 1946 Conover marries her.

But the marriage is fated from the start. Conover is always chasing skirt – seemingly out with a different model night after night. He is also less concerned than Powers about respectability – he has a much more laissez-faire attitude when playboys approach him for dates with his models. “Right in my own office we have the very thing that every man looks for, works for, fights for and dies for,” Conover says, just before being excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

In 1952, having dropped out of the agency business and franchised his schools, Powers will move to Beverly Hills, where he will settle until he dies, age 84. Conover, by contrast, will die age 53, having succumbed to a classic combo of booze, lechery and profligacy. The modeling business, like the movie business, is unforgiving. It has a habit of chewing up its practitioners and spitting them out.

Cover Girl – behind the scenes

Filming a scene from Cover Girl — 1943. Susann Shaw, players Rose Mae Robson (hood), Dusty Anderson, Martha Outlaw, Lee Bowman, Rita Hayworth, Francine Counihan (striped dress) and Jean Colleran in a scene from the Columbia production “Cover Girl” starring Miss Hayworth. Photo by Ned Scott.

Cover Girl has more in common with Gilda than their very different plots and styles might lead you to expect. Both are Columbia productions commissioned by Harry Cohn. Both are directed by Charles Vidor with cinematography by Rudolph Maté. And both have scripts by Virginia Van Upp.

Cohn is known to be tightfisted but he makes an exception for Cover Girl. He sets aside no less than a million dollars for the production and accepts it going US $600,000 over budget, with the lavish dance numbers devised by Kelly in no small part to blame for the overspend.

The movie is quite a coup for the Conover agency – a massive riposte to (and possibly inspired by) The Powers Girl, released the previous year. Harry Conover and Anita Colby are both employed by the studio as “technical consultants”. The latter is in charge of a troupe of Conover models who travel west from New York in a special railway carriage – a great publicity stunt that’s lapped up by the press.

The girls are all excited about what lies in store for them in Tinseltown but they’re in for a nasty surprise. Harry Cohn has made arrangements to ensure that they stay out of trouble. Francine Counihan, one of the models and also Anita Colby’s sister remembers:

Cover Girl was produced by Harry Cohn. Oh, he was a monster. He decided to put us all in one house together where he could see that nobody could get out. So we stayed in Marion Davies’ home in California. He only let us out to go shopping.

And there they stay for months while Harry Cohn apparently searches for an actress to play the lead role. Surely he’s known all along that this is to be a vehicle for his studio’s leading star, Rita Hayworth? Perhaps he just likes the feeling of power over the girls.

Rita and the gang

1943. On a lawn, presumably outside the studio, Rita Hayworth poses with the cover girls. It looks like the photographer must be perched in a...

Lucky man!

1943. Some people have all the luck. Rita Hayworth gives Tech Sergeant Gordon L Smith a peck on the cheek. A caption on the back...

Tea time

1943. The stars relax in the hot California sunshine during a break in filming. The maid (as usual) is uncredited. A caption on the back...

Cover conversation

1943. The two models look as if they're enjoying each other's company. But there must have been some interesting dynamics going on among the troupe...

Anyway, whatever the reason, there’s a great story about how all the girls sneak out one night to go to a party. They have to return at intervals, one by one, to get past the security guards. To the guards’ growing consternation, each in turn announces herself as Anita Colby, who is the only member of the troupe allowed out. Inevitably, the last one back is the real Anita Colby.

Meanwhile, Anita Colby, who also acts as the girls’ agent, makes the most of the stay by managing to book three magazine covers each for the girls. Her success with the press doesn’t go unnoticed and she’s appointed “Feminine Director” of the David O Selznick studio.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo probably by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Robert Coburn.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

Rita Hayworth in a scene from Cover Girl

1943. Photo by Ned Scott.

One of those most closely involved with the way Rita looks in Cover Girl is Robert Coburn, head of Columbia’s Photo Gallery. In John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth, Coburn talks about photographing Columbia’s biggest star:

The contract I signed put me in complete charge of the studio’s stills department. Mind you, if I ever relaxed and let a bad picture of Hayworth or any other star out, Cohn would call me on the carpet immediately.

In those days we had the Johnson Office, and if we had any cleavage showing the pictures would be sent back. The Code was very strict. Any sign of breasts, even the shadow between, had to disappear. A woman wasn’t supposed to have any. We spent all our time touching photos up.

Hayworth didn’t need touching up. She didn’t treat herself badly, she wasn’t an all-night carouser, although naturally we had to watch for wrinkles under the eyes and around the neck. Of course, any skin marks, small pimples, we would take them out. I don’t remember Hayworth ever looking at a picture, I don’t think she ever cared how she looked in a picture. She’d come in once in a while and ask how they looked but she didn’t bother checking or approving them. That’s rare for women. Whereas Cohn was interested in her every minute of the day. He’d call whenever he knew from the call sheet that I was shooting her. They fought a lot. I told Cohn a million times that if he stopped picking on her I’d get what I wanted but he kept needling her and fitting in more hours.

I’d usually talk to her all the time when I was photographing her, getting her in the mood. Then, I’d catch her at her peak. She had the famous Hayworth look, looking over the shoulder, and after doing three of those she’d had it. She’d say, “What do you want that for? Get something else.” She didn’t realize that she didn’t have that come-and-get-me look except in that one pose.

Rita Hayworth with magazines — 1942. Rita Hayworth contemplates her cover girl status. Photo by George Hurrell.

Cover Girl – Rita learns new role

“Cover Girl” – Rita learns new role is the title of an article that appears in the 18 January 1943 issue of LIFE magazine.

Rita Hayworth is just a little bit bigger in the bust and in the hips than the average top-notch photographer’s model. The movie star is 35 in. around bust and hips whereas the average model is, at best. only 34.

These extra inches, which look fine on Rita Hayworth, did not worry Columbia Pictures at all when they cast her for the lead part in their forthcoming movie, The Cover Girl. The movie, which goes into production soon, will tell about photographers’ models who appear on the covers of national magazines. In it Miss Hayworth will combine her looks, figure and talents with Technicolor, some songs and a complicated story about two cover girls, one of 30 years ago and the other of today. The second cover girl will be the first one’s daughter. Miss Hayworth will play both of them.

When Miss Hayworth was in New York City recently, it occurred to Columbia Pictures that she ought to go through a model’s routine to see how a photographer’s model really worked. Miss Hayworth, who is a game girl, spent a full day working out of Harry Conover’s model agency, making believe she was a real cover girl. She learned that beauty is not enough.

For $3 an hour – $10 an hour if in great demand – models work exhausting hours in front of hot lights and fussy photographers, always trying to be charming and intelligent. To get work they have to be on time for appointments, be well-groomed and sweet-tempered. They spend days tramping around from client to client just to keep up their contacts. They are on their feet so much, in fact, that after being a model for a few months a girl’s feet invariably grow a whole shoe-size bigger.

The girls with Rita are Conover models, each chosen by a national magazine to play its cover girl in The Cover Girl. Being the star, Miss Hayworth will not represent any single magazine. This week, however, she is LIFE’s own cover girl.

9 September 1943. Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth get hitched.

In fact during the shooting of Cover Girl it turns out that Rita has two new roles. The second is as the wife of Orson Welles. It’s no secret that the couple have been dating. Even so, when it happens on 7 September 1943 their marriage takes everyone by surprise. According to Lee Bowman, the day the teams are shooting the film’s wedding scene, Rita arrives on the set.

She looked very lovely sitting there in her wedding dress [for the movie] while the crew were setting up. Rita sat there with her hands in her lap, her eyes very big and a lovely big pussy smile on her face. When any of us asked, “What is it, Rita?” she’d just shake her head and say, “Mmm, I’ve got a secret.” Wouldn’t say anything else. The first we knew what it was came during the lunch break when somebody brought us the papers with the headlines.”

While Rita is on cloud nine, director Charles Vidor is anything but. According to the film’s producer, Arthur Schwartz:

And you know who was terribly jealous and unhappy? The director. He had fallen in love with her. He came and cried on my shoulder and didn’t want to go on. He had to continue shooting every day and she was now married and looking more radiant all the time. She had a tremendous empathy, tremendous sex appeal. All those fifteen or so Cover Girls together didn’t have what she had.

Cover Girl – just a piece of fluff?

Cover Girl wins the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual award for Scoring of a Musical Picture. It is also nominated for Color Cinematography, Color Art Direction, Sound Recording and Best Song.

Bosley Crowther, the influential film critic of The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, says in his review:

The script is so frankly familiar that it must have come from the public domain. And the characters are as sleekly mechanical as only musical comedy characters dare to be. But it rainbows the screen with dazzling décor. It has Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth to sing and dance. And virtually every nook and corner is draped with beautiful girls. Further, this gaudy obeisance to divine femininity has some rather nice music in it from the tune-shop of Jerome Kern.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

Rita Hayworth – promotional shot for Cover Girl

1943. Photographer unknown.

At the office

1943. Rita Hayworth and models pose at the offices of Vanity magazine. This is just the epitome of mid-1940s chic in terms of both the...

Heavenly sight

1943. In this ravishing fantasy sequence, Rita Hayworth appears at the top of a stylized Art Deco mountain down which she dances into the arms...

Round the mountain

1943. Having indulged her admirers, Rita Hayworth dances back up to the mountain peak in a rain of golden snowflakes. The caption on the back...

Later on, Arthur Schwartz, whom Harry Cohn brought in to produce Cover Girl, recalls:

In spite of everything people have said about Harry Cohn, his vulgarity, his lack of education, neither of which was a unique characteristic among the men in his position – he had an instinct for quality. Cover Girl, as I made it, couldn’t have been made at WB: Jack Warner wouldn’t have had the taste somehow, while at Metro they would have overproduced it – too many girls and too many of everything.

The magazines and models: Cosmopolitan, Betty Jane Hess; McCall’s, Betty Jane Graham; Vogue, Susann Shaw; Harper’s Bazaar, Cornelia B Von Hessert; Woman’s Home Companion, Rose May Robson; The American Home, Francine Counihan (Anita Colby’s sister); Mademoiselle, Peggy Lloyd; Glamour, Eileen McClory; Coronet, Cecilia Meagher; Liberty, Karen Gaylord; Redbook, Martha Outlaw; The American, Jean Colleran; Farm Journal, Dusty Anderson; Look, Cheryl (Archibald) Archer; Collier’s, Helen Mueller; Rita Hayworth. Collage copyright and courtesy of Blonde at the Film.

In his programme notes for the BFI, director Karel Reisz observes:

In Cover Girl we can see the transition from the old to the new taking place. Though its story has the usual backstage background, many of its numbers are staged in the open air and characters dance in it for the joy of dancing and as an expression of mood, not simply as professional performers. The design of costumes and sets moreover, is notably above the usual standard of the routine product. Cover Girl also saw the emergence of Gene Kelly as a choreographer playing the role which he has since played many times: he dances pieces of the ‘plot’ instead of interpolating numbers, and his style is that of a ballet dancer, not a ‘hoofer’.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth in Put Me To The Test

1943. Photographer unknown.

Cover Girl – want to know more?

Apart from the LIFE article, key sources are Michael Gross’ book, Model – the ugly business of beautiful women, and John Kobal’s biography of Rita Hayworth. You can find my favourite online article at Blonde at the Film. Other articles worth reading are at The Vintage Cameo and moviediva. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective. For biographies of some of the cover girls, take a look at Those obscure objects of desire.

1944. Cecilia Meagher by George Hurrell.

Unsafe sex – the starlet’s dilemma

2017-04-11 By aenigma

Around 1950. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Ress by Janis Paige.

In the aftermath of World War II, unmarried women faced a hard dilemma when it came to sex. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t.

In the words of a 16-year-old girl quoted by Michael Phillips in his article Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s:

How are you supposed to know what they want? You hold out for a long time and then when you give in to them and give your body they laugh at you afterwards and say they would never marry a slut, and that they didn’t love you but were testing because they only plan to marry a virgin and wanted to see if you would go all the way.

The pressures could be especially intense in the torrid and ultra-competitive world of the Hollywood studios, where the casting couch cast a long shadow and having a flexible attitude to sex could be the route to stardom or the road to perdition.

The inspiration for this piece is a collection of photos given to Dr Irving Ress by his clients. Dr Ress was an obstetrician who worked in Hollywood. Among the women who came to him for advice on pregnancy and childbirth were a number of movie stars and actresses. Perhaps they dedicated their photos to him spontaneously. More likely he was susceptible to their charms and asked them to contribute to his collection. Flattered by the request, they were happy to do so.

The predicaments and concerns they confided in him we can only imagine. But that’s not difficult in the context both the time (the 1940s and early ’50s) and the place (Hollywood).

Betty Grable pin-up — 1943. Weapons of mass seduction. The image that made Betty Grable the number one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in LIFE Magazine’s 100 Photos that Changed the World. During a 1982 interview, photographer Frank Powolny recalled that it came about after a regular shooting session. “I asked Betty if she’d like to have a back shot, just to be different She said, ‘Yes,’ and began to clown around. ‘You want it like this?’ she asked, posing. And I said, ‘Yeah.’ “I made only two shots of that pose. It was the second shot that became famous.”

Unsafe sex – the sexual revolution of the 1940s

20 years before the permissive society of the 1960s, a sexual revolution is taking place in the US in the 1940s.

The war years have already seen the flowering of the pin-up, perfected by the Hollywood studios and designed both to market their product and to boost morale by presenting an all-American view of the sweetheart waiting back home for the soldiers and sailors — the girls worth fighting for. As the GIs return, they also bring with them pornography from Europe and Asia.

In the late-1940s “camera clubs” are formed to get around laws restricting the production of nude photos. The clubs claim they exist to promote “artistic photography”, but in reality… The years 1952 through 1957 see Bettie Page posing for Irving Klaw, who distributes his pin-up and bondage shots by mail-order. And in 1953 Hugh Heffner publishes the first issue of Playboy.

At the same time, researchers are taking a new, more scientific interest in sex and sexuality. In 1948 the Kinsey Report, Sexual Behaviors in the Human Male and Sexual Behaviors in the Human Female, is published, shining a light on topics that have hitherto been taboo. Around this time, courses on human sexuality begin to appear on college campuses.

Sex is in the air. And in this context and after 15 years of depression and war, it’s hardly surprising that young people are less inclined than their parents to defer to traditional restraints on their behavior. Between 1941 and 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubles. But it’s not a straightforward matter of celebration, liberation and hedonism holding sway.

The post-World War II years bring with them a new period of economic and sexual anxiety. The US faces a major housing crisis. Juvenile delinquency supposedly reaches epic proportions. Both Republicans and Democrats go after Alfred Kinsey and comic books (Batman and Wonder Woman are accused of promoting homosexuality and lesbianism). The mood is one of pride and depression, valour and self-doubt, stoicism and vulnerability. Welcome to the heyday of film noir.

Unsafe sex – damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t

Barbara Stanwyck in The Two Mrs Carrolls. — 1947. In The Two Mrs Carrolls, Barbara Stanwyck is a victim of her husband. But his portrait of her seems to reflect the period’s underlying ambivalence and paranoia about women.

Meanwhile, women face a tricky dilemma. Leaving aside social attitudes to women having sex outside marriage (boys will be boys so that’s okay), contraceptive techniques are crude and unreliable. So women in relationships are playing with fire – always susceptible to getting pregnant or picking up a sexually transmitted disease.

It’s no wonder that women are strongly motivated to get married at the first opportunity (during the 1950s, the average age of women at marriage is 20). But there’s always the chance that they’ll make a bad choice and end up with a violent and abusive partner. And guess what? Domestic violence is rarely punished and there are no laws against rape in marriage. Which is hardly surprising given that police forces have no special domestic-violence units or policies.

The alternative – walking out – is unlikely to be a bed of roses. Single mothers and divorcees don’t have the same rights to state aid as widows with children so money is a problem. If they can get a job, it’s likely to be menial and low-paid. In other words, there’s a good chance those women end up ostracized and impoverished.

Marilyn Monroe by Frank Powolny — Like most Hollywood actresses, Marilyn Monroe is a manufactured product. In 1946, four years before posing for this picture, she changes her name from Norma Jean Mortenson. To make her more marketable, her hairline is raised by electrolysis, her hair is bleached to platinum blonde, and a silicone prosthesis is implanted in her jaw. It’s possible she also has a nose job. For her part, she does what it takes. She hangs around producers, befriends gossip columnists and entertains influential male guests at studio functions. And she attends acting classes. She regards the trading of sex for stardom as “no big tragedy – nobody ever got cancer from sex” and adds, “I’ve slept with producers. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t.” 1950 photo by Frank Powolny.

Unsafe sex – the honey trap

Pretty girls are drawn to Hollywood like gazelles to a watering hole, where the lions and hyenas lie in wait. Some wannabes, such as Judy Garland, arrive under the influence of ambitious and domineering parents. Most are talent-spotted – Ava Gardner via a portrait photo in a New York photographer’s studio window, Lana Turner at a soda fountain – or so the story goes. Models (like Hazel Brooks) and theatre actresses (like Ella Raines) are popular prey.When they arrive in Tinseltown, they are young and innocent. And, like lambs to slaughter, onto the production conveyor-belt they go. Each is given a name (Frances Ethel Gumm becomes Judy Garland, Betty Joan Perske is rechristened Lauren Bacall ), a more or less fanciful back-story, a makeover and a contract.

What next for our aspiring starlet? A series of photo sessions with plenty of cheesecake shots and, if she’s lucky, a few bit parts. Her fate is down to a combination of factors, not the least of which is the relationships she manages to establish. Which brings us, or rather her, to the casting couch. Three of Hollywood’s foremost lechers in the 1940s are Harry Cohn, Darryl F Zanuck and Howard Hughes.

Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, is a blustering, foul-mouthed, abrasive taskmaster and acts like a tyrant. His office contains an enormous desk for him, and small seats for his visitors, enabling him to tower over them. On his desk is a photo of Benito Mussolini, whom he greatly admires. He also has ties to organized crime and is friendly with mobsters such as Chicago gangster John Roselli. Cohn enjoys using concealed microphones to eavesdrop on employees’ conversations, such as those of Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth during the filming of Gilda. Rita, Joan Crawford and Kim Novak are three of the better-known actresses who manage to build careers for themselves in spite of rejecting his advances.

Darryl F Zanuck, Cohn’s counterpart at 20^th Century-Fox, is widely credited with inventing the “casting couch”. He is famously “in conference” with an endless succession of aspiring actresses between 16:00 and 16:30 every day. He’s a busy man who doesn’t have time to hang about: according to gossip, one would-be actress shown into his office finds him already naked from the waist down and primed for action.

Jane Greer by Ernest A Bachrach — 1945. Jane Greer, a talented actress as well as a beautiful woman, has her career wrecked by Howard Hughes, whose advances she rejects. Photo by Ernest A Bachrach.

Howard Hughes is not just a film producer and the owner of RKO Pictures; he is a business tycoon, engineer and pioneering aviator. He has a “secret” house near his LA home where he “interviews” would-be starlets. Rumour has it that he’s had affairs with a host of young actresses including Bette Davis, Jean Harlow, Ava Gardner, Carole Lombard and Ginger Rogers. Jane Greer’s career hits the buffers when she rejects his advances.

It’s not just the studio heads and producers who are in on the act. Agents, actors, publicists and others are all circling.

But back to our aspiring starlet… Assuming she makes it onto the big screen, the studio, fan magazines and gossip columnists work together to paint an attractive picture of her. By providing details of her domestic life, the studio enables fans to feel as if they can get close to the real person. Articles and photos of her home, her clothes, the events and parties she attends and so on, add grist to the mill. As does the slightest suggestion of romance – but only if our starlet is single.

It’s essential that there’s no hint of scandal. To that end, the studio enlists “fixers” to clean up potential embarrassments such as a drug addiction or an extra-marital affair. That is why it’s important for our starlet to tow the line and keep on the right side of her bosses. Otherwise they could hang her out to dry.

The trouble is that temptation is everywhere. If you want to get a sense of the corrupt and corrupting forces that are rife, just read the novels of Raymond Chandler. Carmen Sternwood, for example, Lauren Bacall’s wild, drug-addicted younger sister exploited by pornographers and blackmailers in The Big Sleep, is an object lesson in what can become of a girl who gets in with the wrong crowd. In My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars, Scotty Bowers, an ex-Marine who works as a bartender at Hollywood parties, paints a picture of the LAPD vice squad prowling the hills in their patrol cars, looking for parties and opportunities to arrest the participants.

Even big stars are vulnerable to scandal. Ingrid Bergman is one of the most-loved stars in America but all that changes overnight when, in spite of having a husband and a daughter, she gets pregnant by Italian director Roberto Rossellini. Colorado Senator Edwin C Johnson takes to the floor of the Senate to denounce her as “a powerful influence for evil.”

And if our starlet fails to make the grade? She might be relegated to the stock character pool, kept around to “pleasure” visiting executives, or just spat out.

Unsafe sex –and what of Dr Ress and his clients?

It is in this glittering and sleazy environment laced with opportunity and danger that some at least of Dr Ress’s clients seek to make their way.

Of the twelve young women who dedicate photos to Dr Ress, seven taste a modicum of success, meet and romance a few of the ‘beautiful people’ and come through (relatively) unscathed, as far as we can tell. “Tommye” Adams crashes and burns – hers is a cautionary tale if ever there was one. Virginia Walker dies tragically young. The other three are mysteries.

AllSurvivorThe badThe goodThe gorgeousThumbnailUnknownVictim

Angela Greene

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For Doctor Ress With sincere thanks and appreciation – Always, Angela."

Angela Greene is born in 1921, grows up in Flushing, New York,...

Constance Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dear Dr. Ress – I hope this was worth waiting for – Love, Connie Dowling".

Constance Dowling has come to Hollywood via...

Doris Dowling

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress. With great affection and appreciation. Doris Dowling (yr. new daughter)".

Doris Dowling has followed her sister, Constance, from Broadway to...

Kay Aldridge

1947. Inscribed “Irving Ress, With great appreciation, Kay Aldridge, 1947”.

Kay inscribes this photo two years after retiring. Her career began 13 years earlier –...

Janis Paige

1945. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress, My dearest thanks and appreciation for being such a wonderful friend to me. With love, “The Brat” Janis Paige"

Janis...

Lynn Merrick

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "If there’s a doctor in the house, I hope it’s DR. RESS! Best Always, Lynn Merrick"

Lynn, blonde and blue-eyed, dedicates this photo...

Charmaine du Rois

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To my favorite Doctor and friend, sincerely always, Charmaine Du Rois".

Diane

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "For my beloved doctor – the best in the world and a dear friend – Thank you for my beautiful little girl –...

Abigail “Tommye” Adams

8 March 1944. Inscribed "To Dr. Ress:– All my deepest affection. Tommye".

In May 1944, three months after inscribing this photo to Dr Ress, Tommye...

Marta Linden

Mid-1940s. Inscribed "To Irving. On account you’re such a love! Marta".

Marta Linden doesn’t hang around for long in Hollywood. Between 1942 and 1945 she...

Liliana Chanel

Around 1950. Inscribed "A Irving, sperando di conservare per sempre la sua meravigliosa amicizia. Liliana".

A label on the back of the photo identifies the...

Virginia Walker

1945. Inscribed "For my very favorite doctor. Virginia".

This photo is issued by 20th Century-Fox to promote A Royal Scandal (1945), a film about the...

Information about the doctor himself is thin on the ground, apart from a brief entry in Wikipedia. But we do catch a tantalizing glimpse of him in Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946 by Tom Weaver and Michael Brunas. They recount an incident involving Australian actress Betty Bryant, cast by Universal as the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).

Around 1948. A photo inscribed to Dr Irving Res by Betty Bryant.

Australian actress Betty Bryant, recently signed by Universal to a term contract, was originally chosen to play the female lead in The Jungle Captive (1945).

On August 30, 1944, one day before production began, she appeared in the office of associate producer Morgan B. Cox and informed him that she didn’t know whether she could find a babysitter to stay with her two year old on certain nights she was scheduled to work. On the first day of shooting she was unprepared, and on the second day she arrived 40 minutes late, just in time for a reprimand from director Harold Young.

To quiet the actress’ maternal apprehensions, her physician Dr Irving L. Ress, Hollywood’s “obstetrician to the stars,” was summoned. In private, Dr. Ress emphatically told Cox that there was nothing about motion pictures or motion picture people that he could admire. According to Ress, all the men in the movie business were concerned primarily with “making” any and all women in any way connected with the industry. Bryant was drawn into the argument and Ress nearly succeeded in creating a scene.

Over the next several days this embarrassing situation continued, with Ress hanging around the set, creating disturbances, careening around the darkened lot in his car and, in the words of Cox in a 16-page September 12 memo), “acting more like a thwarted lover than a reputable doctor.” Cox concluded in his memo that Bryant, slightly ill throughout much of this ordeal and genuinely apologetic for the entire situation, was a victim of circumstances over which she had little control. Of course the boom was inevitably lowered on the hapless actress, and she was bumped. (In his September 9 Los Angeles Times column, Edwin Schallert sugar-coated the incident, reporting that Bryant had gotten ill and “has to go in the hospital for observation and treatment.”) Amelita Ward replaced her in the picture, which ran two days over schedule (wrapping on September 16), probably as the result of the turmoil created by the mysterious Dr. Ress.

Clearly the good doctor has a jaundiced view of the industry. And who, other than the studios and their stooges, could really blame him?

Want to know more?

Two important sources for this piece are a blog about Women and the Sexual Double Standard of the 1950s and “Silent” Sexual Revolution Began In 1940’s and ’50s, an article by Alan Petigny.

For the lowdown on Hollywood, Scandals of Classic Hollywood: Sex, Deviance, and Drama from the Golden Age of American Cinema by Anne Helen Petersen is a great read. Or you could take a look at Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars by Scotty Bowers. For an online article, there’s a Daily Express article on Hollywood’s dirty little secret.

For more about the individual actresses, Wikipedia, IMDb and Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen are excellent starting points.

Gilda – the movie that made Rita Hayworth into a bombshell

2016-12-11 By aenigma

Gilda is a landmark 1940s movie. It was one of hehe first to capture the angst that would infuse post-World War II film noir, and it gave Rita Hayworth her most famous role, transforming her image overnight from dancing queen to femme fatale.

In the movie’s most celebrated scene, she does an impossibly seductive striptease that involves the removal of just two long, black-satin gloves. It’s a performance charged with eroticism, desperation and tragedy and it cemented Rita’s status as Hollywood’s reigning love goddess of the 1940s. Movie posters screamed “There NEVER was a woman like Gilda!”, and Rita is reported to have said, “Every man I knew had fallen in love with Gilda and wakened with me.”

Gilda – Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford embrace — 1945. The caption on the back of this photo rather enviously reads: “Glenn Ford is one of the few ex-servicemen to get the perfect job upon returning to civilian life. The Columbia star, after serving three years in the Marine Corps, was handed the assignment of making love to Rita Hayworth in their recently completed Columbia picture, “Gilda,” in which Miss Hayworth plays a straight dramatic role. The scene above shows the type of “work” to which Glenn was assigned.”

If you’ve never seen the movie, now’s the time to find out what you’ve been missing. If you have a blu-ray player, make sure you get the Criterion transfer.

Spoiler Alert!!! Stop reading now if you want to watch Gilda without knowing the plot in advance.

Gilda – the story in a nutshell

Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford) is a down-at-heel, card-sharp and gambling cheat whom we meet taking advantage of a group of sailors in Buenos Aires. Threatened by one of them as he leaves the docks, he is rescued by Ballin Mundson (George Macready), who invites him to his casino, where he becomes manager.

The arrangement is disrupted by the arrival of Gilda (Rita Hayworth), Johnny’s old flame but now Ballin’s wife. And, like Johnny, she jumps from opportunity to opportunity, looking for the next path to fortune. Gilda and Johnny are two of a kind and take every opportunity to wind each other up. A bad situation is made worse by Ballin ordering Johnny to look after Gilda. Their secret festers and the erotic tension escalates. The pair seem to delight in hurting and humiliating each other.

Meanwhile, we discover that the casino is merely a front for a cartel run by Ballin and a group of ex-Nazis to control the international tungsten market. As the police close in, Ballin fakes his death, and Johnny marries Gilda – not, as it turns out, because he loves her but in order to punish her for being unfaithful to Ballin.

Ballin returns to exact revenge but gets his come-uppance, leaving Johnny and Gilda to walk out into the sunset.

1. Are you decent, Gilda?

On his return from a business trip, Ballin leads Johnny to the master bedroom. We’ve been waiting for Rita’s entrance for over quarter of an hour.

First we hear her singing to herself off-camera. Then she detonates onto the screen in a pose that would have reminded contemporary audiences of Bob Landry’s famous 1941 photo of her for Life magazine.

2. Hate is a very exciting emotion

The carnival is in full swing as Johnny picks up Gilda. Later they return to Ballin’s empty mansion. Rudolph Maté's lighting and cinematography for the bedroom scene is wonderfully moody and the electricity between the pair is palpable.

Ballin returns unexpectedly en route to the airport to escape the police, throwing Johnny into a fit of confusion and angst.

3. Amado Mio

Suffocated by her sham marriage to Johnny, Gilda flees to Montevideo and gets a job singing in a nightclub.

Amado Mio is a gorgeous number set to a pulsating rhumba beat. The choreography is wonderfully sensuous but we don’t know who was the man behind the moves. Surely it must have been Jack Cole, who masterminded Put the Blame on Mame?

4. Put the Blame on Mame

Known as the "Father of Theatrical Jazz Dance," Jack Cole worked with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable and Mitzi Gaynor as well as Rita Hayworth. Before Gilda, they collaborated on Cover Girl (1944) and Tonight and Every Night (1945). Of the Put the Blame on Mame sequence in Gilda, he said:

I must say of all the things I ever did for movies, that’s one of the few I can really look at on the screen right now and say: If you want to see a beautiful, erotic woman, this is it. It still remains first class, it could be done right now. A lot of old things make you go wow! And you have to remember a lot about the period to explain why you did what you did, and make allowances. But every time I see "Put the Blame on Mame" I feel it’s absolutely great.

Gilda – just-in-time production

The making of Gilda turns out to be a pretty haphazard affair. There’s friction behind the scenes (more of that later) between studio boss, Harry Cohn, director, Charles Vidor and various members of the cast and crew. What’s more, the producer, Virginia Van Upp, whom Cohn has assigned to fashion a sexy new film for Rita Hayworth, has too much on her plate (she almost certainly has a hand in the screenplay by Marion Parsonnet). An article in the July 1946 issue of Screenland reports that:

Even today, when perhaps she should be resting on her laurels, she is still doing a double job. For one thing, her pictures are too close together to allow time to write them in advance. Instead, she stays on the set all day to see that each scene is photographed as she intended and then goes home and writes all night. She writes the script as she goes along, about five days in advance of the shooting schedule.

Charles Vidor recalls:

We didn’t have a finished script, we never knew what was coming next and we even started the picture without a leading man. Every night as we quit we got the next day’s scenes. Rita had to study at night, so did I, so did Jean Louis the dress designer, but somehow he kept one leap ahead of us all. So that particular ‘Mame’ morning, none of us knew how Rita was going to look. She sauntered on the stage holding her head up high, in that magnificent way she does, stepping along like a sleek young tiger cub and the whistles that sounded would have shamed a canary’s convention. She enjoyed every second of it. Then she did that elaborate difficult ‘Mame’ number in two takes.

Conference

1945. There seems to be some amusing banter going on between Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford as Harold Clifton looks on. A caption on the...

Conference

1945. With Virginia Van Upp delivering scripts day by day, there's little time for preparation and rehearsal so Rita Hayworth needs all the help she...

Gilda-ing the Rita

1945. Seated in her director's chair, Rita Hayworth is prepared for her Amado Mio scene in Gilda. A caption on the back of the photo...

A touch of the tresses

1945. Helen Hunt, Columbia’s chief hair stylist, is one of Rita’s closest friends. She has worked with Rita since her early days at the studio....

Finishing touches

1945. That movie camera is a monster! It's almost as if Rita Hayworth is being prepared as a ritual sacrifice. But don't worry, a caption...

Make-up test

1945. Rudolph Maté, exposure meter in hand, has a pretty impressive CV. He has worked on several of Carl Theodor Dreyer's films, including The Passion...

Gilda – the two songs

An article in Modern Screen (May 1946, page 8), announces that:

Rita Hayworth turns dramatic in “Gilda.” The studio’s announcement that the glamor girl was saying goodbye to musicals brought a storm of protest from GIs all over the world. In answer to the flood of requests that Rita continue showing her legs and swinging her hips, the studio wrote two songs into the script. “Put the Blame on Mame, Boys” is a torchy lament, and “Amado Mio” comes out in the middle of a samba sequence.

Amado Mio

1945. Gilda (Rita Hayworth) performs Amado Mio at a nightclub in Montevideo.

Put the Blame on Mame

1945. Rita sings Put the Blame on Mame on screen, but behind the scenes her voice is dubbed by Anita Ellis. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

DANCE, LITTLE LADY – Rita Hayworth, although she plays a dramatic role in Columbia’s “Gilda,” takes time out from histrionics to do a torrid dance specialty to the tune of “Put the Blame on Mame, Boys.”

Put the Blame on Mame

1945. Gilda (Rita Hayworth) performs her infamous striptease at the casino.

And it’s true – the songs are in fact retrofitted, not integral to the movie from the outset. It’s another example of the apparently chaotic way in which the film is put together. Both songs are written by Doris Fisher and Allan Roberts, whose work will be recorded by a string of stars including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Marilyn Monroe. According to Doris Fisher:

Though we weren’t supposed to work yet, they gave us a script the next day, told us they wanted a couple of songs and where they wanted them to come. At about 3 a.m. we went into a publisher’s office on Vine Street since we had no office of our own, sat down by a piano and, I don’t know, it just happened. Al came up with that title Put the Blame on Mame because of the script. We’d already been playing around with that feeling for a song so it just worked. We wrote that in a couple of hours. A day or two later we wrote Amado Mio because we had to have something with a South American flavour there. We had no idea where it was going to be, how it was going to be done or what it would look like. We only wrote those two songs. Then they had to shoot those scenes after the film was finished and inject them into the story.

Gilda – Rita’s wardrobe

Columbia certainly goes to town on Rita’s wardrobe, designed by Jean Louis, Columbia’s head of costume. According to the article in Modern Screen:

The star wears twenty-nine different outfits in the picture, including a chinchilla evening wrap worth $65,000 and a sleeveless ermine cloak, valued at S35,000…

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

Publicity shot for Gilda

1945. Portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

However, the pièce de résistance is the iconic strapless satin dress Gilda wears when she sashays with alluring abandon across the casino floor as she performs Put the Blame on Mame. Reputedly inspired by John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Madam X, it is designed to accentuate Rita’s fuller figure – she has recently given birth to her daughter, Rebecca. According to Jean Louis:

It was the most famous dress I ever made. Everybody wonders how that dress can stay on her while she sings and dances… well, inside there was a harness like you put on a horse. We put grosgrain under the bust with darts and three stays, one in the centre, two on the sides. Then we moulded plastic softened over a gas flame and shaped around the top of the dress. No matter how she moved, the dress did not fall down.

Gilda – Rita Hayworth leans casually against a stair-rail — 1945. Gilda leans casually against the stair-rail in Ballin’s mansion. The caption on the back of this photo reads… “ENCHANTRESS– Rita Hayworth plays a siren, 1945 model, in Columbia’s romantic drama, “Gilda,” in which she co-stars with Glenn Ford.” Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

Gilda – Rita Hayworth, the making of a bombshell

The first woman to be known as a bombshell was Jean Harlow, who was nicknamed the “blonde bombshell” for her 1931 film Platinum Blonde. With her role as Gilda, and particularly the Put the Blame on Mame sequence, Rita ends up giving the term a whole new meaning.

In 1946, atomic scientists on the Bikini Atoll name the first atomic bomb to be detonated in peacetime “Gilda” and paint Rita’s picture on it. According to her then husband, Orson Welles, she’s furious.

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. Rita almost went insane, she was so angry. She was so shocked by it! Rita was the kind of person that kind of thing would hurt more than anybody. She wanted to go to Washington to hold a press conference, but Harry Cohn wouldn’t let her because it would be unpatriotic.

More likely, Harry is delighted with the publicity for his movie.

Gilda – behind-the-scenes shenanigans

The year of Gilda’s release, some of the main personalities involved in its production are entangled in a nasty lawsuit. Charles Vidor, the movie’s Hungarian-born director who has already worked with Rita on Cover Girl, in attempt to extricate himself from his contract, sues Harry Cohn, president and production director of Columbia Pictures Corporation, on the grounds of, among other things, “abusive language.” According to Bob Thomas’ book King Cohn, he also claims that during the making of Gilda Cohn accused him of using too much film, quitting early, and shooting excessive retakes.

I told Mr. Cohn that the delays were due to the fact that Miss Hayworth got tired at five o’clock in the afternoon and was unable to give her best performances. I also told him that his abuse was upsetting me, that I could not sleep, that I had to have doctors give me injections, and that I was nervous.

Witnesses for the defence then testify that Cohn was not the only person using abusive language – Vidor was just as bad, especially when it came to dealing with “the little people on the set.” Vidor loses his case and remains at Columbia, for whom he will direct Glenn and Rita in The Loves of Carmen (1948).

Exit Rita

1945. The dress might be glamorous but behind the scenes things are much more functional. Rita does look a bit suspicious so has the photographer...

Goin’ places

1945. Not surprisingly, Columbia issued a string of fashion shots to publicise Cover Girl, one of their previous Rita Hayworth vehicles. Here's one for Gilda....

Tipping the scale

1945. That's a pretty impressive mobile weighing machine that Rita's perched on. A caption on the back of the photo reads:

TIPPING THE SCALE –...

Preview

1945. In costume for the carnival scene, you'll recognise Glenn and Rita but perhaps not the man between them. He's Joe Sawyer, who plays the...

Harry Cohn is known for his autocratic and intimidating management style (not unusual for Hollywood studio moguls of the 1940s). But he could also be a good wind-up and, according to Glenn Ford:

When I went into Gilda, Rita was finished with Orson, and we gave Harry Cohn a few grey hairs. We were told by the sound department that Harry had had a microphone planted in my dressing room. That was kind of interesting. He was worried about my carrying on with Rita, so we gave him some marvellous things to listen to.”

Cohn is furious, but Rita is amused by his reaction. While she entertains Glenn in her dressing room after the day’s shooting, Cohn phones down every 15 minutes. “What the hell are you doing down there?” he shouts. “Just having a drink,” says Ford. “Why don’t you go home? I can’t keep the studio open all hours of the night. It costs money. Now get the hell out and don’t forget to shut off the lights when you leave.”

Enjoying Cohn’s exasperation, Glenn and Rita settle down for another drink. In fact, they’re great friends, having previously worked together on The Lady in Question (1940). And on the set of Gilda:

Rita and I were very fond of one another, we became very close friends and I guess it all came out on the screen. Honestly speaking, I’m sure we all sensed something going on there, there was an excitement on the set. Mr Vidor was a very strict, demanding director who had a streak of sadistic, Hungarian, love-hate understanding and he sort of nurtured that aspect. His instructions before we did a scene, on how we were to think and do it, were pretty incredible, even in today’s market. I can’t repeat the things he used to tell us to think about. They are marvelous images to hold…

Glenn will later admit to having had an affair with Rita, though as a man of discretion he will never give any details.

Gilda – dark undercurrents and the influence of the Hay’s Code

The themes at the heart of Gilda are uncomfortable and, to a 1940s audience, subversive to boot.

Gilda – Rita Hayworth gets into Glenn Ford's car — 1945. With plenty of leg on view, Gilda (Rita Hayworth) winds up the resentful Johnny (Glenn Ford), whom Ballin has charged with taking care of her during the carnival. Photo by Eddie Cronenweth.

The relationships between Gilda and her two ‘lovers’ are at best perverse, at worst sado-masochistic. Ballin observes: “Hate can be a very exciting emotion. There’s a heat in it you can feel. Hate is the only thing that warms me.” In a later scene, Gilda reprises the theme: “Hate is a very exciting emotion, haven’t you noticed? Very exciting. I hate you too, Johny. I hate you so much I think I’m going to die from it.” There’s a rapture, an intensity about Gilda’s feelings for Johnny: “I have to keep talking, Johnny, as long as I have my arms about you, or else I might forget to dance. Push my hat back, Johnny.”

When Gilda performs Put the Blame on Mame, she is not simply provoking both Johnny and Ballin with her open sexuality, she is also crying out in pain for the love she’s being denied. She is both powerful and vulnerable. For Gilda, love and hate are two sides of the same coin.

But the real love affair is between Ballin and Johnny. Upon hearing of this interpretation, Charles Vidor reportedly said, “Really? I never had any idea those boys were supposed to be like that!” Glenn Ford acknowledged the gay subtext, “But it never occurred to us at the time we were filming.”

But hey… what is Ballin doing late at night down by the docks where he rescues Johnny other than cruising? And the relationship that develops between the two men is much too cosy to be just about business.

Which makes Gilda herself into an especially tragic figure, trapped between two profoundly misogynistic ‘lovers’. It also makes a mockery of the ending – it is inconceivable that Johnny and Gilda will simply forget the bitter nastiness of their relationship, let alone live happily ever after.

Gilda – mini lobby card featuring Rita Hayworth — 1946. Mini lobby card issued to movie theatres as publicity for Gilda. Photo by Robert Coburn.

A convincing ending would have hatred and tragedy win out but that wasn’t possible because of the Motion Picture Production Code. Coming into force in 1930, the Hays Code (as it came to be known) introduced film censorship to the US by laying down a series of guidelines based on three general principles:

No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it. Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin.
Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.
Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation.

No wonder Bosley Crowther in his New York Times review, observes:

This reviewer was utterly baffled by what happened on the screen. To our average register of reasoning, it simply did not make sense. It seems that a fantastic female, the pivotal character in this film, turns up in a Buenos Aires casino as the wife of the dour proprietor. But it also seems that she was previously the sweetie of a caustic young man who is quite a hand at gambling and is employed by this same proprietor. For reasons which are guardedly suggested, she taunts and torments this tough lad until, by a twist of circumstances, her husband is suddenly removed. Then she marries the laddie but continues to fight with him because of some curious disposition which is never properly explained. In the end, after certain vagrant incidents, they are reconciled—but don’t ask us why.

Gilda – a rare colour portrait of Rita Hayworth — 1945. A rare colour portrait of Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn.

But let’s end on a more positive note with a couple of reviews that recognize different aspects of Gilda’s greatness. The first is by Ruth Waterbury for the Los Angeles Examiner:

When Judy Garland and Alice Faye got the urge for drama, they went the whole way and in their pictures The Clock [1945] and Fallen Angel [1945], respectively, they handed out the acting straight, without so much as a jazz note or a single twinkle of a toe, to highlight in. Rita Hayworth, going heavily dramatic for the first time in Gilda, proves herself a smarter show woman. For how this glorious pinup does emote in this one! What a glittering gamut of drama she reveals, plus much of her beautiful self while also singing and dancing! The result is an exciting, glamorous, rich, ruddy melodrama – and if the plot is most incredible at times, you will be more than willing to ignore it while concentrating on its star.

And this is from Charles Higham’s Hollywood in the Forties:

This is a film with the intense surrealist qualities of a dream. Its Buenos Aires is a creation totally of the imagination, with its winding dark streets, its gambling hell, Mundson’s white glittering house. The ambience is one of heat, decadence, sexual ferocity barely concealed behind civilized gestures and phrases. Maté’s photography has a lacquered finish: the husband smoking a cigarette in silhouette, the first glimpse of Gilda, like every GI’s dream, sitting on a bed and throwing back her head in ecstasy, the wedding scene glimpsed through windows streaming with rain.

Want to know more?

Tim Dirks’ Filmsite is a great place to start, with a great introduction and a detailed synopsis of the plot. A primary source for this article is John Kobal’s biography, Rita Hayworth: The Time the Place and the Woman. Turner Classic Movies has some excellent articles about the movie, while the 1946 issues of Screenland are worth looking at for contemporary coverage. The Jean Louis quote about that dress is sourced from Gilda: Rita Hayworth as Gilda Farrell. Conelrad Adjacent’s extensive investigation, Atomic Goddess: Rita Hayworth and the Legend of the Bikini Bombshell is a fascinating read for anyone interested in the topic. And there’s also Caren Roberts-Frenzel’s beautifully illustrated Rita Hayworth: A Photographic Retrospective.