The Films of Rita Hayworth

The Films of Rita Hayworth

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Cover Girl (1944) – full review!

Tonight and Every Night (1945)

Gilda (1946)

Miss Sadie Thompson (1953) – as Gloria Swanson (Miss Thompson (1928)) and Joan Crawford (Rain (1932)) had before her forty-five year old Rita Hayworth plays the title role in this musical adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham story; the movie was originally released in 3-D. The original plotline elements of which have subsequently been used in countless dramas involves Miss Thompson’s desire to escape from a life of prostitution by traveling to a remote tropical island in this case Pago Pago on American Samoa after World War II. She nearly makes it too especially when a fresh faced Marine Sergeant played by Aldo Ray proposes to her without knowing about her past. But her ‘reprieve’ is temporary her joy short-lived when she’s “found out” then chastised and ‘forced’ to face her past (and even to return to San Francisco) by a self-righteous religious zealot the son of a great missionary named Alfred Davidson played by José Ferrer. This version was directed by Curtis Bernhardt; Harry Kleiner wrote the screenplay. Sadie Thompson’s Song (Blue Pacific Blues) earned a Best Music Original Song Academy Award nomination. Russell Collins Harry Bellaver Wilton Graff Henry Slate Rudy Bond and Charles Bronson (among others) also appear.

Salome (1953) – is a typically ludicrous Hollywood account of a biblical story with Rita Hayworth in the title role of the beautiful princess whose “dance of the seven veils” leads to King Herod’s (Charles Laughton) execution of John the Baptist (Alan Badel) by decapitation. According to the film Herod’s estranged Queen – Herodias played by Judith Anderson – persuaded her daughter Salome to seduce Herod into action (“Bring me the head of John the Baptist”); the prophet John had been telling the people of Galilee not to obey the royal couple because Herodias was an adulteress by virtue of her previous marriage to Herod’s brother. Earlier Salome had been forbidden by Julius Caesar’s successor Tiberius (Cedric Hardwicke) from marrying his nephew Marcellus because she was a non-Roman ‘barbarian’. So she was banished from Rome where she’d been sent to live as an infant by Herodias who rightly feared for her virtue per the King. So the princess travels home to Galilee with the newly appointed governor of the region Pontius Pilate (Basil Sydney) and the fictional Commander Claudius (Stewart Granger). Having spent a considerable amount of time in the area the Commander’s career training and battle hardened demeanor had started to fade per the influence of the Baptist’s teachings; his further witnessing of the Messiah’s healing of the blind and the “Sermon on the Mount” causes the Roman to experience a transformation. It was directed by William Dieterle and written by Jesse Lasky Jr. and Harry Kleiner. Maurice Schwartz and Arnold Moss also appear as the King’s and Queen’s advisors respectively.

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