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Title details for If This Was Happiness by Barbara Leaming - Available

If This Was Happiness

A Biography of Rita Hayworth

by Barbara Leaming
Anna Fields
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

Rita Hayworth was the epitome of 1940s Hollywood glamour. A huge box-office star, her sultry figure was pasted by GIs on to the first atom bomb ever detonated. Yet behind the smoldering image lay a tragic secret that wrecked her private life. A pathologically shy child, Rita was thrust at an early age into the sordid limelight as her vaudevillian father's dancing partner, suffering sexual and physical abuse at his hands. A desperate need for protection led her into five disastrous marriages, including those to Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan. At the age of forty-two, Alzheimer's disease began to ravage her mind, cutting short her career at its peak. This is a haunting and sympathetic tribute to a talented but insecure beauty who was created, and ultimately destroyed, by the movies.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 3, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781483054421
      • File size: 382964 KB
      • Duration: 13:17:50

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 1, 1989
      Hayworth fans will learn much from this biography by the author of Orson Welles . The surprising story of the acutely shy Margarita Carmen Cansino, who was dubbed ``the Love Goddess,'' contains more melodrama than most romance novels. We follow Hayworth's life from reluctant child performer to incest victim, glamour queen and wife to Orson Welles and Prince Aly Kahn. Some readers will doubtless appreciate the details of the star's sex life and inner thoughts (``as her wedding day approached, Rita grew more anxious''). Yet aside from interviews with Welles, the book is based on secondary sources and information furnished by Hayworth's secretary, publicist, studio hairdresser and makeup man. As her chronicled fights with Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn and court battles over divorce and child custody attest, fame and beauty assure no happy endings. Hayworth, a long-undiagnosed victim of Alzeimer's disease, died at age 68 in 1987. 50,000 first printing; first serial to Cosmopolitan and the Star; BOMC and Time/Life Condensed Books alternates; author tour.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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