
‘Cohn treated Hayworth like a little baby girl…. And it seemed to me that everybody took their cue from him. It was always “come along Rita” never “Miss Hayworth”. Now I’d come from MGM and if you ever said anything like “Okay, Norma”, that man would have disappeared from the face of the earth. It was always Miss Shearer, Miss Garbo, Miss Crawford and only in hushed tones. Not that Rita minded. In fact, I only saw Rita blow her stack once, and it was with herself. We had a scene in the bar where she was supposed to be tiddly. She knew her lines but somehow it wasn’t going well. Anyway, Vidor probably told her she was bad, ‘cause people would say these sort of things to Rita they wouldn’t dream of telling any other star. She dissolved into tears and walked off. Now, suddenly, everybody was concerned about her because it affected the costs to the film. I can’t talk about her exploitation. We were all exploited to some degree. They wanted hours out of you. Not talent. If you had talent as well, fine. Man hours. They didn’t care about you as a human being.’
- Rita Hayworth’s co-star Lee Bowman
This makes me sad to read. =(
This was racism. Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino. She was raised in a Spanish dance family. Let’s not...