People talk a lot about the way that Rita Hayworth looked. She was the Hollywood “love goddess,” with a sensational figure, a dazzling smile, and hair that fell in long, auburn waves. The pinup so iconic that her posters were used as avatars of escapist fantasy in Bicycle Thieves (1948), and as a cover-up for a more literal escape in Stephen King’s jailbreak novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn
The bombshell so voluptuous they pasted her image onto an actual atom bomb. What people don’t talk about enough is what she did on-screen, in front of the camera, to create that effect. That’s partly because we have been told that Rita Hayworth was a fabrication, made by other hands.
Those hands belonged to the father who made her his dance partner when she was still a schoolgirl; the Svengali-like first husband, Eddie Judson, who pushed her into the movies; and to Harry Cohn, who ruled over her career, her image, and more at Columbia. Perhaps also to Orson Welles, her second husband and one-time director, or to Fred Astaire, who said she was his best dance partner in the movies.
Take a look at these glamorous photos to see the beauty of Rita Hayworth through Robert Coburn’s lens in the 1940s and 1950s.
Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn from Affair in Trinidad, 1952
Rita Hayworth by Robert Coburn from Affair in Trinidad, 1952
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