Palling Around with Rita, Frank and Kim

Faithful translations of Broadway musicals to film are rare—and trust me, Pal Joey (1957) is definitely not one of them. It does, however, retain a few elements of the original 1940 Broadway production with score by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, based on a book by John O’Hara (Butterfield 8)—and the talent and charisma of its three bright stars makes it a memorable movie musical experience.

Back in Hollywood’s golden age, it was common practice to buy the rights to the latest Broadway extravaganza and dispense with the original score and libretto, tack on a brand new story, add songs from other source material, maybe salvage a hit song or two from the original, tailor it to the talents of the stars involved—and then use the original title as a marketing come-on to draw in audiences. 

In the 1957 film directed by George Sidney, eight of the original 14 songs are used in the film version (some as background orchestrations), and quite a few well-known Rodgers and Hart standards added, including “My Funny Valentine” and  “The Lady Is a Tramp” (from Babes in Arms) and “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” (from Too Many Girls) and  “There’s a Small Hotel” (introduced in On Your Toes).

Rita Hayworth as Mrs. Vera Simpson 

The chemistry of three megawatt stars, gorgeous San Francisco locations, and some of the most beautiful music ever written by American songwriting legends Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers, made Pal Joey a solid hit when it was released. The film helped launch the legend of Kim Novak, solidified the comeback of superstar Frank Sinatra, and marked a career transition for Columbia Pictures’ all-time top-grossing star Rita Hayworth in her final musical role.

The racy story of an amoral con man named Joey Evans who finds a meal ticket in a rich older older woman Vera Simpson while concurrently romancing a young ingenue, Pal Joey received mixed reviews in its initial Broadway run but it launched the career of a young song and dance man named Gene Kelly, who was plucked from obscurity and promptly signed to star opposite Judy Garland in the MGM musical For Me and My Gal. 

Frank Sinatra in the title role of Joey Evans

Columbia Pictures bought the rights to Pal Joey a year or two later, when it was planned that Kelly would star as Joey opposite new Columbia star Rita Hayworth in the ingenue role. The role of the sugar mama/rich cougar was reportedly offered to some of filmdom’s most glamorous grande dames, including Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, but both turned it down, and the film would not be made for more than a dozen years. (Kelly, of course, would eventually star with Hayworth in 1944’s Cover Girl.)

For her role as stripper turned Nob Hill society matron Vera Simpson, Rita Hayworth garnered top billing above the title for the last time in her career, as per the terms of her Columbia contract. Superstar Sinatra good-naturedly waived his own usual top billing, so his name would appear between Hayworth and Novak.“I don’t mind being the meat in that sandwich,” he cracked. 

Hayworth evokes the Love Goddess magic that made her a star with her first song, the burlesque satire “Zip.” Though the number was in the original play, it was performed by a character not in the movie, a female journalist who spoofs Gypsy Rose Lee. (In the 1952 revival, the role was played by Elaine Stritch, who brought down the house night after night with her wry interpretation of the lyrics.) In the film, it’s the perfect opportunity for Rita Hayworth to resurrect the ghost of Gilda a decade before, peeling off her elbow-length glove and tossing it to the crowd while undulating to the bumps and grinds of the burlesque drumbeat with the aplomb of a lifelong professional dancer (which she, of course, was).

Kim Novak as Linda Christian

Dressed by her Gilda costumer Jean Louis—who also designed for Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day and Susan Hayward among others—and still oozing glamour and sex appeal, beautiful Rita is in the flower of radiant maturity here, although in the second half of the film she wears an overcoat and a severe older-woman short hairstyle—appropriate for playing the “heavy” who comes between Sinatra and Novak and keeps them apart. 

But earlier, Hayworth’s languid and sensual rendition of “Bewitched” in Vera’s bedroom has her in silky lingerie, hair wild and free…and as Rita dances into her enormous spa bath, she disrobes and steps into the shower, pressing her bare bosom against the frosted glass of the shower at the end of the number—a startlingly sexy moment for 1957 Hollywood.

Hayworth captivates her audience with a rousing rendition of "Zip"

A love triangle pas de deux dream sequence was choreographed by Hayworth’s pal Hermes Pan, Fred Astaire’s personal choreographer who had staged their dances together in You’ll Never Get Rich and You Were Never Lovelier.

Despite her luminous performance, Pal Joey turned out to be the swan song of Hayworth’s musical film career and last glimpse of the Love Goddess image she had created. She was only 39, but in those days the age of 40 sounded a death knell for a female glamour star. Moving forward with her career, Hayworth had a few interesting dramatic films yet to make including Separate Tables and The Story On Page One, but she was no longer a leading lady, and her “older woman” roles became smaller and smaller, and during her final decade in film she ended up playing harridans and alcoholics. (But she imbued even these throwaway roles with humanity and vulnerability.) Hayworth retired from film in 1972 and passed away in 1987 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.   

A rapturous Rita in the shower after performing "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"

Linda Christian is somewhat of a thankless role for Kim Novak, who had had meatier roles in Picnic and The Man with the Golden Arm (opposite Sinatra) and would soon become an icon herself with Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle (both with James Stewart). But Miss Novak (still with us as of this writing) is a lovely and incandescent presence here, holding her own opposite the two veteran stars.

Joey and Linda: "I Could Write a Book"

As Joey Evans, Frank Sinatra puts on film unforgettable renditions of, among others, “Lady Is a Tramp,” “I Didn’t Know What Time It Was” and “There’s a Small Hotel,” his sublimely silky delivery as iconic as the Rodgers and Hart standards themselves. (Hayworth’s and Novak’s song vocals were dubbed, by Jo Ann Greer and Trudi Erwin, respectively.)

Sinatra won the Best Actor Musical or Comedy Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey, solidifying the A-List superstar status that he had almost lost at the beginning of the decade. In the late 1940s, Sinatra’s popularity as the darling of the bobbysoxers had begun to wane, despite appearances in MGM films like On the Town and Take Me Out to the Ball Game. 

Hayworth, Sinatra and Novak in Hermes Pan's dream sequence

His personal life was in turmoil, amid rumors of mafia involvements, the dissolution of his marriage to first wife Nancy and his volatile relationship with new flame Ava Gardner. His record sales plummeted. Depressed, stressed and down on his luck, Sinatra literally lost his voice for a time and thought his career was over. But he fought his way back. He took a non-singing supporting role in 1953’s From Here to Eternity and earned a well-deserved Academy Award, revitalizing his career. And the famous voice came back—better than ever, in fact.

Some of Sinatra's most iconic musical numbers are found right here in Pal Joey

Though it veers far from the Broadway original, the film version of Pal Joey is a glossy, splashy, tuneful Technicolor extravaganza that’s delightfully diverting and packed with star power—perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon and a pint or two of your favorite ice cream. 

Happy 100th birthday, Miss Rita!

This essay was written for the Rita Hayworth is 100 blogathon hosted by Love Letters to Old Hollywood. I look forward to reading everyone’s entries about our beloved Love Goddess! 

Lovely Rita, Lethal Gilda

They say the love of a good woman can save a fallen man. Gilda (1946) is not about that kind of woman. It’s the story of a sultry siren who leads a man to his destruction, and with wanton malice aforethought. Masterfully directed by Charles Vidor, Gilda is textbook film noir, chock full of all the elements that define this quintessential 1940s genre.

Lurid and suggestive rather than explicit in their portrayals of the dark side of human nature, film noir provided a creative milieu in which verboten themes and subjects could be safely explored without breaking the stringent Production Code that promoted “clean and wholesome” moviemaking. 

Rita Hayworth triumphs in the title role

With Gilda, Vidor and cameraman Rudolph Maté pull out all the film noir stops, creating a moody, glittering black-and-white mise en scène. Set in steamy postwar Buenos Aires, the film transports the viewer to a shadowy underworld of rootless expatriate revelers who come out only after the sun goes down. (Indeed, every scene in the film takes place in the dark of night.)

All the classic elements of film noir are present and accounted for in this seminal film—a cynical worldview, sexual symbolism, the double-cross, even a Nazi subplot. Just about everyone’s pretending to be something they’re not—there’s even a masked Carnivale ball to underline the theme of falsity and impersonation. And at its apex is a poisonous love affair fueled by the most venal of impulses. 

Johnny (Glenn Ford) rolls the dice

Here, Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford display perhaps the most explosive and smolderingly sensual screen chemistry of any movie couple of the 1940s, far more than Stanwyck and MacMurray in Double Indemnity, or even Bogart and Bacall in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep. Both their characters are opportunistic narcissists, forced to dance to the tune of the rich and powerful to make their way in the world, bartering their assets and skills for protection and security. Survival by any means, beginning with pretense and deception, is the only goal.

Unshaven and raggedly attired, armed only with his own set of specially weighted dice, Johnny Farrell (Ford) makes his own luck by cheating his way through life. But a chance (?) encounter with a wealthy benefactor, the sinister Ballin Mundson (George Macready), sparks his ambition and gives him the opportunity for respectability and the good life. Alas, Johnny’s newfound success turns out to be even more seamy and dangerous than his former life as two-bit hustler. 

Johnny, Ballin (George Macready) and his constant companion: "Just the three of us"

Johnny visits Mundson’s underground gambling establishment and insinuates himself into the proprietor’s good graces. There he will learn the cardinal rule of gambling: The house always wins--the establishment may let you cash in up to a point, but when you cross the line, you’re out. Or maybe even dead.

Even after quickly rising to the role of casino manager and confidante to Mundson, dressed in an impeccable tuxedo and tails, Johnny is nevertheless pegged as a peasant by the wise and wily restroom attendant Uncle Pio (Steven Geray). Though under the aegis of Ballin’s protection, Johnny will never be respected. 

Always be nice to your sugar daddy

But Johnny’s problems have only just begun, as a major complication threatens the security of his newfound berth. Mundson returns from a brief business trip with his beautiful new wife Gilda in tow—and the girl in question happens to be a former paramour with whom he did not part amicably, to put it kindly.

Gilda and Johnny’s karmic connection is based not on unrequited love and not on money. Hate and revenge are their aphrodisiacs, keeping both in a perpetual state of seething anger,  barely concealed contempt and unfulfilled sexual arousal. Indeed, in their first private moment together, Gilda whispers savagely, “You know how much I hate you, Johnny? I hate you so much I’d destroy myself to bring you down with me.” And so she will. 

Gilda delights in taunting Johnny

The diminutive and vaguely effeminate Ballin Mundson, who carries a silver-tipped cane as a substitute phallus, seems far more entranced and obsessed by Johnny than he is with wife Gilda, and studies his employee’s reaction to her with amused interest. Later, we’ll see Ballin voyeuristically spying on the lovers in flagrante delicto, while anxiously massaging the tip of his cane, which converts to a lethal weapon, an elegantly thrusting razor-sharp spear. (Voyeurism is a major theme here, beautifully illustrated by the shadow-casting electronic blinds in his office that give Mundson a birds-eye view of all the happenings in his casino and nightclub.)

At her new husband’s club, Gilda works hard to make a spectacle of herself, flirting brazenly with practically any man who shows interest— not to make Ballin jealous but to get her ex-lover and chaperone Johnny in trouble with his employer--and keep him hot, bothered and nearly frantic.

The character of hustler and pretty boy Johnny Farrell shows Ford at the flower of impetuous youth that would later give way to a more laconic, weathered and world-weary persona, but here his violent and explosive passion and desire for revenge more than match Gilda’s. In many ways, the film belongs to him. He gives a fierce performance as the hardened adventurer whose perfect setup is compromised by a dangerous doll who threatens to blow his cover. 

"I hate you so much I think I'm going to die from it."

The untamed redhead in the title role is played, of course, by Rita Hayworth (the former Margarita Cansino). After a long Hollywood buildup, during which she changed her name and dyed her dark Latina hair in various shades of red from strawberry blond to torrid sunset, Hayworth had paid her dues as an extra, bit player and featured actor. By the mid-1940s, Rita was now being recognized as an A-List star, appearing mostly in musicals and comedies opposite the likes of Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. She had played a femme fatale once or twice before, most notably in Blood and Sand opposite Tyrone Power, but here was a role that only came once in a lifetime; no wonder the publicity posters screamed, “There never was a woman like Gilda!”

Ballin Mundson sees all

Poured into a slinky strapless satin gown and breathing heavily, she sings “Put the Blame on Mame” and creates one of classic film’s most iconic moments with her titillating near-striptease. Though her vocal performance was reportedly dubbed by jazz singer Anita Ellis, Hayworth gives the song its sultry sizzle with her languid and suggestive dance moves.

The plot is too deliciously serpentine to reveal beat by beat, but suffice to say that Gilda is a gripping melodrama featuring iconic imagery, striking performances and a style that is copied in film noir homages to this day.

Though they costarred in several more films together, including The Loves of Carmen and Affair and Trinidad, plus a brief reunion years later with her cameo appearance in The Money Game, Hayworth and Ford never quite generated the same amount of raw heat as they had with Gilda.

Hayworth struggled to live up to the indelible screen image she had created. The many men in her life found it hard to separate the fiery love goddess character from the sweet, often insecure child-woman that Hayworth really was. And unlike Ford, Hayworth found it a little more rough going as she matured, often reduced to playing alcoholics and harridans in the latter part of her career. 

Another long, long night for Gilda

Gilda was a big break for Glenn Ford that propelled him to the top of the Hollywood food chain and kept him on a career trajectory that would last for decades, in genres as varied as war epics to westerns, romance, drama and family comedy. Ford would always be grateful to Rita for jump-starting his career with Gilda.

As a big fan of film noir, this is my absolute favorite, chiefly due to the searing chemistry of the two principal stars and the unsettling idea that hate can be as powerful as love. Gilda is the ultimate anti rom-com!

Big thanks to my friend Quiggy at The Midnite Drive-In for hosting the Film Noir Blogathon. I’m very excited to discover new blogs and immerse myself in this classic genre! 

Rita Hayworth's Make-Believe World

We remember a lovely face and a ravishing figure, a spirited toss of shining red hair. Her name conjures images of 1940s glamour and romance, music and magic. But what was Rita Hayworth really like?

Rita Hayworth died on May 14th, 1987, of complications from Alzheimer's disease, at age 68. Hayworth led a stormy and tumultuous life full of well-publicized ups and downs. She was film royalty and a real-life princess, but her true story was a somewhat grim fairy tale, and she never enjoyed a happily-ever-after.

Most fans know about her fabled marriages to film luminary Orson Welles and international playboy Prince Aly Khan; her adversarial relationship with Columbia studio head Harry Cohn; her iconic film noir turns as Gilda (1946) and The Lady from Shanghai (1948); her staggering dancing ability and legendary pairings with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. They also know she died too soon.

Rita was a reluctant glamour goddess who preferred to slouch around in jeans and sweatshirts with no makeup far before it was fashionable. Unable to live up to her screen image, she was unlucky at love. "They went to bed with Gilda," she said sadly, referring to her most iconic role, "but they woke up with me." She counted among her greatest achievements being a good mother to her two daughters. She looked upon her acting career as a job, nothing more.

Many young stars have a stage mother pushing them into the business. Margarita Cansino had a stage father, dancer Eduardo Cansino, a perfectionist and taskmaster who superimposed his own frustrated ambitions on his lovely young daughter. Cansino owned a school of dance in Hollywood where the studios sent their contract players to teach them the basics. (This is where James Cagney learned to tap dance, and Jean Harlow prepared for her only musical role, in 1935's Reckless).

From the age of 13, young Margarita was put to work as a primary Cansino breadwinner alongside her father, to supplement the family income. Appearing in after-hours Tijuana nightclubs as Eduardo's dancing partner, Rita was performing sexually charged rhumbas and tangos with her own father to drunken crowds. More than one source suggests that Margarita may have been physically and sexually abused by her hard-driving, exacting father, as well.

She was signed as a contract player at Fox Studios in 1935, where she played a succession of exotics and stereotyped South-of-the-Border characters until her option was dropped a few months later.

A Svengali-style first marriage to a much older man, a fast-talking salesman named Edward Judson, took her from Latin bit player to Hollywood ingénue. It was Judson who oversaw the complete transformation of black-haired Latin lovely Rita Cansino into the all-American girl next door Rita Hayworth. He had her hairline completely reshaped by painful electrolysis and dyed her locks a deep shade of red, changing her name from Cansino to Hayworth in the process.

She signed with Columbia, her career took off, and she became one of the top stars of the 1940s. Though she enjoyed rehearsing her dancing and the camaraderie with her Columbia Studios family, Rita never took her work too seriously. Her ambitions were to be a wife and mother, but she found her career left her precious little time to spend with her children, Rebecca (Welles) and Yasmin (Khan). And every man she married turned out to be the wrong man.

After the marriage to Aly Khan in 1949 (her third), Hayworth retired from the screen. After their divorce, she returned to Hollywood to resume her career, but it had lost momentum. The decade that followed was a series of comebacks. So the goddess of the 1940s struggled in the 1950s, as her tabloid-worthy personal life became more interesting than the films she was making, including her musical swan song, Pal Joey (1957).

Aging gracefully is difficult at best in Hollywood, and Hayworth was scrutinized and criticized in the press for her weight fluctuations and the lines around her eyes——and she was only in her 30s! But again, she was determined to reinvent herself, so she could continue to make a living and provide for her children.

By the late '50s, Hayworth was on her way to becoming a dramatic actress in literate fare such as Terrence Rattigan's Separate Tables (1958) and Clifford Odets' The Story on Page One (1960). But again, her professional achievements were overshadowed by reports of alcoholism and domestic violence via her embattled relationships with her fourth husband, fading singer Dick Haymes, and her fifth, producer James Hill.

Though Hayworth was not diagnosed until 1980, it was as far back as the early 1960s when friends and family began to notice a change in Rita. She began having blackout-type episodes that most attributed to her heavy drinking. MGM star Ann Miller recalled that Rita had invited her and choreographer Hermes Pan to dinner one night. They knocked on the front door and waited a long time for an answer. Finally, the door flew open and there stood an unkempt, wild-eyed Rita, who stared at her two friends uncomprehendingly. "Who are you? Go away!" she blurted to Miller and Pan, then slammed the door in their faces before they could identify themselves. When Rita and Ann spoke a few days later, Hayworth told Miller she had no memory of the event.

The episodes of strange behavior continued on and off for more than a decade, as Hayworth continued to work sporadically in film and on television. Finally, it became clear she could not continue. Hayworth's youngest daughter, the Princess Yasmin Khan, became her mother's primary caregiver. In the late 1970s, Yasmin set up her mother in an apartment with round-the-clock care in her building on Central Park West in New York City. It was not until 1980 that Hayworth's condition was given a name, after pioneer researcher Dr. Alois Alzheimer. (In 1994, the diagnosis of American President and former movie actor Ronald Reagan would continue to bring universal awareness to the disease.) By now, Rita was in decent physical shape, but completely incoherent.

From this perpetual dream world, her daughter remembers, Hayworth was unreachable...except when there was music playing. Then, she would sway to the rhythm and a smile would light up her still lovely face, almost as if she were rehearsing those long-ago dance routines to romantic standards by Berlin, Porter and Kern. In the recesses of the mind is where all Love Goddesses really reside.