If This Was Happiness

Following her biographies of Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, the author offers an account of the life and film career of the "Love Goddess" whose smouldering image hid a tragic secret which fame and love affairs with glamorous men could do nothing to heal. "If this was happiness", said Orson Welles, "imagine what the rest of her life had been!" Margarita Cansino was a shy child, thrust into the sordid limelight by her ambitious father as his dancing partner. His exploitation and abuse set a pattern for life. Her name was changed to Rita Hayworth and her film career took off, but her personal life remained a failure: five disastrous marriages, including those to Welles and Aly Khan, short-lived love affairs with men such as David Niven and Howard Hughes, a drawn-out custody battle for her daughter Yasmin accompanied by accusations of child neglect, and finally the long slide into Alzheimer's disease, agonizingly mis-diagnosed as alcoholism.
 
Following her biographies of Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, the author offers an account of the life and film career of the "Love Goddess" whose smouldering image hid a tragic secret which fame and love affairs with glamorous men could do nothing to heal. "If this was happiness", said Orson Welles, "imagine what the rest of her life had been!" Margarita Cansino was a shy child, thrust into the sordid limelight by her ambitious father as his dancing partner. His exploitation and abuse set a pattern for life. Her name was changed to Rita Hayworth and her film career took off, but her personal life remained a failure: five disastrous marriages, including those to Welles and Aly Khan, short-lived love affairs with men such as David Niven and Howard Hughes, a drawn-out custody battle for her daughter Yasmin accompanied by accusations of child neglect, and finally the long slide into Alzheimer's disease, agonizingly mis-diagnosed as alcoholism.