Rita Hayworth and Aly Khan, 1950

Rita Hayworth (1918–1987), American film actress and dancer who rose to glamorous stardom in the 1940s and ’50s. Hayworth was the daughter of Spanish-born dancer Eduardo Cansino and his partner, Volga Hayworth, and, as a child, she performed in her parents’ nightclub act. While still a teenager, she caught the attention of a Hollywood producer, and in the mid-1930s she began appearing in films, using her given name of Rita Cansino, starting with Under the Pampas Moon (1935). Movies from this period included Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935), Dante’s Inferno (1935), and Meet Nero Wolfe (1936). On the advice of her first husband, Edward Judson (who became her manager), she changed her name to Rita Hayworth and dyed her hair auburn, cultivating a sophisticated glamour that first registered with her role as an unfaithful wife who tries to seduce Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings (1939).