Beauty Archivist: Becoming Rita - How Hollywood Has Never Championed Natural Beauty
Becoming a star in the golden age of Hollywood seemed like a tangible possibility for the prettiest girl in every small town across America. Studios signed hundreds of young women to starlet contracts, locking them in for several years, often at a very low wage. Once signed most of these would-be stars languished in B movie bit parts and chorus lines but for the few who did draw attention from studio execs, who were considered to have real money making potential, the studio would become not merely an employer but an all controlling entity something akin to a coercive even abusive relationship.
The studio managed every aspect of its players' lives. From what they ate, wore, the medication they were on, who they dated and critically, their identities. A full studio makeover meant an actress was locked into perpetually playing a designated role off screen as well as on, a role that often had little relationship to her actual personality. Names and biographies changed as well as appearances. A star crafted by executives out of the raw materials provided by an endless stream of hopeful, pretty girls.
An irony is, from a contemporary viewpoint, part of the charm of Golden Age cinema is the idiosyncrasies and imperfections in the faces of its stars. A beauty that isn't undermined by a touch of laxity in the skin, a slight overbite or a puffy under eye, instead it is more magnetic because of its humanity. Yet in reality these women had all undergone their own grueling transformations. Jean Harlow's hair was bleached a candy floss white every single Sunday with a crude mixture of Peroxide and Clorox until it fell out in clumps at age twenty four, Marilyn Monroe received a chin implant made of sponge and suffered greatly from an infection she got a result of liquid silicone injections to her breasts.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___
One star who’s public persona as the All American Sex Goddess was in direct opposition to her true self was Rita Hayworth. Born Margarita Carmen Cansino in Brooklyn in 1918, to a Spanish father and Irish American Mother, Rita was considered sweet but plain as a child and had a debilitating shyness. From the moment she was three years old, Rita was coached as a professional dancer, although she noted that she never liked it very much “but I didn't have the courage to tell my father, so I began taking the lessons. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood.”
Rita was taken out of school at just thirteen to perform as her father’s dance partner, and would be self conscious for the rest of her life about her lack of education. Posing as husband and wife Rita’s father lied about her age in order to set her to work full time dancing in clubs in Tijuana. A childhood marked by instability, emotional and sexual abuse. Haywood’s early life, as her career in general, was defined by status as a commodity, leveraged by controlling and abusive men. First her father and then her first husband Edward Judson, who she married at just eighteen and who considered himself her Svengali and who functioned halfway between a talent manager and a pimp, coercing Rita to trade sex with execs for bit parts in films.
Rita’s early career, performing as Rita Cansino was unremarkable. Obviously ‘foreign looking’ with her distinctive Spanish features, Rita was relegated to small unspecified “ethnic” roles such as “Egyptian Girl” in Charlie Chan in Egypt. Rita made no real mark on Hollywood until, acting under the advice of Harry Cohn, Columbia’s studio head, Judson decided to make over and rebrand Rita - I say Judson decided because unlike the star-making plastic surgery makeovers of today, it would have been very unlikely Rita herself would have been involved in the choice.
“American audiences were happy to accept a Hispanic heroine, as long as they thought the actress was really white.”
In order to eradicate the vestiges of her Mediterranean heritage, Rita underwent many rounds of painful and crude electrolysis to raise her hairline and widen her forehead, her black hair was bleached and tinted to its famous strawberry blonde, and she was renamed Rita Hayworth for her mothers maiden name. Ironically, in the long tradition of Hollywood whitewashing, Rita’s first big role post makeover was as Latin coded show girl Nina Barona in Angels over Broadway. American audiences were happy to accept a Hispanic heroine, as long as they thought the actress was really white.
Rita would go on to become one of the top stars at Columbia with roles in films such as Gilda establishing her as an icon of femininity and glamour; A bombshell “Sex Goddess” reputation which couldn’t be further removed from her vulnerable and insecure off screen reality. A photograph of Hayworth in 1941’s Life magazine - in which she wears a silk negligee and embodies that heady and commercially successful mix of American wholesomeness and explosive sexuality - became the most widely circulated pin up photo during WWII.
Despite Rita’s lifelong fear her origins would be discovered, in fact, the constructed nature of her image would come to be something much of the public would love her for. In the same way there is an appetite today for the idea of a self made beauty, Rita’s emergence from a more relatable chrysalis, the fact she had once been a shy girl of immigrant origin, and not considered breathtaking, would become part of her legend. Her allure increased for its perceived democratic nature, perpetuating the dreams of those hoping to be discovered and made over themselves. Tragically, whilst the fans were able to reconcile these two duelling personas, Hayworth herself never would. As she put it, “Every man I knew, went to bed with Gilda and woke up with me” worrying that her real and essential self would always be a disappointment to the men who could only see her as the mirage.
Stripping away the assumption that 20th Century stars represented a real beauty unlike the manufactured beauty of today reveals a more frightening reality. Silver screen actresses such as Hayworth did indeed submit to often drastic and painful procedures in beauty’s pursuit, yet by modern standards very few seem to pass baseline requirements of attractiveness for models, actresses and scarily even just women. I got a text a few weeks ago from a friend with a picture of young Susan Sarandon, looking undeniably beautiful but also sort of normal and interesting in her specificness. Not every feature, perfectly aligned with a facetuned ideal. The caption was just “why aren’t we just allowed to have faces anymore”. I would argue that despite hardly being simply natural, the Golden Age vision of beauty is more refreshing because not every deviation or element of individuality was ironed out in the way that it can feel like it is today. Hayworth’s, Monroe’s and Harlow’s transformations feel like a gloss through which you can still see the woman beneath.
Words: Grace Ellington
