RITA HAYWORTH The Prince Who BROKE HER HEART

HER ILL-FATED MARRIAGE TO A PLAYBOY TAUGHT THE LOVE GODDESS TO TRUST HER OWN INSTINCTS

In April 1951, Rita Hayworth arrived back in her native New York after nearly three years abroad. As she disembarked the French liner De Grasse with her two young daughters, the actress nicknamed “The Love Goddess” told reporters she was looking forward to seeing a Broadway show and eating a hot dog.

During her two-month visit, Rita often denied that her marriage to international playboy Aly Khan was in trouble, but she was lying. Their divorce would be the end of a heartbreaking but ultimately transformative period for the actress. “It is so easy to say she was a victim, but she always left her husbands,” notes Adrienne McLean, author of Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom. “She had a lot more strength than we’d like to think she had.”

Rita developed this inner steel through painful experience. The daughter of a Spanish flamenco dancer and a Ziegfeld Follies girl, Rita, born Margarita Cansino, began performing as a child. “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood,” said Rita, who was taken out of school at age 12 to become her father’s dance partner.