If This Was Happiness cover art

If This Was Happiness

A Biography of Rita Hayworth

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About this listen

 Rita Hayworth was the epitome of 1940s glamour. A legendary "Love Goddess", she was a huge box-office star, and her sultry beauty and sensational figure made her into one of Hollywood's greatest sex-symbols: a pin-up so incendiary that GIs pasted it on to the first atom bomb ever detonated.

Yet behind the smoldering image lay a tragic secret that wrecked her private life. A pathologically shy child, she was thrust at an early age into a sordid limelight as her vaudevillian father's dancing partner, and suffered sexual and physical abuse at his hands. A desperate need for protection led her into five marriages, including nuptials with Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan. All of them resulted in exploitation and disaster, as did affairs with some of the world's most glamorous men.

©1989 Barbara Leaming (P)1996 Blackstone Audio Inc. Entertainment & Celebrities Entertainment & Performing Arts Film & TV Entertainment Celebrity Biography

Critic reviews

"Hayworth fans will learn much from this biography by the author of Orson Welles. The surprising story of the acutely shy Margarita Carmen Cansino, who was dubbed "the Love Goddess", contains more melodrama than most romance novels." ( Publishers Weekly)
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Lovely story. Read all the Hollywood actresses biographies but never one of her. So sad she ended up with Alzheimer’s. So young.

Lovely

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For all her beauty and success you couldn’t want the life she had. I don’t think she ever escaped from her start in life. Uneducated, unprotected and abused, what a desperate situation. The story is told very well and I liked the analysis parts too. Thankfully she had a few good friends and her youngest daughter at the end of her life. I shall look at her in her movies with a rather different view of how she got there.

Sad but True

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loved hearing about Rita's life I had no idea the sadness & abuse she had suffered. Her custody battles over her daughter. Her 5 husbands, her sad decent into Dementia
it's a long book, I think there were one or two points it got too much. Namely the 4th husband. It was heartening to know her youngest daughter took care of her in her decline.

Beautiful Rita Heyworth

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Quite fast faced but an insight into a screen goddess's tragic life of being used by the old cinema film industry in Hollywood, and almost all the men using her for her fame and money. Really sad true story. Good listen, recommend.

Incredibly sad story of her life.

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Good listen to an interesting life and how badly she was treated by those who were supposed to have loved her most

intriguing

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