Current Exhibitions / Traveling Exhibitions

Back to list of portraits   Back to American Women introduction

		Rita Hayworth (1918-1987) Rita Hayworth spent her first years in the film business taking minor parts in low-budget B movies. But, around 1940, urged on by her first husband, she underwent a make-over that transformed her into a russet-haired temptress, and suddenly Hollywood took notice. Over the next several years, she became one of the movie industry's most glamorous stars and by the late 1940s, she had been christened "The Great American Love Goddess." Among her most successful films were Cover Girl and Tonight and Every Night, but the one for which she is best remembered is Gilda in which she played a pliant, but seductive woman victimized by various men. This Italian poster image, promoting An Affair in Trinidad, depicts Hayworth with her co-star in the film, Glenn Ford. The scene portrayed, however, was not from Trinidad. Rather it came from Gilda in which Ford had also starred. Anselmo Ballester (1897-1987) Color halftone, 1953 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution