A TRIBUTE TO THE LOVE GODDESS

As the seasonal celebrations of the 7th Art are en route to Cannes, we like to stop along the way to dedicate a minute of our thoughts to Hollywood's hey-days legend Rita Hayworth, who passed away exactly 20 years ago. Italian Satellite channel Studio Universal (channel 320) devotes to the late actress a cycle of 3 films and a documentary, starting tonight with You'll Never Get Rich (1941) by Sidney Lanfield.

Margarita Carmen Cansino, started her career in 1933 as a dancer. Success strucks in 1941 with You'll Never Get Rich, where she stars cheek-to-cheek with Fred Astaire, and in Strawberry Blond by Raoul Walsh, co-starring with James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.

Beautiful beyond belief, Hayworth was the perfect incarnation of Gilda by Charles Vidor, the role of a lifetime...in every sense of the word, since she got so close to her on-screen persona to never again being able to walk away from it. Rita is often quoted to have said "Every man I have ever known has fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with me." The quote mirrors the dramatic turns her life took, afflicted as it was by unhappy marriages (Hayworth went in by the church aisle and out by the court door five times, two of which with Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan, son of the Aga Khan), depression, addiction and, later on, alzheimer that ultimately sealed her fate with death in 1987, at the age of 68. But even the devastating disease, which left her completely helpless, did not tarnish the glorious image of Rita Hayworth, the ever shining film star, the universal symbol of sensualty beaming from the silver screen.

Enjoy the beautiful dance scene with Fred Astaire that made Rita Hayworth a star: