hassan974

An excerpt from "The Making of COVER GIRL" c2004 Hassan Khan. RITA HAYWORTH and the fine art of DISPLAY All collective talent on Cover Girl agree that Rita Hayworth possessed the fine art of "display." They consider this quality, which Hayworth possessed to be the most intensely feminine quality that any actress could bring to the screen. It is not mere empty display, and involves far more than being unfailingly decorative. Women more beautiful than Rita have paraded across the screen, carefully photographed, gowned and made up, and lacking the ability to display. It is Hayworth's own and seeing Rita Hayworth in movement is to believe it. And it could only be seen on the set of a shooting company, for that is the only time that Rita Hayworth chose to bring it forth. Off-screen and during rehearsals, Rita withheld the spark. "But when the camera turns", warns Cover Girl film editor, Viola Lawrence, "You just have to stand there and wonder where it all comes from. She is electric and the camera doesn't want to photograph anything else." Hayworth had a precious feminine quality that many a self-propelled Hollywood actress has struggled to duplicate before being cruelly unmasked by the camera.

How many of you have seen her pre-codes on TCM? THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP is completetly hysterical with Charles Laughton doing his usual over-acting of the period with the worst east end cockney I ever heard. Love him though. Tallulah is great in FAITHLESS (1932) with Robert Montgomery. She plays a spoiled rich girl who, despite depression era warnings, refuses to curtial her extravagant spending. The eventual riches to rags happens and she has to take to prostitution to get medicine for her dying husband. It's more of a Clara Bow type motion picture, but Tallulah does a great job in it. They showed it first on the old TNT and then on TCM. I haven't read all the Tallulah posts so I hope I am not mentioning something that has been gone over before.

Hi, It's not a book I am doing. It is a series of quarterly newsmagazines in which each features a different Hayworth film with in depth behind the scenes "creation of" kind of stuff. It's the kind of thing that has limited marketability since it does not contain sleezy personal life details. There is no "hook" to bring in buyers; just good old fashioned accurate Hollywood history. It's strictly for people interested in film from that standpoint. It really gives an idea of how a studio work at creating these now classic films. I haven't figured out the cost per issue yet but I do have my printer lined up. I've done everything myself on computer: layout, typesetting, design. You didn't think that Orson Welles was the only one who liked controlling everything, did you? lol The nice thing is that people are able to email me photos from their collection to use without having to send originals. People have been generous in scanning and sending photos rare photos at the required resolution for printing. I don't need to retire off these newsmagazines but I would like to recover my costs and make a little for years spent researching. We'll see what happens in this soft book market. The people at Columbia have been very generous with tie-ins because I am also giving them publicity for their Rita Hayworth DVD's. Thanks for asking. Hassan K.

April, Can you give some information about the short? Perhaps story line and anything you can remember about it?