Orson Welles may have given Columbia Pictures mogul Harry Cohn heartburn when he cut and bleached Rita Hayworth’s hair. (Out with the trademark russet locks, in with the blond.)
But he made a classic movie. We’re talking, of course, about 1947’s The Lady From Shanghai, Hayworth’s final outing under her old Columbia contract.
She accepted the role of an ic-cold film noir femme fatale (Ida Lupino was the original choice for the part) in large measure for financial reasons. She and Welles were ending their five year marriage, and Rita figured that since Welles would be paid a percentage of the film’s gross, their daughter Rebecca would benefit. (As it turned out, the film was a box office bust.)
As for Welles, The Lady From Shanghai was in effect his final outing; he was finished in Hollywood. Columnist Louella Parsons, who admired Rita but loathed Orson, gloated in print to her many readers that Welles was washed up in Hollywood AND washed up with Hayworth. Thus, she theorized, the drastic altering of Hayworth’s locks symbolized Welles’ frustration and vengeance on Hollywood.
As film noir scholar Eddie Muller notes, production of the film became Hollywood legend.” On the first take, an assistant cameraman keeled over from a heart attack…. And as for his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Welles treated her like fallout from the Bikini test.
Welles, who produced, costarred in, directed and wrote the screenplay, portrays a naive Irish seaman, who narrates the convoluted tale in an transparently fake accent. Hayworth is a former saloon singer with a heart of lead, toughened by an international circuit she’s circumnavigated too many times. Her paraplegic husband (Everett Sloane) is a defense lawyer renowned for never losing the high profile cases he handles.
The seaman is seduced by the lawyer’s wife. The lawyer’s sidekick (Glenn Anders) hatches a plot to murder, and frame the seaman. The wife guns down an underling (Ted DeCorsia) who knows too much. She at the film’s finale is finally unmasked as the ruthless, cold blooded killer of the piece in a fatal shootout with her husband — I’m aiming at you, lover!
All this plays out before the by-now familiar set in an amusement park’s Hall of Mirrors. The scene is beautifully staged, one of Welles most evocative big screen triumphs. At the movie’s conclusion, the sailor leaves the Hayworth character bleeding on the floor screaming, I don’t want to die. He departs, she does.
Like much of Welles work, The Lady of Shanghai, gets better with pretty much each viewing. The supporting cast — particularly Sloane, Anders (who comes across as more than a little creepy) and DeCorsia — is superb. Rita looks gorgeous throughout, easily overcoming a wooden performance.
The sole clunker is Welles himself as the sailor. Out-of-shape and more than a little clumsy onscreen (check him out in the fight scenes), Welles is a dud as the femme fatale magnet that the sailor is supposed to present. The yacht used in the picture (The Lady From Shanghai was partially shot on location in Acapulco) was leased from Errol Flynn.
Now had he been cast in the part Welles had badly bungled….
It can sometimes be intriguing how certain films came into being. Take the 1947 picture THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI, for instance.
Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre Company was in dire financial straits, his musical production of ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ needed to find $55,000 at once or costumes would be impounded and its Boston preview cancelled. Orson stumbled upon a copy of ‘If I Die before I Wake’ and promptly phoned Columbia boss Harry Cohn. If he would buy the rights to the novel, Orson would write, direct and star in a movie version, provided Harry would send $55,000 to Boston within two hours. Harry agreed, the money arrived, the musical went on as planned, and Orson and his wife Rita Hayworth eventually co-starred in the movie version of the novel (The Lady from Shanghai).
As Joe & Frank said Welles ordered Rita to cut her hair and bleach it for the picture and Cohn nearly had apoplexy. Audiences did not like her new look either.
Orson Welles took one look at the iconic Bob Landry 1941, WW2 pin-up of Rita, the one in which she is kneeling on a bed in a black and white negligee, and decided he had to meet her. They dated for 20 months from 1942 until 1943 before marrying in September. In December ’44 they had a child, but the marriage folded in November 1947. Orson was a compulsive adulterer. Even while Rita was giving birth to their child he was cheating with Judy Garland, Gloria Vanderbilt and who knows how many prostitutes.
Errol Flynn hooked up with Rita in 1946 when her marriage to Welles was all but over. He loaned her husband the use of his yacht Zaca for his movie The Lady from Shanghai…
As a teenager Margarita Cansino (Rita Hayworth) was sexually abused by her abominable father, a Latin dancer named Eduardo Cansino, who not only abused her himself, but rented her out to his cronies. When she confided this to her husband Orson Welles he was rightly appalled. ‘He was a terrible man and she hated him’, said Welles. In her later years Rita took a lot of lovers, a lot of fleeting moments, as she sought to convince herself that she was still desirable. The ravages of Alzheimer’s surely impacted on her decision-making as well. It was a horrible, sad end for one of the great beauties of the American cinema.
Rita’s life is such a tragic one really and makes me sad for all that she endured. However, I also think it gave her a natural vulnerability on screen.
I watched The Lady from Shanghai recently for the first time and found myself completely mesmerized. It’s such a strange film with strange characters, but it had me completely engrossed. Even Orson Welles, who as you said, is not right for the part, kept me fascinated with his performance.