If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth
About this audiobook
Rita Hayworth was the epitome of 1940s Hollywood glamour. A huge box office star, her sultry figure was pasted by GIs onto the first atom bomb ever detonated. Yet behind the smoldering image lay a tragic secret that wrecked her private life. A pathologically shy child, Rita was thrust into the sordid limelight as her vaudevillian father’s dancing partner at an early age, suffering sexual and physical abuse at his hands. A desperate need for protection led her into five disastrous marriages, including those to Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan. At the age of forty-two, Alzheimer’s disease began to ravage her mind, cutting short her career at its peak.
This is a haunting and sympathetic tribute to a talented but insecure beauty who was created, and ultimately destroyed, by the movies.
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About the author
Barbara Leaming is the author of the New York Times bestseller Katharine Hepburn. She was for many years professor of theater and film at Hunter College. Her articles have appeared in Vanity Fair and the New York Times Magazine. She lives in Connecticut.
Anna Fields (1965–2006), winner of more than a dozen Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award in 2004, was one of the most respected narrators in the industry. Trained at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, she was also a director, producer, and technician at her own studio, Cedar House Audio.
