Rita Hayworth

Hayworth was born as Margarita Carmen Cansino in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest child of two dancers. Her father, Eduardo Cansino, was of Spanish Andalucian descent from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a little town near Seville, Spain. Her mother, Volga Hayworth, was an American of Irish and English descent who had performed with the Ziegfeld Follies.: 281  The couple married in 1917. They also had two sons: Eduardo Jr. and Vernon. Her maternal uncle Vinton Hayworth was also an actor. Margarita's father wanted her to become a professional dancer, while her mother hoped that she would become an actress. Her paternal grandfather, Antonio Cansino, was renowned as a classical Spanish dancer. He popularized the bolero, and his dancing school in Madrid was world-famous. Antonio Cansino instructed Rita Hayworth in her first dance lesson. Hayworth later recalled, "From the time I was three and a half... as soon as I could stand on my own feet, I was given dance lessons.": 67  She noted "I didn't like it very much... but I didn't have the courage to tell my father, so I began taking the lessons. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, that was my girlhood.": 16  She attended dance classes every day for a few years in a Carnegie Hall complex, where she was taught by her uncle Angel Cansino. Before her fifth birthday she was one of the Four Cansinos featured in the Broadway production of The Greenwich Village Follies at the Winter Garden Theatre. In 1926, at the age of eight, she was featured in La Fiesta, a short film for Warner Bros. In 1927, her father took the family to Hollywood. He believed that dancing could be featured in the movies and that his family could be part of it. He established his own dance studio, where he taught such stars as James Cagney and Jean Harlow.: 253  In 1931, Eduardo Cansino partnered with his 12-year-old daughter to form an act called the Dancing Cansinos.: 14  Her hair was dyed from brown to black to give her a more mature and "Latin" appearance. Since under California law Margarita was too young to work in nightclubs and bars, her father took her with him to work across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. In the early 1930s, it was a popular tourist spot for people from Los Angeles. Because she was working, Cansino never graduated from high school, but she completed the ninth grade at Hamilton High in Los Angeles. Cansino (Hayworth) took a bit part in the film Cruz Diablo (1934) at age 16, which led to another bit part in the film In Caliente (1935) with the Mexican actress Dolores del Río. She danced with her father in such nightspots as the Foreign and the Caliente clubs. Winfield Sheehan, the head of the Fox Film Corporation, saw her dancing at the Caliente Club and quickly arranged for Hayworth to do a screen test a week later. Impressed by her screen persona, Sheehan signed her to a six-month contract at Fox under the name Rita Cansino, the first of two name changes during her film career.