she had diamonds in her feet...
The daughter and granddaughter of acclaimed Spanish dancers, Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino was a native of Brooklyn with deep Andalusian roots. Her father’s forbears included statesmen, grandees of Spain, lawyers, merchants and financiers; her mother's English & Irish family had been prominent in the acting profession since the Shakespearean era.
By age ten she already had professional dancing experience and a screen appearance. Her first fame came dancing with her father in the family company, "The Dancing Cansinos," which she joined in the depression when her aunt left to get married. She was groomed for the movies from an early age and later adopted her mother's maiden name, Hayworth.
Rita was Fred Astaire's favorite partner, and no star ever shone brighter. In a unique accolade, her dancing in Mexico as a precocious teenager inspired the naming of the "Margarita" cocktail in her honor.
In 1942 the Dance Teachers Association gave her its highest award, "Miss Panamusicana," for being the dancer who, in their opinion, did the best work the previous year and had high professional standards.
A trip to Sevilla in 1948 brought all her Spanish relatives together for an unforgettable juerga. By chance, her beloved grandfather, Antonio, or "Padre," was also in town, and he was the second-to-last dancer to perform.
A pioneering choreographer, Antonio Cansino was considered one of the founders of flamenco. Among other things, he introduced and established the bolero on a tour of South America, and his transcriptions of flamenco guitar music for piano and orchestra were used by many other dance troupes.
Padre's fame as a dancer was such that King Alfonso invited him to perform at a Royal Gala honoring the visiting King of England. Antonio had made Spanish dance respectable; with this performance he made it fashionable. Dancing the sevillanas became all the rage among the social elite.
When Antonio pursued Spanish dance as a child, there were no flamenco schools, and he had to go to tavernas and fiestas to study dancers. He later took private lessons in Italian ballet. The school he opened at Calle Encemienda No. 10 in Madrid in 1905 was one of the first of its kind (and is still to this day a Spanish dance school).
That night in Sevilla Rita was the last to take to the boards in the fin de fiesta and "she danced like a real Spaniard-not like a film star," Emrys Williams recalled. "Her white arms flashed above her head as she clicked her fingers. Her skirt had wings as she spun round and long loose red hair floated above her shoulders."
Shy and reserved offstage, Rita Hayworth is remembered as an unpretentious and unassuming woman and a consummate professional. According to Astaire, "She learned steps faster than anyone I've ever known. I'd show her a routine before lunch. She'd be back right after lunch and have it down to perfection. She apparently figured it out while she was eating."
In the movies she portrayed both Terpschiore, muse of dance, and her namesake Carmen, but one role eluded her: "I would have liked to have played Federico Garcia Lorca's Yerma, the story of a barren woman who has no children and whose husband rejects her. It's a tremendous part and the few times I mentioned an interest in it, while I was still the right age, the people whom I discussed it with said they had never heard of it."
Sixty years ago, her image inspired gallantry; today, her visage looks down upon a new generation of flamenco dancers at the Gypsy Camp, a studio in Santa Monica. Denied a normal childhood by an abusive father, her dazzling career is a tribute to the human spirit. Her marriage made her a princess, but her feet made her a queen. Ole, Bonita--you are not forgotten.
