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On Top of Rita Hayworth's World: The Sexiest 1940s Hair
Without consulting him, she had cut off all her hair in an extreme makeover that also radically changed her trademark haircolor to blonde. She went from long and red to short and blonde.
It wasn't Rita's first major hair transformation. Although her beauty was greater than just her mane--the svelte dancer had a beautiful face and figure--hair was, in fact, a significant issue at the start of her career in Hollywood. Such a story is rarely told--back in the 1940s and still today. How many starlets do you know who were ignored until they changed their locks? One report credits Rita Hayworth's rise to fame as the result of a new hairline; whereas another says it was the decision to change her hair color. Which account is correct? Or were both alterations equally significant?
When she was young, like many girls starting out, Rita worked hard to get noticed. She once said she had been upset that nobody wanted their picture taken with her after her dancing shows in clubs. She had a lot of publicity photos taken, and showed up at all the right places to be seen, "but nothing much was happening as far as public reaction was concerned."2 What to do? The man she was with had an idea. He wondered if changing her hairline could make a difference. Ed Judson approached her hairdresser at Columbia, Helen Hunt, and asked her what could be done. She referred him to the president of the Electrolysis Association of America.
"They took photos of Rita," Hunt recalled, "blew them up, and drew lines indicating where the hairline was and where it should be." "The change was important but subtle," Hunt explained, "... I used to bleach the front of Rita's hair, so the hairline wouldn't be so prominent--the cameramen were always after me to lighten her hair."3 The process of permanently removing hair by electrolysis was slow and painful. She persevered and it yielded tremendous results. Rita Hayworth, however, believed more than altering her hairline, becoming a redhead changed her life. In a 1941 interview, when she was 22, Rita said she got a chance to act when actress Ann Sheridan went on strike demanding more money. Warners changed her hair color to strawberry blonde for the 1941 movie Strawberry Blonde, and made her have a striking resemblance to Sheridan. Rita had taken acting classes but felt the dye was significant. "I used to feel like a Spanish girl," said Rita, "but with red hair I feel, well--like an American."4 She acknowledged luck was a factor for her just like it is for most new actresses, but she added, "I should have been a redhead long ago."5 It was Helen Hunt who advised her in the beginning to change her hair color from dark brown to red.
"I've been doing Rita's hair since she was 18," said Hunt. "And she is responsible for the most dramatic influence in my career," said Hayworth. "It was Helen who suggested that I become a redhead. It was the turning point in my career. As soon as I became a redhead things began to happen."6 Asked the beauty secret to her crowning glory, Helen Hunt said: "I believe in oil shampoos, lots of them, and in towel-drying her hair rather than sitting under a dryer." Asked if she would ever get a short hairstyle, Rita Hayworth said she once had it short for a movie with Orson Welles (The Lady from Shanghai): "But I let it grow back as fast as I could. I don't see the point of following a fashion if it is not becoming."7 Gilda (1946) was Rita's biggest movie. She was the hurt and passionate femme fatale caught between two men. Both her strapless dress and sexy hair in one famous night club scene created a total evening look that was unforgettable. "I got fan mail--and hate mail--about Rita's hair," revealed Helen Hunt. "Some clergymen declared that I would go to hell for contributing to evil because of Rita's hair in Gilda!
"Rita acted with her hair," explained Hunt. "I would be on the set and hear the director say, 'You're angry now. Toss your hair back.' Or 'You're happy in this scene. Use your hair.' "8 So how exactly was the famous hairstyle--perhaps the most famous 1940s hairstyle--created? "The spectacular Gilda hairdo," write Hayworth biographers Joe Morella and Edward Epstein, "was achieved without fuss each morning in Columbia's hairdressing department. First Helen Hunt would wash and set Rita's hair. Then two assistants--each holding a portable blow-dryer--would stand on each side or Rita, drying her hair, as Helen simultaneously brushed it out and styled it. Since time was money in Cohn's studio, all of this was done in twenty--maximum thirty--minutes."9 Despite all the daily attention, or perhaps because of it, Miss Hayworth wasn't a vain diva. "Rita never looked in the mirror," said Hunt. "You'd think she'd stare at herself, like the other stars did. She'd never even look at her hair when I was through." "Look at your hair, isn't it beautiful?" Hunt sometimes asked. "Oh, yes. Thanks, Helen," Rita would say after looking at it briefly in a mirror.10
About five years after Gilda, in the early 1950s, the Hayworth Look, that is, "the bare shoulders, the cascading hair," was still in fashion. Hunt continued to be inundated with requests on how to achieve it, including from celebrities. "Xavier Cugat came to me with his then-wife, Abbe Lane," remembers Hunt, "and asked me, 'Make her hair look like Rita Hayworth's.' "11
Gorgeous Rita. Great hair and lovely smile. She was the beauty icon of the 40s, and like many women of the day, had the classic 1940s side parting. Her hair was so full and lustrous. She became a major star after the release of the classic movie Gilda. (The iconic black strapless vintage dress she wore was recently put on auction with a starting bid of $30,000.) References1. Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein, Rita: The Life of Rita Hayworth, New York: Dell, 1983, 102.
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"Everybody knows that the most beautiful thing about Rita was her hair," said her acting studio boss, Harry Cohn.1 The Columbia Pictures president was reacting to the unauthorized makeover upon his premier actress for The Lady from Shanghai (1947). 
How ironic is it that the woman who had the best hair in the 1940s, which women wanted to copy then, and many years later, and even still today, didn't pay much attention to it?