Friday, May 27, 2011
Rita Hayworth,Put the Blame on Mame from Gilda!
Gilda (1946) is a black-and-white film noir directed by Charles Vidor. It stars Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth in her signature role as the ultimate femme fatale. The film was noted for cinematographer Rudolph Mate's lush photography, costume designer Jean Louis' wardrobe for Hayworth (particularly for the dance numbers), and choreographer Jack Cole's staging of "Put the Blame on Mame" and "Amado Mio", sung by Anita Ellis.
The film's plot is continually narrated by Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford), a small-time American gambler newly arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who has a love-hate relationship with his former lover, Gilda (Rita Hayworth). When he wins a lot of money cheating at craps, he has to be rescued from a robbery attempt by a complete stranger, Ballin Mundson (George Macready). Mundson tells him about an illegal high-class casino, but warns him not to practice his skills there. Farrell ignores his advice, cheats at blackjack, and is taken by two men to see the casino's owner, who turns out to be Mundson. Farrell talks Mundson into hiring him and quickly gains his confidence. However, the unimpressed washroom attendant, Uncle Pio (Steven Geray), keeps calling him "peasant".
One day, Mundson returns from a trip with a beautiful new wife, who is none other than Gilda. Unaware that she was once Farrell’s lover, Mundson assigns Farrell to keep an eye on her. Farrell keeps track of her, his loathing for her intensifying as she cavorts with men at all hours.
Meanwhile, Mundson is visited by two German businessmen. Their secret organization had financed a tungsten cartel, with everything put in Mundson's name to hide their connection to it. However, when they decide it is safe to take over, Mundson refuses to transfer ownership to his backers. The Argentine secret police are interested in the Germans; government agent Obregon (Joseph Calleia) introduces himself to Farrell to try to obtain information, but the American knows nothing about that aspect of Mundsen's operations. When the Germans return later, Mundson shoots and kills one of them.
That same night, at Mundson's house, Farrell and Gilda describe how much they hate each other, then end up kissing. Mundson arrives at that moment, then flees to a waiting airplane. Farrell and Obregon witness its short flight; the plane explodes shortly after takeoff and plummets into the ocean. However, Mundson has parachuted to safety, thus faking his death.
With Mundson apparently dead, Gilda inherits his estate. Farrell marries her, but not out of love. He stays away, but has her guarded day and night out of contempt for her and loyalty to Mundson. Gilda tries to escape the tortured love-hate relationship, but fails. Finally, Obregon tells Farrell that Gilda was never truly unfaithful to Mundson or to him, prompting Farrell to try to reconcile with her.
At that moment, Mundson reappears, armed with a gun. He faked his death to deceive the Nazis. Mundson tells them he will have to kill them both, but Uncle Pio manages to fatally stab him in the back. Obregon shows up and confiscates the estate for the government. Farrell and Gilda are free to leave the country.
Plot
Rita Hayworth in the film trailer
One day, Mundson returns from a trip with a beautiful new wife, who is none other than Gilda. Unaware that she was once Farrell’s lover, Mundson assigns Farrell to keep an eye on her. Farrell keeps track of her, his loathing for her intensifying as she cavorts with men at all hours.
Meanwhile, Mundson is visited by two German businessmen. Their secret organization had financed a tungsten cartel, with everything put in Mundson's name to hide their connection to it. However, when they decide it is safe to take over, Mundson refuses to transfer ownership to his backers. The Argentine secret police are interested in the Germans; government agent Obregon (Joseph Calleia) introduces himself to Farrell to try to obtain information, but the American knows nothing about that aspect of Mundsen's operations. When the Germans return later, Mundson shoots and kills one of them.
That same night, at Mundson's house, Farrell and Gilda describe how much they hate each other, then end up kissing. Mundson arrives at that moment, then flees to a waiting airplane. Farrell and Obregon witness its short flight; the plane explodes shortly after takeoff and plummets into the ocean. However, Mundson has parachuted to safety, thus faking his death.
With Mundson apparently dead, Gilda inherits his estate. Farrell marries her, but not out of love. He stays away, but has her guarded day and night out of contempt for her and loyalty to Mundson. Gilda tries to escape the tortured love-hate relationship, but fails. Finally, Obregon tells Farrell that Gilda was never truly unfaithful to Mundson or to him, prompting Farrell to try to reconcile with her.
At that moment, Mundson reappears, armed with a gun. He faked his death to deceive the Nazis. Mundson tells them he will have to kill them both, but Uncle Pio manages to fatally stab him in the back. Obregon shows up and confiscates the estate for the government. Farrell and Gilda are free to leave the country.
Cast
Rita Hayworth as Gilda in the trailer for the film
- Rita Hayworth as Gilda Mundson Farrell
- Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell / Narrator
- George Macready as Ballin Mundson
- Joseph Calleia as Det. Maurice Obregon
- Steven Geray as Uncle Pio
- Joe Sawyer as Casey
- Gerald Mohr as Capt. Delgado
- Mark Roberts as Gabe Evans
- Ludwig Donath as German
- Don Douglas as Thomas Langford
- Lionel Royce as German
- Saul Martell as Little man
- George J. Lewis as Huerta
- Rosa Rey as Maria
- Anita Ellis, the singing voice of Rita Hayworth
Sandra Dee
She rarely acted after this time, and her final years were marred by illness; she died as a result of renal failure.
Birth and background
Dee was born Alexandra Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey. Her parents divorced before she was five. She was of Polish and Carpathian-Russian ancestry and was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. Her son Dodd Darin wrote on page 27 of his biographical book about his parents Dream Lovers that Sandra's mother, Mary Cymboliak, and her sister Olga "were first generation daughters of a working class Russian Orthodox couple." Sandra herself recalled on page 30 "we belonged to a Russian Orthodox Church, and there was dancing at the social events."Alexandra would soon take the name Sandra Dee. She became a professional model by the age of four and subsequently progressed to television commercials.
There has been some confusion as to Dee's actual birth year, with evidence pointing to both 1942 and 1944. According to her son's book she was born in 1944, but since Dee started modeling and acting at a very young age, she and her mother falsely inflated her age by two years so she could find more work. Therefore 1942 was listed as her birth year in official studio press releases, leading to that year being considered truthful in verifiable sources. If Dee was indeed born in 1942, she was 18 when she married the 24 year-old Bobby Darin in 1960.
In a 1959 interview, Dee recalled that she "grew up fast", surrounded mostly by older people, and was "never held back in anything [she] wanted to do." During her modeling career, Dee attempted to lose weight to "be as skinny as the high fashion models", though an improper diet "ruined [her] skin, hair, nails - everything".Having slimmed down, her body was unable to digest any food she ate, and it took the help of a doctor to regain her health. According to the actress, she "could have killed [herself]" and "had to learn to eat all over again."
Career
Ending her modeling career, Dee moved from New York to Hollywood in 1957. There, she made her first film, Until They Sail, in 1957, and the following year, she won a Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year - Actress, along with Carolyn Jones and Diane Varsi.She became known for her wholesome ingenue roles in such films as The Reluctant Debutante, Gidget, Imitation of Life, and A Summer Place. She later played "Tammy" in two Universal sequels to Tammy and the Bachelor in the role created by Debbie Reynolds.
During the 1970s, Dee took very few acting jobs but made occasional television appearances.
Personal life
Her marriage to Bobby Darin in 1960 kept her in the public eye for much of the decade. They met while making the film Come September (released in 1961) together. She was under contract to Universal Studios, which tried to develop Dee into a mature actress, and the films she made as an adult—including a few with Darin—were moderately successful. They had one son, Dodd Mitchell Darin (also known as Morgan Mitchell Darin). She and Darin divorced in 1967 and Darin died in 1973.In 1994, Dee's son Dodd Darin published a book about his parents, Dream Lovers: The Magnificent Shattered Lives of Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, in which he chronicled his mother's anorexia, drug and alcohol problems and her disclosure that she had been sexually abused as a child by her stepfather, Eugene Douvan.
Illness and death
Dee's adult years were marked by ill health. She admitted that for most of her life she battled anorexia nervosa, depression and alcoholism. In 2000, it was reported that she had been diagnosed with several ailments, including throat cancer and kidney disease. Complications from kidney disease led to her death on February 20, 2005, at the Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, California.Sandra Dee is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, not far from her mother, Mary C. Douvan, who died on December 27, 1987. She is survived by her son, her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters.
In popular culture
One of the popular songs of the Broadway musical and 1978 movie Grease is "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee." Dee's life with Bobby Darin was dramatized in the 2004 film Beyond the Sea, in which Kevin Spacey played Darin and Dee was played by Kate Bosworth. Sandra Dee is referenced as a sex symbol in Mötley Crüe's song "Come On and Dance" from the album Too Fast For Love. She is also mentioned in Waylon Jennings' 1980 hit "I Ain't Living Long Like This" in the third verse where Angel the road house queen is compared to Texas Ruby and also mentioned in Felix da Housecat's song "Everyone Is Someone In L.A."
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