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Starbright. Stars are to Hollywood what bonds are to the U.S. Government: you have to turn them out or you go bankrupt. And at present the cinema industry is feverishly working up new stars. The Government consent decree, requiring the five biggest studios to sell no more than five pictures at a whack, has forced them to depend more than ever on the drawing power of box-office names, has put a new premium on stars, of whom there are only about 60 in Hollywood who cut much ice at the box office.
The appeal that makes a first-magnitude star cannot be manufactured out of nothing, but Hollywood knows that a searchlight of costly publicity can turn a promising extra girl into a dividend-paying property. It could happen to any one of a thousand "Lana Turners" crowding the nation's drugstore counters.
But only the Big Three (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros.) are powerful enough to build a star by publicity alone. Paramount and RKO, whose pockets are not so well-lined for promotion, seldom manage to nudge their neophytes beyond the contract-player stage. With neither pretensions nor money to burn, the three remaining studios —Columbia, Universal, Republic—have to rely on pure ability to turn the trick. To get to heaven, their stars have to be good.
Rita Hayworth is. By all the rules of Hollywood she has won her "S." It took six years, and it wasn't easy. You'll Never Get Rich is her 33rd picture. Just turned 23, she owes considerable thanks for her varsity letter to the sagacity of stubborn, knife-brained Lou Smith, Columbia's publicity head. The rest was due to her own ability and constitution.
Carmen was a justifiable middle name for Eduardo Cansino to give his first child. Eduardo named her Margarita Carmen Cansino. He always called her Carmen. He wept when (for Hollywood purposes) she took her Irish mother's name (Hayworth) and shortened her own first name to Rita.
Rita's grandfather Antonio (now 76 and living in San Francisco) was the most renowned exponent in his day of Spain's classical dances. He was bravoed in the capitals of Europe and South America, where he made the bolero famous.
Eduardo was 17, his sister Elisa 15, when Father Antonio started them off as a team. They had danced through Europe, England, Canada and Australia when in 1913 Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, of Manhattan and Newport, brought them to the U.S. to appear, chiefly, at her swank functions. They were an instant hit. Knowing their business, they changed with the times, modernized their costumes and steps, remained successful. In vaudeville they got top billing. Sometimes they played on the same bills with an up-&-coming dance team known as the Astaires (Fred & Adele).