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Grandfather Antonio danced only with his daughters or with some other member of the family, and the tradition stuck. When Sister Elisa died in 1928, Eduardo had to wait for Rita, who was ten, to grow up. The year before, certain that vaudeville was finished, he had moved his family from New York City, where Rita was born and schooled, to Hollywood. To earn a living he started a dancing school. Meanwhile, he settled on his daughter's future—motion pictures. Says he: "There was more money in it. and it provided the only logical future for Rita." But Rita, who can be exceedingly lethargic about things she isn't interested in, was not interested in dancing. Eduardo understood that, too. At 13, unknown to his father, he had trained to be a bullfighter. Just before his first fight, Father Antonio found out and yanked him off the bill. He became a dancer.
Vamp Till Ready. Rita made her professional debut at 14—in a stage prologue to Back Street, an Irene Dunne-John Boles special, at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles. She danced a Spanish number with her Aunt Elisa's son. Eduardo watched them from out front. "I said to myself, 'Hey, she don't look like no baby any more.' Then I decided it was time to . . . start her off."
The customers at Tijuana's rococo Foreign Club, favorite relaxing spot for cinema bigwigs, saw nothing babyish about Rita, either. They applauded Eduardo and his new partner into an 18-month stay. The Cansinos' routine of 26 numbers consisted of modernized versions of the old Spanish classical dances (the Bolero, the Spanish tango, etc.). Between shows Eduardo locked his buxom young daughter in the dressing room. Tijuana was that kind of a place. After the last show of the day, they went back into the U.S. to join the family at Chula Vista.
Next, the Cansinos took a four-week engagement aboard one of California's notorious gambling ships off the Long Beach shore. That venture was a flop. Between acts, Eduardo fished off the ship, caught a fishhook in his finger and went to bed with an infection. Rita tried to carry the show alone, soon gave it up. "The management didn't think I had enough Spanish seductiveness," says she. "I was 15 at the time, and the only thing that really aroused me was food."
Rita's chance came in Agua Caliente. Booked for four weeks at the gaming Hotel Agua Caliente, they were a hit. The Cansinos stretched their stay to seven months. While little Eduardo could pass for a good ten years younger than his age, Rita's well-developed figure, Spanish features (topped by straight, black hair, parted in the middle) disguised her youth.
Eduardo saw that she sat at table with such cinema bigshots as Winfield Sheehan (then head of Fox), Sol Wurtzel, et al.—but only for a respectable minimum of time. This caution earned him the jeering nickname "Mama Cansino." But his tantalizing strictness worked.