Rita Hayworth was the ultimate femme fatale—but behind the glamorous facade, her life was a tragedy of epic proportions. The starlet only wanted to be loved, yet she was met with rejection and heartbreak at every turn.
Hayworth claimed that she’d been “the happiest in her life” when she was with Orson Welles—but his reaction was brutal. Their marriage had been filled with strife and infidelity, so Hayworth’s quote haunted Welles.
He later said that if that was what she considered happiness, he couldn’t imagine what terrors and miseries she’d suffered otherwise. However, no one had a better insight on the dark pain that Hayworth was hiding than him…
After Hayworth’s death, Welles broke down and revealed the dark secret she’d hidden her whole life. While they were married, Hayworth had confessed to Welles that her father had taken advantage of her when she was just a young girl. She’d escaped his clutches when she was a teen, but the terrible abuse had informed the ill-fated relationships she’d been drawn to in the decades afterward. Sadly, this history of pain and trauma wore away at Hayworth as the years went on.
Then, in 1960, Hayworth began to change. Once kind-hearted and loving, she became known for public outbursts and tantrums. In the words of her daughter, it took “two decades of hell” before Hayworth’s family finally uncovered the horrible truth about what was really happening to her.
Most people put down Hayworth’s public outbursts and tantrums as an effect of too much drinking. It turned out that Hayworth wasn't an alcoholic. Instead, she was battling Alzheimer’s. Although the disease is common now, there wasn’t much knowledge about it at the time. In fact, it had largely been ignored since its discovery in 1906, which is why it took 20 years for the doctors to diagnose her correctly. In the end, Hayworth became the first public face of the disease.
It wasn’t the love of a man though, but her daughter’s that ultimately helped Hayworth. Yasmin Aga Khan took Hayworth under her care and was a loving and considerate companion to her mother until she breathed her last.
