This week, Mill Creek Entertainment is at it again. Only this time the focus is on the glamor of Hollywood as embodied by 1940s and 50s screen legend Rita Hayworth.
Also streeting on Nov. 17 will be the 12 film/6 disc Blu-ray collection titled Rita Hayworth: The Ultimate Collection, which not only showcases many of her greatest film achievements, but comes priced — on Blu-ray, mind you — to collect at just $3.82 per film. Film fans, you can’t own classic movies on Blu-ray at that price point … except when Mill Creek Entertainment steps up and makes it so.
Without further ado, let’s get to it. It is no secret that throughout the 1930s Rita Hayworth’s career was going nowhere fast. Minor parts, bit parts, unbilled walk-ons, but she endured and caught the eye of Columbia Pictures head, Harry Cohn, who made her first a star … and then a legend.
The film that changed the direction of her career was the 1940 romantic comedy directed by Joseph Santley, Music in My Heart, co-starring Tony Martin. It is the earliest film included in this collection.
This success was followed with the 1941 romantic comedy, You’ll Never Get Rich, which featured Hayworth with Fred Astaire. Of course, everyone knows of the dancing talents of Fred Astaire, but Hayworth had been a “hoofer” since her teens and this was the first time, on screen, that she was given the opportunity to strut her stuff!! It too is included in this wonderful Blu-ray collection from Mill Creek Entertainment.
Things slowed down during World War II, but in February of 1945 she was back in director Victor Saville’s Tonight and Every Night … and then came the musical, Down to Earth, which was followed by Orson Welles’ 1948 film noir gem, The Lady from Shanghai. All three films are here.
Also in 1948 was director Charles Video’s The Loves of Carmen, co-starring Glenn Ford. Marriage issues during the late 40s and early 50s put a gap in her film career, but she was back with Glenn Ford in Affair in Trinidad in 1952, which was followed in 1953 with the first sound version of the story of Salome, which teamed Rita Hayworth (as Princess Salome, of course) with Stewart Granger and Charles Laughton.
Miss Sadie Thompson (an adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham’s short story, “Rain”) arrived in 3D in 1954 — with José Ferrer and Aldo Ray — and then we continue with director Robert Parrish’s all-star thriller, Fire Down Below, teaming Hayworth with Robert Mitchum and Jack Lemmon in the summer of 1957.
And wrapping up this wonderful salute to the film career of Rita Hayworth are director George Sidney’s Christmas of 1957 musical triumph, Pal Joey, with Hayworth as Vera Simpson, co-starring with Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak and last, but certainly not least, we have director Robert Rossen’s 1959 Western, They Came to Cordura, teaming her with Gary Cooper, Van Heflin, Tab Hunter and Richard Conte … WOW!!
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