Rita Hayworth was the epitome of 1940s Hollywood glamour. The legendary "Love Goddess', she was a huge box-office star, and her sultry beauty and sensational figure turned her into the ultimate sex-symbol: a pin-up so incendiary that GIs pasted it on to the first atom bomb ever detonated.

Yet behind the smoulderin gimage lay a tragic secret that wrecked her private life. A pathologically shy child, she was thrust at an early age into sordid limelight as her vaudevilliam father's dancing partner - and suffered sexual and physical abuse at his hands. This set the pattern that she was to follow for the rest of her life. A desperate need for protection led her into five marriages - including those ot Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan - all of them resulting in exploitation and disaster. Affairs with the world's most glamourous men did nothing to help; nor did endless law-suits, custody battles for her daughter Yasmin, professional difficulties with the infamous mogul Harry Cohn, and the ultimate agony of her long slide into the mists of Alzheimer's disease.

IF THIS WAS HAPPINESS is the first full biography of Rita Hayworth. Drawn from sources including FBI files, medical files and interviews, it is at once sensational, revealing and compassionate.

THIS IS NOW A BOOKRING

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