“I suppose most of us are lonely in this big world, but we must fall tremendously in love to find it out,” wrote Orson Welles in a letter to Rita Hayworth. In the 1940s, the pair became a great Hollywood power couple – one of the more genuine marriages of creative talent of the golden age. 

Yet, in spite of a few happy years and the birth of a daughter, Rebecca, their relationship couldn’t last. Increasingly soured by Welles’s obsession with work and his constant straying, Hayworth moved out after only three years together. 

Before then, their years together gradually saw the family home turned into a make-shift production office. When interviewed in 1947, an exasperated Hayworth said: “As for our home-life, just look around. It’s this set.” 

The set in question was for Welles’s classic film noir The Lady from Shanghai (1947), which starred both performers, and premiered 75 years ago this month. Looked at now, their final months together feel uncannily documented by the film; their time together making it a final chance for the ailing relationship.

Based on the 1938 novel If I Die Before I Wake by Raymond Sherwood King, the drama follows a web of intrigue surrounding Irish sailor Michael O’Hara (Welles). One night in Central Park he saves the beautiful Elsa (Hayworth) from a mugging. Falling in love with her, he accepts a request to sail on a trip she’s taking with her wealthy lawyer husband Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane). The voyage is tense, and a strange array of characters come along for the ride, including the creepy George Grisby (Glenn Anders) who proposes for O’Hara to help fake his death. When the plan goes wrong, O’Hara is set up as the fall guy for a particularly complicated murder. But who really orchestrated the betrayal?

The film further cemented Hayworth’s relationship with film noir after her celebrated role the previous year in Charles Vidor’s Gilda – another astonishing performance which haunted the star’s personal life. In a quote that has since become Hollywood legend, Hayworth bitterly expressed the contrast between her screen image and her real persona. “Men go to bed with Gilda, but wake up with me,” she quipped.  

Hayworth owed to her success to her background as a dancer, in particular opposite Fred Astaire in films such as You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), despite working tirelessly in smaller screen roles since the age of sixteen. Underneath the glitz of what seemed a traditional rise to fame, however, was a troubled past. 

Though her real name was Margarita Carmen Cansino, Hayworth initially went under Rita Cansino. Her father Eduardo pushed Hayworth to perform from childhood, moving her from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in the belief that her dance skills could find her screen work. When interviewed about his time with Hayworth, Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming that the performer had opened up about being sexually abused by her father. Her subsequent alcoholism and difficult relationships, with such notable figures as singer Dick Haymes to Prince Aly Kahn, was often attributed to childhood trauma.

Hayworth’s first marriage was to ruthless promoter Edward C. Judson. Keen to make money from her obvious star qualities, Judson flaunted her around Hollywood, determined for her to do whatever it took to get bigger and better roles. Judson was “literally a pimp,” according to Welles. It was arguably one of the encounters organised by Judson that led to Hayworth’s success with Columbia Studios and, therefore, the eventual production of The Lady from Shanghai.

Judson organised a date for Hayworth on a private yacht with head of Columbia Harry Cohn. But it was the limit for the actress. Hayworth refused to sleep with Cohn, leading to a long and bitter grudge, in spite of becoming the most famous starlet on his roster. Though he was unable to say no to such an obviously talented and lucrative star, he would bully her relentlessly during her time under contract with the studio.

Welles first spotted Hayworth in a pin-up photo for Life magazine while he was shooting a film in Brazil. He promised himself that he’d find her on his return to Hollywood, so taken was he with her image, and he began writing to her. Hayworth, for her part, started to socialise with Welles’s crowd of Mercury Theatre players and they quickly sparked a happy relationship. It resulted in marriage after only a year, wedding in 1943 on Hayworth’s lunch break between takes on Vidor’s film, Cover Girl. 

Their marriage certainly seemed to be happier than Hayworth’s others. When asked why they had tried to patch things up one final time during the filming of The Lady from Shanghai, she replied: “We’re in love, Orson and I. It’s as simple as that.” 

But it wasn’t long before Welles’s reluctance to settle down became apparent. He had several affairs as the relationship strained, adamant that moving away from the limelight, as Hayworth wished, was not a desire he shared.

They moved in together again for filming The Lady from Shanghai, reuniting after a brief separation, and treated the Acapulco location shoot as a second honeymoon. But the film was far from the sort of smooth-running production to save a crumbling marriage. “Orson and I are through,” Hayworth told Modern Screen magaze by the time its last scene was filmed. “This time it’s for keeps. I just can’t take it any longer!”

One huge contention was Welles’s dramatic change to Hayworth’s iconic look. Gone were her famous red locks, replaced with an icy blonde trim. “I had it bleached,” Hayworth told a San Francisco audience in 1972 after being asked whether she had donned a wig. “It hurt because my hair is black. It was a departure for me, but I wanted to do it as [Orson] was an innovator.” Cohn, who was overseeing the production, was furious. 

The film’s curse continued. Hayworth was taken ill with an unspecified ailment for almost a month, meaning the production ground to a halt. However, Hayworth denied this later when interviewed by the New York Times. “I wasn't ill on that picture,” she said. “Not once. You wanna know who was ill? Orson! Orson was ill – on account of Harry Cohn!” 

Further problems piled up. Assistant cameraman Donald Ray Cory died of a heart attack while filming, and the fact that the yacht used for the shoot, The Zaca, was owned by hard-drinking star Errol Flynn meant the schedule was regularly disrupted by his chaotic behaviour. Flynn had stipulated in the boat lease contract that he be present during filming. Like Welles, Flynn had a propensity for disappearing, though rumours still abound that when Cory died, Flynn tried to drunkenly bury the body at sea in a duffle bag rather than face any fuss with the Mexican authorities.

Back ashore, Welles lost control of the edit. The Lady from Shanghai was butchered after a negative response to a test screening. It dropped over an hour of footage, and continued the ongoing trend of his projects being dashed by Hollywood bosses. He not only lost his film, though: the production confirmed the marriage to Hayworth beyond saving. Hayworth filed for divorce and their marriage was over for good by 1948. “Mr Welles showed no interest in establishing a home,” Hayworth told the eventual divorce proceedings.

However, Hayworth famously admitted to Welles that “the only happiness I’ve ever had in my life has been with you.” Welles told Leaming of his shock on learning this. “If this was happiness,” he said, “imagine what the rest of her life had been.”

This history makes the ending of The Lady from Shanghai all the more poignant. After the film’s final shootout in a hall of mirrors, Hayworth’s Elsa lies wounded and dying. “You mean we can’t win?” she calls to O’Hara. The sailor becomes Welles for a moment, firmer and colder. “No, we can’t win,” he replies before walking out.

Hayworth was still incredibly proud of her performance in the film. In a 1970 interview with French television, her eyes lit up as she recalled it. “I thought The Lady from Shanghai was a great picture,” she said. “Working with Orson was marvellous. I thought it was one of the very best pictures I’d ever done.” Indeed, her performance dazzles throughout, part soft-focus heroine, part conniving femme fatale.

Welles clearly harboured guilt over what happened to the marriage and he recalled Hayworth on the very last day of his life. Appearing on a 1985 episode of The Merv Griffin Show, the maverick looked back over his time in Hollywood with more affection than usual. 

“She is a dear person and [was] a wonderful wife,” he said. “[She was] extraordinary in every way. I’ve never heard of anybody who sounds like an enemy of hers. She doesn’t have any.” Two hours later, Welles passed away at the age of 70, Hayworth’s praises still fresh on his lips. As he concluded in that early love letter to Hayworth all those years previously: “You are my life – my very life.”