“But only the Big Three (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros.) are powerful enough to build a star by publicity alone. Paramount and RKO, whose pockets are not so well-lined for promotion, seldom manage to nudge their neophytes beyond the contract-player stage. With neither pretensions nor money to burn, the three remaining studios ——Columbia, Universal, Republic——have to rely on pure ability to turn the trick. To get to heaven, their stars have to be good.

Rita Hayworth is. By all the rules of Hollywood she has won her "S." It took six years, and it wasn't easy. You'll Never Get Rich is her 33rd picture. Just turned 23, she owes considerable thanks for her varsity letter to the sagacity of stubborn, knife-brained Lou Smith, Columbia's publicity head. The rest was due to her own ability and constitution. “

"I think the editors of LIFE would have considered it too risquéé for the cover," says LIFE photo editor John Morris. "It was OK inside. Was it the talk of the office? I mean, did people know what a phenomenon this photograph was going to be? No, not at all. It had run in the magazine and we were working on the next issue."

Four months after Hayworth's photo was published, America went to war. And soldiers took the silk-and-lace picture along to remind them of home.


By the end of the war, more than 5 million copies of the photo were sold. Only Betty Grable, smiling cutely over her shoulder in a white bathing suit and heels, with legs that went on forever, sold more pin-ups.

Amy Henderson, a cultural historian at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, sees a real difference in the Hayworth and Grable pin-ups. Grable, she says, had a girl-next-door perkiness about her, while Hayworth was more alluring.

Although she came to be known as "The Love Goddess," Hayworth was shy and even introverted.”