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One Degree of Eduardo Cansino
Rita Hayworth's father, Eduardo Cansino, came to the United States with his sister Elisa and his brother Angel in January 1913. The Cansinos were children and grandchildren of Spanish dancers and were already noted dancers there. As the "Dancing Cansinos", Eduardo and Elisa quickly became successful on the vaudeville circuit.
At the same time, Fred Astaire and his sister Adele were struggling to establish themselves in vaudeville. For several weeks, the two couples were on the same bill, and Fred later said that he watched them attentively over and over again. Eduardo and his sister were only slightly older (born in 1895 and 1896, respectively) than the Astaires. (Adele was born on September 10, 1896, Fred on May 10, 1899.) Did Fred see himself, if he could just stick it out for a few more years, at last taller than Adele?
Probably due only to coincidence and the popularity of movie musicals in Latin American settings in the 1930s and 40s, dancers trained by or influenced by Eduardo Cansino seemed to get their big movie breaks with Latin music. For Fred Astaire, his first successful movie – and his first pairing with Ginger Rogers – was "Flying Down to Rio" in 1933. Their dance to "The Carioca" raised them to prominence over the movie's stars, Dolores del Rio and Gene Raymond.
Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansino on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York. Eduardo had met her mother, the very-American show girl Volga Haworth, in 1916, either at the "Ziegfeld Follies" or during rehearsals for the Cansinos' first Broadway musical comedy, "Follow Me", at the Shubert Brothers' Casino Theater. Eduardo and Volga married in 1917. Margarita joined the Dancing Cansinos vaudeville act at age 7, after lessons with Angel Cansino at his Carnegie Hall studio.
Margarita's career in vaudeville was brief. In 1926, Eduardo and Elisa starred in the dance segment of a one-hour sound Warner Bros. Vitaphone movie "prologue" filmed in Brooklyn, to be coupled with the Warner Bros.' "Don Juan". This led Eduardo in 1927 to join the migration of vaudeville and Broadway entertainers to Hollywood. Elisa accompanied Eduardo's family, but decided that she was too old to continue dancing. Eduardo didn't speak English well, so he turned to teaching and choreography for movies. This is where the connections became really interesting, including one that enabled Margarita to get started in the movies.
In the spring of 1931, Eduardo choreographed a prologue for the Cathay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. The show included Elisa's 21-year-old son Gabriel, who had remained behind in Spain when Eduardo and Elisa first came to the U.S. Gabriel's partner injured her leg just before the show opened. Eduardo replaced her with his 12-year-old daughter, and quickly realized that Margarita was physically developed enough to appear on-stage as a dancing partner.
This re-ignited Eduardo's desire to resume dancing, initially at floating casinos beyond the 3-mile limit off the California coast. Engagements were limited, however, and even after Prohibition was repealed, Margarita's age prevented work where liquor was sold. Age wasn't a problem in Mexico, however, so Eduardo moved his family to Chula Vista, California, across the border from Tijuana. Movie industry people were attracted to the new Agua Caliente race track, casino, and golf course near Tijuana, but Eduardo had to settle for the Foreign Club Café de Luxe. This booking led to nothing further, however, and the family moved back to Los Angeles.
At this point, Eduardo was able to get a former student, Grace Poggi, to put in a good word for him with her new friend and benefactor, Joseph Schenck, co-founder with Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century Films and a major stockholder in the Agua Caliente complex. Poggi's first film role was as a "specialty dancer" in "The Kid From Spain", a 1932 Samuel Goldwyn production set in Mexico and starring Eddie Cantor, with music by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, and choreography by Busby Berkeley. Among the many "Goldwyn Girls" were Paulette Goddard, Jane Wyman, and another Eduardo Cansino student, Betty Grable. Although this musical fits the Latin pattern and got Poggi's career going, Betty Grable's career didn't take off until another Latin musical in 1940: "Down Argentine Way" (which was also the American movie singing debut of Carmen Miranda, who needed no help from Eduardo).
Schenck engaged Eduardo and Margarita at Agua Caliente, where they performed for almost a year, sometimes doing 20 shows a week. The two Cansinos, or Margarita alone, also began to appear in movies shot locally or in Hollywood. Finally, Winfield Sheehan, production chief at Fox Studios, noticed Margarita and invited her to Los Angeles for a screen test. Sheehan changed "Margarita" to "Rita", and as Rita Cansino at age 16 she danced with Gary Leon in "Dante's Inferno". Fox offered her a 6-month contract after "Dante's Inferno", and the Cansinos returned to Los Angeles after the Agua Caliente engagement ended in February 1935.
By the way, Fox merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935. Darryl Zanuck dropped Rita after replacing her in "Ramona" with Loretta Young. Husband-to-be Edward Judson got Rita a 7-year contract at Columbia Pictures, headed by Harry Cohn. Before the contract signing, Cohn decided to avoid a "Latin" image for Rita by changing her last name. Cohn knew of Vinton Haworth, Volga's brother, as a successful radio personality and character actor, and thus wanted to use "Haworth". A question of pronunciation immediately arose, so "Hayworth" was used to spell the name as it was pronounced. As a further point of interest: Vinton was married to a sister of Lela Rogers, mother of Ginger Rogers, making Vinton Haworth an uncle of both Ginger and Rita.
Before the Fox merger, Winfield Sheehan sent some new hires to Eduardo for dance training. One of them, June Storey, had been referred to Sheehan by her uncle and was eventually picked up by Republic Pictures, where she was paired with Gene Autry in 10 musical westerns between 1939 and 1940. She got to sing several songs with Autry in one of the pictures, "South of the Border" (of course).
Once Rita Hayworth became established in Hollywood, training with Eduardo could connect back with Rita. Grace Godino took lessons with Eduardo as a child, and later became a friend of Rita and her stand-in during film-making. In addition to community theater acting in California, Godino had a career as an artist at Walt Disney Studios.
Eduardo Cansino was part of the early training of one of the 20th century's greatest Broadway dancers, Gwen Verdon – probably during her childhood when she learned many types of dancing to push her recovery from rickets. Verdon, who grew up in Los Angeles with an MGM studio electrician father and a mother who had been a member of the Denishawn dance troupe, eloped at age 17, divorced 5 years later, and then joined the dancing group of Jack Cole (whose own training included Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn). Verdon worked with Cole both on Broadway and in Hollywood, as a dancer and then also as an assistant choreographer. Cole choreographed several movies late in Betty Grable's career, including "The Farmer Takes a Wife" in 1953. Verdon had a minor part in the 1953 movie, which may be where she picked up credit for helping Grable with her dancing (a second degree connection back to Eduardo).
Verdon finally achieved Broadway stardom in Cole Porter's "Can-Can", which opened May 7, 1953, at the Shubert Theatre. Both she and choreographer Michael Kidd won Tony Awards. This success led in May 1955 to "Damn Yankees", which brought Verdon into association with choreographer (and later director) Bob Fosse and took Fosse and her back to Hollywood for the movie version in 1958. This is the only movie that preserved Gwen Verdon as Broadway audiences remember her. The movie also preserves the only Hollywood record of Verdon and Fosse dancing together, in "Who's Got the Pain (When They Do the Mambo)?".
Although undoubtedly just another coincidence, the persona Verdon's Lola adopts to seduce Tab Hunter/Joe Hardy is "Senorita Lola Hernando", with appropriate exaggerated accent and a hat that pays homage to Carmen Miranda. The Verdon/Fosse number is paired with the Latin-flavored "Whatever Lola Wants". Ms. Hernando may be associated somehow with the proprietor of the "hideaway" in the earlier 1954 hit, "The Pajama Game", with music and lyrics by the same team: Richard Adler and Jerry Ross.
"The Pajama Game", choreographed by Bob Fosse, both on Broadway and in the 1957 movie, was the high point in the career of Carol Haney, another dancer with Eduardo Cansino training. Born in Massachusetts in 1924, the year before Gwen Verdon's birth, Haney didn't take lessons from Cansino until moving to California after graduating from high school in 1942 – about a decade after Verdon's lessons as a child. From then on, however, Haney's career moved slightly ahead of Verdon's. Haney preceded Verdon as a dancer and assistant with Jack Cole, and then began a series of MGM movies with Gene Kelly, from "On the Town" in 1949 to "Invitation to the Dance" in 1956. She again became an assistant choreographer with Kelly, teaching Leslie Caron and Georges Guetary to dance with Kelly's style of choreography in "An American in Paris" (1951). She similarly worked with Debbie Reynolds in "Singin' in the Rain" (1952), as well as preparing Cyd Charisse to dance with Kelly in "The Broadway Ballet" in that film. Haney's experience with Jack Cole's style of oriental dancing came into play when she helped Kelly work out the animated choreography in the "Sinbad the Sailor" segment of "Invitation to the Dance". (Haney herself appeared in the segment as Scheherazade.)
Carol Haney worked with Hermes Pan on the choreography for the movie "Kiss Me Kate" in 1953. She was paired with Bob Fosse on-screen in the movie's final number, "From This Moment On". She helped Fosse work out his own choreography for their segment of the number; Pan approved the result, and the music was arranged to match the clear transition to the first appearance on film of Fosse's style. When Fosse subsequently was invited to choreograph "The Pajama Game" on Broadway, he insisted that Carol Haney be hired for the show. This finally brought her to wide public recognition in the number, "Steam Heat", which she danced on stage and in the film with Peter Gennaro and Buzz Miller, another dancer from Jack Cole's group.
The final connection with Eduardo Cansino led to bandleader Xavier Cugat's 1932 big break at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, and then to a 1942 movie that featured the Xavier Cugat Orchestra for the first time in Hollywood and united Cugat with two other Cansino connectees: Rita Hayworth and Fred Astaire.
In about 1925, one of Eduardo's child students was Marie Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Connell, born in 1917 and known professionally (from age 9) as Margo. Her guardian, Carmen Castillo, was a movie stand-in for Dolores del Rio. Xavier Cugat married Carmen and became Margo's "Uncle Javier".
Cugat had been born on January 1, 1900, in Spain, as Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Bru y Deulofeo. At age 4, he moved with his family to Cuba, where he became a child prodigy on the violin. He attracted the attention of the touring Enrico Caruso in 1913, which led to the family's move to New York and an unsuccessful performance at Carnegie Hall. After further study in Germany, a second Carnegie Hall concert went well but not well enough to suit Cugat. At this point, friends introduced Cugat to Vincent Lopez, and Cugat worked for a year in Lopez's orchestra at Casa Lopez. The work soon grew boring, however, and Cugat took advantage of an offer to go to Los Angeles to sell a shipment of Spanish art. Cugat made one last attempt at classical violin, performing at the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium. The concert was poorly attended and got poor reviews, but Charlie Chaplin was in the audience and one year later (while Cugat worked as the caricaturist at the Los Angeles Times) offered Cugat work as a violin soloist for his movie sound tracks. (When sound was added to movies, Chaplin attempted to show that mime with music could be more powerfully dramatic than the spoken word, writing the music for his movies himself.)
Once in the world of movie-making, Cugat met and married Carmen Castillo. During a long delay in production of a movie, Carmen encouraged Cugat to form a Latin dance orchestra. He did, and soon became popular at the Cocoanut Grove with the rumba, tango, conga, and bolero.
In 1932, the 15-year-old Margo had become a successful Latin dancer in Los Angeles and was invited by an executive from New York's Waldorf-Astoria to dance there. Margo did not understand English well and wisely asked the executive to talk to her Uncle Javier. The man visited the Cocoanut Grove, and invited Cugat and his musicians to come to New York as well.
Cugat appeared at the Waldorf-Astoria for 16 years, with related recording contracts and radio broadcasts that helped stimulate a growing national popularity of Latin dances and rhythms. At some point, a young Rita Cansino was among the beautiful women who appeared with his orchestras. A young Desi Arnaz played with the orchestra for about a year and then talked Cugat into franchising his name so Arnaz could go to Miami as leader of an act called "Desi Arnaz and his Xavier Cugat Orchestra".
Cugat had maintained connections with Hollywood, appearing in films from time to time as a musician or band leader. After the Fred Astaire–Rita Hayworth combination had proved popular in the 1941 musical, "You'll Never Get Rich", Harry Cohn at Columbia Pictures decided to follow up with an Argentina-set musical, which became the 1942 "You Were Never Lovelier". This served as the first film appearance of the Xavier Cugat Orchestra, with Cugat acting as himself and playing both his well-known Latin numbers and music written for the movie by Jerome Kern (with Johnny Mercer lyrics). Kern was uncomfortable with Latin rhythms, so this was likely a factor in adding Cugat and his own music selections to the mix. With Astaire and Hayworth dancing to the playing of Cugat and his musicians, the only missing link was Rita's father, played instead by Adolphe Menjou.
© 2014