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Acknowledgments When the subject of your work is a star like Rita Hayworth, you soon find that a lot of people have some fond recollection involving her and are eager to share it with you (I really never came across anyone who actively detested Hayworth or her films). Doing research for this project has thus been far more than a matter of reading books and articles, sifting through archival material, and studying Hayworth’s films; it also comprised the joys of more amorphous and informal structures like conversation , fellowship, and the occasional heated debate. I would like to thank everyone who shared his or her Hayworth experiences, memories, and opinions with me in this way over the years; you have been a continual source of inspiration and energy, whether we knew each other’s names or not. I am particularly grateful to Eddie Saeta, Robert Schiffer, Vincent Sherman, and Nita Bieber Wall for talking with me about their work with Hayworth; Fletcher Chan, Dr. Carole Hope Durbin, Fred Hanneman, and the several anonymous respondents to my lengthy questionnaire about Hayworth; Caren Roberts-Frenzel, president of the Rita Hayworth fan club; and most of all Jeanne Kramer and Constance McCormick Van Wyck, for having the foresight to save so much ephemeral and valuable material about stars and for making it available to people like me. Hayworth’s home studio, Columbia, remains an archival blank spot— melancholy rumors continue to circulate about whether its archives even exist, as well as whether they will ever be opened to researchers—so I would like to thank Terrance McCluskey, at one time an archivist for Sony Pictures Entertainment, for providing me with some crucial information about Hayworth’s studio contracts and the Beckworth Corporation. I am also very grateful to Norm Scott and the Ned Scott Archive for permission to reprint several photos by Ned Scott, especially the wonderful photo on the front cover; I learned a lot from Norm, not only about his father but about Hollywood studio photography generally. The Ball Brothers Foundation provided me with a visiting fellowship to work in the Orson Welles Collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, and I deeply appreciate the patience and consideration of the library’s staff. Other libraries, archives, and institutions on whose help and superlative staffs this project has relied include the Cinema-Television Library, University of Southern California, especially the peerless and peerlessly generous Ned Comstock; the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles; the British Film Institute, London; and the Dance Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Nor could I have gotten far without the help of the libraries and staffs of Emory University, Hollins University, and the University of Texas at Dallas, all of which have been extremely helpful at various critical times. Other individuals and colleagues whom I would like to thank for their intellectual and emotional support through the years include Amy Schrager Lang, my mentor, adviser, sternest and most helpful critic, and dissertation codirector at the Institute of the Liberal Arts at Emory University ; Robin Blaetz, a kind and generous teacher, colleague, and friend; Michael Wilson, a limitless font of all sorts of information, as well as a valued colleague and friend; and Dennis Kratz, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, who makes all things possible. I also thank others involved in the genesis of this book as a dissertation at Emory University: David Cook (dissertation codirector), Matthew Bernstein, Gaylyn Studlar, and Allen Tullos. Here at the University of Texas at Dallas, I have received additional support and encouragement from all of my colleagues, especially Susan Branson, R. David Edmunds, Erin A. Smith, Marilyn Waligore, and Dan Wickberg. I am grateful also to Steven Cohan, Mary Desjardins, Ina Rae Hark, David Lugowski , and Ann Martin for their kindness and conference conviviality over these many years and to my friends and relatives Barbara Cooper, Judy V. Jones and Scott Belville, Charley and Annie Morgan, Cindy Hinton , and Jim and Jo McLean. I also want to thank Larry Thomas again, one of the people to whom this book is dedicated, for locating so many of its illustrations during his travels. Finally, I offer my deepest and warmest thanks to everyone at Rutgers University Press, especially Joe Abbott, for his expert copyediting; Marilyn Campbell, for all of her logistical help and guidance and her patience with my obsessive tendencies; and Leslie Mitchner...

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