By 1945, Rita Hayworth was one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood. She had already appeared in dozens of films and graced the covers of countless magazines. But the version of Rita that photographer Peter Stackpole captured that year was something different — not a studio creation, but a woman at home, on her own terms, in her own space.
Stackpole photographed Rita at her Beverly Hills home, where she posed in a white two-piece bathing suit beside her large swimming pool. The setting was relaxed and personal, far removed from the controlled glamour of a studio lot. These were not promotional stills — they were a rare window into her private life.
The timing of the shoot carried real weight. Rita’s mother had died just five weeks after the birth of Rita’s daughter Rebecca in January 1945. That personal loss sat quietly beneath the surface of these photographs, giving them a depth that pure glamour alone never could.
Peter Stackpole was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine and was known for getting close to his subjects in ways that formal portrait photographers rarely managed. His camera caught Rita laughing, lounging, and simply existing in her home — moments that studio photographers were never hired to find.
Just a few months after this shoot, Rita began production on Gilda, the film that would define her career. The movie was produced specifically for her by screenwriter and producer Virginia Van Upp, one of the few women to hold that kind of power in Hollywood at the time. Gilda would turn Rita into a cultural icon, but in the summer of 1945, none of that had happened yet.
What Stackpole documented was Rita Hayworth between chapters — a new mother, a grieving daughter, and a major star all at once. The white bathing suit, the sprawling pool, the California light: they frame a woman in a rare, unguarded moment.
Rita’s ease in front of the camera was something she had developed over years. She began performing as a child, joining her father Eduardo Cansino’s dance act as a teenager. By the time she reached Columbia Pictures, she had already spent most of her life in front of audiences. That comfort shows clearly in Stackpole’s photographs — she is relaxed in a way that many stars never managed off set.
The photographs also capture the physical setting of her Beverly Hills home with clarity. The pool is large, the grounds well-kept, and the architecture typical of the comfortable but not extravagant homes that working Hollywood stars occupied in the 1940s. It was a life built from years of steady work, not overnight success.
At 27 years old in 1945, Rita was at the peak of her physical presence and professional momentum. She had recently starred in Cover Girl (1944) opposite Gene Kelly, a film that brought her renewed critical attention and box office success. The energy from that period carries through in Stackpole’s shots — there is confidence in the way she holds herself, even in casual poolside moments.
Her daughter Rebecca, born in December 1944, was the child of Rita and her then-husband Orson Welles, whom she had married in 1943. The early months of 1945 were some of the most emotionally complicated of Rita’s life — new motherhood, the death of her mother, and a demanding film career all pressing in at the same time.
Stackpole’s photographs do not show any of that strain directly. What they show is a woman who knew how to present herself, even in an informal setting — poised, warm, and fully at ease by the water. That ability to project calm and beauty regardless of circumstance was, in many ways, the defining skill of a working Hollywood star.
