- published: 31 Oct 2015
- views: 4524
George Peabody Macready, Jr. (August 29, 1899 – July 2, 1973), was an American stage, film, and television actor often cast in roles as polished villains.
Macready was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and graduated there from Classical High School and, in 1921, from Brown University, where he was a member of Delta Phi fraternity and won a letter as the football team manager. While in college, Macready was injured in an accident in a Model T Ford. He sustained a permanent scar on his right cheek, having been thrust through the windshield while traveling on an icy road when the vehicle skidded and hit a telephone pole. The injury, along with his high brow and perfect diction, gave Macready the Gothic look of an authoritarian or villainous character. Macready was stitched up by a veterinarian, but he caught scarlet fever during the ordeal.
Macready first worked in a bank in Providence and was then briefly a newspaperman in New York City before he turned to stage acting. He claimed to have been descended from the 19th century Shakespearean actor William Charles Macready. He made his Broadway debut in 1926 in The Scarlet Letter. Through 1958, he appeared in fifteen plays, both drama and comedy, including The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on the family of the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American dancer and film actress who garnered fame during the 1940s as one of the era's top stars. Appearing first as Rita Cansino, she agreed to change her name to Rita Hayworth and her hair color to dark red to attract a greater range in roles. Her appeal led to her being featured on the cover of Life magazine five times, beginning in 1940.
The first dancer featured on film as a partner of both the stars Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Hayworth appeared in a total of 61 films over 37 years. She is listed by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 Greatest Stars of All Time.
Hayworth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918 as Margarita Carmen Cansino, the oldest child of two dancers, Eduardo Cansino, Sr., from Castilleja de la Cuesta, a little town near Seville, Spain, and Volga Hayworth, an American of Irish-English descent who had performed with the Ziegfeld Follies. The Catholic couple had married in 1917. They also had two sons: Eduardo, Jr. and Vernon.