Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth: A Thank You to Barbara Leaming

Though I credit her cool biographies in the notes of Tex[t]-Mex, it's time I gave a loving shout-out to Barbara Leaming, author of If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth and of Orson Welles: A Biography; I don't know if Tex[t]-Mex would have worked if I had not stumbled upon Leaming's writings. Biographical gleanings dot the pages of the first two chapters of my book, "Chapter One. Hallucinations of Miscegenation and Murder: Dancing along the Mestiza/o Borders of Proto-Chicana/o Cinema with Orson Welles's Touch of Evil" and "Chapter Two. When Electrolysis Proxies for the Existential: A Somewhat Sordid Meditation on What Might Occur if Frantz Fanon, Rosario Castellanos, Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Sandra Cisneros Asked Rita Hayworth Her Name at the Tex[t]-Mex Beauty Parlor." Yes, the titles are too long! Thanks, I've heard it before!

In any event, here are two images off the Heritage Auctions site that are really amazing--as with most images on this blog, merely click the picture to be treated to a high-resolution image: