On Hallo•meme, be bewitching, like ‘Gilda’ 6

I was thinking about my costume for this Halloween. Who better to embody than Rita Hayworth in her hallowed role as a film-noir temptress in the movie of the same name, Gilda (1945), from Columbia Pictures?

Here she is in her nightclub number in the movie, “Put the Blame on Mame.”

Rita was dressed in a black strapless sheath upon the suggestion of her choreographer, Jack Cole. It was he who advised costume designer, Jean Louis, to base a dress on a John Singer Sargent painting, “Madam X,” that hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Mame,” was choreographed by Cole to a song by Doris Fisher and Al Roberts. Both music and choreography were patched together au derniere moment, in this patchwork of a movie. Cole told Hollywood historian John Kobal that, “They were making the picture up as we went along.”

Gilda’s sultry, she’s taunting, she’s a man eater. So how could I, a mere mortal, hope to get that look, that attitude, that je ne sais quoi ?

That was made possible by a stroke of L.A. luck. One recent evening, strolling along Fairfax Avenue just outside the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Museum, my friend and I happened upon the cult filmmaker Mike Jittlov. The Los Angeles-born Jittlov is the genius behind the 1988 feature-length film The Wizard of Speed and Time, based on his 1979 short film of the same name. We had just watched the film in utter delight on the big screen of the Academy. Jittlov is reknowned, if not revered, as an animator and specialist in special effects animation, including stop-motion animation, rotoscoping, and pixilation. Here’s his brilliant short film, naturally not in highest resolution but you can get the gist nonetheless.

Recognizing my friend as the stage/screen/recording artist, George Chakiris, Jittlov nicely asked if he might take a photo of George. Which he did. At my request, he then shot a photo of George and myself. When Jittlov emailed me the result, George looked gorgeous, as always, and me? Not so much. A terrible angle and a bad hair day. Jittlov offered to rectify it, instructing me to send a “full body” replacement shot that I liked so he could photoshop me with George. Feeling this was a tad too much vanity, as a joke, I sent him the above image of Rita Hayworth as “Gilda.” Clearly challenged, Jittlov took it on, and voila! My Gilda look for Hallo•meme.

Only in L.A.!

Arts journalist Debra Levine is the founder/publisher/editor of artsmeme now in its sixteenth year of arts-blogging. Debra marks forty years as a dance critic in 2024.