mrglennford:

On the last day at the location of Carmel and Monterey for their film A Stolen Life, Bette asked Glenn to celebrate by having dinner with her at the Pebble Beach Golf Course clubhouse.  They had a luxurious meal, enhanced by a couple of bottles of wine.  Afterward they went for a stroll out on the moonlit grounds.  Bette led him to a manicured plot of ground on the eighteenth green, overlooking the Pacific, glistening in the lights of a full moon, Glenn recalled:

Suddenly Bette reached up and held me and planted a kiss on my lips.  I was startled.  In the back of my mind I had sometimes thought Bette had been interested in more than my acting prowess, but we had gotten to be friends, and nothing like that had happened before — she knew I was enjoying a happy marriage with a new baby at home.  I honestly felt I had never done anything to provoke her. While I stood there not knowing what to say she started to unbutton her blouse.  Later I would hear that this was what she did when she wanted to seduce someone, exposing her breasts that were absolutely unbelievable.  But I was very much in love with my wife at the time, and I simply wasn’t interested. 

I told her, “I’m sorry, Bette, I just can’t”  She said I was stupid.  She said, “You’ll never regret the things you did.  You’ll only regret the things you didn’t do.”

There was an awkward moment as we stood there before she covered her breasts again.  But she took it in stride and never mentioned it again.  We remained on really friendly terms for the rest of the picture.

—Excerpt from Glenn Ford: A Life by Peter Ford

eleanor-powell:

Eleanor Powell and Glenn Ford on their wedding day

From Weddings and Movie Stars

Rita’s friendship had survived all of my dad’s relationships with women, and it survived Cynthia’s too.  For years their relationship had been so close and casual that Dad would often come home to find Rita at the bar fixing herself a drink or sunbathing by his pool.  Sometimes she wanted to talk and unburden herself about something, other times she wanted to be left alone.  His home was an escape for her, and my father respected her whims.  They would go out to dinner on occasion or accompany each other to events and premieres.  During the “Cynthia years” Dad saw much less or Rita but still stayed in touch.  When he called to check on her now and then she seemed either in a perceptual state of unreal enthusiasm or on the verge of tears.  Suspicious of most people, she seldom admitted visitors or came to the phone.  Sadly, she was an alcoholic, and much of her depressed and erratic behavior was due to her drinking.   

In 1979 Rita sold the house next door and took an apartment in Beverly Hills, and most people agree that she was never the same.  She had fallen in with some people who took control of her life, and they did not serve her well.  Much alter we learned that Rita was suffering from a debilitating disease few people had ever heard of at the time:  Alzheimer’s.  It slowly eroded her mind, with tragic results. It wasn’t long before Rita’s loving daughter, Princess Yasmin, decided to bring her mother back to New York to live with her in a large condo on Central Park West.  My father stayed in touch with Yasmin, but he declined to visit Rita in New York.  He found the prospect too heartbreaking.  “I wanted to remember her as she was,” he said.  My father was one of the pallbearers at Rita’s funeral. 

—Peter Ford, Glenn Ford:  A Life

mattybing1025:

During the filming of Gilda, Harry Cohn, who was obsessed with Rita Hayworth and endlessly lusted after her, began to suspect that something was up between his two stars; a situation that made him very agitated.  Cohn learned that Glenn and Rita did not go home after work but hid out together in Rita’s dressing room until later in the evening.  One day the studio boss summoned Glenn to his office to talk about it. 

Glenn described their meeting:

I went to see him.  He was very unpleasant.  He demanded to know what Rita and I were up to — he knew exactly how long we were in the dressing room together.  When I told him we were rehearsing and just having a couple of drinks at the end of the day, he snorted that he wasn’t going to keep the studio open all night anymore, and we were to go right home after work.

The situation became ridiculous.  We found out that Harry had planted listening devices in the dressing rooms.  We were both furious.  But then we decided to play a joke on Harry.  Just for Cohn’s microphones we acted out a scene like we could never have gotten away with in the movie.  I’d start groaning, “Oh Rita…come on, baby, give it to me!”  And Rita would moan back, “Oh, Glenn, that’s great…yes, yes!!”  Rita would repeat the refrain from the song “Amado Mio” from the film, “Love me forever and let forever begin tonight.”

Harry never picked up on our mischief.  Sometimes we’d have to rush out of the dressing room because we were laughing so hard and didn’t want the microphones to pick it up.

forlovelyritahayworth:

Rita and Glenn relaxing on the set of Gilda 1946.

Knowing that Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn had their dressing rooms bugged so he could keep track of his stars, Rita and Glenn decided to give him something to worry about while filming Gilda. Most days, after filming, she would invite Ford to her dressing room for a drink, prompting Cohn to call her every fifteen minutes to demand to know what was going on.

Glenn Ford’s son, Peter, insists that his father always carried a torch for Rita. He kept her picture on the table near his bed for most of his life.

 

The Most Unforgettable Screen Romances of the Studio Era: Leading Couples (TCM)