Trailer
Plot summary
Johnny Farrell, an American newly arrived in Buenos Aires, makes money cheating at dice with sailors at the docks. A stranger, Ballin Mundson, saves him from a robbery attempt and tells him about an illegal casino in the city, warning him against cheating there. Johnny wins at blackjack by counting cards and is taken to meet the casino's owner, who proves to be Mundson. Johnny persuades Mundson to hire him and rises to become the casino's manager. Mundson comes home from America with a bride, Gilda, married on a day's acquaintance. Johnny and Gilda know each other from before, and both keep it from Mundson when he asks.
Cast
- Julio Abadíaas Newsman
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gilda (1946)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- An atomic bomb to be tested at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands would bear the film's title above an image of Hayworth, a reference to her bombshell status; the bomb was decorated with a photograph of her cut from the June 1946 issue of Esquire magazine.
- Hayworth was deeply offended that her image was put on the atom bomb; according to Orson Welles, her husband at the time of filming, she believed it was a publicity stunt from Columbia executive Harry Cohn, and Welles told biographer Barbara Leaming she had never been angrier.
- The story was originally set to be an American gangster film directed by Edmund Goulding, but the location was changed to Buenos Aires after objections from censor Joseph Breen and the replacement of Goulding with Charles Vidor.
- During filming, Hayworth and Ford began an affair that would last until Hayworth was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease by the early 1980s, nearly four decades after they first played opposite each other.
- Rita Hayworth's performance was a primary inspiration for the animated character Jessica Rabbit in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988): her appearance, the song "Put the Blame on Mame" and her hourglass figure influenced Jessica's design, hair and stage presence.
