"Rita, take a deep breath."

  That apparently was the instruction given to Rita Hayworth when Bob Landry took the above photograph for LIFE magazine in 1941. This photograph of Hayworth holding her breath would go on to sell over five million copies by the end of World War Two. It was this photograph Orson Welles saw while filming in Brazil which led him to famously declare the actress "the biggest electric train set a boy ever had!" Okay no, that's how he described RKO. What he actually said upon seeing Hayworth's picture was: "When I come back, that's what I'm going to do!" Which isn't far off. And reader, he did.

 

 I'll be playing Rita Hayworth's second husband in Almog Pail's new musical The Love Goddess at the Cockpit Theatre in a month's time. It's a wonderful script – the whole cheating-on-the-wife-you're-sawing-in-half side of Welles is not one we often see – and I'm really looking forward to starting rehearsals next week. I'll also be playing Hayworth's boss, Harry Cohn, the monstrous, Weinstein-ian head of Columbia Pictures. And at least four other Americans, so I'm also really nervous. But I love being part of a labour of love, and Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without a musical. Get yer tickets HERE!