Made on location in Trinidad, "Fire Down Below" was Rita Hayworth's return to the screen after a four-year absence
During her screen absence Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "The Barefoot Contessa," which starred Ava Gardner as a Spanish dancing-girl who becomes first an international film star and then a Contessa, was released with great success Although Mankiewicz had always denied there were fictional similarities between his film and Hayworth's own private life, most filmgoers and film gossips felt otherwise
In fact they regarded "The Barefoot Contessa" as an obvious imitation or approximation of Rita's life, just as they had found similarities between her husband Orson Welles' film "Citizen Kane" and the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst
Therefore "Fire Down Below" had a sort of "built-in" curiosity about it and critics who for years had ignored Rita's acting abilities or were even willing to admit their possibilities, were now beginning to regard her as an actress instead of just a sex symbol
Considerably older-looking, and playing a woman used and abused by many men, Rita had a few lines that contained cruel accuracies about her own life
During her screen absence Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "The Barefoot Contessa," which starred Ava Gardner as a Spanish dancing-girl who becomes first an international film star and then a Contessa, was released with great success Although Mankiewicz had always denied there were fictional similarities between his film and Hayworth's own private life, most filmgoers and film gossips felt otherwise
In fact they regarded "The Barefoot Contessa" as an obvious imitation or approximation of Rita's life, just as they had found similarities between her husband Orson Welles' film "Citizen Kane" and the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst
Therefore "Fire Down Below" had a sort of "built-in" curiosity about it and critics who for years had ignored Rita's acting abilities or were even willing to admit their possibilities, were now beginning to regard her as an actress instead of just a sex symbol
Considerably older-looking, and playing a woman used and abused by many men, Rita had a few lines that contained cruel accuracies about her own life