Rita Hayworth was the ultimate victim of old Hollywood's predatory math: she commanded the highest salaries of the 1940s, but the studio system extracted most of the value before it reached her hands. Studios owned her image, controlled her roles, and took their cut first—she was earning what equates to $90M annually but walking away with a fraction after studio fees, agent commissions, and taxes decimated her paycheck. Audrey Hepburn operated in a different era with better representation and more agency over her career, but even more crucially, she didn't die broke and scrambling.

The real wealth killer for Rita was the divorce gauntlet. Multiple marriages to wealthy men (including Orson Welles and the Aly Khan) meant multiple divorces that systematically stripped her assets—a financial catastrophe that compounded when combined with mismanagement and the studio system's iron grip on her earning potential. She had peak earning power but zero structural wealth protection, no diversified income streams, and advisors who failed her.

Audrey's $55M posthumous estate reveals the modern playbook: licensed image rights, merchandising, and brand partnerships that turn a legacy into a perpetual money machine. Rita died in 1987 with minimal estate infrastructure; her image rights were fragmented and poorly monetized. The cruel irony: Audrey's carefully built brand generates more annual revenue today than Rita earned during Hollywood's golden age, turning death into a business advantage rather than a financial ending.