Today in motorcycle history, May 14, 1987

                                   

  Rita Hayworth, one of Hollywood's most glamorous leading ladies dies.

 

  One of Edward Turner's (Triumph Motors Managing Director of Engineering) favorite personal photo's was that of Rita Hayworth posing with him on the first post-war Thunderbird to be shipped to California on his first visit to Los Angeles in July of 1945.

 

  While a guest of W.E. Johnson Jr, the head of Triumph's American distributor Johnson Motors Inc., Mr. Johnson talked to "a guy he knew" at Columbia Pictures and arranged for Turner to take in the making of a Hollywood movie and afterwards is introduced to one of the movie's main attractions, Rita Hayworth.

 

  Edward Turner would return to Coventry toward the end of September, as in his words “All good things must come to an end.”  He expressed himself as thoroughly enjoying his visit, especially the hospitality of sunny California.  And meeting Rita Hayworth.