Question: What do Meir Pa’il, one of Israel’s founding fathers and Hollywood siren Rita Hayworth have in common? Answer: Meir’s granddaughter Almog Pail, whose one-woman play about Hayworth has been reworked into the musical Love Goddess at The Cockpit theatre.

With a new score by Logan Medlan, Pail plays Hayworth in the show and when we meet online for this interview, the Israeli actor is looking remarkably like her onstage alter ego.

“My hair is actually really curly,” says Pail, 26 whose tresses have been straightened into the wavy, long locks that instantly conjure Hayworth’s films and Hollywood’s golden era. It wouldn’t normally be necessary for the star of a show to be in costume during rehearsals but after this conversation a photoshoot is scheduled ahead of opening night this weekend.

With Pail’s New York accent, which seems to have subsumed the cadence from her native Tel Aviv, it is a little like talking to both character and the actor at the same time.

“When I was approached to write a piece about Rita Hayworth I didn’t know much about her. People of my generation don’t even know who she is at all. So I had to do my research. But as soon as I found out about her Alzheimer’s, that to me was my connection,” she says. This, sadly is another connection between Almog’s grandfather and Hayworth, and also millions of others.

Pa’il (Almog has dropped the apostrophe) was politically active on the Israeli left and a member of the Knesset.

LOVE GODDESS image

Poster for Love Goddess, The Rita Hayworth Musical

Born in Jerusalem in 1926 he fought with the Palmach, including against the British in the 1940s, and smuggled Jews into Mandate Palestine from Syria. He also commanded the IDF’s 51st Battalion during Suez rising to the rank of Colonel. But the last 12 years of his life were marked by Alzheimer’s. Witnessing the decline had a great affect on Almog.

“He went from being probably the most interesting and smart man I’d ever met in my life to not even being able to have a conversation, losing pieces of his memory and repeating himself. Sometimes it felt uncomfortable to be around him because he would yell for no reason.”

This experience gave her instant empathy with Hayworth when she discovered the star had also died while suffering from Alzheimer’s.

“Rita was the first public figure to be associated with the disease. That’s quite important,” she says. “She was friends with Ronald Reagan and after she died he started the Alzheimer’s Awareness Week in the US, but then he also died of Alzheimer’s.”

Hayworth’s working relationship with her boss Harry Cohn, the President of Columbia Pictures, had more than whiff of #metoo about it. “He kind of took ownership over Hayworth and was quite a predator,” says Pail.

“She was forced to sleep with this guy or that guy. Cohn himself tried it on though it’s not clear if he was successful. She was obviously not the first or the last female movie star to go through that experience. Maybe not quite as much as Marilyn Monroe but definitely along those lines and during that same era.”

It is an experience that echoes today. “You ask any woman, especially in the performing arts. We all go through something along those lines. I had my share growing up in the industry as a young actress and I definitely can sympathise with Rita.”

On the day of this interview there is another reason why her thoughts are with her grandfather. Israeli elections have just returned Netanyahu to office along with far-right members of his coalition.

“In a way I’m thinking thank God my grandfather is not here to see this, to see all the things he built just falling apart. I don’t shy away from expressing how I feel about it. He wouldn’t be happy.”

She sounds both impassioned and disillusioned about Israeli politics and I wonder if she ever thought about following in the footsteps of her grandfather’s political career.
“I thought about it,” she admits.

“I was asked many times when I was in college because I was involved politically. But I knew that I wanted to be an actor.”

So, time to ask what comes next for Pail. But if the question is usual the answer is not.

“I can’t tell you much about it,” says Pail, “but I’m in a film called Circumcision.” Oh?

“Yes, I play a Rabbi who is a little a bit eccentric,”

You play a circumcising, eccentric female rabbi?
“That’s all I can say,” says Pail.

Love Goddess, The Rita Hayworth Musical is at The Cockpit until December 23