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Only Angels Have Wings Lyrics
Heavens above, I could never hate her
She’s done nothing wrong
A photograph of Rita Hayworth
A Latin bombshell, an atom bomb
Lovely Rita, America’s sweetheart
The girl next door and a whole lot more
From Hollywood to Hiroshima
From the silver screen to the Second World War
And of course she’s gorgeous
But this is grotesque
If only angels have wings
Then she’s an angel of death
She’s done nothing wrong
A photograph of Rita Hayworth
A Latin bombshell, an atom bomb
The girl next door and a whole lot more
From Hollywood to Hiroshima
From the silver screen to the Second World War
But this is grotesque
If only angels have wings
Then she’s an angel of death
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This song is about an historical event in the United States' Cold War history: the atomic bomb exploded on the Bikini atoll in 1946 was said to be graced with an image of Rita Hayworth. (It wasn't on the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, but we can forgive Marty Donald his alliteration.)
Though reported on extensively at the time (Orson Welles, who was then married to Hayworth, noted it in a report, without mentioning she was his spouse), the story began to take on the elements of a legend due to many of the details being part of government classified information. This is doubtless how Marty Donald heard the story, & perhaps why he suggests that Hayworth's likeness was on the Hiroshima bomb.
I checked online, & discovered that someone had already done the research, & found the image on the bomb, which you can read about & view here:
http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2013/08/atomic-goddess-revisited-rita-hayworths.html