Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers
Rogers in 1943
Born	Virginia Katherine McMath (1911-07-16)July 16, 1911 Independence, Missouri, U.S.
Died	April 25, 1995(1995-04-25) (aged 83) Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
Resting place	Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery
Nationality	American
Occupations	Actress dancer singer
Years active	1925–1987
Known for	Kitty Foyle Top Hat Vivacious Lady The Gay Divorcee Swing Time 42nd Street
Political party	Republican
Spouses	Jack Pepper ​ ​ (m. 1929; div. 1931)​ Lew Ayres ​ ​ (m. 1934; div. 1940)​ Jack Briggs ​ ​ (m. 1943; div. 1949)​ Jacques Bergerac ​ ​ (m. 1953; div. 1957)​ William Marshall ​ ​ (m. 1961; div. 1969)​
Relatives	Lela Rogers (mother) Phyllis Fraser (cousin) Vinton Hayworth (uncle)
Website	gingerrogers.com

Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer and singer during the

Rogers was born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City. She and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, when she was nine years old. In 1925, she won a Charleston dance contest^[1] that helped her launch a successful vaudeville career. After that, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her stage debut in Girl Crazy. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film roles as a supporting actress in 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933).

In the 1930s, Rogers's nine films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre and gave RKO Pictures some of its biggest successes: The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936). But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she turned her focus to dramatic and comedy films. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences in films such as Stage Door (1937), Vivacious Lady (1938), Bachelor Mother (1939), Primrose Path (1940), The Major and the Minor (1942) and I'll Be Seeing You (1944). After winning the Oscar, Rogers became one of the biggest box-office draws and highest-paid actresses of the 1940s.^[1]

Rogers's popularity was peaking by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway. She starred in the successful comedy Monkey Business (1952) and was critically lauded for her performance in Tight Spot (1955) before entering an unsuccessful period of filmmaking in the mid-1950s, and returned to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly! More Broadway roles followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 of an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. She continued to act, making television appearances until 1987, and wrote an autobiography Ginger: My Story which was published in 1991. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of natural causes in 1995, at age 83.

During her long career, she made 73 films. She ranks number 14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema.

Early life

Virginia Katherine McMath was born on July 16, 1911, in Independence, Missouri, the only child of Lela Emogene Owens, a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer, and William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer.^{[2]: 9, 10 [2]: 16 [3]} Her maternal grandparents were Wilma Saphrona (née Ball) and Walter Winfield Owens.^[4]: 3 She was of Scottish, Welsh, and English ancestry.^[5] Her mother gave birth to Ginger at home, having lost a previous child in a hospital.^[2]: 11 Her parents separated shortly after she was born.^{[2]: 1, 2, 11}After unsuccessfully trying to reunite with his family, McMath kidnapped his daughter twice, and her mother divorced him soon thereafter.^{[2]: 7, 15 [6]} Rogers said that she never saw her natural father again.^[2]: 15

In 1915, she was left with her grandparents, who lived in nearby Kansas City, while her mother made a trip to Hollywood in an effort to get an essay she had written made into a film.^[2]: 19 Lela succeeded and continued to write scripts for Fox Studios.^{[2]: 26–29}

One of Rogers's young cousins had a hard time pronouncing "Virginia", giving her the nickname "Ginger".^[7]

When Rogers was nine years old, her mother married John Logan Rogers. Ginger took the surname Rogers, although she was never legally adopted. They lived in

As a teenager, Rogers thought of becoming a school teacher, but with her mother's interest in Hollywood and the theater, her early exposure to the theater increased. Waiting for her mother in the wings of the Majestic Theatre, she began to sing and dance along with the performers on stage.[8]

Career

1925–1929: Vaudeville and Broadway

Rogers's entertainment career began when the traveling

At 17, Rogers married Jack Culpepper, a singer/dancer/comedian/recording artist of the day who worked under the name Jack Pepper (according to Ginger's autobiography and Life magazine, she knew Culpepper when she was a child, as her cousin's boyfriend).^[10] They formed a short-lived vaudeville double act known as "Ginger and Pepper". The marriage was over within a year, and she went back to touring with her mother.^[10] When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs and then her Broadway debut in the musical Top Speed, which opened on Christmas Day, 1929.

Within two weeks of opening in Top Speed, Rogers was chosen to star on Broadway in Girl Crazy by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with their choreography. Her appearance in Girl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19.^{[citation needed]}

1929–1933: Early film roles

Rogers's first movie roles were in a trio of short films made in 1929: Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1930, Paramount Pictures signed her to a seven-year contract.^{[citation needed]}

Rogers soon got herself out of the Paramount contract—under which she had made five feature films at

Rogers was known for her partnership with Fred Astaire. Together, from 1933 to 1939, they made nine musical films at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) was produced later at MGM. They revolutionized the Hollywood musical by introducing dance routines of unprecedented elegance and virtuosity with sweeping long shots set to songs specially composed for them by the greatest popular song composers of the day. One such composer was Cole Porter with "Night and Day", a song Astaire sang to Rogers with the line "... you are the one" in two of their movies, being particularly poignant in their last pairing of The Barkleys of Broadway.^{[citation needed]}

Arlene Croce, Hermes Pan, Hannah Hyam, and John Mueller all consider Rogers to have been Astaire's finest dance partner, principally because of her ability to combine dancing skills, natural beauty, and exceptional abilities as a dramatic actress and comedian, thus truly complementing Astaire, a peerless dancer. The resulting song and dance partnership enjoyed a unique credibility in the eyes of audiences.^{[citation needed]}

Of the 33 partnered dances Rogers performed with Astaire, Croce and Mueller have highlighted the infectious spontaneity of her performances in the comic numbers "I'll Be Hard to Handle" from Roberta, "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet, and "Pick Yourself Up" from Swing Time. They also point to the use Astaire made of her remarkably flexible back in classic romantic dances such as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" from Roberta, "Cheek to Cheek" from Top Hat, and "Let's Face the Music and Dance" from Follow the Fleet.^{[citation needed]}

Although the dance routines were choreographed by Astaire and his collaborator

John Mueller summed up Rogers's abilities as: "Rogers was outstanding among Astaire's partners, not because she was superior to others as a dancer, but, because, as a skilled, intuitive actress, she was cagey enough to realize that acting did not stop when dancing began ... the reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable".[14]

Author Dick Richards, on p. 162 of his book Ginger: Salute to a Star, quoted Astaire saying to Raymond Rohauer, curator at the New York Gallery of Modern Art, "Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success."^{[citation needed]}

In a 1976 episode of the popular British talk-show Parkinson (Season 5, Episode 24), host Michael Parkinson asked Astaire who his favorite dancing partner was. Astaire answered, "Excuse me, I must say Ginger was certainly [uh, uh,] the one. You know, the most effective partner I ever had. Everyone knows."^{[citation needed]}

After 15 months apart and with RKO facing bankruptcy, the studio paired Fred and Ginger for another movie titled Carefree, but it lost money. Next came The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, based on a true story, but the serious plot and tragic ending resulted in the worst box-office receipts of any of their films. This was driven not by diminished popularity, but by the hard 1930s economic reality. The production costs of musicals, always significantly more costly than regular features, continued to increase at a much faster rate than admissions.^{[citation needed]}

1933–1939: Success in nonmusicals

Both before and immediately after her dancing and acting partnership with Fred Astaire ended, Rogers starred in a number of successful nonmusical films. Stage Door (1937) demonstrated her dramatic capacity, as the loquacious yet vulnerable girl next door and tough-minded theatrical hopeful, opposite Katharine Hepburn. Successful comedies included Vivacious Lady (1938) with James Stewart, Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), where she played an out-of-work girl sucked into the lives of a wealthy family, and Bachelor Mother (1939), with David Niven, in which she played a shop girl who is falsely thought to have abandoned her baby.^{[citation needed]}

In 1934, Rogers sued Sylvia of Hollywood for $100K for defamation. The fitness guru and radio personality had claimed that Rogers was on her radio show when, in fact, she was not.^[15]

On March 5, 1939, Rogers starred in "Single Party Going East", an episode of Silver Theater on CBS radio.^[16]

1940–1949: Career peak and reuniting with Astaire

In 1941 Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in 1940's Kitty Foyle. She enjoyed considerable success during the early 1940s, and was RKO's hottest property during this period. In Roxie Hart (1942), based on the same play which later served as the template for the musical Chicago, Rogers played a wisecracking flapper in a love triangle on trial for the murder of her lover; set in the era of prohibition. Most of the film takes place in a women's jail.

In the neorealist Primrose Path (1940), directed by Gregory La Cava, she played a prostitute's daughter trying to avoid family pressure into following the fate of her mother. Further highlights of this period included Tom, Dick, and Harry, a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men; I'll Be Seeing You (1944), with Joseph Cotten; and Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature film: The Major and the Minor (1942), in which she played a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse for an extended period. This film featured a performance by Rogers's real mother, Lela, playing her film mother.

After becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, including Tender Comrade (1943), Lady in the Dark (1944), and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), and became the highest-paid performer in Hollywood. However, by the end of the decade, her film career had peaked. Arthur Freed reunited her with Fred Astaire in The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, when Judy Garland was unable to appear in the role that was to have reunited her with her Easter Parade co-star.

1950–1987: Later career

Rogers's film career entered a period of gradual decline in the 1950s, as parts for older actresses became more difficult to obtain, but she still scored with some solid movies. She starred in Storm Warning (1950) with Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, a noir, anti-Ku Klux Klan film by Warner Bros. In 1952 Rogers starred in two comedies featuring Marilyn Monroe, Monkey Business with Cary Grant, directed by Howard Hawks, and We're Not Married!. She followed those with a role in Dreamboat alongside Clifton Webb, as his former onscreen partner in silent films who wanted to renew their association on television. She played the female lead in Tight Spot (1955), a mystery thriller, with Edward G. Robinson. After a series of unremarkable films, she scored a great popular success on Broadway in 1965, playing Dolly Levi in the long-running Hello, Dolly!^[17]

In later life, Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire; she presented him with a special

From the 1950s onward, Rogers made occasional appearances on television, even substituting for a vacationing

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Rogers has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6772 Hollywood Boulevard.^[19]

Personal life

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Rogers, an only child, maintained a close relationship with her mother, Lela Rogers, throughout her life. Lela, a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer, was one of the first women to enlist in the

Rogers and her mother had a very close professional relationship. Lela Rogers was credited with pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York City and in Hollywood, and gave her much assistance in contract negotiations with RKO. She also wrote a children's mystery book with her daughter as the central character.[25]

Marriages

Rogers married and divorced five times. She did not have children.

On March 29, 1929, Rogers married for the first time at age 17 to her dancing partner Jack Pepper (real name Edward Jackson Culpepper). They divorced in 1932, having separated soon after the wedding. Rogers dated Mervyn LeRoy in 1932, but they ended the relationship and remained friends until his death in 1987. In 1934, she married actor Lew Ayres (1908–96). They divorced six years later in 1940. In 1943, Rogers married her third husband, Jack Briggs, who was a U.S. Marine, before divorcing in 1950. In 1953, she married Jacques Bergerac, a French actor 16 years her junior, whom she met on a trip to Paris. A lawyer in France, he came to Hollywood with her and became an actor. They divorced in 1957. Her fifth and final husband was director and producer William Marshall. They married in 1961 and divorced in 1970, after his bouts with alcohol and the financial collapse of their joint film production company in Jamaica.^[26]

Friendships

Rogers was lifelong friends with actresses Lucille Ball and Bette Davis. She appeared with Ball in an episode of Here's Lucy on November 22, 1971, in which Rogers danced the Charleston for the first time in many years. Rogers starred in one of the earliest films co-directed and co-scripted by a woman, Wanda Tuchock's Finishing School (1934). Rogers maintained a close friendship with her cousin, writer/socialite Phyllis Fraser, the wife of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf. Rita Hayworth's maternal uncle, Vinton Hayworth, was married to Rogers's maternal aunt, Jean Owens.

Religion

Rogers was raised a

Rogers was a talented tennis player, and entered the 1950 US Open. However, she and Frank Shields were knocked out of the mixed doubles competition in the first round.^[28]

Legacy

The city of Independence, Missouri designated the birthplace of Ginger Rogers a Historic Landmark Property in 1994. On July 16, 1994, Ginger and her secretary, Roberta Olden, visited Independence, Missouri, to appear at the Ginger Rogers' Day celebration presented by the city. Rogers was present when Mayor Ron Stewart affixed a Historic Landmark Property plaque to the front of the house where she was born on July 16, 1911. She signed over 2,000 autographs at this event, which was one of her last public appearances.

The home was purchased in 2016 by Three Trails Cottages and restored, then transformed into a museum dedicated to Lela Owens-Rogers and Ginger Rogers. It contains memorabilia, magazines, movie posters, and many items from the ranch that Lela and Ginger owned. Several gowns that Ginger Rogers wore are on display. The museum was open seasonally from April to September, and several special events were held at the site each year. It closed in August 2019.^[29]

Rogers made her last public appearance on March 18, 1995, when she received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award. For many years, Rogers regularly supported, and held in-person presentations, at the Craterian Theater, in Medford, where she had performed in 1926 as a vaudevillian. The theater was comprehensively restored in 1997 and posthumously renamed in her honor as the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Rogers spent winters in Rancho Mirage and summers in Medford, Oregon. She died at her Rancho Mirage home on April 25, 1995, from a heart attack at the age of 83.^[30] She was cremated and her ashes interred with her mother Lela Emogene in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.^[31]

Legacy

• Likenesses of Astaire and Rogers, apparently painted over from the "Cheek to Cheek" dance in Top Hat, are in the "
  Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" section of The Beatles film Yellow Submarine
  (1968).
• Rogers's image is one of many famous women's images of the 1930s and 1940s featured on the bedroom wall in the
  Nazis
  . When the house became a museum, the gallery the Frank sisters created was preserved under glass.
• Ginger The Musical by Robert Kennedy and Paul Becker which Ginger Rogers approved and was to direct on Broadway the year of her death was in negotiations as late as the 2016–17 Broadway season. Marshall Mason directed its first production in 2001 starring Donna McKechnie and Nili Bassman and was choreographed by Randy Skinner.
• Rogers was the heroine of a novel, Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak (1942, by Lela E. Rogers), in which "the heroine has the same name and appearance as the famous actress, but has no connection ... it is as though the famous actress has stepped into an alternate reality in which she is an ordinary person." It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941 and 1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.[32]
• The Dancing House in Prague, sometimes known as Ginger and Fred, designed by the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić in cooperation with Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and inspired by the dancing of Astaire and Rogers.
• In the 1981 film Pennies From Heaven, Bernadette Peters's character dances with Steve Martin's as they watch Fred and Ginger's "Let's Face the Music and Dance" sequence from 1936's Follow the Fleet, using it as their inspiration.
• Federico Fellini's film Ginger and Fred centers on two aging Italian impersonators of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Rogers sued the production and the distributor when the film was released in the U.S. for misappropriation and infringement of her public personality. Her claims were dismissed, as according to the judgment, the film only obliquely related to Astaire and her.^[33]
• Rogers was among the sixteen Golden Age Hollywood stars referenced in the bridge of Madonna's 1990 single "Vogue".^[34]
• Rogers is the namesake of the Ginger Rogers, a cocktail containing gin, ginger, and mint.^[35][36][37]
• Rogers was the subject of a quotation summarizing women's capacity to achieve that is popular among feminists: "Rogers did everything [Astaire] did, backwards . . . and in high heels." The quote comes from a 1982 Frank and Ernest comic strip by Bob Thaves.^[38]
• A
  musical about the life of Rogers, entitled Backwards in High Heels, premiered in Florida in early 2007.^[39][40]

See also

• List of actors with Academy Award nominations
• List of dancers

References

Bibliography

• Astaire, Fred (August 5, 2008). Steps in Time (reprint ed.). Harper Collins.
  ISBN 978-0061567568
  .
• ISBN 978-0394724768
  .
• Faris, Jocelyn (1994). Ginger Rogers – a Bio-Bibliography. Greenwood Press.
  ISBN 978-0313291777
  .
• Hyam, Hannah (2007). Fred and Ginger – The Astaire-Rogers Partnership 1934–1938. Brighton: Pen Press Publications.
  ISBN 978-1-905621-96-5
  .
• ISBN 978-0241117491
  .
• Rogers, Ginger (1991). Ginger: My Story. Toronto: Harper Collins, Canada.
  ISBN 978-0060183080
  .

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ginger Rogers.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Ginger Rogers.

• Ginger Rogers at
  IMDb
• Ginger Rogers at the TCM Movie Database
• Ginger Rogers at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ginger Rogers – Appreciations
• Ginger Rogers biography from Reel Classics
• John Mueller's 1991 New York Times review of Ginger: My Story
• Photographs and literature
• Owens-Rogers Museum in Independence, Missouri