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Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer and singer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), and performed during the 1930s in RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.

Ginger Rogers

Virginia Katherine McMath

(1911-07-16)July 16, 1911
Independence, Missouri, U.S.

April 25, 1995(1995-04-25) (aged 83)

Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.

Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery

American

  • Actress
  • dancer
  • singer

1925–1987

Republican

Hollywood Walk of Fame

gingerrogers.com

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.

Likenesses of Astaire and Rogers, apparently painted over from the "Cheek to Cheek" dance in Top Hat, are in the "" section of The Beatles film Yellow Submarine (1968).

Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

Rogers's image is one of many famous women's images of the 1930s and 1940s featured on the bedroom wall in the in Amsterdam, a gallery of magazine cuttings pasted on the wall created by Anne and her sister Margot while hiding from the Nazis. When the house became a museum, the gallery the Frank sisters created was preserved under glass.

Anne Frank House

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.

[34]

The 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.

Dancing House

In the 1981 film , 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.

Pennies From Heaven

'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.[35]

Federico Fellini

Rogers was among the sixteen Golden Age Hollywood stars referenced in the bridge of 's 1990 single "Vogue".[36]

Madonna

Rogers is the namesake of the , a cocktail containing gin, ginger, and mint.[37][38][39]

Ginger Rogers

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 comic strip by Bob Thaves.[40]

Frank and Ernest

A about the life of Rogers, entitled Backwards in High Heels, premiered in Florida in early 2007.[41][42]

musical

List of actors with Academy Award nominations

List of dancers

Astaire, Fred (August 5, 2008). (reprint ed.). Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0061567568.

Steps in Time

(1977). The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book (reprint ed.). Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0394724768.

Croce, Arlene

Faris, Jocelyn (1994). . Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0313291777.

Ginger Rogers – a Bio-Bibliography

Hyam, Hannah (2007). Fred and Ginger – The Astaire-Rogers Partnership 1934–1938. Brighton: Pen Press Publications.  978-1-905621-96-5.

ISBN

(1986). Astaire Dancing – The Musical Films of Fred Astaire. Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 978-0241117491.

Mueller, John

Rogers, Ginger (1991). . Toronto: Harper Collins, Canada. ISBN 978-0060183080.

Ginger: My Story

at IMDb

Ginger Rogers

at the TCM Movie Database

Ginger Rogers

at the Internet Broadway Database

Ginger Rogers

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