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Biography

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was a legendary Academy Award-winning American actress and dancer. She is most remembered as Fred Astaire's romantic interest and dancing partner in a series of ten all-singing all-dancing Hollywood musicals, but her acting career spanned over thirty years.


Early Life
Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, the daughter of Eddins McMath, of Scottish ancestry and Lela Owens McMath, of Welsh ancestry. Her mother Lela separated from Ginger's father soon after she was born, and Lela and Ginger went to live with Lela's parents in nearby Kansas City.

Her parents became estranged and fought for custody of Ginger, with her father even going as far as taking Ginger without consent from Lela. After they divorced Ginger stayed with her grandparents, Walter and Saphrona Owens, while Lela wrote screenplays for two years in Hollywood. Several of Ginger's cousins had a hard time pronouncing her first name Virginia, they shortening it to "Ginga".

When Ginger was nine years old her mother remarried John Logan Rogers. Ginger took the name of Rogers, although never legally. They lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and Lela became a theater critic for a local newspaper, the Fort Worth Record.

As a teenager Ginger thought of teaching school, but with Lela's interest in Hollywood and the theater, young Ginger would get more and more exposure to the theater. Waiting for her mother in the wings of the Majestic Theater, Ginger began to sing and dance along to the performers on stage.


'Vaudeville'
Five years later her entertainment career was born one night when the traveling Vaudeville act of Eddie Foy (Bob Hope would play Foy in The Seven Little Foys) came to Fort Worth and needed a quick stand-in. She would enter and win a Charleston contest and then hit the road on a Vaudeville tour. She and Lela would tour for four years. During this time Lela divorced John Rogers, but kept his surname.

When Ginger was 17 she married Jack Culpepper, another dancer on the circuit. The marriage was over within months, and Ginger went back to touring with her mother. When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs and then her Broadway theater debut in a musical called Top Speed, which opened on Christmas Day, 1929.


Film Career
Her 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.

Within two weeks of opening in Top Speed she was hired to star in Girl Crazy by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with their choreography, and he briefly dated Ginger. Her appearance in Girl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19. In 1930 she was signed with Paramount Pictures for a seven-year contract.

Rogers would soon get herself out of the Paramount contract and head with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé, three forgettable pictures. After getting bit parts for singing and dancing for most of 1932, in 1933 she made her screen break-through in 42nd Street with Warner Brothers.

She would then make a couple more forgettable films with RKO. But in the second of those, Flying Down to Rio, she again met up with Fred Astaire. In 1939, she played opposite David Niven in Bachelor Mother.


Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" from Roberta (1935): RKO publicity still[edit]
Years With Fred Astaire
Ginger Rogers was of course most famous for her partnership with Fred Astaire. Together, they made such films as Top Hat and Swing Time, films which are weak on storyline but showcased Fred and Ginger's dancing. Of their partnership, Katharine Hepburn said, "She gives him sex, he gives her class." Despite their onscreen chemistry, the two were not friends offstage, and their last film was in 1939. Nevertheless, "Fred and Ginger" has become almost an automatic reference for any successful dancer partnership.

In 1941 Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her starring role in 1940's Kitty Foyle. In 1940 she purchased a 1000-acre ranch between Shady Cove, Oregon and Eagle Point, Oregon, along the Rogue River, just north of Medford.

The ranch, named the 4-R's (for Rogers' Rogue River Ranch), is where she would live, along with her mother, when not doing her Hollywood business, for 50 years. The ranch was also a dairy, and would supply milk for the war effort during World War II, to Camp White. Rogers loved to fish the Rogue every summer. She sold the ranch in 1990, and moved to Medford.

She was a right-wing Republican politically, and lived for much of her life with her mother, Lela Rogers (1891–1977), a Christian Scientist (like Ginger) who was a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, movie producer, one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps, and a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Ginger's mother "named names" to the HUAC, and both mother and daughter were staunchly anti-Communist. This extremely close mother-daughter relationship — Ginger's mother even denied Ginger's father visitation rights after their divorce — has been proffered to explain, in part, Rogers's history of marital disappointments and childlessness.

After her first marriage (to her dancing partner Jack Pepper; real name Edward Jackson Culpepper; on March 29, 1929; they divorced in 1931, having separated soon after the wedding), in 1934, she married her second husband, actor Lew Ayres (1908–1996); they separated quickly and were divorced in 1941. In 1943, she married her third husband, Jack Briggs, a Marine; they divorced in 1949.

In 1953, she married her fourth husband, lawyer Jacques Bergerac (16 years her junior, he became an actor and then a cosmetics company executive); they divorced in 1957 and he soon remarried actress Dorothy Malone. In 1961, she married her fifth husband, director and producer William Marshall, but separated from him within weeks of their marriage, eventually divorcing him in 1969.

Ginger was good friends with Lucille Ball for many years until Ball's death in 1989, at the age of 77. Lucy did not seem to share Ginger's political views, but evidently still enjoyed her company, as did Bette Davis, a Democrat who definitely did not share Ginger's views and called her a "moralist", but still professed to enjoying Ginger's company.

Ginger Rogers was a cousin of Rita Hayworth, and also to actress Phyllis Fraser (later known in NYC as Phyllis Cerf), whose acting career was brief.

Ginger would spend the winters in Rancho Mirage, California, and the summers in Medford, Oregon. Ginger Rogers died on April 25, 1995, of complications from diabetes, at the age of 83, in Rancho Mirage, California, and was interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

The Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater in Medford, Oregon is named in her honor.

Filmography

  "Hotel"
... aka Arthur Hailey's Hotel
- Hail and Farewell (1987) TV Episode .... Natalie Trent
"Glitter"
- In Tennis, Love Means Nothing (1984) TV Episode
Glitter (1984) (TV)

"The Love Boat"
- The Critical Success/Love Lamp Is Lit, The/Take My Boy Friend, Please/Rent a Family/Man in Her Life: Part 1 (1979) TV Episode .... Stella Logan
- The Critical Success/Love Lamp Is Lit, The/Take My Boy Friend, Please/Rent a Family/Man in Her Life: Part 2 (1979) TV Episode .... Stella Logan

"The Bell Telephone Hour"
- Salute to Jerome Kern (1965) TV Episode .... Hostess
- Shakespeare's 400th Anniversary (1964) TV Episode .... Hostess
- The Songs of Irving Berlin (1962) TV Episode .... Hostess
Harlow (1965/II) .... Mama Jean Bello
"Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre"
... aka The Chrysler Theater
... aka Universal Star Time (syndication title)
- Terror Island (1965) TV Episode .... Helen
Cinderella (1965) (TV) .... Queen
... aka Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (USA: complete title)
The Confession (1964) .... Madame Rinaldi
... aka Quick, Let's Get Married (UK: TV title)
... aka Seven Different Ways
"Vacation Playhouse"
- Love Affair Just for Three (1963) TV Episode .... Elizabeth Harcourt/Margaret Harcourt
"Zane Grey Theater"
... aka Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater (USA: complete title)
... aka The Westerners (USA: rerun title)
- Never Too Late (1960) TV Episode .... Angie Cartwright

"The DuPont Show with June Allyson"
... aka The June Allyson Show
- The Tender Shoot (1959) TV Episode .... Kay Neilson
Oh, Men! Oh, Women! (1957) .... Mildred Turner
Teenage Rebel (1956) .... Nancy Fallon
The First Traveling Saleslady (1956) .... Miss Rose Gillray, Gillray Corset Co.
Tight Spot (1955) .... Sherry Conley
Beautiful Stranger (1954) .... 'Johnny' Victor
... aka Twist of Fate (USA)
Black Widow (1954) .... Carlotta 'Lottie' Marin
"Producers' Showcase"
- Tonight at 8:30 (1954) TV Episode .... (segment Red Peppers) (segment Still Life) (segment Shadow Play)
Forever Female (1953) .... Beatrice Page
Monkey Business (1952) .... Mrs. Edwina Fulton
... aka Be Your Age
... aka Howard Hawks' Monkey Business (USA: complete title)
Dreamboat (1952) .... Gloria Marlowe
We're Not Married! (1952) .... Ramona Gladwyn
The Groom Wore Spurs (1951) .... Abigail Jane 'A.J.' Furnival
Storm Warning (1951) .... Marsha Mitchell
Perfect Strangers (1950) .... Theresa (Terry) Scott
... aka Too Dangerous to Love (UK)

The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) .... Dinah Barkley
It Had to Be You (1947) .... Victoria Stafford
Magnificent Doll (1946) .... Dolly Payne Madison
Heartbeat (1946) .... Arlette Lafron
Week-End at the Waldorf (1945) .... Irene Malvern
I'll Be Seeing You (1944) .... Mary Marshall
Lady in the Dark (1944) .... Liza Elliott aka Boss Lady
Tender Comrade (1943) .... Jo Jones
Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) .... Katie O'Hara Von Luber, aka Katherine Butt-Smith
The Major and the Minor (1942) .... Susan Kathleen 'Su-Su' Applegate
Tales of Manhattan (1942) .... Diane
Roxie Hart (1942) .... Roxie Hart
Tom Dick and Harry (1941) .... Janie
Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940) .... Katherine 'Kitty' Foyle
... aka Kitty Foyle (USA: short title)
Lucky Partners (1940) .... Jean Newton
Primrose Path (1940) .... Ellie May Adams

5th Ave Girl (1939) .... Mary Grey
Bachelor Mother (1939) .... Polly Parrish
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) .... Irene Castle nee Foote
Carefree (1938) .... Amanda Cooper
Having Wonderful Time (1938) .... Thelma 'Teddy' Shaw
... aka Having a Wonderful Time
Vivacious Lady (1938) .... Francey
Stage Door (1937) .... Jean Maitland
Shall We Dance (1937) .... Linda Keene
Swing Time (1936) .... Penelope 'Penny' Carroll
Follow the Fleet (1936) .... Sherry Martin
In Person (1935) .... Carol Corliss, aka Clara Colfax
Top Hat (1935) .... Dale Tremont
Star of Midnight (1935) .... Donna Mantin
Roberta (1935) .... Comtesse Scharwenka
Romance in Manhattan (1935) .... Sylvia Dennis
The Gay Divorcee (1934) .... Mimi Glossop
... aka The Gay Divorce (UK)
Change of Heart (1934) .... Madge Rountree
Finishing School (1934) .... Cecilia Ferris
Upperworld (1934) .... Lilly Linda
Twenty Million Sweethearts (1934) .... Peggy Cornell
Flying Down to Rio (1933) .... Honey Hale
Sitting Pretty (1933) .... Dorothy
Chance at Heaven (1933) .... Marjorie 'Marje'/'Mug' Harris
Rafter Romance (1933) .... Mary Carroll
A Shriek in the Night (1933) .... Pat Morgan
Don't Bet on Love (1933) .... Molly Gilbert
Professional Sweetheart (1933) .... Glory Eden
... aka Imaginary Sweetheart
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933) .... Fay Fortune
Broadway Bad (1933) .... Flip Daly
... aka Her Reputation (UK)
42nd Street (1933) .... Anytime Annie
You Said a Mouthful (1932) .... Alice Brandon
Hat Check Girl (1932) .... Jessie King
... aka Embassy Girl (UK)
The Thirteenth Guest (1932) .... Lela/Marie Morgan
... aka Lady Beware
The Tenderfoot (1932) .... Ruth Weston
Carnival Boat (1932) .... Honey
Suicide Fleet (1931) .... Sally
The Tip-Off (1931) .... Baby Face
... aka Looking for Trouble (UK)
... aka The Tip Off (USA: poster title)
Honor Among Lovers (1931) .... Doris Brown
Follow the Leader (1930) .... Mary Brennan
... aka Manhattan Mary (USA)
Office Blues (1930) .... Miss Gravis
Queen High (1930) .... Polly Rockwell
The Sap from Syracuse (1930) .... Ellen Saunders
... aka The Sap from Abroad
Young Man of Manhattan (1930) .... Puff Randolph
A Night in a Dormitory (1930) .... Ginger

A Day of a Man of Affairs (1929)
Campus Sweethearts (1929)



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