Ginger Rogers (bornVirginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer during theGolden Age of Hollywood. She won anAcademy Award for Best Actress for her starring role inKitty Foyle (1940), and performed during the 1930s inRKO'smusical films withFred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century.
Rogers was born inIndependence, Missouri, and raised inKansas City. She and her family moved toFort Worth, Texas, when she was nine years old. In 1925, she won a Charleston dance contest[1] that helped her launch a successfulvaudeville career. After that, she gained recognition as aBroadway actress for her stage debut inGirl Crazy. This led to a contract withParamount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film roles as a supporting actress in42nd Street (1933) andGold Diggers of 1933 (1933).
In the 1930s, Rogers's nine films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre and gaveRKO Pictures some of its biggest successes:The Gay Divorcee (1934),Top Hat (1935) andSwing Time (1936). But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she turned her focus to dramatic andcomedy films. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences in films such asStage Door (1937),Vivacious Lady (1938),Bachelor Mother (1939),Primrose Path (1940),Kitty Foyle (1940),The Major and the Minor (1942) andI'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 successfulThe Barkleys of Broadway. She starred in the successful comedyMonkey Business (1952) and was critically lauded for her performance inTight Spot (1955) before entering an unsuccessful period of filmmaking in the mid-1950s, and returned to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role inHello, Dolly! More Broadway roles followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 of an off-Broadway production ofBabes in Arms. She continued to act, making television appearances until 1987, and wrote an autobiographyGinger: My Story which was published in 1991. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at theKennedy Center Honors. She died of natural causes in 1995, at age 83.
During her long career, Rogers made 73 films. In 1999, she ranks number 14 on theAFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema.
100 W Moore St., Independence, Missouri, the birthplace of Rogers
Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath on July 16, 1911 inIndependence, Missouri,[2] the only child ofLela Emogene Owens, a newspaper reporter, and William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer.[3][4] Her maternal grandparents were Wilma Saphrona (née Ball) and Walter Winfield Owens.[5] She was of Scottish, Welsh, and English ancestry.[6] Her mother gave birth to Ginger at home, having lost a previous child in a hospital.[7] Rogers was raised aChristian Scientist and remained a lifelong adherent.[8]
Her parents separated shortly after she was born.[9] After unsuccessfully trying to reunite with his family, McMath kidnapped his daughter twice, and her mother divorced him soon thereafter.[10][11] Rogers said that she never saw her natural father again.[12] In 1915, she was left with her grandparents, who lived in nearbyKansas City, while her mother made a trip toHollywood in an effort to get an essay she had written made into a film.[13] Lela succeeded and continued to write scripts for Fox Studios.[14]
One of Rogers's young cousins had a hard time pronouncing "Virginia", giving her the nickname "Ginger".[15]
When Rogers was nine years old, her mother married John Logan Rogers, whose surname she took.[16] The family moved toFort Worth, Texas, where her mother became a theater critic for a local newspaper.[17] Rogers attended, but did not graduate from, Fort Worth'sCentral High School.
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 Ft. Worth's Majestic Theatre, she began to sing and dance along with the performers on stage.[18]
Rogers's entertainment career began when the travelingvaudeville act ofEddie Foy came to Fort Worth and needed a quick stand-in. In 1925 the 14-year-old entered and won aCharleston dance contest; the prize allowed her to tour as Ginger Rogers and the Redheads for six months on theOrpheum Circuit.[19][20] In 1926, the group performed at an 18-month-old theater calledThe Craterian inMedford, Oregon. This theater honored her years later by changing its name to the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.[21] When the M.G.M filmThe Barrier premiered inSan Bernardino, California, in February 1926, Rogers's vaudeville act was featured. The local newspaper commented, "Clever little Ginger Rogers showed why she won the Texas state championship as a Charleston dancer."[22]
At 17, Rogers married Jack Culpepper, a singer/dancer/comedian/recording artist of the day who worked under the nameJack Pepper (according to Ginger's autobiography andLife magazine, she knew Culpepper when she was a child, as her cousin's boyfriend).[20] 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.[20] When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs. She made her Broadway debut in the musicalTop Speed, which opened atChanin's 46th Street Theatre onChristmas Day, 1929[23] following the musical's premiere in Philadelphia at theChestnut Street Opera House on November 13, 1929.[24]
Within two weeks of the New York opening ofTop Speed, Rogers was chosen to star on Broadway inGirl Crazy byGeorge Gershwin andIra Gershwin. Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with their choreography. Her appearance inGirl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19.[25]
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, andCampus 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 atAstoria Studios inAstoria, Queens—and moved with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal withPathé Exchange. Two of her pictures at Pathé wereSuicide Fleet (1931) andCarnival Boat (1932) in which she played opposite futureHopalong Cassidy starWilliam Boyd. Rogers also made feature films for Warner Bros., Monogram, and Fox in 1932, and was named one of 15WAMPAS Baby Stars. She then made a significant breakthrough as Anytime Annie in theWarner Bros. film42nd Street (1933). She went on to make a series of films at Warner Bros., most notably inGold Diggers of 1933, in which her solo, "We're in the Money", included a memorable verse inPig Latin. She then moved toRKO Studios, was put under contract and with Astaire started work onFlying Down to Rio, a picture starringDolores del Río andGene Raymond. Rogers and Astaire "stole the show",[26][27][28] an industry term for outshining the billed stars.
Rogers was known for her partnership withFred 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), andThe 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 wasCole 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 ofThe Barkleys of Broadway.[citation needed]
Arlene Croce,Hermes Pan, Hannah Hyam, andJohn 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]
Although the dance routines were choreographed by Astaire and his collaboratorHermes Pan, both have testified to her consummate professionalism, even during periods of intense strain, as she tried to juggle her many other contractual film commitments with the punishing rehearsal schedules of Astaire, who made at most two films in any one year. In 1986, shortly before his death, Astaire remarked, "All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it, but of course they could. So they always cried. All except Ginger. No, no, Ginger never cried".[29]
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".[30]
According to Raymond Rohauer, curator at the New York Gallery of Modern Art, Astaire gave Rogers this salute: "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."[31]
In a 1976 episode of the popular British talk-showParkinson (Season 5, Episode 24), hostMichael Parkinson asked Astaire who his favorite dancing partner was. Astaire answered, "Excuse me, I must say Ginger was certainly the one. You know, the most effective partner I ever had. Everyone knows."[32]
After 15 months apart and with RKO facing bankruptcy, the studio paired Fred and Ginger for another movie titledCarefree, but it lost money. Next cameThe 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 greater than regular features, continued to increase at a much faster rate than admissions.[citation needed]
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, oppositeKatharine Hepburn. Successful comedies includedVivacious Lady (1938) withJames Stewart,Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), where she played an out-of-work girl sucked into the lives of a wealthy family, andBachelor Mother (1939), withDavid Niven, in which she played a shop girl who is falsely thought to have abandoned her baby.[33]
In 1934, Rogers suedSylvia 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.[34]
On March 5, 1939, Rogers starred in "Single Party Going East", an episode ofSilver Theater onCBS radio.[35]
Atrailer forKitty Foyle depicting Rogers' cover appearance onLife magazine for her Oscar-winning 1940 role
In 1941 Rogers won theAcademy Award for Best Actress for her role in 1940'sKitty Foyle. She enjoyed considerable success during the early 1940s, and was RKO's hottest property during this period. InRoxie Hart (1942), based on the same play which later served as the template for the musicalChicago, 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 melodramaPrimrose Path (1940), directed byGregory La Cava, she plays a character attempting to conceal being a prostitute's daughter being pressured into following the fate of her mother and grandmother. Further highlights of this period includedTom, Dick, and Harry, a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men;I'll Be Seeing You (1944), withJoseph Cotten; andBilly Wilder's first Hollywood feature film:The Major and the Minor (1942), in which she played a down-on-her-luck woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket home and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse at a military academy. Rogers' mother, Lela, played her mother in the film.
After becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, includingTender Comrade (1943),Lady in the Dark (1944), andWeek-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 inThe Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, when Judy Garland was unable to appear in the role that was to have reunited her with herEaster Parade co-star.
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 inStorm Warning (1950) withRonald Reagan andDoris Day, a noir, anti-Ku Klux Klan film by Warner Bros. In 1952 Rogers starred in two comedies featuringMarilyn Monroe,Monkey Business withCary Grant, directed byHoward Hawks, andWe're Not Married!. She followed those with a role inDreamboat alongsideClifton Webb, as his former onscreen partner in silent films who wanted to renew their association on television. She played the female lead inTight Spot (1955), a mystery thriller, withEdward G. Robinson. After a series of unremarkable films, she scored a great popular success on Broadway in 1965, playingDolly Levi in the long-runningHello, Dolly![36]
In later life, Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire; she presented him with a specialAcademy Award in 1950, and they were copresenters of individual Academy Awards in 1967, during which they elicited a standing ovation when they came on stage in an impromptu dance. In 1969, she had the lead role in another long-running popular production,Mame, from the book byJerome Lawrence andRobert Edwin Lee, with music and lyrics byJerry Herman, at theTheatre Royal Drury Lane in theWest End ofLondon, arriving for the role on the linerQueen Elizabeth 2 from New York City. Her docking there occasioned the maximum of pomp and ceremony atSouthampton. She became the highest-paid performer in the history of the West End up to that time. The production ran for 14 months and featured a royal command performance forQueen Elizabeth II.[37]
From the 1950s onward, Rogers made occasional appearances on television, even substituting for a vacationingHal March onThe $64,000 Question. In the later years of her career, she made guest appearances in three different series byAaron Spelling:The Love Boat (1979),Glitter (1984), andHotel (1987), which was her final screen appearance as an actress. In 1985, Rogers fulfilled a long-standing wish to direct when she directed the musicalBabes in Arms off-Broadway inTarrytown, New York, at 74 years old. It was produced by Michael Lipton and Robert Kennedy of Kennedy Lipton Productions. The production starred Broadway talents Donna Theodore, Carleton Carpenter, James Brennan,Randy Skinner,Karen Ziemba, Dwight Edwards, and Kim Morgan. It is also noted in her autobiographyGinger, My Story.[38]
The city ofIndependence, Missouri designated the birthplace of Ginger Rogers a Historic Landmark property in 1994. That July 16, Ginger and her secretary, Roberta Olden, attended a “Ginger Rogers' Day” celebration presented by the city. The affixed a plaque to the building Rogers signed over 2,000 autographs at one of her last public appearances.
The home was purchased in 2016 by Three Trails Cottages, which restored, then transformed it into a museum dedicated to Ginger Rogers and her mother Lela. Open seasonally until 2019, it contained memorabilia, magazines, movie posters, and many items from the ranch the pair owned, and hosted numerous events.[40]
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 theCraterian 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.[41]
Rogers married and divorced five times and had no children.[42][43]
On March 29, 1929, Rogers married for the first time at age 17 to her dancing partnerJack Pepper (real name Edward Jackson Culpepper).[44] They divorced in 1931, having separated soon after the wedding. Rogers datedMervyn LeRoy in 1932, but they ended the relationship and remained friends until his death in 1987. In 1934, she married actorLew Ayres.[44][45] 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 1948.[45] In 1953, she marriedJacques 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.[45] They divorced in 1957.[45] Her fifth and final husband was director and producerWilliam 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.[46]
Rogers, an only child, remained close to her mother, Lela Rogers, throughout her life.[47][48] Lela 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.[49]
Rogers was lifelong friends with actressesLucille Ball andBette Davis. She appeared with Ball in an episode ofHere's Lucy on November 22, 1971, in which Rogers danced theCharleston 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'sFinishing School (1934). Rogers maintained a close friendship with her cousin, writer/socialitePhyllis Fraser, the wife ofRandom House publisherBennett Cerf.Rita Hayworth's maternal uncle,Vinton Hayworth, was married to Rogers's maternal aunt, Jean Owens.
Rogers was raised a Christian Scientist and remained a lifelong adherent.[8]Christian Science was a topic she discussed at length in her autobiography.[53]
Rogers was a talented tennis player, and won the Texas State Charleston Championship in 1926.[54] She later entered the 1950US Open. However, she andFrank Shields were knocked out of the mixed doubles competition in the first round.[55]
Rogers's image is one of many famous women's images of the 1930s and 1940s featured on the bedroom wall in theAnne Frank House inAmsterdam, a gallery of magazine cuttings pasted on the wall created byAnne and her sisterMargot while hiding from theNazis. 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.[58]
In the 1981 filmPennies from Heaven,Bernadette Peters's character dances withSteve Martin's as they watch Fred and Ginger's "Let's Face the Music and Dance" sequence from 1936'sFollow the Fleet, using it as their inspiration.
Federico Fellini's filmGinger 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. According to the judgment, the film only obliquely related to Astaire and her.[59]
Rogers was among the sixteen Golden Age Hollywood stars referenced in the bridge ofMadonna's 1990 single "Vogue".[60]
Rogers is the namesake of theGinger Rogers, a cocktail containing gin, ginger, and mint.[61][62][63]
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 1982Frank and Ernestcomic strip byBob Thaves.[64]
Amusical about the life of Rogers, entitledBackwards in High Heels, premiered in Florida in early 2007.[65][66]
^"World Premiere of Picture Viewed by Thousands Here - 'The Barrier' Voted Mighty Spectacle, Vaudeville Fine,"The San Bernardino Daily Sun, Monday 1 March 1926, Volume LVIII, Number 1, page 6.
^Friedman, Drew (May 3, 2017)."Flashback: Meeting Ginger Rogers".Leonard Maltin's Movie Crazy.Archived from the original on February 6, 2026.{{cite web}}:|archive-date= /|archive-url= timestamp mismatch; February 7, 2026 suggested (help)
Ellrod, J. D. (2024).The Stars of Hollywood Remembered: Career Biographies of 82 Actors and Actresses of the Golden Era, 1920s-1950s. Jefferson, North Carolina:McFarland & Company.ISBN978-1-476-60783-2.
Hyam, Hannah (2007).Fred and Ginger – The Astaire-Rogers Partnership 1934–1938. Brighton: Pen Press Publications.ISBN978-1-905621-96-5.
Kendall, Elizabeth (2002).The Runaway Bride: Hollywood Romantic Comedy of the 1930s. New York City, New York: Cooper Square Press.ISBN978-0-815-41199-4.
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