Ginger Rogers
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Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did, ...backwards and in high heels.
—Frank and Ernest by Bob Thaves, 3 May 1982
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Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer. She is known for her performances in films and RKO's musical films in which she was partnered with Fred Astaire. She appeared on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.
She entered show business by way of a dance contest which launched a successful stage career, starting in Vaudeville and then making her way to Broadway in the 1930 production Girl Crazy. Broadway led first to a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures, followed by a longer tenure with Warner Bros, where she first caught the public eye in 1933's 42nd Street. During the 1930s she made ten films with Fred Astaire, including Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936), which permanently paired the two in the public memory.
After two films with Astaire in a row flopped, Rogers chose to branch out into comedies and Dramas, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1940 for her performance in the title role of Kitty Foyle. (Which incidentally started a fashion craze with the dress style named for her character and the film.) Throughout the 1940s she was one of the most successful actresses in Hollywood, and in 1942 was the highest-paid as well, but by the end of the decade her popularity began a decline. During the fifties she had difficulty finding roles, although she did appear in several noteworthy films, including 1950's Storm Warning (with Ronald Reagan and Doris Day), two films with Marilyn Monroe (Monkey Business with Cary Grant and We're Not Married!), Dream Boat, and Tight Spot with Edward G. Robinson.
In 1965, after a series of disappointing and unremarkable films, she returned to Broadway as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! Four years later she took the title role in Mame in the London production. Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the vast majority of Rogers' acting work was theatrical. From the 1950s onward, she also made occasional television appearances, ranging from game shows to anthology dramas. Some of her final performances as an actress were in three Aaron Spelling vehicles, The Love Boat (in 1979), Glitter (in 1984), and Hotel (1987, and her very last acting role). And in 1985 she fulfilled a long-standing dream by directing an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms.
A partial listing of Rogers' film roles includes
- Young Man of Manhattan (1930)
- 42nd Street (1933)
- Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
- 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)*
- Stage Door (1937)
- Carefree (1938)*
- The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939)*
- Kitty Foyle (1940)
- Chicago (1941)
- Tales of Manhattan (1942)
- The Major and the Minor (1942)
- Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
- Lady in the Dark (1944)
- I'll Be Seeing You (1944)
- Magnificent Doll (1946)
- The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)*
- Storm Warning (1951)
- We're Not Married! (1952)
- Monkey Business (1952)
- Dreamboat (1952)
- Black Widow (1954)
- Tight Spot (1955)
- Harlow (1965; her last film)
*Film with Fred Astaire
- Academy Award: For Best Actress, 1940, for the title role in Kitty Foyle.
- Beauty Mark: She had a rather large one on her jaw just below the left corner of her mouth.
- Billing Displacement: While Flying Down To Rio is now remembered as the first of the Astaire/Rogers movies, neither was the star of the picture; Dolores del Rio was. And Rogers had higher billing than Astaire. (It was her twentieth film and his second.)
- Busby Berkeley Number: Helped create some of the Trope Codifiers/Trope Namers in Gold Diggers of 1933.
- Catch Phrase: "Cigarette me, big boy", which briefly entered pop culture after audiences heard Rogers' character repeat it several times in 1930's Young Man of Manhattan.
- Dance Sensation: Her films with Astaire were famous for these: they introduced "The Carioca" in Flying Down To Rio, "The Continental" in The Gay Divorcee, "The Piccolino" in Top Hat, and "The Yam" in Carefree.
- Fluffy Fashion Feathers: She wore a feathered dress for the "Cheek To Cheek" number in Top Hat. (According to Fred Astaire, the feathers caused problems in filming by flying off everywhere during the dance.)
- Memetic Mutation: The Frank and Ernest strip quoted at the top of the page provided the title for her autobiography as well as that of a 2007 biographical musical about her -- both entitled Backwards and in High Heels. Not to mention hundreds of image macros which quote it.
- Pimped-Out Dress: In the film Lady in the Dark, she wears a dress with a mink skirt. She had to wear an altered version for a dance sequence in a later scene.
- Stage Names: Rogers's real name was Virginia Katherine McMath.
- Those Two Actors: Is eternally paired with Fred Astaire in the public mind and memory, even though they worked on only ten films together.
- Throw It In: She was goofing off during rehearsals of "We're in the Money" for Gold Diggers of 1933 and began singing it in Pig Latin. Studio executive Daryl F. Zanuck caught her at it, and suggested she do it for real in the film. And the rest, as they say, is istoryhay.
- Tom Hanks Syndrome: Remade herself into a dramatic actress in the 1940s, to the point where she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1940.
- You Say Tomato: Performed the Trope Namer with Astaire in Shall We Dance.
