Ginger Rogers 1911 -1995 ….from vaudeville to Hollywood one dance step at a time!

She was born Virginia Katherine McMath on July 16th, 1911 in Independence, Missouri, the second child of W. Eddins and Lela Owens McMath. The couple had lost their first child due to a birth accident and Lela, a devout Christian Scientist, blamed both the doctor and her husband for the tragedy. Soon after she found out she was pregnant again, Eddin accepted a job with a railroad in Ennis, Texas. But Lela wanted out of the marriage and refused to go with him. She stayed behind in Independence where she worked as a secretary before and after Virginia’s birth. However Eddins wanted his family back and even tried to “kidnap” his daughter on two occasions. But Lela continued the divorce action and Eddins was denied visitation rights. He died ten years later with little contact with his daughter.

When Virginia was 5, Lela left her in Kansas City with her maternal grandparents and went off to Hollywood to write scripts for silent films. Virginia (now nicknamed Ginger) was separated from her mother for about a year before joining her in New York City . But when Lela joined the Marine Corps. Publicity staff, Ginger went back home. Lela returned there in 1921 and soon after married insurance broker, John Logan Rogers who legally adopted Ginger and gave her the surname she would use the rest of her life. They moved to Fort Worth, Texas where Lela made sure Ginger was exposed to theater and dance and where, at 14, Ginger joined Eddie Foy, Jr. as a dancer in his vaudeville act.

Soon Lela and Ginger were touring the Paramount/Publix vaudeville circuit with Lela collecting 20% as Ginger’s manager and also writing material for the act. Ginger sang, danced and did recitations (often in the baby talk she later worked into many of her screen roles). In 1929, while on a 3-week break in New Orleans, Ginger met up with Jack Culpepper, a vaudeville hoofer (known as Jack Pepper) she knew from Texas and married him. Mama Lela packed up in a huff and left for home. The newlyweds went on the road together in an act they called “Ginger and Pepper”. But the marriage lasted only 10 months and a disillusioned Ginger went back on the road alone. When she called home she found out Lela was also getting a divorce from Daddy John. Husbands were becoming an endangered species!

Back in New York, vaudeville led to 3-reel films and then to Broadway. A role in “Top Speed” led to a screen test at Paramount. In the chorus of “Top Speed” Ginger met a dancer by the name of Hermes Pan who would later become her rehearsal director at RKO. After that show ended, Ginger went into the cast of George Gershwin’s” Girl Crazy” where she earned $1,000 a week playing Molly Gray, a postmistress out West. One day, during rehearsals, a friend of the dance director stopped by to take a look at the dance routines. It was Ginger’s first meeting with Fred Astaire! The show ran for 272 performances and when it closed in June, 1931, Ginger and Lela headed for Hollywood.

Ginger spent the next 5 five years making one film after another but they were mainly programmers or B films. Two bright spots…her role of Anytime Annie in “42 nd Street” (1933) and “Gold Diggers of 1933” where she did the song “We’re in the Money “ in pig latin dressed in gold coins. Then, on the set of “Don’t Bet on Love” she met handsome Lew Ayres and romance blossomed. Mama Lela didn’t seem to mind this time because she was busy convincing RKO to put Ginger on a long term contract. They agreed to 7 years and put Ginger right to work. The film was “Flying Down To Rio” with Gene Raymond (replacing Joel McCrea), Dolores Del Rio and Fred Astaire! It was the beginning of something big!

Ginger married Lew Ayres but the marriage lasted less than two years before they separated and Ginger moved back home with Lela. She blamed the break-up on Lew’s penchant for Hollywood parties and his prenuptial agreement (what’s yours is yours and what’s mine is mine) and Lew blamed it on her mother.

Before “Flying Down to Rio” was even released the buzz had begun. Ginger went immediately into four more films and Fred was off to Broadway to do a Cole Porter play. But audiences were howling for more Fred and Ginger so, as soon as Fred got back (with the Cole Porter play revamped as “The Gay Divorcee”) the studio put the pair to work. Then they followed it up soon afterward with “Roberta”. The team was in the big time….and the box office receipts made RKO solvent again. Fred and Ginger went on to make 9 films together before they broke up as a team and went on to solo projects.

1942 was a banner year for Ginger who had four films in release and a new 1000 acre ranch on the lovely Rogue River in Oregon. She also had a new man, a young marine who she had met while on a USO tour. Ginger married Jack Briggs on January 16 th, 1943. Ginger was in the middle for filming “Lady in the Dark” at the time and her leading man, Ray Milland was quite annoyed when the picture was interrupted for her wedding. The film got mixed reviews which didn’t improve his mood very much.

In 1948, when Judy Garland became too ill to play opposite Fred Astaire in “The Barkleys of Broadway” MGM called on Ginger to replace her. The old magic was still there but it was the last film they would do together. Ginger’s career was on the descent and beginning to look a little like one of her marriages…some good times but a lot of duds. Even a return to Broadway for Louis Verneuil’s “Love and Let Love” in 1951 fell a little flat, not because of Ginger’s performance but its tiresome plot. The marriage to Jack Briggs also ended in 1949 when Jack, unable to gain a foothold in the industry, began drinking (Ginger abhorred alcohol). She claimed that he had no head for business….he said nothing. But after the divorce, Jack Briggs became a very successful businessman.

While on a tour of France, Ginger met young lawyer Jacques Bergerac and decided to try marriage a fourth time. She was 42 and Bergerac was 26 when they tied the knot on February 7 th, 1953. Ginger was convinced the handsome Frenchman would go far in the movies and wangled a screen test for him at MGM. But, in her own career, Ginger continued to see films that would have normally been hers going to younger actresses. On the other hand, she kept turning down roles that that gave other stars box office bonanzas. By 1957, the well was dry. Ginger decided to go back on the road with a cabaret act but also continued her guest spots on television. Her marriage broke up as well. Ginger claimed Jacques was unfaithful. He later told friends that he just couldn’t stand her squeaky clean lifestyle (Ginger’s idea of a Hollywood party was ice cream sodas on the patio).

In 1960 Ginger finally got her chance to do “Annie Get Your Gun” for a 5-city tour on the summer theater circuit (she had wanted to do the film role when Judy Garland was replaced but it was given to Betty Hutton). She also met the man who would become her fifth husband, actor William Marshall. Ginger felt she now had a family man who shared her views about Hollywood and some of the town’s decadent ways. Marshall told her that he could live without alcohol (he lied) and they were married on March 16 th, 1961.

Ginger continued doing stage and television work. She was reunited with “Weekend at the Waldorf” costar Walter Pidgeon in the television version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” but when the two of them danced in the ballroom scene, the cameras cut away. Could it be that Walter had two left feet? Ginger also made her last film as Mama Jean in “Harlow” (she should have stayed home and passed on this one). In 1965 she replaced Carol Channing in the Broadway run of “Hello, Dolly”. It lasted 18 months and Ginger was the toast of the town. In 1968 she even did a few twirls with Fred for the 1968 Oscar telecast and, in 1969, she took on the role of “Mame” for the London stage. She also divorced William Marshall. It seems he was selling her jewelry to pay off debts and using her Rolls Royce to squire a paramour around town!

By the 1970s Ginger was busy in a score of television guest spots and acting as a fashion consultant for J. C. Penney. She created “The Ginger Rogers Show” to take on the road and commissioned Jean Louis to design the costumes (this was one thing Ginger never could get right). In May, 1977 Lela Rogers died at 85 ending the long stage-mother/daughter teaming. But Ginger continued to work until declining health confined her to a wheel chair. She finished her autobiography “Ginger: My Story” in 1991.

Ginger Rogers died of natural causes on April 25 th, 1995 at the age of 83. She was buried in Oakwood Memorial Cemetery beside her mother and not far from her old dancing partner, Fred Astaire.

Filmography