Ginger Rogers

Her mother did not wait for Hollywood to come to Missouri. Lela Owens McMath was a newspaper reporter in Independence when Virginia Katherine McMath was born there in 1911, and by 1916 she was writing scripts in Hollywood, one of the few women with that job. She managed her daughter's career for the rest of her life, including the contracts with RKO. Ginger won a Charleston contest in Fort Worth in 1925, at 14, and the prize was six months of vaudeville on the Orpheum Circuit. She was 19 when Girl Crazy opened on Broadway with a Gershwin score and a chorus coach named Fred Astaire. It made her a star overnight.

Between 1933 and 1939 she made nine musicals with Fred Astaire at RKO — Top Hat, Swing Time, Follow the Fleet — and a tenth, The Barkleys of Broadway, a decade later. Astaire built the steps. Rogers was the one who could act, and the dances worked because she gave them a dramatic reason to happen. The move into straight drama was deliberate and began before the partnership ended. In February 1941 she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle, beating Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, and by the mid-1940s she was the highest-paid performer in Hollywood.

The last routine in Swing Time, "Never Gonna Dance," took 47 takes in a single day before Astaire was satisfied. Rogers finished it with her feet bruised and bleeding. Astaire said years later that every partner he ever danced with cried at some point, all except Ginger. She was a lifelong Republican who opposed Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal and campaigned for Thomas Dewey, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Her mother Lela helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and testified as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947, naming the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. A committee investigator told the same hearings that Rogers had refused to speak a line from Trumbo's Tender Comrade — share and share alike, that's democracy — because she thought it Communist.

She made 73 films. When the parts thinned in the 1950s she went back to the stage, playing Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway in 1965 and Mame in London four years later. She directed off-Broadway at 74 and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 1992. She died of a heart attack at her home in Rancho Mirage, California, on April 25, 1995. Dance writers now credit her with more of the partnership than she once got: the acting inside the dancing was hers. And the line everyone quotes, that she did everything Astaire did backwards and in high heels, was neither hers nor Ann Richards's. Bob Thaves wrote it in a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon.

Ginger Rogers's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Flying Down to Rio film
  First pairing with Fred Astaire — the two stole the picture from its billed stars 1933
• Top Hat film
  The most profitable of the RKO Astaire-Rogers musicals 1935
• Swing Time film
  National Film Registry — the "Never Gonna Dance" finale took 47 takes in a day 1936
• Stage Door film
  Straight drama opposite Katharine Hepburn, and the proof she could carry it 1937
• Kitty Foyle film
  The Academy Award for Best Actress 1940
• The Major and the Minor film
  Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature as director — her mother Lela played her mother 1942

• July 16, 1911 aged 0 Born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri Her mother, a newspaper reporter, delivered her at home.
• 1925 aged ~14 Wins a Charleston contest in Fort Worth at 14 The prize was six months on the Orpheum Circuit as Ginger Rogers and the Redheads.
• 1930 aged ~19 Stars on Broadway in the Gershwins' Girl Crazy at 19 Fred Astaire was hired to coach the dancers. The show made her a name.
• 1933 aged ~22 Paired with Astaire for the first time in Flying Down to Rio
• 1936 aged ~25 Finishes the Never Gonna Dance number in Swing Time with her feet bleeding 47 takes in one day, before Astaire was satisfied.
• February 27, 1941 aged 29 Wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle Over Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis.
• October 24, 1947 aged 36 Her mother Lela testifies as a friendly witness before HUAC Lela Rogers named Dalton Trumbo and called Tender Comrade Communist propaganda.
• 1965 aged ~54 Takes over as Dolly Levi in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway
• April 25, 1995 aged 83 Dies of a heart attack at her home in Rancho Mirage, California She was 83, and was interred beside her mother in Chatsworth.

• Fred Astaire 1899–1987
  Made dance work on film by winning control of how it was shot. danced with
• Katharine Hepburn 1907–2003
  Four-time Oscar-winning actress whose independent spirit and wit made her a screen legend. co-starred with
• Bette Davis 1908–1989
  Studio-era actress who won two Academy Awards and fought Warner Bros. over contract terms. friend
• James Stewart 1908–1997
  The everyman of American movies, and a combat bomber pilot who rarely mentioned it. co-starred with
• Cary Grant 1904–1986
  The definitive Hollywood leading man, and one of the first stars to break the studio contract system. co-starred with