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Ginger Rogers, (July 16 1911 - April 25 1995), was
a legendary United States|American actor|actress
and dancer. 

Born Virginia Katherine McMath, in Independence,
Missouri, the daughter of Eddins McMath and Lela
Owens McMath. He mother Lela separated from
Ginger's father soon after she was born, Lela and
Ginger went to live with her maternal grandparents
in nearby Kansas City, Missouri|Kansas City. Her
parents became estranged, and fought for custody
of Ginger, 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 cousin had a hard time pronouncing her
first name Virginia, they shortened it to "Ginga".


When Ginger was nine-years-old her mother
remarried, to 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 in the wings of
the Majestic Theater, for her mother, Rogers began
to sing and dance along to the performers on
stage.

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 Ft. Worth and needed a quick
stand-in. She would enter and win a Charleston
contest and then hit the road on a Vaudeville
tour. Her and Lela would tour for four years.
During this time Lela divorced John Rogers. 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, December 25, 1929. Within two weeks of
opening in Top Speed she was hired to star in Girl
Crazy by George Gershwin|George and Ira Gershwin.
Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with
their choreography. 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.  

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. Her
first 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. In 1939,
she played opposite David Niven in Bachelor
Mother.

In 1940 Ginger Rogers won the Academy Award for
Best Actress, for her starring role in Kitty
Foyle. That same year she purchased a 1000-acre
ranch between Shady Cove, Oregon|Shady Cove and
Eagle Point, Oregon|Eagle Point, in Oregon, along
the Rouge River, just north of Medford,
Oregon|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 in Rogue every summer. She sold the
ranch in 1990, and moved into Medford.

She was a right-wing United States Republican
Party|Republican politically, and lived for much
of her life with her mother, Lela Owens McMath
Rogers (1891–1977), a Christian
Science|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 virulently
"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 United States Marine
Corps|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, although Ball did not necessarily share
Ginger's extreme political views. In fact, Ball
had actually registered as a Communist in her
hometown in upstate New York as a young girl to
please her eccentric, socialist grandfather, and
she was interviewed by the HUAC about it in the
1950s, but cleared.

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

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

==Filmography==

*Campus Sweethearts RKO short subject, 1929
*A Day of a Man of Affairs Columbia short subject,
1929
*A Night in a Dormitory Pathe short subject, 1930
*Young Man of Manhattan Paramount, 1930
*The Sap from Syracuse Paramount, 1930
*Queen High Paramount, 1930
*Office Blues Paramount short subject, 1930
*Follow the Leader Paramount, 1930
*Honor Among Lovers Paramount, 1931
*The Tip-Off RKO, 1931
*Suicide Fleet RKO, 1931
*Carnival Boat RKO, 1932
*The Tenderfoot First National, 1932
*Hollywood on Parade MGM short subject, 1932
*The Thirteenth Guest Monogram, 1932
*Screen Snapshots Columbia short subject, 1932
*Hat Check Girl Fox, 1932
*You Said a Mouthful First National, 1932
*42nd Street Warner Bros., 1933
*Broadway Bad Fox, 1933
*Hollywood on Parade No. 9 Paramount short
subject, 1933
*Gold Diggers of 1933 Warner Bros., 1933
*Professional Sweetheart RKO, 1933
*Don't Bet on Love Universal, 1933
*A Shriek in the Night Allied, 1933
*Rafter Romance RKO, 1933
*Chance at Heaven RKO, 1933
*Sitting Pretty Paramount, 1933
*Flying Down to Rio RKO, 1933
*Twenty Million Sweethearts First National, 1934
*Upperworld Warner Bros., 1934
*Finishing School RKO, 1934
*Change of Heart Fox, 1934
*The Gay Divorcee RKO, 1934
*Hollywood Newsreel Warner Bros. short subject,
1934
*Romance in Manhattan RKO, 1935
*Roberta RKO, 1935
*Star of Midnight RKO, 1935
*Top Hat RKO, 1935
*In Person RKO, 1935
*Follow the Fleet RKO, 1936
*Swing Time RKO, 1936
*Shall We Dance RKO, 1937
*Stage Door RKO, 1937
*Vivacious Lady RKO, 1938
*Having Wonderful Time RKO, 1938
*Carefree RKO, 1938
*The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle RKO, 1939
*Bachelor Mother RKO, 1939
*5th Ave Girl RKO, 1939
*Primrose Path RKO, 1940
*Lucky Partners RKO, 1940
*Kitty Foyle RKO, 1940
*Tom Dick and Harry RKO, 1941
*Roxie Hart 20th Century-Fox, 1942
*Tales of Manhattan 20th Century-Fox, 1942
*The Major and the Minor Paramount, 1942
*Once Upon a Honeymoon RKO, 1942
*Show Business at War 20th Century-Fox short
subject, 1943
*Tender Comrade RKO, 1943
*Lady in the Dark Paramount, 1944
*Battle Stations 20th Century-Fox short subject,
1944
*I'll Be Seeing You Selznick, 1945
*Week-End at the Waldorf MGM, 1945
*Heartbeat RKO, 1946
*Magnificent Doll Universal, 1946
*It Had to Be You Columbia, 1947
*The Barkleys of Broadway MGM, 1949
*Screen Snapshots: The Great Showman Columbia
short subject, 1950
*Perfect Strangers (1950 film)|Perfect Strangers
Warner Bros., 1950
*Storm Warning Warner Bros., 1951
*The Groom Wore Spurs Universal, 1951
*We're Not Married! 20th Century-Fox, 1952
*Dreamboat 20th Century-Fox, 1952
*Monkey Business 20th Century Fox, 1952
*Forever Female Paramount, 1953
*Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Great Entertainers
Columbia short subject, 1953
*Black Widow 20th Century-Fox, 1954
*Beautiful Stranger United Artists, 1954
*Tight Spot Columbia, 1955
*The First Traveling Saleslady RKO, 1956
*Oh, Men! Oh, Women! 20th Century-Fox, 1957
*The Confession Golden Eagle, 1964
*Harlow Magna, 1965

==Quotations about Rogers==
* "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did,
and she did it backwards and in high heels." Faith
Whittlesey, former US ambassador to Switzerland.
Responsibility for this quote also has been traced
to a 1982 Frank and Ernest cartoon. 

* "Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred
sex." Katharine Hepburn, actress. Variants include
"Astaire gave her class, and Rogers gave him sex"
and "He gave her class, and she gave him sex."

==External links==
* http://www.gingerrogers.com/home.html Ginger
Rogers Official Website
* http://www.classicactresses.com/ginger.html
Ginger Rogers @ Classic Actresses
*
http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Ginger/ginge
r.htm Ginger Rogers biography from Reel Classics
* imdb name|id=0001677|name=Ginger Rogers