Ginger Rogers “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.” A now famous quote about the dancing duo who together changed Hollywood films with their dance routines of unprecedented elegance and virtuosity. Even today any great dance duo are afforded the reference "Fred and Ginger" as a compliment to their achievements. Born Virginia Katherine McMath in Missouri on July 16th 1911, her cousins had problems pronouncing her name and shortened it to‘Ginga’. Family and friends continued to call her this, and later theatre men who understood the name to be "Ginger" billed her as such on their marquees. After her parents divorced Ginger lived with her grandparents during a custody battle for their child. Later, when Ginger was nine years old her mother remarried John Logan Rogers. Ginger took his name of Rogers, although she was never legally adopted. Ginger’s mother had a big interest in Hollywood and the theater and with her young exposure to the theater Ginger’s interest increased.
As a teenager waiting for her mother in the wings of the Majestic Theatre, she began to sing and dance along to the performers on stage.Her big break came when the traveling vaudeville act of Eddie Foy (Bob Hope would play Foy in The Seven Little Foys) came to Fort Worth and a stand in was required. At the young age of seventeen Ginger married Jack Culpepper, another dancer on the circuit. He was to be one of five husbands in Ginger’s life. Ginger’s first encounter with Fred Astaire came when he was hired to help the dancers with their choreography in Girl Crazy by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin in which Ginger was to star. Astaire and Rogers briefly dated.Of their relationship, Katharine Hepburn was rumored to say, “Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex.”Together Fred and Ginger were immortalized in the line from the famous Madonna song “Vogue”, “Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, dance on air".
Together, from 1933 to 1939 Rogers and Astaire made nine musical films at RKO and in so doing, revolutionized the Hollywood musical. Ginger's other leading men included Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, David Niven, Burgess Meredith, William Powell, Ronald Colman, Dennis Morgan and James Stewart. Two of Rogers’ close friends were Lucille Ball (a distant cousin on her mother's side) and Bette Davis. After films Ginger Rogers also made many television appearances and in addition to having her own TV special, she appeared with Perry Como, Bob Hope, Pat Boone, Steve Allen, Merv Griffin, Dean Martin. Ginger Rogers lived for much of her life with her mother, Lela Rogers (1891–1977), who was a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer.Ginger Rogers died on April 25, 1995, at the age of eighty three from a congestive heart failure, in Rancho Mirage in California where she spent her winters. She was cremated and her ashes are interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. In August 2006, it was announced that a musical about the life of Ginger Rogers, entitled Backwards in High Heels, would premiere in Florida in 2007. ABB | 
