April 26, 1995

Ginger Rogers, Who Danced With Astaire and Won an Oscar for Drama, Dies at 83

By PETER B. FLINT

Ginger Rogers, the vivacious actress whose supple grace in the arms of Fred Astaire lifted the spirits of Depression-era moviegoers in some of the most elegantly romantic musical films ever made, died yesterday at her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. She was 83.

The blond, blue-eyed actress, who came out of Charleston contests and the vaudeville circuits to win notice as a cherub-faced flapper with a piping voice and a sassy air in early musicals like "42d Street" and "Gold Diggers of 1933," went on to win acclaim for her dramatic portrayals and an Academy Award for best actress for her depiction of a lovelorn career woman in the 1940 film "Kitty Foyle."

The potent chemistry of her partnership with Astaire, in a succession of urbane romances that featured rapturous dance routines, propelled her into the top 10 of Hollywood's box-office attractions. "He gives her class, and she gives him sex," Katharine Hepburn once said. By 1941, Ginger Rogers was the highest-paid American woman, earning $355,000 a year.

While her graceful dancing was on display in her many musicals, Miss Rogers also won renown in dramatic roles including an aspiring actress in "Stage Door" (1937) and a prostitute's daughter in "Primrose Path" (1940). Her gift for comedy bubbled through movies like "Bachelor Mother" (1939), "Tom, Dick and Harry" (1941) and "The Major and the Minor" (1942). In a screen career that began with a bit role in "Young Man of Manhattan" in 1930, she made more than 70 movies.

But the Astaire-Rogers musicals, epitomizing grace, energy and sophistication, were her enduring memorial. The couple, in their smooth, seemingly effortless style, spun gossamer fantasies from the infectious scores of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and Vincent Youmans.

Anna Kisselgoff, the chief dance critic of The New York Times, said yesterday: "Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than most people gave her credit for. She may have swooped and dipped into many a romantic swoon, but her footwork was as precise as Astaire's."

The plots of their films often turned on mistaken identity and other far-fetched devices, but they were accepted as breathing spaces between the couple's champagne dance numbers in lavish settings where all the walls, telephones and pianos were white, the butlers were always comic and love was the only concern.

Under Astaire's painstaking coaching, Miss Rogers's dancing became more fluid with each film, and the consensus was that none of his later partnerships generated the electricity they did.

Writing in 1972, the dance critic Arlene Croce said Miss Rogers "danced with love, with pride in the beauty of an illusion -- and with one of the most elegant dancer's bodies imaginable." She added, "She avoided any suggestion of toil or inadequacy."

When the actress went to the stage of the Biltmore Bowl in the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles to accept her Oscar on Feb. 27, 1941, she stood with tears streaming down her face and said: "This is the greatest moment of my life. I want to thank the one who has stood by me faithfully: my mother."

It was her mother, the former Lela Owens, who groomed her for a show-business career with singing, dancing and acting lessons. Miss Rogers, whose given name was Virginia Katherine McMath, was born on July 16, 1911, in Independence, Mo. Her father, William McMath, and her mother were divorced soon after. Their daughter was called Ginger because a cousin could not pronounce Virginia, and she took her later surname from John Rogers, who was briefly her stepfather. She grew up in Kansas City, Mo., and Fort Worth. Her mother continued to manage her career until she died in 1977.

At 15, Miss Rogers became the champion Charleston dancer in Texas. Then, for three years, her mother chaperoned her through four vaudeville acts a day throughout the South and Midwest. "I traveled with my mother, Lela, and there was never enough money," Miss Rogers said. "I always had to roll down my silk stockings and carry a doll when we bought train tickets so I could go half-fare. If we had $3, we always figured how to tip for the trunks and still eat." She played Kansas City, St. Louis and Chicago. When Miss Rogers was 18, they went to New York, where she sang with two bands and in a musical and starred in the Gershwins' 1930 Broadway hit "Girl Crazy," introducing the songs "But Not for Me" and "Embraceable You."

At 19, she made her first feature film in New York, "Young Man of Manhattan," uttering a memorable instruction: "Cigarette me, big boy." In her third musical film, "42d Street," she was a risque, wisecracking chorine, Anytime Annie. "The only time she said no," a fellow actor quipped, "she didn't hear the question."

Her big break came when she was 22, when she and Mr. Astaire won supporting roles in "Flying Down to Rio." Their rollicking introduction of a dance called the Carioca stole the show from its nominal stars, Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond.

Over the next six years they were teamed in eight more movies and introduced a glittering array of now-standard songs and dances, among them "Night and Day" and "The Continental" from "The Gay Divorcee," "I Won't Dance" from "Roberta," "Cheek to Cheek" from "Top Hat," "Let's Face the Music and Dance" from "Follow the Fleet," "Never Gonna Dance" from "Swing Time" and "They All Laughed" from "Shall We Dance."

Years later, she wrote about their partnership, emphasizing that Astaire was no Svengali. By the time they joined forces in "Flying Down to Rio" in 1933, she pointed out, she had made 20 films, he only one. She acknowledged that they had "occasional snits," but, she said: "We had fun, and it shows. True, we were never bosom buddies off the screen; we were different people with different interests. We were a couple only on film."

And, she noted: "I'd do three or four pictures between those I made with Fred. We weren't Siamese twins. I always wanted to stretch out and do some things as me, alone, by myself. I did, and among the things was 'Kitty Foyle.' "

Miss Rogers's later films included an elaborate fantasy, "Lady in the Dark" (1944); a wartime romance, "I'll Be Seeing You" (1945); the comedies "Dreamboat" (1952), "Monkey Business" (1952) and "Forever Female" (1954), and melodramas like "Tight Spot" (1955) and "Harlow" (1965). Reviewers attributed her enduring success to a dualistic personality -- tough versus vulnerable, ingenuous versus calculating -- and to a talent for mimicry and pretense.

In 1951, Miss Rogers won wide praise in a Broadway comedy, "Love and Let Love," although reviewers panned the play. Typically, she concluded, "We could have gone on touring around the country, probably playing to packed houses and getting our money back, but I'd rather be a sitting duck in a big pond."

In later musical triumphs, she succeeded Carol Channing in the title role of "Hello, Dolly!" on Broadway in 1965 and played the role to ovations for more than two years. In 1969, she introduced "Mame" to London audiences. Gower Champion, who directed her in "Dolly," hailed her "drive, verve, spark and talent."

Miss Rogers liked to keep busy. She often worked in summer stock, appearing in productions of musicals like "Annie Get Your Gun" and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and in comedies like "Tovarich" and "Bell, Book and Candle." In the 1970's she developed a successful nightclub act, and she was also a fashion consultant to the J. C. Penney chain.

In her last film, in 1965, she played Jean Harlow's mother in "Harlow." By then, she was unhappy with the frankness of Hollywood films. Looking back, she said, "We made happy pictures that people enjoyed seeing, not the kind the audiences have to go through trauma to see nowadays."

Miss Rogers's autobiography, "Ginger: My Story," was published by HarperCollins in 1991. John Mueller, in The New York Times Book Review, found Miss Rogers's book short on insight and discreet to the point that "one does not get a terribly rich feel for her personality." In discussing her career, he continued, "she is far more likely to tell us what she wore than what she did."

Miss Rogers was a Christian Scientist who never smoked or drank alcohol, except for an occasional glass of wine at supper. She loved the outdoors and exercised regularly. When her schedule allowed, she swam every day and played golf and tennis several times a week. She ate moderately and maintained a trim figure in middle age, giving this advice: "I try to feed my hunger rather than my appetite."

In 1938, she built a mountaintop mansion in Beverly Hills with a large swimming pool, a tennis court and an elaborate soda fountain. She also bought a big dairy and multi-crop ranch on the Rogue River near Medford, Ore., which eventually became her main home.

The actress was married five times: to Edward Culpepper, a dancer and actor known in vaudeville as Jack Pepper (1928 to 1931); the actor Lew Ayres (1934 to 1940); Jack Briggs, another actor (1943 to 1949); Jacques Bergerac, a French actor and businessman (1953 to 1957), and William Marshall, a director and producer (1961-1967). All five marriages ended in divorce. "I yearned for a long, happy marriage with one person," she wrote. But, she said, her life had been blessed in other ways, and in 1987 she said she didn't mind being alone. "It'd be fun to have a chum around, but it's very had to have a chum unless you're married to him," she said. "And I don't believe in today's concept for living with someone unmarried."

In 1992, Miss Rogers was one of the recipients of the 15th annual Kennedy Center Honors for lifetime achievement.

Asked by one interviewer what personal quality she was proudest of, Miss Rogers replied: "The most important thing in anyone's life is to be giving something. The quality I can give is fun and joy and happiness. This is my gift."

In more than six decades in show business, Ginger Rogers appeared in some 70 films, as well as in vaudeville, theater and television. Here are some highlights of her career.

Films

Young Man of Manhattan 1930
Hat Check Girl 1932
42d Street 1933
Gold Diggers of 1933
Sitting Pretty 1933
Flying Down to Rio 1933
The Gay Divorcee 1934
Top Hat 1935
Follow the Fleet 1936
Swing Time 1936
Shall We Dance 1937
Stage Door 1937
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939
Kitty Foyle 1940
Roxie Hart 1942
Lady in the Dark 1944
It Had To Be You 1947
The Barkleys of Broadway 1949
Forever Female 1953
Harlow 1965 Theater
Top Speed 1929
Girl Crazy 1930
Love and Let Love 1951
Hello, Dolly! 1965
Mame 1969