In 1930, a vivacious ingenue sauntered onscreen as a Jazz Age flapper in Young Man of Manhattan and quipped, “Cigarette me, big boy,” launching a successful and popular movie career. If I were to ask you whose feature-film career began with this sassy come-on, you might guess Mae West. But, it was actually Ginger Rogers, TCM’s Star of the Month for March.

I have always enjoyed Rogers onscreen, but, like many classic movie lovers, I tended to think of her in relation to Fred Astaire and their ten musicals together. The iconic stature of these musicals makes it difficult not to. Even biographers and feature writers who declare their intention to discuss only Rogers’s career often end up devoting considerable space to the Astaire-Roger’ pairing. And, truth be told, for years I dismissed Rogers because of her mother Lela’s testimony before the House on Unamerican Activities Committee in which Mama Rogers was a friendly witness denouncing the Communist influence in Hollwood, including her daughter’s  Tender Comrades (1944), a melodrama about WWII on the home front. According to Lela, Ginger was “duped” into making the film, which was full of “Communist propaganda.” This bit of Hollywood lore has always left a bad taste in my mouth.

GINGER ROGERS, c. 1947

Only recently have I realized that Rogers was a marvelous, talented comedienne and that her star image is quite “modern.” Over the years, I have seen and appreciated many of her comedies and musicals, but a recent viewing of Roxie Hart made me take notice of her snappy line delivery, energetic presence, and independent spirit. Rogers’s easy-going charm and identification with comedies and musicals make it easy to take her for granted, especially in comparison to peers Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford, who are associated with drama and melodrama. But, Rogers’s star image as a confident everywoman who can crack wise, stand tough, and still look glamorous makes her characters easy to relate to and difficult not to admire.  Independent but not fierce, worldly but not cynical, working class but not unpolished, Rogers’s screen persona struck a perfect balance that is still appealing and relevant—especially now when there are so few female stars in Hollywood, let alone those whose appeal can cut across age and class lines.

GINGER DURING HER VAUDEVILLE DAYS

Born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri, Ginger grew up in Ft. Worth, Texas, experiencing the kind of working-class childhood that makes women tough and self-sufficient. Her mother worked most of her life, whether as a single woman raising a child, or as a wife contributing to her family’s income. After Ginger won a Charleston contest in Ft. Worth at age 14, Lela Rogers became the driving force behind her show-biz career. As a little girl, young Ginger had taken dancing lessons, but more significantly, she honed her natural talent and learned certain skills in that show-biz training ground known as vaudeville. Rogers grew up on the road, criss-crossing America to perform on the numerous live-performance circuits in small towns and big cities. I don’t want to recount too much of Rogers’s biography, because the TCM website features a solid account of her life, and there are many books that do a more thorough job than I can here, but I wanted to bring up her background in vaudeville. As the vaudeville era slides farther and farther into the past, and fades from our common cultural consciousness, its impact on American film and entertainment has been lost. There is something about vaudeville-trained performers that made them adept at the physical aspects of acting, versatile at handling different genres of entertainment, and disciplined at their craft. Most of all, they exhibited perfect timing in the delivery of lines, understanding how to maximize the rhythm of the words, how to milk certain pronunciations for effect, and how to get across the nuances of the line’s meaning. As a “graduate” of vaudeville, Rogers couldn’t have had better training for the Golden Age of Hollywood.

GINGER IN 'GIRL CRAZY,' c. 1930

Rogers landed in New York City around 1929-30 cast as the second lead in the Broadway musical Top Speed. At the same time, she appeared in several short films shot at Paramount’s studio on Long Island, then graduated to appearing in low-budget features there. In 1930, she landed a major break when she was cast as the female lead in the Gershwins’ Broadway hit Girl Crazy. Rogers introduced two tunes that became American standards, “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me.” In addition, she became friends with George Gershwin who encouraged her not only in her career but also in pursuing her hobby of sketching and painting. (What a life!) Hollywood studio scouts noticed her in Girl Crazy, and she was lured to Hollywood, where she appeared in a steady stream of movies for Paramount and Warner Bros.  As an experienced singer, dancer, and actress, Rogers had little trouble finding film work; in 1933 alone, she made ten films, starring in secondary roles or appearing as part of an ensemble. At the tale end of that series, she found herself under long-term contract to RKO and cast in a little musical called Flying Down to Rio, her first with Astaire. Many assume her career began with her pairing with Astaire, but Flying Down to Rio was actually her 20^th film—and Astaire’s second.

Rogers continue to star in films for the next 32 years, appearing in her last role in 1965 as Jean Harlow’s mother in the biopic Harlow. Hollywood in the mid-1960s had little room for aging Golden Age stars, so she turned to Broadway to headline several musicals and then launched her own nightclub revue based on the highlights of her career—a trouper to the end.

MAJOR STARS WERE TURNED INTO PAPER DOLLS DURING THE GOLDEN AGE.

While TCM pulled together a wonderful and thorough celebration of Ginger Rogers’s movie career during the month of March, my own movie tribute would be a bit different. Below is an annotated list of Rogers’s films that are my favorites for largely personal reasons. I left out her ultra-famous musicals with Astaire, as well as her Oscar-winning dramatic role in Kitty Foyle, not because I don’t like these movies but because I wanted to turn the spotlight on other films for other reasons. Feel free to leave a note about your favorite Ginger Rogers movie and why.

GINGER IN HER "MONEY" COSTUME

Golddiggers of 1933. Rogers’s persona as a tough cookie who cracks wise was well suited to her role as the blonde, gold-digging chorine in 42^nd Street and Golddiggers of 1933. As Anytime Annie in 42^nd Street, she costars as a chorus girl who is affecting a false persona, effectively playing a character who is playing at being someone. While I appreciate this tricky turn of acting-within-acting, I prefer Golddiggers over 42^nd Street because of Rogers’ performance of “We’re in the Money” while dressed in a skimpy costume made of giant coins. In the middle of the tune, director Mervyn LeRoy cuts to Rogers as she deftly launches into the song’s chorus in Pig Latin, with the camera moving so close to her mouth that it looks strange. Apparently, LeRoy and others had heard Rogers singing “We’re in the Money” in Pig Latin while goofing around on the set and decided to include it in the number. Given that sync sound had taken over the industry just six years earlier, this gimmicky focus on word play must have delighted audiences in a way lost on us now.

Finishing School (1933). Rogers received third billing in this pre-Code drama that starred Frances Dee as naïve Virginia Radcliff. Rogers and Dee play students at a snobbish school called Crockett Hall, with Rogers casts as Cecilia Ferris, who is nicknamed Pony because of her talent for horseback riding. Almost as soon as Virginia moves in, cynical, wisecracking Pony offers her a cigarette and a drink—both of which are against school policy. When the girls sneak away to spend the weekend drinking and carousing at a New York City hotel, Virginia ends up drunk and in the clutches of a cad. Young intern Dr. Ralph “Mac” McFarland rescues her, and the two embark on a romance that leads Virginia into an unwed pregnancy. I confess that Finishing School is not very good, but I found the film interesting because of the pre-Code subject matter about unwanted pregnancy and because it proved Rogers to be a star. She effortlessly dominates the film and overshadows Dee in every scene they have together. Directors Wanda Tuchock and George Nichols, Jr. took full advantage of Rogers’s talents for repartee and well-timed quips, making Pony far more memorable than the other actresses. For example, when a freshman who tags along after the girls asks if she can borrow a brassiere, Pony hands over the garment, remarking that “it’s like putting a saddle on a Pekinese.”

ROGERS WITH DAVID NIVEN

Bachelor Mother (1939). Garson Kanin penned and directed this charming comedy in which Rogers plays a shop girl who stumbles across an unwanted baby. David Nivens costars as the son of the department store owners, a ladies man who falls for Rogers even though he mistakenly believes she is an unwed mother. Though a low-budget film from RKO, the pairing of Nivens with Rogers proved quite popular with the public, and the movie was a sleeper hit. The very-American Rogers and the English-born Nivens  have a nice chemistry together, and each of them gets to shine in a comic set piece . Rogers was excellent at mimicry, which comes through in a party scene in which she pretends to be Swedish. Nivens’s comic scene involves his attempts to return a toy duck to his department store.

Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941). In another script written by Garson Kanin, one of the best comedy writers from the war years, Rogers plays a telephone operator who can’t decide which of three suitors to marry. There is Tom, the fast-talking automobile salesman (George Murphy), Dick, the rich man who should be every girl’s dream catch (Alan Marshall), and Harry, an eternally unemployed free spirit (Burgess Meredith). The film’s premise is an excuse for clever dream sequences—a Kanin specialty—in which Rogers frets about her choices. In terms of the Production Code, directors and writers could get away with more in dream sequences, and there is a funny moment in Rogers’s final dream when all three suitors are on a bed, eagerly waiting for her. Those of you who remember Burgess Meredith only from Rocky should catch him as Harry in this film; he is cute, clever, and indeed a catch.

ROGERS'S VAUDEVILLE BACKGROUND WAS GOOD TRAINING FOR COMEDY. THIS IS FROM 'TOM, DICK, and HARRY.'

Roxie Hart (1942). In this Golden Age version of Chicago, Rogers plays the titular role. Directed by William Wellman, the script was not only cleaned up to suit the guidelines of the Production Code, but the character of Roxie was shaped to fit Ginger Rogers’s star image. My favorite scenes are those in which Rogers gets an opportunity to show off her marvelous dancing skills: She dances the “black hula,” which mesmerizes a young reporter who falls in love with her and performs a tap dance up and down a set of steps. Unlike the calculating protagonist of the stage play and silent version of Chicago, Rogers’ dim, gum-chewing Roxie is fun-loving, naïve, and vivacious, which is a perfect fit to her star image.

The Major and the Minor (1942). If you have not seen this comedy written and directed by Billy Wilder don’t miss it when it airs this Wednesday night on TCM. Wilder’s first turn as a director stars Rogers as Susan Applegate, a woman who disguises herself as adolescent schoolgirl “Su-Su” Applegate in order to travel by train at half-fare. Rogers liked the script immediately because it reminded her of a time in her own life when she and her mother criss-crossed the country on the vaudeville circuit. She often pretended to be 12 years old in order to save money on fares, an experience she drew upon for this role. In the film, Susan falls for Ray Milland and ends up spending a few days at the military school where he teaches. There, the boys in the academy fall all over themselves to attract her attention, while she is determined to break up Milland and his fiancée. Again, Rogers is excellent in a kind of double performance in which she is playing Susan who is “playing” Su-Su. Her interpretation of an adult pretending to be a child is believable and funny. In my favorite scene, she needs to make a secret phone call but must first get rid of the school’s student switchboard operator in order to do so. She strolls by the young boy deftly doing a few hip, hepcat dance steps, which gets his attention. She then persuades him to go get a radio so they can dance together. The brief bit of fancy footwork takes advantage at Rogers’s talent for dance. I like this film for several reasons, including the way Susan is confidently in control of the situation throughout the film. And, Rogers smartly plays Su-Su as a bundle of adolescent energy while depicting Susan as confident and cool—a nice contrast that helps define the two “characters.” Also, in true Wilder fashion, the premise of the plot seems almost unsavory. After all, Milland is an adult male who is attracted to what he thinks is a 12-year-old, while Rogers, who is really an adult, is fending off the passes of young boys. Yet, Wilder knew how to ride the line between a tasteless situation and a farcical one.

GINGER AS SU-SU IN 'THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR'

Monkey Business (1952). This film features such major talent that I don’t understand why it’s not better appreciated. Directed by Howard Hawks, this screwball comedy stars Rogers as the much-beleaguered wife of an absent-minded professor, played by Cary Grant. Grant has been working on a fountain-of-youth formula that will slow the aging process, but he can’t quite get the ingredients right. When a lab chimp tosses his latest version of the formula into the water cooler, Grant and others suddenly act like they are teenagers after taking a sip. Marilyn Monroe plays the dishy secretary with a crush on Grant, who, under the spell of the formula, takes her for a spin in his hot rod. However, Grant continues to regress, winding up with the neighborhood kids playing cowboys and Indians. At one point, Rogers drinks the tainted water and regresses to childhood, too, giving her another opportunity to play an adult who is reverting to childhood. I thought both Grant and Rogers were suitably funny as adults-playing-children, though male critics tend to be harsh on Rogers for her performance. I also liked the sweetness of the couple’s relationship, with Rogers understanding Grant’s absent-minded behavior with loving acceptance. The actors have a nice onscreen report together, perhaps because they had appeared in a previous film, Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), or perhaps because they had been romantically involved in the early 1940s.

Wednesday, March 31, is the last day of the month-long celebration of Ginger Rogers’s movies on TCM, and the day’s showings will include Kitty Foyle (1940), Tom, Dick, and Harry (1941), The Major and the Minor (1942), Primrose Path (1940), and Lucky Partners (1940). The early 1940s were arguably the height of Rogers’s career, which is nicely showcased by that evening’s selection. Don’t miss it.