The True Nature Of The Relationship Between Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire
Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were one of the biggest Hollywood duos of all time, perhaps the most famous: their dance moves captivated the world during the Golden Age of Hollywood. But what was the story behind the partnership? Well, Ginger told all in her 1991 autobiography Ginger: My Story. Let’s take a look at the real relationship between Rogers and Astaire and find out what those dance moves really meant.
Ginger
Rogers was born with the name Virginia McMath. But one of her young cousins couldn’t pronounce “Virginia” and ended up calling her “Ginger” instead. Thanks in part to her red hair, the nickname stuck.
Rogers didn’t have that great a childhood. Her mother split from her father, and he didn’t take it well. He tried to steal his daughter away not once but twice. Then, after the divorce went through, Rogers never saw him again.
Mother and daughter
Rogers adored her mother, Lela, who was connected with the movie industry: she worked as a screenwriter for silent films. And Lela knew her daughter had the skills to make it in Hollywood.
The young Rogers spent her much of her formative childhood years performing in vaudeville. As an adult, she wrote in her autobiography, “I loved every minute of my theatrical experience.”
Early life
In 1925 a 14-year-old Rogers entered a dance contest and won. As a prize, she got to tour for six months as “Ginger Rogers and the Redheads.” In case you were wondering, her new surname was taken from her mother’s second husband.
Assisted all the way by her mother, Rogers went from success to success. One year after winning the contest, Rogers was featured in an MGM film called The Barrier. Movie stardom awaited for the beautiful young dancer.
Fred
Meanwhile Fred Astaire was also rising to fame. He had followed a slightly different path to Rogers, but he had also been encouraged by his family to pursue his talents.
Astaire had an older sister named Adele who was also a very talented dancer, and young Fred followed in her footsteps. The pair became a brother-sister act and by 1917 they’d made it to Broadway.
“Can’t act. Slightly bald. Also dances”
When Astaire started trying to break into movies, the producers of the time were reportedly not impressed. Astaire later always insisted that an early RKO screen test report of his had read, “Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.”
But all the same, and regardless of whether or not he was follically challenged, Astaire was given a role in the 1933 film Dancing Lady. It was a big success and as a result, more movie roles soon came his way.
Girl Crazy
Astaire and Rogers met for the first time during rehearsals of the Broadway show Girl Crazy. That show marked the first time they had ever danced together. Rogers noted in her autobiography that he was “dapper.”
And she wrote of their first dance, “We stopped and started a dozen times and he added little steps here and there. Finally, Fred said, ‘Here, Ginger, try it with me.’”
Impressions
But Rogers hadn’t actually been all that taken with Astaire. She stated in her book, “There was no reason to be particularly impressed. I honestly didn’t think of him again.”
Astaire had liked her, though. In his own autobiography, 1959’s Steps in Time, he called her a “very attractive and talented new little Texan.” Before long, he was back in Rogers’ life and she was very much thinking of him again.
First date
Not long after their first meeting, Astaire called up Rogers and asked her out on a date, to which she agreed. They went to the Central Park Casino, where, Rogers wrote, “I made the happy discovery that as wonderful a dancer as Fred was on stage, he was equally superb as a partner on the dance floor.”
They ended the night with a passionate moment.” Inside the car, Fred had me in his arms,” Rogers wrote, “and the kiss that we shared in that five minutes would have never passed the Hays Office code!”
Not an item
And yet, that date and passionate kiss didn’t go anywhere in the end. As fate would have it, Rogers was heading for Hollywood to pursue her career, and so there was no time for a romantic relationship between the couple.
“If I had stayed in New York, I think Fred Astaire and I might have become a more serious item,” Rogers wrote in her book. “We were different in some ways, but alike in others. Both of us were troupers from an early age, both of us loved a good time, and, for sure, both of us loved to dance.”
Married now
Then in 1933 Astaire and Rogers met again on the set of the RKO film Flying Down to Rio. She was fourth-billed and he was fifth. Neither of them was a superstar yet, but it appears their earlier romance must have added an extra “X” factor to their dances.
All the same, “Fred looked the same but acted differently,” Rogers wrote in her book. “He was not as open, far more formal. I felt I didn’t even know him. As if to explain his behavior, he said, ‘I’m married now.’”
Phyllis
Yep, Astaire had wed. His wife was Phyllis Baker Potter, a New York socialite, and Astaire was by all accounts very happy with her. They even went on to have two children together, Fred Jr and Ava.
There was no hint of Astaire getting back together with his old flame Rogers as the pair of them filmed Flying Down to Rio, despite the clear intimacy of their dance moves together in front of the cameras.
A partnership takes off
Flying Down to Rio was a big success, and plenty of that was down to Astaire and Rogers dancing “The Carioca.” Astaire wrote in his biography that he didn’t feel like it was anything special, but clearly the audiences felt differently when they saw it.
RKO was delighted with its new hit and the studio instantly cast Astaire and Rogers in a new movie, The Gay Divorcee. The die was now cast: a legendary partnership was beginning to flower.
The Carioca
Arlene Croce, a biographer of Astaire and Rogers, talked about “The Carioca” in an interview with the French website Le Ciné-club de Caen. The dance routine had exerted an incredible impact on the movie industry, according to her.
“‘The Carioca’ is not an outstanding dance by Astaire and Rogers standards, but it was a breath of fresh air in 1933. Before then, no really distinguished dancers had appeared on screen, and dance routines were clumsily filmed and directed,” she said.
Obvious rapport
“When Astaire and Rogers got up to dance The Carioca it was the first time movie audiences had seen anything like it — a man and a woman dancing together with style, elegance, humour, apparent spontaneity and obvious rapport.”
She continued, “ It's not surprising they were an instant hit.” And that’s not all. Tellingly, Croce had also added in another part of the same interview, “Romance is the key to the relationship between Fred and Ginger.”
Out
In the beginning Astaire hadn’t actually wanted to form a partnership with Rogers, though. After all, he had spent all his early career in a partnership with his sister. He even wrote to his agent about it.
"I don't mind making another picture with her, but as for this ‘'team’ idea, it’s ‘out!’” the letter read. “I've just managed to live down one partnership and I don’t want to be bothered with any more.”
Fears
Rogers soon heard about this. “I heard through the grapevine that Fred was not happy with this proposal,” she wrote in her autobiography. “He had been teamed with Adele for so long that he feared being identified, yet again, with any one female.”
For her part, Rogers harbored no such qualms, though. “While I could sympathize with his feelings about being teamed with me, I, on the other hand, had no apprehensions about making more films with him,” she continued.
Limited
Rogers was fiercely pragmatic about teaming up with Astaire. “I had the opportunity to appear in non-musicals by myself. For every film I did with Fred Astaire, I did three to four without him,” she wrote.
The situation, as she understood it, was not an equal one. She went on to explain, “Our partnership was a limited one only in his case, not in mine. Fred didn't have this luxury; he was a musical comedy star, period.”
Class and sex
One interesting thing that Rogers and Astaire did was add the implication of intimacy to their dance moves. As Katherine Hepburn allegedly said, “Fred gave Ginger class, and Ginger gave Fred sex.”
But the topic of sex in movies was very much a taboo subject at the time. The Hays Office Code — the self-imposed set of Hollywood rules which Rogers had referenced in her autobiography — made sure of that.
The Hays Code
The Hays Code was very strict about what could and couldn’t be portrayed in movies. It forbade profanity — even saying the words “God” or “Jesus Christ” as swear words — as well as “any licentious or suggestive nudity” and “sex perversion.”
By today’s standards it’s a downright disturbing set of rules. For example the code also forbade “miscegenation” — in other words, relationships between people of different races — from being portrayed on screen.
Dirty dancing
Rogers and Astaire’s dances were almost a way of getting around the Hays Code rules on sex. They couldn’t show the act of lovemaking, clearly, but their dancing could very heavily imply that the characters were indulging in it.
Sometimes, the dances would end with Astaire and Rogers’ both displaying passionate, almost aroused expressions. Adult audiences would have been in no doubt about the hidden meaning that was being conveyed in these sequences.
Insecure
In fact, so clear was this implicit message that it’s thought that Astaire’s wife Phyllis was often pretty jealous of her husband constantly being so very up close and personal with another woman.
Perhaps she can’t really be blamed for that. “I think she was somewhat insecure in her new role as a famous dancer's wife,” Rogers wrote of Phyllis in her autobiography. And she didn’t stop there.
“Never warmed up”
“One thing's for sure, she never warmed up to me… and she surely didn't want her husband to, either,” Rogers wrote in her book. She believed Phyllis had actually vetoed some scenes between her and Astaire.
“Other than on the dance floor, Fred and I rarely embraced in our films,” she wrote. “Fred said he couldn’t stand mushy love scenes and felt like a fool kissing for the camera. Frankly, I think Phyllis didn’t want him kissing other women.”
Kissing
All the same, Rogers and Astaire did eventually lock lips in the movie Carefree. “Whether it has any bearing or not, Phyllis Astaire was not on the set when we shot this sequence,” Rogers later wrote in her autobiography.
Astaire wrote about the moment in his autobiography, too. He wrote in his account that when Phyllis had seen the scene, she’d mischievously told him, “This is the first time you ever really made an effort to win an Academy Award.”
Ten movies
Astaire and Rogers ended up making ten films together. There was Flying Down to Rio, The Gay Divorcee, Roberta, Top Hat, Follow the Fleet, Swing Time, Shall We Dance, Carefree, and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.
They then reunited ten years later for The Barkleys of Broadway, but that was because Rogers was drafted in as a replacement for Judy Garland, who’d had to drop out because of her substance-abuse problems.
Her story
But Rogers, it seems, was never really 100 percent happy with her partnership with Astaire. She indicated as much in My Story, which delved deeply into all her innermost thoughts about her work.
“Over the years, myths were built up about my relationship with Fred Astaire,” she wrote. “The general public thought he was a Svengali, who snapped his fingers for his little Trilby to obey; in their eyes, my career was his creation.”
Ostrich feathers
And there were certainly heated arguments between the pair every now and again. One of them involved an ostrich-feather dress Rogers had picked out for a scene. According to her autobiography, she had always been fond of pretty dresses.
Rogers insisted on wearing the dress, but her choice proved problematic when it actually fell apart in the middle of a dance scene. Astaire had been furious with her and as a result a massive argument broke out on set.
New nickname
Everything worked out in the end, though: a seamstress fixed the dress up and Rogers was still able to wear it in the movie. Only a small number of feathers dropped off during the final take that was used in the film.
Astaire and Rogers were later able to joke about their brouhaha. Astaire ended up getting Rogers a little gold feather charm and gave her the nickname of “feathers,” which speaks volumes about their friendship.
“Nonsense”
There were always rumors afoot that Rogers and Astaire hated each other behind closed doors, but by their own accounts that just wasn’t true: both of them frequently denied it. In her autobiography, Rogers called it “nonsense.”
Then in 1976 Astaire labeled claims of friction between the pair as the exact same thing when he was interviewed by Michael Parkinson. He said, “When Ginger kicked me down the stairs I loved it, I really did.”
“Great privilege”
Rogers even mentioned the same rumors about discord between the couple in the opening of her autobiography, where she declared that her motive was, in part, to correct “gossip, inaccuracies, and misinformation.”
“One of those pernicious rumors that refused to die concerned my relationship with Fred Astaire,” she wrote. “Now I have the opportunity to set the record straight. Fred and I had the great privilege of working together in ten films.”
Beautifully
Rogers wrote, “Fred said on more than one occasion that I was the only one of his dancing partners who didn't cry. Fred and I were colleagues, and despite occasional snits like the blue feather dress episode, we worked together beautifully.”
“All you have to do to verify my statement is watch us; we had fun, and it shows.” And it’s certainly true that many generations of movie-lovers since have gone on to do precisely that.
Only on film
She also pointedly said, dispelling the other type of rumors that were spread about them, “We were never bosom buddies off the screen; we were different people with different interests. We were a couple only on film.”
And she went on to explain, “Because we were so good together, the public tried to make something bigger out of our relationship, even when we were married to other people.”
Victory and loss
As time went on, both Rogers and Astaire began to explore the world of entertainment outside of dancing. Rogers picked up an Academy Award in 1941 for playing the title role of Kitty Foyle.
But Astaire unfortunately suffered a terrible loss. In 1956 his wife Phyllis passed away from lung cancer, and he was naturally completely devastated. He even tried to drop out of the movie he was filming at the time, but wasn’t given permission.
Aborted retirement
Astaire moved onto different kinds of movies and TV shows. In 1957 he did the dance film Silk Stockings with Cyd Charisse. It was a flop, and Astaire announced his retirement from dancing after that.
That retirement didn’t last, though. He went on to dance in films such as Finian’s Rainbow, and he even got to do a bit of dancing in disaster film The Towering Inferno, for which he earned an Oscar nomination.
Partners
Rogers and Astaire remained partners in a sense, despite the fact that their careers ended up on different paths. Memorably, they danced on stage at the Academy Awards in 1967 where they received a standing ovation.
By that point Rogers was with her fifth and last husband, the director and producer William Marshall. Rogers even started a film company with him, but the venture failed, and the pair eventually got divorced.
Second wife
As for Astaire’s personal life, he ended up marrying again after the tragic death of Phyllis. In 1980 he wedded Robyn Smith; it set tongues wagging because his new bride was a whopping 45 years his junior.
Not much is known about their marriage, as Astaire maintained his privacy fiercely. He apparently spent his last days watching horse racing, writing songs, and — somewhat surprisingly — skateboarding!
Astaire’s death
Astaire was the first of the duo to die. He passed away in June 1987 having contracted pneumonia. And Rogers was displeased when the media once again brought up the alleged “feud” between them right after his passing.
“Excuse me, I’d like to correct you, there,” she told an ABC journalist when they had implied the pair hated each other on the very same day of Astaire’s death. “We were not ‘at each other’s throats’. I loved him, and we put a great deal of love into what we were doing.”
A dear friend
Rogers made mention in her autobiography about the last time she’d ever seen Astaire: it had been at a party for their mutual friend and colleague Hermes Pan. “It was fun to be with Fred as we watched our dance clips,” Rogers wrote.
“Unfortunately, that evening was the last time we appeared in public together and the last time I ever saw him. He was there with his darling new wife, Robyn, who has since become a close friend of mine.”
Rogers’ death
Rogers died in 1995 at the age of 83 from a heart attack. She was cremated and her ashes were buried next to her beloved mother Lela in Oakwood Memorial Park in California.
As befitted a star of her magnitude, many obituaries were written about her, and of course they all referenced her legendary partnership with Fred Astaire, and how they’d risen to fame together.
Electricity
“Under Astaire's painstaking coaching, Miss Rogers’ dancing became more fluid with each film, and the consensus was that none of his later partnerships generated the electricity they did,” The New York Times wrote.
And arguably that electricity is perhaps what makes their movies so enduring: it seems as though it takes you right to that never-recorded moment where they shared that one passionate kiss together.