How a Dance Contest Catapulted Ginger Rogers into the Spotlight
How a Dance Contest Catapulted Ginger Rogers into the Spotlight
2 minute read
Caption from LIFE. For old times' sake Ginger wears a dress her mother made for her when she appeared at a St. Louis vaudeville theater 14 years ago. The dress still fits.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
When LIFE dedicated a ten-page spread to 31-year-old Ginger Rogers in 1942, she had already made nine musical films with Fred Astaire, won an Oscar for Kitty Foyle and raked in the equivalent of $14 million in today’s dollars. Born Virginia Katherine McMath near Kansas City, Mo., and christened Ginger by a cousin who couldn’t pronounce her name, Rogers had moved on from her dancing career to become one of Hollywood’s leading actresses. When she traveled with LIFE photographer Bob Landry to her old stomping grounds in Missouri and Texas, she was promoting her latest flick, Roxie Hart, an adaptation of the 1926 play Chicago.
But her lucrative career might never have come to pass had Rogers not entered and won a statewide Charleston contest when she was 17. After a family move to Texas, where her mother worked as a theater reporter for the Fort Worth Record, Rogers had been exposed to the actors and dancers from whom she picked up her craft. And after winning the contest she got her own dance troupe, Ginger Rogers and her Redheads, and made her way from vaudeville to Broadway to the silver screen.
Once Rogers won that contest, it took a lot more than luck to maintain a steady career. LIFE wrote that her work ethic involved not only a healthy stamina, but a high tolerance for physical pain. “Rehearsing sometimes for 18 hours straight,” the profile read, “Ginger often left the studio at night with her feet bleeding.”
As for the Charleston, the dance that started it all, those skills served Rogers quite well in Roxie Hart:
Actress Ginger Rogers geared up for fly fishing on her 1,000-acre ranch.Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.
Caption from LIFE. For old times' sake Ginger wears a dress her mother made for her when she appeared at a St. Louis vaudeville theater 14 years ago. The dress still fits.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Three of a kind are Ginger and her enterprising great-great-great grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. John Sappington, depicted in anonymous portraits in Arrow Rock tavern. Dr. Sappington introduced quinine pills to cure malaria in Missouri where church bells were rung every night to remind people to take pills. Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. At tomb of her most famed ancestor, Dr. John Sappington, near Arrow Rock, Ginger reads epitaph: "A truly honest man is the noblest work of God;" "He lay like a warrior taking his rest"—from Alexander Pope and Charles Wolf.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Ginger visits Arrow Rock, Mo. on old Sante Fe Trail, where her ancestors moved from Maryland in 1817. Their heirlooms are on exhibit in this tavern.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. From the roof of Prairie Park, where Ginger is taking a good look, Dr. Sappington claimed he could see his five daughters' homes. The doctor moved here in his old age, gave his daughters nearby land so he could keep an eye on them. The building below are old slave quarters.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesGinger Rogers posing looking at LP records. Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Ginger returns to her birthplace in Independence, Mo. for the first time since she left as a baby a few weeks old. Independence is about 12 miles east of Kansas City.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. After 20 years Ginger sits at her old school desk in fifth grade at Fort Worth, Texas. With her is Mrs. Ruth Zant, who taught her favorite subject, English.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Ginger meets a childhood friend, Frances Jakobe, who lived across the street from her. Still living in Kansas City, Frances is now Mrs. John Lee, mother of three, including Jackie in her lap, Joan in the corner.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. This was Ginger's bedroom in her grandparents' house. She looks out the window where she used to shout to Jakobe girls who lived across the street. Ginger's grandfather, Walter Owens, now lives near her in Hollywood.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesGinger at the Baker Hotel in Dallas, Texas.Bob Landry—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. A childhood dream comes true in the form of this soda fountain in her own home. Ginger fixes a rich sundae for her mother who lives with her.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. This is Ginger's hideaway behind her Hollywood home. Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. With a mouthful of apple, Ginger raids her own orchard. Ginger herself doesn't do many chores around her ranch, feels she is entitled just to loaf after her chores in Hollywood.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Ginger feeds wild flowers to one of her 22 cows that will soon help to provide rich milk to a cantonment of soldiers stationed near Rogers' ranch at Eagle point, Ore.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. Leaning on the fence are Ginger, her mother (right) and their farm manager watching the cattle at dinnertime.Bob Landry—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
