Ginger: My Story

Ginger Rogers is an entertainment legend. She has danced her way into the hearts of millions and has starred in both comedy and drama on both stage and screen. Now, for the first time, she tells her story. "My mother told me I was dancing before I was born", Ginger Rogers writes. Born in Independence, Missouri, in 1911, she debuted in vaudeville at age fourteen. In 1930 she starred on Broadway in Girl Crazy, introducing the classic Gershwin tunes "Embraceable You" and "But Not for Me". Then she went to Hollywood, and the rest is history. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire formed one of the most magical screen partnerships the world has ever seen. They made ten films together, including the classics Top Hat, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance, enrapturing the nation with their incandescent dance numbers and unique chemistry. Rogers displayed her deft comic touch in Stage Door, The Major and the Minor, and Monkey Business, and won the 1940 Oscar for Best Actress for her dramatic role in Kitty Foyle. Ginger sparkles with Ginger Rogers's wry, sometimes offbeat sense of humor and glows with her warmth and humanity. Once, to land a role, Rogers invented the persona of the aristocratic British actress "Lady Ainsley" - costar Katharine Hepburn was not amused. In 1936, Ginger was invited to the White House for FDR's birthday party, and the president asked her to do an impromptu dance number. All went well until she caught a heel on the carpet, stumbled, and the top of her dress almost came down in front of the distinguished company. Lavishly illustrated with rare photographs from her personal collection, Ginger is full of stories that only Ginger Rogers could tell - the joys and heartbreaks of her fivemarriages, including one to matinee idol Lew Ayres; her romances with Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Hollywood attorney Greg Bautzer, Howard Hughes, and George Gershwin; and her encounters with such figures as Lucille Ball, Harry Truman, Henry Fonda, Dwight Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe, Juan Peron, Noel Coward, Richard Nixon, Judy Garland, Henry Kissinger, David Niven, the Shah of Iran, David O. Selznick, Irving Berlin, and Ronald Reagan. Rogers also writes of her abiding religious conviction, which has seen her through many difficult times. For fans of stage and screen - and for lovers of the special brand of magic that is Ginger Rogers's own - Ginger is an irresistible treat, a behind-the-scenes account of life during Hollywood's golden age by one of its most enduring stars.