Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer. She is known for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), but is best remembered for performing in RKO's musical films (partnered with Fred Astaire) on stage, radio and television, throughout much of the 20th century.

30/04/2019
Ginger Rogers

1. Profile :

*Ginger Rogers in 1941

Born Virginia Katherine McMath
July 16, 1911
Independence, Missouri, U.S.
Died April 25, 1995 (aged 83)
Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.
Resting place Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery, Chatsworth, California
Nationality American
Occupation
Actress dancer singer
Years active 1925–1987
Spouse(s)
Jack Pepper
(m. 1929; div. 1931)
Lew Ayres
(m. 1934; div. 1940)
Jack Briggs
(m. 1943; div. 1949)
Jacques Bergerac
(m. 1953; div. 1957)
William Marshall
(m. 1961; div. 1969)

2. Introduction :

Ginger Rogers (born Virginia Katherine McMath; July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) was an American actress, dancer, and singer. She is known for her starring role in Kitty Foyle (1940), but is best remembered for performing in RKO's musical films (partnered with Fred Astaire) on stage, radio and television, throughout much of the 20th century.

Born in Independence, Missouri, and raised in Kansas City, Rogers and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas, when she was nine years old. After winning a 1925 Charleston dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her debut stage role in Girl Crazy. This success led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street (1933). Throughout the 1930s, Rogers made nine films with Astaire, among which were some of her biggest successes, such as Swing Time (1936) and Top Hat (1935). After two commercial failures with Astaire, Rogers began to branch out into dramatic films and comedies. Her acting was well received by critics and audiences, and she became one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s. Her performance in Kitty Foyle (1940) won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.

Rogers remained successful throughout the 1940s and at one point was Hollywood's highest-paid actress, but her popularity had peaked by the end of the decade. She reunited with Astaire in 1949 in the commercially successful The Barkleys of Broadway. After an unsuccessful period through the 1950s, Rogers made a successful return to Broadway in 1965, playing the lead role in Hello, Dolly!. More lead roles on Broadway followed, along with her stage directorial debut in 1985 on an off-Broadway production of Babes in Arms. Rogers also made television acting appearances until 1987. In 1992, Rogers was recognized at the Kennedy Center Honors. She died of a heart attack in 1995, at the age of 83.

Rogers is associated with the phrase "backwards and in high heels", the title of her memoir, attributed to Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest 1982 cartoon with the caption "Sure he [Astaire] was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did...backwards and in high heels". This phrase is sometimes incorrectly attributed to Ann Richards, who used it in her keynote address to the 1988 Democratic National Convention.

A Republican and a devout Christian Scientist, Rogers was married five times, with all of her marriages ending in divorce; she had no children. During her long career, Rogers made 73 films, and her musical films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre. Rogers was a major movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is often considered an American icon. She ranks number 14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema.

3. Early life :

*100 W Moore St., Independence, Missouri, the birthplace of Ginger Rogers

Virginia Katherine McMath was born on July 16, 1911, in Independence, Missouri, the only child of Lela Emogene (née Owens; 1891–1977), a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer, and William Eddins McMath (1880–1925), an electrical engineer. She was of Scottish, Welsh, and English ancestry. Her mother did not want her to be born in a hospital, having lost a previous child there. Her parents separated shortly after she was born, but her grandparents, Wilma Saphrona (née Ball) and Walter Winfield Owens, lived nearby in Kansas City. After unsuccessfully trying to become a family again, McMath kidnapped his daughter twice. Rogers said that she never saw her natural father again. Her mother divorced her father soon thereafter.

In 1915, Rogers moved in with her grandparents while her mother made a trip to Hollywood in an effort to get an essay she had written made into a film. Lela succeeded and continued to write scripts for Fox Studios. Rogers was to remain close to her grandfather and much later, when she was a star in 1939, she bought him a home at 5115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California, so he could be close to her while she was filming at the studios.

One of Rogers' young cousins, Helen, had a hard time pronouncing "Virginia", shortening it to "Badinda"; the nickname soon became "Ginga".

When Rogers was nine years old, her mother remarried, to John Logan Rogers. Ginger took the surname Rogers, although she was never legally adopted. They lived in Fort Worth. Her mother became a theater critic for a local newspaper, the Fort Worth Record. She attended, but did not graduate from, Fort Worth's Central High School (later renamed R.L. Paschal High School).

As a teenager, Rogers thought of becoming a school teacher, but with her mother's interest in Hollywood and the theater, her early exposure to the theater increased. Waiting for her mother in the wings of the Majestic Theatre, she began to sing and dance along with the performers on stage.

4. Career :

I. Vaudeville and Broadway :

Rogers' entertainment career was born one night when the traveling vaudeville act of Eddie Foy came to Fort Worth and needed a quick stand-in. She then entered and won a Charleston dance contest which allowed her to tour for six months, at one point in 1926 performing at an 18-month-old theater called The Craterian in Medford, Oregon. This theater honored her many years later by changing its name to the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.

At 17, Rogers married Jack Culpepper, a singer/dancer/comedian/recording artist of the day who worked under the name Jack Pepper (according to Ginger's autobiography, she knew Culpepper when she was a child, as her cousin's boyfriend). They formed a short-lived vaudeville double act known as "Ginger and Pepper". The marriage was over within months, and she went back to touring with her mother. When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs and then her Broadway debut in the musical Top Speed, which opened on Christmas Day, 1929.

Within two weeks of opening in Top Speed, Rogers was chosen to star on Broadway in Girl Crazy by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with their choreography. Her appearance in Girl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19.

5. Early film roles :

*Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers in 42nd Street (1933)

Rogers' first movie roles were in a trio of short films made in 1929—Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1930, she was signed by Paramount Pictures to a seven-year contract.

Rogers soon got herself out of the Paramount contract—under which she had made five feature films at Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens—and moved with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé Exchange. Two of her pictures at Pathé were Suicide Fleet (1931) and Carnival Boat (1932) in which she played opposite future Hopalong Cassidy star, William Boyd. Rogers also made feature films for Warner Bros., Monogram, and Fox in 1932, and was named one of 15 WAMPAS Baby Stars. She then made a significant breakthrough as Anytime Annie in the Warner Bros. film 42nd Street (1933). She went on to make a series of films at Warner Bros. most notably in Gold Diggers of 1933 where her solo, "We're In The Money", included a verse in Pig Latin. She then moved to RKO Studios, was put under contract and started work on "Flying Down To Rio", a picture starring Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond but it was soon stolen by Rogers and Broadway star Fred Astaire.

6. 1933–1939: Astaire and Rogers :

Rogers was known for her partnership with Fred Astaire. Together, from 1933 to 1939, they made nine musical films at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) was produced later at MGM. They revolutionized the Hollywood musical by introducing dance routines of unprecedented elegance and virtuosity with sweeping long shots set to songs specially composed for them by the greatest popular song composers of the day. One such composer was Cole Porter with "Night and Day", a song Astaire sang to Rogers with the line "...you are the one" in two of their movies, being particularly poignant in their last pairing of The Barkleys of Broadway.

*Rogers, with her frequent co-star Fred Astaire, in the film Roberta (1935)

Arlene Croce, Hermes Pan, Hannah Hyam, and John Mueller all consider Rogers to have been Astaire's finest dance partner, principally because of her ability to combine dancing skills, natural beauty, and exceptional abilities as a dramatic actress and comedian, thus truly complementing Astaire, a peerless dancer. The resulting song and dance partnership enjoyed a unique credibility in the eyes of audiences.

Of the 33 partnered dances Rogers performed with Astaire, Croce and Mueller have highlighted the infectious spontaneity of her performances in the comic numbers "I'll Be Hard to Handle" from Roberta, "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet, and "Pick Yourself Up" from Swing Time. They also point to the use Astaire made of her remarkably flexible back in classic romantic dances such as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" from Roberta, "Cheek to Cheek" from Top Hat, and "Let's Face the Music and Dance" from Follow the Fleet.

Although the dance routines were choreographed by Astaire and his collaborator Hermes Pan, both have testified to her consummate professionalism, even during periods of intense strain, as she tried to juggle her many other contractual film commitments with the punishing rehearsal schedules of Astaire, who made at most two films in any one year. In 1986, shortly before his death, Astaire remarked, "All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it, but of course they could. So they always cried. All except Ginger. No, no, Ginger never cried".

John Mueller summed up Rogers' abilities as: "Rogers was outstanding among Astaire's partners, not because she was superior to others as a dancer, but, because, as a skilled, intuitive actress, she was cagey enough to realize that acting did not stop when dancing began...the reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable".

Author Dick Richards, in his book Ginger: Salute to a Star, quoted Astaire saying to Raymond Rohauer, curator at the New York Gallery of Modern Art, "Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success."

In a 1976 episode of the popular British talk-show "Parkinson" (Season 5-Episode 24), host Sir Michael Parkinson asked Astaire who his favorite dancing partner was. Astaire answered, "...Ginger. She was the one. You know, the most effective partner I ever had. Everyone knows."

In her classic 1930s musicals with Astaire, Ginger Rogers, co-billed with him, was paid less than Fred, the creative force behind the dances, who also received 10% of the profits. She was also paid less than many of the supporting "farceurs" billed beneath her, in spite of her much more central role in the films' great financial successes. This was personally grating to her and had effects upon her relationships at RKO, especially with director Mark Sandrich, whose purported disrespect of Rogers prompted a sharp letter of reprimand from producer Pandro Berman, which she deemed important enough to publish in her autobiography. Rogers fought hard for her contract and salary rights and for better films and scripts.

After 15 months apart and with RKO facing bankruptcy, the studio paired Fred and Ginger for another movie titled Carefree, but it lost money. Next came The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, based on a true story, but the serious plot and tragic ending resulted in the worst box-office receipts of any of their films. This was driven not by diminished popularity, but by the hard 1930s economic reality. The production costs of musicals, always significantly more costly than regular features, continued to increase at a much faster rate than admissions.

7. 1933–1939: Rogers without Astaire :

Both before and immediately after her dancing and acting partnership with Fred Astaire ended, Rogers starred in a number of successful nonmusical films. Stage Door (1937) demonstrated her dramatic capacity, as the loquacious yet vulnerable girl next door, a tough-minded, theatrical hopeful, opposite Katharine Hepburn. Successful comedies included Vivacious Lady (1938) with James Stewart, Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), where she played an out-of-work girl sucked into the lives of a wealthy family, and Bachelor Mother (1939), with David Niven, in which she played a shop girl who is falsely thought to have abandoned her baby.

In 1934, Rogers sued Sylvia of Hollywood for $100K for defamation. Sylvia, Hollywood's fitness guru and radio personality, had claimed that Rogers was on Sylvia's radio show when, in fact, she was not.

On March 5, 1939, Rogers starred in "Single Party Going East", an episode of Silver Theater on CBS radio.

8. 1940s :

In 1941, Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in 1940's Kitty Foyle. She enjoyed considerable success during the early 1940s, and was RKO's hottest property during this period. In Roxie Hart (1942), based on the same play which later served as the template for the musical Chicago, Rogers played a wisecracking flapper in a love triangle on trial for the murder of her lover; set in the era of prohibition, most of the film takes place in a women's jail.

In the neorealist Primrose Path (1940), directed by Gregory La Cava, she played a prostitute's daughter trying to avoid family pressure into following the fate of her mother. Further highlights of this period included Tom, Dick, and Harry, a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men; I'll Be Seeing You (1944), with Joseph Cotten; and Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature film: The Major and the Minor (1942), in which she played a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse for an extended period. This film featured a performance by Rogers' real mother, Lela, playing her film mother.

After becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, including Tender Comrade (1943), Lady in the Dark (1944), and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), and became the highest-paid performer in Hollywood. However, by the end of the decade, her film career had peaked. Arthur Freed reunited her with Fred Astaire in The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, when Judy Garland was unable to appear in the role that was to have reunited her with her Easter Parade co-star.

9. Late career :

Rogers' film career entered a period of gradual decline in the 1950s, as parts for older actresses became more difficult to obtain, but she still scored with some solid movies. She starred in Storm Warning (1950) with Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, a noir, anti-Ku Klux Klan film by Warner Bros. In 1952 Rogers starred in two comedies featuring Marilyn Monroe, Monkey Business with Cary Grant, directed by Howard Hawks, and We're Not Married!. She followed those with a role in Dreamboat alongside Clifton Webb, as his wife. She played the female lead in Tight Spot (1955), a mystery thriller, with Edward G. Robinson. After a series of unremarkable films, she scored a great popular success on Broadway in 1965, playing Dolly Levi in the long-running Hello, Dolly!.

*Ginger Rogers with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe in Monkey Business (1952)

In later life, Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire; she presented him with a special Academy Award in 1950, and they were copresenters of individual Academy Awards in 1967, during which they elicited a standing ovation when they came on stage in an impromptu dance. In 1969, she had the lead role in another long-running popular production, Mame, from the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in the West End of London, arriving for the role on the liner Queen Elizabeth 2 from New York City. Her docking there occasioned the maximum of pomp and ceremony at Southampton. She became the highest-paid performer in the history of the West End up to that time. The production ran for 14 months and featured a royal command performance for Queen Elizabeth II.

From the 1950s onwards, Rogers made occasional appearances on television, even substituting for a vacationing Hal March on The $64,000 Question. In the later years of her career, she made guest appearances in three different series by Aaron Spelling: The Love Boat (1979), Glitter (1984), and Hotel (1987), which was her final screen appearance as an actress. In 1985, Rogers fulfilled a long-standing wish to direct when she directed the musical Babes in Arms off-Broadway in Tarrytown, New York, at 74 years old. It was produced by Michael Lipton and Robert Kennedy of Kennedy Lipton Productions. The production starred Broadway talents Donna Theodore, Carleton Carpenter, James Brennan, Randy Skinner, Karen Ziemba, Dwight Edwards, and Kim Morgan. It is also noted in her autobiography Ginger, My Story.

The Kennedy Center honored Ginger Rogers in December 1992. This event, which was shown on television, was somewhat marred when Astaire's widow, Robyn Smith, who permitted clips of Astaire dancing with Rogers to be shown for free at the function itself, was unable to come to terms with CBS Television for broadcast rights to the clips (all previous rights-holders having donated broadcast rights gratis).

For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Rogers has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6772 Hollywood Boulevard.

10. Personal life :

*Rogers with Jacques Bergerac in the 1950s

Rogers, an only child, maintained a close relationship with her mother, Lela Rogers, throughout her life. Lela, a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer, was also one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps, was a founder of the successful "Hollywood Playhouse" for aspiring actors and actresses on the RKO set, and a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Rogers was a lifelong member of the Republican Party, who campaigned for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election and was a strong opponent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking out against both him and his New Deal proposals. She was also a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution.

Rogers and her mother also had an extremely close professional relationship. Lela Rogers was credited with many pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York and in Hollywood, and gave her much assistance in contract negotiations with RKO. She also wrote a children's mystery book with her daughter as the central character.

On March 29, 1929, Rogers married for the first time at age 17 to her dancing partner Jack Pepper (real name Edward Jackson Culpepper). They divorced in 1931, having separated soon after the wedding. Ginger dated Mervyn LeRoy in 1932, but they ended the relationship and remained friends until his death in 1987. In 1934, she married actor Lew Ayres (1908–96). They divorced seven years later.

In 1943, Rogers married her third husband, Jack Briggs, who was a U.S. Marine. Upon his return from World War II, Briggs showed no interest in continuing his incipient Hollywood career. They divorced in 1949. In 1953, she married Jacques Bergerac, a French actor 16 years her junior, whom she met on a trip to Paris. A lawyer in France, he came to Hollywood with her and became an actor. They divorced in 1957. Her fifth and final husband was director and producer William Marshall. They married in 1961 and divorced in 1969, after his bouts with alcohol and the financial collapse of their joint film production company in Jamaica.

*Rogers in 1993

Rogers was lifelong friends with actresses Lucille Ball and Bette Davis. She appeared with Ball in an episode of Here's Lucy on November 22, 1971, in which Rogers danced the Charleston for the first time in many years. Rogers starred in one of the earliest films co-directed and co-scripted by a woman, Wanda Tuchock's Finishing School (1934). Rogers maintained a close friendship with her cousin, writer/socialite Phyllis Fraser, wife of Random House publisher Bennett Cerf, but was not Rita Hayworth's natural cousin, as has been reported. Hayworth's maternal uncle, Vinton Hayworth, was married to Rogers' maternal aunt, Jean Owens.

She was raised a Christian Scientist and remained a lifelong adherent. She devoted a great deal of time in her autobiography to the importance of her faith throughout her career. Rogers' mother died in 1977. Rogers remained at the 4-Rs (Rogers' Rogue River Ranch) until 1990, when she sold the property and moved to nearby Medford, Oregon.

The City of Independence, Missouri, designated the birthplace of Ginger Rogers an Historic Landmark Property in 1994. On July 16, 1994, Ginger and her secretary Roberta Olden visited Independence, Missouri to appear at the Ginger Rogers' Day celebration presented by the city. Ginger was present when Mayor Ron Stewart affixed an Historic Landmark Property plaque to the front of the house where she was born on July 16, 1911. She signed over 2,000 autographs at this event. The home is currently being restored and will be open to the public in 2018. An annual Ginger Rogers Day Festival is held in July in Independence. The current owner of the house is Three Trails Cottages, Inc. and the museum director is Marge Padgitt. Plans have begun for a second building to accommodate Ginger Rogers memorabilia.

She made her last public appearance on March 18, 1995, when she received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award. For many years, Rogers regularly supported, and held in-person presentations, at the Craterian Theater, in Medford, where she had performed in 1926 as a vaudevillian. The theater was comprehensively restored in 1997 and posthumously renamed in her honor as the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.

11. Death :

*Grave of Ginger Rogers at Oakwood Memorial Park

Rogers spent winters in Rancho Mirage and summers in Medford, Oregon. She died at her Rancho Mirage home on April 25, 1995, at the age of 83. A coroner's autopsy concluded the cause of death was from natural causes. She was cremated and her ashes interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California, with her mother's remains.

12. Portrayals of Rogers :

Likenesses of Astaire and Rogers, apparently painted over from the "Cheek to Cheek" dance in Top Hat, are in the "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" section of The Beatles film Yellow Submarine (1968).

Rogers' image is one of many famous women's images of the 1930s and '40s featured on the bedroom wall in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, a gallery of magazine cuttings pasted on the wall created by Anne and her sister Margot while hiding from the Nazis. When the house became a museum, the gallery the Frank sisters created was preserved under glass.

Ginger The Musical by Robert Kennedy and Paul Becker which Ginger Rogers approved and was to direct on Broadway the year of her death was in negotiations as late as the 2016–17 Broadway season. Marshall Mason directed its first production in 2001 starring Donna McKechnie and Nili Bassman and was choreographed by Randy Skinner.
A musical about the life of Rogers, entitled Backwards in High Heels, premiered in Florida in early 2007.

Rogers was the heroine of a novel, Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak (1942, by Lela E. Rogers), in which "the heroine has the same name and appearance as the famous actress, but has no connection ... it is as though the famous actress has stepped into an alternate reality in which she is an ordinary person." It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941–1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.

The Dancing House in Prague (Czech: Tancici dum), sometimes known as Ginger and Fred, was designed by American architect Frank Gehry and inspired by the dancing of Astaire and Rogers.

In the 1981 film Pennies From Heaven, Bernadette Peters's character dances with Steve Martin's as they watch Fred and Ginger's "Let's Face the Music and Dance" sequence from 1936's Follow the Fleet, using it as their inspiration.

Federico Fellini's film Ginger and Fred centers on two aging Italian impersonators of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Rogers sued the production and the distributor when the film was released in the U.S. for misappropriation and infringement of her public personality. Her claims were dismissed, as according to the judgement, the film only obliquely related to Astaire and her.

*Ginger Rogers - 1940s

13. Filmography

Title Date Director Co-Starring Notes

Night In A Dormitory 1929 Harry Delmar maybe 1930
Office Blues 1930 musical short
Young Man of Manhattan 1930 Monta Bell Claudette Colbert, Norman Foster The line "Cigarette me, big boy" became a catchphrase during the 1930s after audiences heard Rogers repeat it throughout the movie.
Queen High 1930 Fred Newmeyer
The Sap from Syracuse 1930 A. Edward Sutherland Jack Oakie
Follow the Leader 1930 Norman Taurog
Honor Among Lovers 1931 Dorothy Arzner Claudette Colbert
The Tip-Off 1931 Albert Rogell
Suicide Fleet 1931 Albert Rogell
Carnival Boat 1932 Albert Rogell
The Tenderfoot 1932 Ray Enright Joe E. Brown 

*In The Thirteenth Guest 1932  (Director - Albert Ray Lyle Talbot )

Hat Check Girl 1932 Sidney Lanfield Sidney Lanfield was the most frequent director on the Addams Family 1960s television show.
You Said a Mouthful 1932 Lloyd Bacon Joe E. Brown 

*42nd Street 1933 Lloyd Bacon Warner Baxter, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell As Ann Lowell, aka "Anytime Annie". ("She only said no once, and then she didn't hear the question".)

Broadway Bad 1933 Sidney Lanfield
Gold Diggers of 1933 1933 Mervyn LeRoy Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell Featured Rogers' famous performance of "We're in the Money," directed and choreographed by Busby Berkeley.
Professional Sweetheart 1933 William A. Seiter Norman Foster
A Shriek in the Night 1933 Albert Ray Lyle Talbot
Don't Bet on Love 1933 Murray Roth Lew Ayres Ginger Rogers and Lew Ayres were married for seven years following this film.
Sitting Pretty 1933 Harry Joe Brown Jack Oakie, Jack Haley

*Flying Down to Rio 1933 Thornton Freeland Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Fred Astaire The first Astaire–Rogers pairing.  This is the only movie where Rogers is billed above Astaire.

Chance at Heaven 1933 William A. Seiter Joel McCrea 

*Rafter Romance 1933 (Director - William A. Seiter Norman Foster )

Finishing School 1934 Wanda Tuchock and George Nicholas Beulah Bondi
Twenty Million Sweethearts 1934 Ray Enright Dick Powell
Change of Heart 1934 John G. Blystone Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell
Upperworld 1934 Roy Del Ruth Mary Astor
The Gay Divorcee 1934 Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire
Romance in Manhattan 1934 Stephen Roberts Francis Lederer
Roberta 1935 William A. Seiter Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott Lucille Ball has an uncredited appearance as a model. She had lines deleted since her character was supposed to be a French model and she could not perfect the accent.
Star of Midnight 1935 Stephen Roberts William Powell
Top Hat 1935 Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire
In Person 1935 William A. Seiter George Brent 

*Follow the Fleet 1936 Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire, Randolph Scott, Lucille Ball 

Swing Time 1936 George Stevens Fred Astaire
Shall We Dance 1937 Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire 

*Stage Door 1937 Gregory La Cava Katharine Hepburn, Adolphe Menjou, Gail Patrick, Lucille Ball 

Having Wonderful Time 1938 Alfred Santell Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Lucille Ball, Red Skelton This used much of the same cast as Stage Door.
Vivacious Lady 1938 George Stevens James Stewart, Charles Coburn, Hattie McDaniel
Carefree 1938 Mark Sandrich Fred Astaire, Jack Carson, Hattie McDaniel
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle 1939 H. C. Potter Fred Astaire
Bachelor Mother 1939 Garson Kanin David Niven, Charles Coburn
Fifth Avenue Girl 1939 Gregory La Cava Walter Connolly
Primrose Path 1940 Gregory La Cava Joel McCrea
Lucky Partners 1940 Lewis Milestone Ronald Colman, Jack Carson 

*"Kitty Foyle 1940 Sam Wood Dennis Morgan, James Craig Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress the first year that the Academy did not announce winners before the ceremony. She beat Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, Martha Scott, and former co-star Katharine Hepburn."

Tom, Dick and Harry 1941 Garson Kanin Burgess Meredith
Roxie Hart 1942 William A. Wellman Adolphe Menjou An adaptation of the non-musical play Chicago, later adapted into the successful stage musical and film.
Tales of Manhattan 1942 Julien Duvivier Henry Fonda, Cesar Romero, Rita Hayworth, Gail Patrick
The Major and the Minor 1942 Billy Wilder Ray Milland Rogers campaigned hard for Billy Wilder and as a result this became his debut film. This remains one of Rogers' favorite movies. Near the end, her real mother, Lela Rogers, played her character's mother.
Once Upon a Honeymoon 1942 Leo McCarey Cary Grant
Tender Comrade 1943 Edward Dmytryk Robert Ryan
Lady in the Dark 1944 Mitchell Leisen Ray Milland, Warner Baxter
I'll Be Seeing You 1944 William Dieterle Joseph Cotten, Shirley Temple
Week-End at the Waldorf 1945 Robert Z. Leonard Lana Turner Remake of the 1932 film Grand Hotel, Rogers portrayed the ballerina who was first played on screen by Greta Garbo.
Heartbeat 1946 Sam Wood Adolphe Menjou
Magnificent Doll 1946 Frank Borzage David Niven, Burgess Meredith
It Had to Be You 1947 Don Hartman and Rudolph Mate Cornel Wilde 

*"The Barkleys of Broadway 1949 Charles Walters Fred Astaire Judy Garland was originally cast, having recently starred with Astaire in Easter Parade (1948); due to personal problems, she was replaced by Rogers. This is the only Astaire–Rogers film not released by RKO and the only one filmed in color (although the "I Used to Be Color Blind" number in Carefree was originally filmed in Technicolor)."

Perfect Strangers 1950 Bretaigne Windust Dennis Morgan
Storm Warning 1951 Stuart Heisler Ronald Reagan, Doris Day, Steve Cochran
The Groom Wore Spurs 1951 Richard Whorf Jack Carson
We're Not Married! 1952 Edmund Goulding Marilyn Monroe, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Fred Allen, Victor Moore 

*Monkey Business 1952 Howard Hawks Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn 

Dreamboat 1952 Claude Binyon Clifton Webb
Forever Female 1953 Irving Rapper William Holden
Black Widow 1954 Nunnally Johnson Gene Tierney, Van Heflin, Peggy Ann Garner
Twist of Fate 1954 David Miller Herbert Lom Released in Great Britain as Beautiful Stranger; Rogers' husband at the time, Jacques Bergerac, appeared in the film.
Tight Spot 1955 Phil Karlson Edward G. Robinson, Brian Keith, Lorne Greene, Eve McVeagh
The First Traveling Saleslady 1956 Arthur Lubin Carol Channing Clint Eastwood appeared in an early film role.
Teenage Rebel 1956 Edmund Goulding Michael Rennie
Oh, Men! Oh, Women! 1957 Nunnally Johnson David Niven
Quick, Let's Get Married! 1964 William Dieterle Ray Milland Also known as "The Confession."
Harlow 1965 Alex Segal Carol Lynley Rogers' last film.

14. Short subjects :

An appearance with Perry Como on TV's Kraft Music Hall (1957)
A Day of a Man of Affairs (1929)
A Night in a Dormitory (1930)
Campus Sweethearts (1930)
Office Blues (1930)
Hollywood on Parade (1932)
Screen Snapshots (1932)
Hollywood on Parade No. A-9 (1933)
Hollywood Newsreel (1934)
Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 3 (1936)
Show Business at War (1943)
Battle Stations (Narrator, 1944)
Screen Snapshots: The Great Showman (1950)
Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Great Entertainers (1954)

15. Television :

*An appearance with Perry Como on TV's Kraft Music Hall (1957)

On The Red Skelton Show (1963)
Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, at least 10 appearances between 1956-65
The DuPont Show with June Allyson, as Kay Neilson in "The Tender Shoot" (October 18, 1959)
What's My Line? (at least six appearances between 1954-66)
The Hollywood Palace (two appearances, 1964)

*The Red Skelton Show (at least 3 episodes, 1963-64)

The Jack Benny Program (1957)
The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom (1959)
The Ed Sullivan Show (1963), singing "Something's Gotta Give"
Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella (1965 remake starring Lesley Ann Warren)
Here's Lucy, episode "Ginger Rogers Comes to Tea" (1971)
The Love Boat (1979) (episodes 3.10 and 3.11)
Glitter (1984) (episode 1.3)
Hotel (1987) (episode 5.1) (final screen role)

16.Stage work :

Top Speed (1929)
Girl Crazy (1930)
Love and Let Love (1951)
The Pink Jungle (1959)
Annie Get Your Gun (1960)
Bell, Book and Candle (1960)
Calamity Jane (1961)
Husband and Wife (1962)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1963)
A More Perfect Union (1963)
Tovarich (1964)
Hello, Dolly! (1965, Broadway,
replacement for lead)
Mame (London, 1969)
Coco (1971)
No, No, Nanette (1974)
Forty Carats (1974)
Anything Goes (1980)
Miss Moffat (1983)
Charley's Aunt (1984)

17. Radio appearances :

Year Program Episode/source

1942 Lux Radio Theatre Kitty Foyle
1953 Radio Theater It Grows on Trees

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