One of my latest flea Market finds, a vintage movie magazine from 1939, with biographies of Ginger and Fred (tagging @past-lives-today because i know she will enjoy this)
At this event in 1974, Fred and Ginger spent the evening hudled in their own bubble with Hermes Pan, chatting away. There are many candid transparencies for sale at auction of the three of them at this reception, oblivious to the rest of the room. There is no way around the fact that Fred and Ginger truly enjoyed each other’s company.
Around the time of wrapping filming on The Gay Divorcée, Ginger ran away from her mother and the film industry. It took a few search parties for her to be “retrieved”, and this was not the first or last time Ginger took it upon herself to “disappear”. She struggled a great deal with separating her own thoughts, feelings, beliefs and desires from those of her mother and of film producers. It was something she didn’t speak about, but wrote about in letters to friends when she was much older. There is a great deal we don’t know about Ginger, because the Old Hollywood film industry had her written as a character that they forced her to be from the 1930s until her death.
I’ve been a dancer and a dance historian for many, many years. I have studied dozens of famous dance partnerships. This is not a look you give a partner you hate. And it is not a look Astaire ever gave any of his other partners.
Fred and Ginger on set for Carefree, 1938. Their dear friend and choreographer, Hermes Pan, always said that Ginger was Fred’s “best” partner, and that he felt they belonged together. One of his famous quotes was, “Fred and Ginger seemed to go together.”
From what I have read and researched about Fred and Ginger’s time during the filming of The Barkleys of Broadway (their 10th film as partners), they both felt happy to just hang out together, and they laughed their way through rehearsals, filming and promotional stills. They also had dinner at each other’s houses regularly. Fred’s daughter, Ava, has shared several stories about Fred and Ginger spending quality time together during this production. Ava has said at several fan events in England that this production was less pressure on both of them, and therefore a great deal of fun, for “Daddy and Ginger.”
A vivid, colour transparency of Ginger Rogers recently sold at auction. Based on her hair and clothing style, this appears to have been taken in 1939. If you need a moment to catch your breath, well of course you do.
