Ginger Rogers

Ginger Rogers began as a vaudeville and Broadway performer before moving into film in the early 1930s, where she is most enduringly remembered for the ten musicals she made opposite Fred Astaire at RKO between 1933 and 1949, including "Top Hat" (1935), "Swing Time" (1936), and "Shall We Dance" (1937). Their partnership defined the Hollywood musical of the decade and made Rogers, in the choreographer Hermes Pan's phrase, the equal partner who "gave him sex" as Astaire gave the pairing style. Rogers deliberately sought roles outside the musical genre to avoid being confined to the Astaire partnership, and the strategy paid off when she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the straight dramatic role of "Kitty Foyle" (1940), a performance with no dancing at all. She continued acting in film, on stage, and in television into the 1960s and beyond, and worked twice with Cary Grant in romantic-comedy vehicles during his freelance period at RKO in the 1940s, in productions distinct from both her Astaire musicals and her later dramatic work.