Sunday morning with Ginger and the gays

Poor Ginger. Never could sing, but did, anyway.

Gower Champion: Why didn't you tell me?

Hermes Pan: I thought you knew.

Yowsa—those poor souls…I feel so sorry for them. I think I recognize one of them from Emerson College!

Yikes. Is that some kind of Silver Follies number she performed for old folks homes in Palm Springs?

God - she looks like Mae West in Sextette.

Did she get those dancers on loan from Mitzi Gaynor?

Probably 65 or so in this clip

Ginger Rogers Born: July 16, 1911, Independence, MO

"Love Will Keep Us Together" was certified gold by the RIAA and also won the Grammy Award (1975) for Record of the Year on February 28, 1976.

I'd like to see her rendition of Muskrat Love.

I just caught AIDS.

They gave her really limited ranges of motion, to preserve her breathe and energy for her lip synching

Ginger was a hateful homophobe. She was the first guest on one of the chat shows one night. Harvey Fierstein was the second guest, and she refused to stay onstage during his segment. She left.

[quote] she left

Harvey overheard fellow guest Ginger Rogers telling a producer that she couldn’t stay on the couch after her segment and sit with Fierstein, because Fierstein was a homosexual and she didn’t want to risk catching AIDS from him — whereupon Fierstein enthusiastically greeted her, proclaimed him her greatest fan and kissed her on the cheek.

the Carioca

[quote]Ginger was a hateful homophobe. She was the first guest on one of the chat shows one night. Harvey Fierstein was the second guest, and she refused to stay onstage during his segment. She left.

She could've just been a Harveyphobe.

R113 I thought she would be doing a series of low energy gestures and she is actually seated for part of that dance, but in other segments she is actually dancing pretty athletically for someone her age at that time. Her dress is doing a lot of the work, too, when she ruffles all that material to create motion without having to exert herself (no deep bends, few high kicks, no fast twisting to create a torque in her spine).

I think the dancers also stay pretty far away from her to avoid tripping her and when the one dancer lifts and twirls her, they set up the drums in a row to make a sort of barrier, and there is a palpable tension and little sigh at the last lift. It looks like an event you might see at dog show, but with a really old and decrepit afghan hound rustling gingerly through the ring with a nervous handler.

In Liza Minnelli’s last performances, I think they dragged her around in a chair, and one critic noted that the dancers all wore white gloves and wiggled their hands a lot to distract the audience from being out of step.

It must be hard to age as a performer known for high energy dance movements.

^^ r13, that is. D’oh

Hadn’t seen her that skinny in years.

I heard two bones snap.

Pussy hounds all of them. Positively dripping…

The guy with the thick mustache is a fucking STAR.

Love his animated face waiting for Ginger to stop wiggling so he could shoot right back to his fabulousness.

Mustache Guy (and beard guy) seem to be in both videos posted above -- I guess Ginger had some kind of show where these were her regular background sprites.

I lived near a summer theater when I was a teen and could have gone and seen her there but I didn't. I didn't see Marlene Dietrich, either. I did see Cyd Charisse and Mitzi Gaynor.

You know all four of those guys went off to the baths afterward.

In 1987, she testified before Congress about colorization of old movies (she complained bitterly about it and said it hurt her feelings). I remember she looked absolutely awful by that point--she was all gussied up like Baby Jane Hudson and looked like a freak.

She was the poster child for elderly female celebrities with inappropriately long hair.

and I had 'em all! R23

I'm always impressed with how seemingly effortlessly Ginger always managed to stay with the times. Also, did some of these men come out of the closet at another point in the show? OP, how do you know they're gay?

In OP’s clip, she sounds a lot like a character she played in a film called The Major and the Minor, with Ray Milland. Her character disguised herself as a twelve year old to pay a cheaper train fare, and gets in all this comedic trouble doing that. Her voice in the clip sounds weirdly juvenile, maybe intentionally. She reminds me of a girl with progeria.

Super Bowl half time show potential?

In a lot of her pictures in the 1950's her LONG LONG hair was braided and slipped down the back of her dress.

She refused to cut it.

R15/R27: Try as you might, you can't make up how for bad she looked. She was long past her heyday.

Here she is in Mame 1969.

She remained lithe until the very end.

Why would she do this to herself?

R33 Shit! that clip is good and mean. I never got into watching French & Saunders but I think they “went for it” and weren’t afraid to offend.

I once saw one viral clip of them performing as retirees in Florida, holding up giant containers of milk and orange juice when Warehouse grocers were new. That clip ended with one bleeding out on the floor of their kitchen, shot with an assault rifle from a gun show. It was pretty dark, and pretty funny. They captured all the false joviality of recent retirees pretty accurately, and savagely.

at what piont in Ginger's career did she transition to live performance in musical theatre.?

Was she doing summer stock in the 1950s? She didn't just open in NYC in Hello Dolly after Channing left...or did she?

R35. I’ve seen that clip but can no longer find it.

Rogers was definitely on the "straw hat circuit" by the early 70s.

She must have had an excruciating life as a homophobic dancer.

Late in Merman’s life, there was an attempt to do a Girl Crazy 50th Anniversary concert (1980, I guess) but plans fell apart when Ginger insisted on being billed above Merman, since she had top billing in 1930. Merman of course became the breakout star of Girl Crazy and went on to become the biggest star on Broadway, and Ginger became - well, this. And Merman in 1980 was still in great form.

Who saw...?

And Merman loved the gays. Well, maybe not Harvey, but who can blame her?

The clip of "Love Will Keep us Together" was from 1980, shortly before Ginger appeared at Radio City Music Hall in a stage musical revue featuring the Rockettes.

The dancer on the far left (Jeff Parker), studied with Eleanor Powell in the 1970's at her home. His partner was Ron Steinbeck (2nd from the right).

Ginger was very fond of both of them and was very supportive of their relationship..

(R38) She did a great deal of summer stock in New England. I remember seeing her in "Forty Carats", "No, No Nanette", "Coco" and I think she also did "Annie Get Your Gun" and "Molly Brown" in some areas. Her nightclub act was hugely popular in the Region also. I saw it in 1976 at the North Shore Music Theatre and at Storrowtown in Western Massachusetts, which was run by Ann Corio.

She toured in the Midwest, too, during that time. So did Ann Curio---she toured annually with "This was Burlesque".

Sparkle, Ginger...

The skinny dancers showing off their fine asses were tragically dragged down by ancient Ginger's croaks and low kicks.

Those old gals love showing off those gams at any age. They earned a lot from those legs I guess. Ginger, Ann Miller, Liza, show them whie you can I guess.

None of those dancers had any problem getting out of the draft.

<- Sadly, they didn't live past 1984.

Captain Stubing loved my act! I wasn't just an entertainer for the gay boys.

You bet your ass, r48.

Ginger was doing 40 Carats at a summer theatre. A high school friend was interning there and she asked him to go get ammonia capsules for her (to use when she needed to cry). She tipped him with a check for ten dollars. Who's going to cash a check made out to you from Ginger Rogers?

Give Ginger her due, R 40 — she was a much bigger star than Merman, maybe not on Broadway but everywhere else. Rogers was a very big movie star in the ‘30s and ‘40s when that meant something. And Merman was . . . Merman.

Good gay boy that I am, on Mother’s Day of 1982 I took my mother to a matinee of “Nine” on Broadway right after it opened. Though shows often started 10 minutes late, it got to be 15 and then 20 minutes late and the show still hadn’t started. Suddenly there was a noise and flurry at the back of the theater and it was Ginger Rogers surging down the center aisle in ruffled black chiffon, gesturing and speaking out to the whole audience. They had held the curtain for her and she’d been stuck in traffic and now she was loudly apologizing to the audience. There was a hush of confusion and then suddenly everyone got up (us included) and gave her a standing ovation as she made her way to her house seat, bowing and blowing kisses. And the cast of “Nine” proceeded to play the whole show to her. It was Ginger fucking Rogers. That’s a star, baby.

Ginger came to Boston in October of 1991 to promote her autobiography. While there she appeared on Tom Bergeron's local show, "People are Talking".

We were casual acquaintances, but Ginger had her assistant, Roberta, call me in New Hampshire to make sure I came to Boston for the taping, which I did.

While she was wheelchair bound, she still exuded "star quality" and her mind was as sharp as ever.

Later that day, she went to the Harvard Coop to sign copies of her book. When she saw me, she wished me a happy early birthday (I turned 35 later that month) and asked me whether the friend who accompanied me was, "...the new man in your life..." When I told her we were "just friends", she smiled and responded, "You should be more than that. He's good looking..."

R52 I think that was the only costume designed for Joan by Edith Head. She wore her own separates and jewelry to economize production costs. While filming Trog, I think she wore mostly her own clothing and also changed wardrobe in a car. Both Berserk and Trog are guilty pleasures, a pretty fascinating era of schlock filmmaking. Really cool.

^^I mean in that film Berserk. Herman Cohen produced these films on tight budgets.

Thank you, R25. I have been noticing that on some women for some time. And really long hair on young women, On the former it's holding onto youth way past the due date. And on the latter it looks unkempt and creepy.

After a certain well-known singers or entertainers should retire while they can maintain their dignity. Perry Como comes to mind for recent ones..Cher, too.

As for those dancers, loved the tightness of their costumes. In the late seventies, I was a closeted teenager lusting after them while watching then shake their beautiful butts and bulges on the small screen.

While I'm sure many straight men did love your 'act', R51 Ginger, I wouldn't use Captain Stubing as evidence of that fact...

Jamaica Mambo

Doris Day, in the late 70's when she was in her mid 50's, had long hair.

Sylvia Miles could enter this discussion perhaps?

AGHHHHHHH!!!

The "Tuesday you're touring in stock" part of Ginger's career seems to have been 1960-80: Annie Get Your Gun, Bell Book and Candle with her husband at the time (read Harold Kennedy's No Pickle No Performance for a chapter on Ginger's ick factor), Calamity Jane, a play called Husband and Wife, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, another play A More Perfect Union, Tovarich, Hello Dolly! (Broadway and tour), Mame (was this in stock and not just London?), Coco, No No Nanette, Forty Carats, and Anything Goes. She also did her act The Ginger Rogers Show. She did a revisal of Miss Moffat in 1983, and somewhere along the way directed a Babes in Arms with DL fave Karen Ziemba.

What gives a person pause is that, yes, Rogers was born in 1911, and some of these roles were built on actresses decades younger. Tammy Grimes was 26 when she started doing Molly Brown. Ginger was literally twice that age. Doris Day was 31 when she did Calamity Jane, Ginger was 50. Rogers was still younger when she did Annie Get Your Gun than Merman was when she revisited the show in the late 60s. And Rogers wasn't as old when she did Dolly as Carol Channing was the last time she did it.

thanks R64

Ginger/Coco

She could do anything!

R12 WHAT AN ANECDOTE!

I think the clip is fabulous....back in those olden times these dancers were the only glimpse of gay men to be seen by us gaylings

In those tight pants, r69.

In '77 I was 14 and just discovering my sexuality and decided that meant seeing Ginger, Liza, and Bette Davis in live shows that year. Throw in Lily Tomlin, Jo Anne Worley, and Karen Morrow for extra bonus points. Ginger's show was the worst by far.

Lily's shows were so effortless, r71. She was so comfortable up there.

Yes, R72, I was mesmerized and went to see her backstage after the show. She wore an embroidered black cape and signed autographs and held court effortlessly too.

New Fangled Tango

[quote] but plans fell apart when Ginger insisted on being billed above Merman, since she had top billing in 1930. Merman of course became the breakout star of Girl Crazy and went on to become the biggest star on Broadway, and Ginger became - well, this

Even though somebody already answered - come on. Ginger Rogers was a world-wide movie star, one of the biggest - ever hear of Astaire and Rogers? - and after Astaire she became a bigger star on her own for quite a few years.

As for summer stock, I'm pretty sure Ginger was at the Ogunquit Playhouse or the Cape Cod Playhouse as early as the 50s. If not, then the 60s for sure.

[quote]I think the clip is fabulous....back in those olden times these dancers were the only glimpse of gay men to be seen by us gaylings

Hey, what about us?

R24- Being gussied up like Baby Jane Hudson sounds rather

FABULOUS

if one is an old hag and has to be gussied up

[quote] She could do anything!

Except act and sing.

Mean!

She was an object of nostalgia. Also, she took over "Hello Dolly" from someone who created the Dolly role but also could not sing or act, Carol Channing. Carol was a personality and a performer, but not much of an actual actor or singer.

Sorry, but I'd take Channing over Rogers any day. Carol may not have had a your typical Broadway voice, but she knew how to put a song over, and she definitely could act a song.

It only costs a nickel to see the whale.

R80 you are wrong and R81 is correct. Channing was great in a theatre. Saw her several times. Immense charisma and knew how to put everything over.

R80 is correct.

Carol Channing was a novelty act. She was no singer or actress but she could put over a song or a scene by the force of her personality.

I agree about Carol. She had a personality made for the stage, which is why her screen career never took off. As an 8-year-old, we went to the NY World's Fair in 1964 and also saw the original production of "Dolly" starring Carol. I will never forget the experience. Carol had the audience in the palm of her hand and the energy in the St. James was electric.

We saw Ginger in the touring company in Boston several years later. She was very good, and nostalgia played a big part in the audience response. However, she did not mesmerize in the way that Channing had. Her vocals were average at best whereas Channing used her vocal skill to grab you by the balls and create a lasting memory.

Ginger's 70's nightclub act, however, was top-notch. She created an intimacy with her audience and had her celebrated "star quality" out in force. Vocally she was only okay and her version of "If He Walked Into my Life" was embarrassing, but she oozed charm and had the audience on its feet, numerous times.

R85 exactly. Her scenes in a rotten old film called Skidoo were sort of disturbing to watch. Onstage I bet she was something way better.

R71. I would have KILLED to see Karen Morrow and JoAnne Worley—Beltresses of the Universe!

If....

Ginger could act, and she could do comedy better than many leading ladies.

[quote] Her scenes in a rotten old film called Skidoo were sort of disturbing to watch. Onstage I bet she was something way better.

Yes, let's blame Carol for the disaster that was Skidoo.

(R88) Well at least it is better than Lucy's version. However, by the time she did her nightclub act (1976) her limited vocal skills were fading. She did, hwoever, do a brilliant version in that act of "We're in the Money" in Pig Latin, which brought down the house.

Loved this number from her Radio City show in the summer of 1980. She looked great - still slim and glamorous. She was charming and the song was within her limits but unfortunately it did not lead into the anticipated big dance number. She moved well but that was about it.

Ginger danced but she was not a great dancer or even a dancer, really. She moved well. She was pretty, charming, a good actress/comedienne. Had a lot of star quality.

[quote]Ginger danced but she was not a great dancer or even a dancer, really.

I was in high school in 1980 and had become a fan of Astaire Rogers films (and the other wacky old movies WOR used run late at night) when I was babysitting. I went by myself to see her Radio City show because, as stated above, she was Ginger Fucking Rogers.

I believe Radio City was still being run more like a movie theater, because I got there early, was near the front of the line and ended up in the first row. She indeed had star quality, and it was the first time I was that close to a famous person. A decade later, when she was in the wheelchair, she did a Q & A at the LA DGA theater after screening. She had aged a great deal but was still sharp and funny.

R94

[quote] Ginger “did an awful lot of rehearsing,” Walters conceded, but admits she was “not really a dancer. She moves well.”

--Charles Walters, former Broadway dancer, later an MGM choreographer/director. Directed Astaire and Rogers in their final film, The Barkleys Of Broadway and was a fan of both of them.

[quote]“not really a dancer. She moves well.”

Ginger may have not been a versatile dancer, but what's she's doing on screen *is* dancing...not just *moving*.

R97 Yeah, she's dancing. She does a good job. She acts like a dancer, even. That doesn't make her "a dancer." Even I (not a dancer) have always realized that. Rita Hayworth, Cyd Charisse, Eleanor Powell, Gwen Verdon, were dancers It's a natural-born talent and athleticism that's obvious.

Billy Wilder co wrote and directed Ginger in The Major and the Minor

I remember enjoying it ages ago. It was mentioned above Is it still funny?

R99 I love it.

Ginger with Tom Snyder.

(Have to rewind it, I guess.)

I'm still wondering about that perception that Ginger was a homophobe. Choreographer Randy Skinner worked with Rogers for years and even partnered with her in some dance numbers. She chose him to choreograph that production of BABES IN ARMS that she directed. Well, Randy is as gay as a goose, and yet they were good friends. So what gives? Did she change her mind about the homos?

From Wikipedia: In 1985, Ginger Rogers directed a production at the Music Hall in Tarrytown, New York, that starred Randy Skinner, who also choreographed the show, and Karen Ziemba as Susie. The song "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" was added to the song list.

I think the story about Harvey Fierstein happened very early on in the AIDS epidemic when we knew very little about how HIV is transmitted and a lot of people were terrified.

Wow - it seems like the song at R92 is prerecorded.

Yes....I think it was less homophobia and more AIDS phobia.......there was a lot of panic in the mid-80's because so much was UNKNOWN.

It's also some ancient DL eldergay who trots out that same anecdote on every available occasion.

I remember seeing that movie, Tight Spot, on late night TV. It was good! Ginger’s performance was a little weird, not her typical role...

[quote] The "Tuesday you're touring in stock" part of Ginger's career seems to have been 1960-80: Annie Get Your Gun, Bell Book and Candle with her husband at the time (read Harold Kennedy's No Pickle No Performance for a chapter on Ginger's ick factor)

R64 Come on, none of us are going read that book. Tell us what it said.

No Pickle No Performance streaming on link below / Chapter / Ginger / page 76

That link excludes almost the entire book numnut.

Still won’t just tell us what the guy wrote.

r108 Kitty Carlisle! If only he'd added Vivian Vance, that book would have been the permanent #1 bestseller in the DataLounge Gift Shoppe.

[quote] I think the story about Harvey Fierstein happened very early on in the AIDS epidemic when we knew very little about how HIV is transmitted and a lot of people were terrified

I’m on Prep and I’d still be scared of getting AIDS from Harvey.

Harvey spreads AIDS as easily as room temperature Alouette on a Ritz.

112 you type like an asshole.

The thing about that clip is that the dancer with the big dark mustache to the right of Ginger is so excellent. His movements are so much crisper and energetic than the other three.

I think I’d rather see Bette Davis sing her Baby Jane song.

Ginger's appeal in the Thirties was that during the Depression she always seemed so authentic. She could sing a little, and dance better, and she was kind of pretty in a Midwestern way. But her great gift was with a comic quip--she could really sass people. She's so good in the Astaire & Rogers films because it usually takes most of the film for her character to admit she's in love with the Astaire character, and so she spends the rest of the movie putting him down, and she's always great at that. Her best putdowns are directed against Katharine Hepburn in "Stage Door" in their hilarious big scene together when they share a room.

Ginger was great at comedy, and some of the best films from the late 30s and early 40s showcase how charmingly earthy and real she could be: favorites include "Bachelor Mother," "Tom, Dick, and Harry," and especially her very best film, "The Major and the Minor," where she gets to show off her wonderful gift for mimicry. The trouble was that she always wanted to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, and she just wasn;t very good at that, so she did awful films like "Kitty Foyle" (for which she won the Oscar!) and "Tender Comrade."

Audiences loved her for a long time into the 40s--she even had a big hit with the terrible overblown "Lady in the Dark," where she incapable of making the title character likable or vulnerable. By the early 50s she was still acting but for some mysterious reason her films were selling her as a glamor gal, when she had always been so pointedly unglamorous as a star (that was much of her appeal).

Her formidable mother Lela basically ran her life and her career, and when the great Ida Lupino movie "The Hard Way" came out, everyone understood it was a dramatization of that dynamic between them. Her mother plays Ginger's character's mother in "The Major and the Minor," by the way, and Ginger memorably imitates her singular way of speaking in for a long scene.

R114 congratulations on unclutching your pearls long enough to make that little contribution. I hope you kept your anus clenched though… that coal won’t become a diamond if you take a break.

Huh huh—you so funny😴

I was never a fan of her or her dancing partner Fred Astaire.

I wish I never clicked on that video. Mustache man looks like my therapist, and I can’t unsee it now.

[quote] By the early 50s she was still acting but for some mysterious reason her films were selling her as a glamor gal, when she had always been so pointedly unglamorous as a star (that was much of her appeal).

I think in the 50s there were a several movies where she played a glamorous character, but she played a lot of regular types, too. There was the movie where she played a juror, Perfect Strangers. In Monkey Business she played the wife of scientist Cary Grant, basically a childless middle class housewife, who gets into a lot of crazy comedy. There was The Bride Wore Spurs, Tight Spot (where she played a prison inmate who testifies in court), The First Traveling Saleslady, Teenage Rebel, etc. The roles varied.

...........

With DL faves Bea Benaderet and Mabel Albertson!

Hey, what about us?

—Paul Lynde, Rip Taylor, Alan Sues, Jim Nabors, Jonathan Harris....

Yeah..such turn ons !!!

Ginger also got quite zaftig in the fifties too, which affected what kinds of roles she could play. Her Oscar was truly a gift because she was not a great dramatic actress. And all of that fuzz on her face too...ick.