Ginger Rogers as "Lady in the Dark" 1944

There was once a restored version of this film on the internet, vanished. This one is fairly good... of a movie that's akin to eating a bowl full of frosting!

Hmmm.

Ginger's acting lane was narrow but she was able to navigate it to an Oscar.

She was so fresh and natural in her films with Astaire and in most of her 1930s work at RKO and then everything went downhill.

Wasn't she a fag hater?

She didn't transition to TV and her film career was over in the '50s. So after that all she was really remembered for was being Fred's partner.

IMO, after her Kitty Foyle Oscar win, Ginger had about another 5 years as a top star. Post-war, most of Rogers' films were duds, though she made a few good ones in the '50s. After that TV guest appearances and stage work.

Dancing was so tied to her persona that kept doing it for a...long...time.

Ginger Rogers did exactly all the same things that Fred Astaire did, but her pussy smelled.

Ginger's gaudy fantasy costumes reminded me of this equally overdone musical...

She was outstanding in Stage Door. I like her. More of a personality than an actress.

She spoke French!

I'm sure she considered dancing with knock-kneed Lucie Arnaz a career highlight.

The coolest thing about "Lady in the Dark" is that oversized patient's sofa! Swanky!

Cold-hearted ruin of an old fascist.

But when young she could sometimes be wonderful.

I think Ginger eloped with a marine in the middle of shooting this movie, shutting down production for days and days, adding to the already huge budget and giving director Mitchell Leisen a tremendous headache.

The movie made a profit (virtually every movie released during the war made money) but some successes hurt a career rather than helping it. LADY IN THE DARK, followed by another movie in which Ginger portrayed a Great Lady, WEEKEND AT THE WALDORF (another big hit) convinced many fans that she was putting on airs and getting above herself.

Like Joan Crawford, audiences liked Ginger as a working class girl who's no-nonsense and fun. Not over the top and over-enunciating their lines. Weekend at the Waldorf is an MGM glamour wallow. But after Waldorf, Rogers post war films had few triumphs, except, ironically The Barkleys of Broadway, which reunited her with Fred.

She was ok when dancing with Fred but that's it.

[quote]Ginger's gaudy fantasy costumes reminded me of this equally overdone musical...

MAME wasn't overdone, r10, it was badly done and done in by the casting. If you want overdone, here ya go...

I love Ginger. She was gorgeous in the 1930s. Her non-dancing role as the sister in Storm Warning (1951) was excellent. Bit cuckoo on the Christian Science front, however, and frequently married (6 in total I believe).

[quote]The movie made a profit (virtually every movie released during the war made money) but some successes hurt a career rather than helping it.

This one was actually a big hit--one of the biggest moneymakers of its year.

It's an awful movie, but it was a huge popular success.

It was a big Broadway hit.

Rogers was rather conservative and minded some things that were in Tender Comrade (written by by future blacklistee Dalton Trumbo). Her mother was even more conservative. I think she was active in Hollywood HUAC hearings. She had a kind-of workshop for Hollywood hopefuls. Lucille Ball later replicated this, supporting Carole Cooke, Robert Osbourne and Gene Roddenberry. Ginger was a staunch Christian Scientist.

After making Storm warning together she and Steve Cochran were an item for a time. Hard to fathom as he liked big breasts.

She was great in The Major and the Minor. Billy Wilder's first film as director. I liked her in a lot of things. Stage Door was definitely one. The Astaire-Rogers films, especially Carefree and Barkleys.

Three movies from 1952:

"DREAMBOAT--a broad spoof of how TV in its early days had revived the careers of silent film stars by showing their old films. In the movie, Ginger hosted a TV show that presented the movies she had made with Webb in the silent era. He was a college professor who found the attention unwelcome. She was also very funny opposite Fred Allen in the anthology film WE'RE NOT MARRIED. And MONKEY BUSINESS (opposite Cary Grant, co-starring Charles Coburn and Marilyn Monroe) was another comedy--with Cary as a scientist who inadvertantly mixes up a youth serum in his lab--that is taken first by Cary, then by Ginger.

I think Rosalind Russell would have been perfect for "Lady in the Dark." She always played career women.

Ginger stopped "The Barkleys of Broadway" in its tracks with this camp classic scene! Playing young Sarah Bernhardt like young Norma Desmond!

Lady in the Dark is a weird and fabulous show and I appreciate the movie what it does do, and get over all the ways it's not very good.

Mitchell Leisen is one the great homos in Hollywood History. A fabulous art director and an OK movie director. He had respect in the industry and success. And no scandals of any kind. A professional.

The stage musical was avant-garde: a Freudian psychological exploration, using dream sequences to probe neuroses.

Of course the film toned down much of the psychoanalysis to fit 1940s American film norms — but even then, it retained fragmented dream sequences, musical fantasy interludes, and complex emotional material. Women's films for matinee audiences in WWII America weren’t fully ready or even tolerant of dream logic, deep psychological exploration, and non-linear storytelling structures, and Lady in the Dark seemed odd, serious, and heavy.

Yet it IS a sophisticated theatre adapted to movies, trying to survive in a medium and marketplace that preferred light, clear, uplifting narratives during a grim wartime period. Leisen was brave to even try adapting it. A gay move, in my opinion.

Some film buffs today recognize Lady in the Dark as an ambitious but imperfect film, not a stupid or incompetent one.

I'd rather they didn't attempt it, than make a half-assed movie version. It's been years since I've seen it. I also read the play years ago. The play was good--I can't imagine movie audiences thinking it was unclear. The movie was unclear. I just remember the final epiphany didn't make a lot of sense without including the song, My Ship. I figured they probably dropped it because Ginger couldn't sing. Also, Mischa Auer was no Danny Kaye.

Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges both decided they needed to direct their own screenplays at around the same time, because Leisen messed with their writing for Hold Back the Dawn and Remember the Night (and previous movies like Midnight, Arise, My Love, and Easy Living). Since they both ended up making better movies than Leisen ever made, I guess they were proven right.

One pretty good movie Leisen directed later on was No Man of Her Own (1950?) with Barbara Stanwyck and John Lund. I don't think it really holds up under strong examination, but it's a good melodrama/borderline film noir. (remade--with a lot of changes--as Mrs. Winterbourne.)

R24 well Ginger did appreciate huge cocks

Mitch Leisen was a Golden Age Gay of Hollywood. I bet ole Ging hated him..

Rogers was a true right-winger -- anti-communist, anti-women's rights, anti-people of color, anti-everything, A true, nasty, mean-spirited conservative. The one thing she could do was dance with Fred Astaire, who always looked as if he was carrying her rather than partnering with her.

Watch Fred Astaire with Eleanor Powell and you can see what a true, equal pairing looks like.

(Powell was, unfortunately, also a right winger. But as Gene Kelly once said, no one dances better than Ellie).

r14 I want that sofa. It looks so comfy. I love your blog. I am into classic film also and always looking for good recommendations.

Notice they only made the one film together, r34. Zero chemistry.

Her brother Mr. was also pretty famous.

Lady in the Dark was on stage a really remarkable work: it's about a neurotic, unhappy, but highly successful magazine editor at a magazine like vogue who is in a longterm relationship with a married man, who is finally divorcing his wife so they can be married. but she resists the idea of marrying him and is plagued by anxiety. So she goes to see a psychiatrist who asks her to tell him her dreams, and over the course of two acts she describes three of them to him: the Glamour dream, where she dreams she is the most adored woman in the world, the Wedding dream, where she dreams she's finally agreed to marry her lover, and the Circus dream, where she dreams she's on trial in a huge circus for being unable to make up her mind.

Each of the dreams is mostly sung straight through, with almost no music elsewhere in the show except the fragment of a song Liza cannot entirely remember from her childhood. Only by the musical's end can she sing the entirety of the song--"My Ship"--which is at the core of her problems (it relates to her strong feelings of competition with her mother when she was a child).

The phantasmagoria the producers worked on stage was considered stunning (there was a complicated turntable apparatus to make the transition into the dreams Liza recounted to her psychiatrist0, and it had some of the loveliest of all Kurt Weill Broadway songs: "My Ship" (which became a standard), "This is New," "One Life to Live." plus it had two much beloved novelty songs, "Tschaikowsky," a patter song which made a star out of Danny Kaye, and "The Saga of Jenny," which also became a standard. It ran for something like 500 performances on Broadway, which was remarkable at the time.

In making it into a musical, Mitchell leisen and the studio made some odd choices. they cut out many of the songs, including "My ship," which was not only the most beautiful song in the score but also was key to the entire plot. Leisen did not get along with his female stars usually, and Rogers was no exception. He also wanted her to wear a very ugly sausage roll hairdo to emphasize how unglamorous Liza felt about herself, which is even today so ugly it's hard to look at. He also decided to have new songs be added to the score to replace some of the ones he took out, and though one of these is quite nice on its own ("Suddenly its Spring"), it just doesn't sound much like Weill's sophisticated and instantly recognizable style.

R34 Ginger looked/danced better with Fred than Eleanor Powell. She was a solo dancer, not a dancing partner. Yes, she was a better dancer than Ginger. But...what R36 said.

Astaire's other "best" partners were Rita Hayworth and Cyd Charisse in the movies (Maybe also Vera-Ellen), and on TV, Barrie Chase.

Reply 35, Thank you, much appreciated! While not a big hit, "Storm Warning" director Stuart Heisler managed to get both Ginger and Ronald Reagan to drop their phony personas and give natural performances. And Doris Day gives a good performance in her first dramatic role, too. My look here:

Lovey Howell as Patricia Arquette...

Didn’t Moss Hart base Lady in the Dark on his own intense psychotherapy to rid himself of homosexuality?

r42, that therapy did indeed lead him to the creation of "Lady in the Dark."

There is a stereotypically queeny gay character in the musical, the photographer Russell Paxton, which was the Broadway role that made Danny Kaye a star.

Danny & Syl

I watched Tight Spot twice just for how awful Ginger looked in it. Why she would approve that hairstyle is unfathomable .

Ginger's cropped hair, mask make-up gives Joan Crawford a run for her '50s money in "Tight Spot." Rogers really goes big as the BRASSY moll just sprung from the pen. The movie is a nifty noir, nearly ruined by Ginger's gaga performance. Here's my look...

Saw her once at the South Shore Music Circus. I also saw Mitzi Gaynor and Rosemary Clooney there. Going to a show there was part of a vacation on the Cape, for a lot of people.

By the way, when you think about it, concerts now are a racket, with people paying hundreds of dollars for a seat to a show where you sit so far away you need binoculars. Back in the '50s, say, you could see the biggest stars in nightclubs, up close. There was almost no such thing as the enormous stadium concert.

A Teutonic Lady...

I’m sick of all the Mitchell Leisen bashing here. He was a good director, and it surprises me that those quoting Preston Sturges’ and Billy Wilder’s nasty comments about Leisen’s direction of their scripts don’t recognize homophobia when they read it —Leisen was known to be gay around the Paramount lot, and as a director, he often cut scenes and dialog from their scripts which he felt were self-indulgent.

His vindication comes in watching the films they criticized, all of which are excellent. MIDNIGHT from Wilder’s script with Charles Brackett, is one of the funniest, bitchiest and most glamorous screwball comedies of the ‘30s. EASY LIVING, a Preston Sturges script from a Vera Caspary idea, was a terrific screwball comedy and very successful in its day. REMEMBER THE NIGHT from a script by Preston Sturges was funny too, but far more genuinely romantic than anything Sturges directed on his own, and it’s one of the best Christmas-themed movies that came out of Hollywood. Neither screenwriter had a right to complain about the finished films from their scripts.

And it’s not true that he couldn’t work with actresses — he worked with Claudette Colbert several times and directed her in her own favorite of all her films, ARISE, MY LOVE. He also directed Veronica Lake in a femme fatale performance in I WANTED WINGS that made her a star overnight.

It IS true that the men in his films are gorgeously photographed — it’s clear he had a crush on the young Fred MacMurray, and manages to get him out of his clothes in every film MacMurray made with Leisen, including in NO TIME FOR LOVE (with Claudette Colbert!) where MacMurray makes his entrance half naked as a sandhog (this is a wartime film that also depicts a number of gay male characters.)

These are things I wouldn’t expect gay men to object to, so maybe some of you should actually watch the films you’re so casually trashing.

Good post R49 l just wish ol’ Mitch had a crush on someone other than Fred MacMurray who is the unsexiest leading man of the era

Ginger Rogers was a dirty Repug.

R49 You said what I wanted to say, but better. I would also have mentioned To Each His Own, though.

These dyke 'dos were prevalent in the early 1950s. But they seemed incongruent with variations of Diior's New Look.

I like Saga of Jenny as the finale to Julie Andrews’ “ Star!”

R49 I've watched all the films I (and you) referred to. I've watched some of them several times. I just watched Remember the Night last week, for example.

I think Leisen was an okay director and I gave him credit for No Man of Her Own. But after he couldn't direct scripts by Wilder & Brackett as a team, or Preston Sturges, any more, the quality of his films never reached the heights of the ones you mentioned. To Each His Own is pretty good (produced and co-scripted by Brackett), and The Mating Season is okay (mainly because of Thelma Ritter)--again produced and co-scripted by Brackett--but it's not as good a comedy as anything Brackett-Wilder wrote or Wilder directed. Brackett, too, never again did anything as good as he did with Wilder.

I haven't seen all his movies. I've seen things like Kitty, w/Paulette Godard, Golden Earrings (enjoyable) with Dietrich and Milland, Bride of Vengeance--Godard as Lucretia Borgia--Frenchman's Creek, Captain Carey, USA. I don't think I have to think he was better than he was just because he was gay. There are plenty of other, better gay directors I like. Not saying he was untalented.

Thick ankles.

There's the story about how Ginger wanted to play Elizabeth, in Mary of Scotland, starring Katharine Hepburn and Fredric March, directed by John Ford. Pandro Berman, head of the RKO studio at the time, said people would laugh at the idea. Regardless of whether she could play it, or not. So supposedly Ginger had herself all made up and no one recognized her, and wowed everyone with her test. But then when people found out it was Ginger, she was not cast. (Florence Eldridge, March's wife, ended up in the role.) I guess Bette Davis also tried to get the part.

Bette got to play Liz II...*twice*.

I think she had real comedy talent, though. Later in life she was on some show -- Glitter, I guess -- in an episode. It was about a fashion magazine (the TV series). She had a comedy part--she played an egotistical actress on a soap who refuses to be killed off. A woman I knew who was a big Ginger fan called me and told me to switch it on. She was very funny!

R58 But not in my pik-chah!

Ginger started lookin' all Mae West when she got old...

Chip Mayer was quite the stud. Died of "natural causes" at only 57? Hmm?

[quote]Leisen was known to be gay around the Paramount lot

Well, as long as he limited his gayness to the time he was on the Paramount lot ...

[quote] These are things I wouldn’t expect gay men to object to, so maybe some of you should actually watch the films you’re so casually trashing.

Was anyone objecting to any of what you posted? They said that he often didn't get along with his leading ladies and that "Lady in the Dark" is a terrible film. His being gay doesn't change that.

I never saw "Lady in the Dark", Now I have to add the movie to the "Dinner and a Movie" collection on Sat. nights

Love Ginger Rogers!!

Can’t stand her. Never could. Her Oscar was definitely a gift. She was never nominated again.

I'm not even a Kate fan, but seems like Hepburn should have won for one of her most famous roles, Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story. It was huge comeback for her, first on stage, then film, after being declared box office poison. And Ginger's Kitty Foyle won, instead?

Or Joan Fontaine in REBECCA R67. I think Howard Hughes got her that Oscar. Then Joan got her consolation award for SUSPICION the following year.

Forget winning that year’s Oscar—her nomination should have gone to Rosalind Russell for His Girl Friday or Margaret Sullavan in The Shop around the Corner. I think Rogers’ performance in Primrose Path the same year is also better than Kitty Foyle.

In my opinion the Kitty Foyle Oscar had to do with Ginger's increasing popularlity at the time, and the fact that she carried a dramatic "A" picture coming off her partnership with Astaire in light musicals (and the popular comedies she did in between, like Vivacious Lady and Bachelor Mother). The movie was also a big hit.

[quote] Kitty Foyle was RKO's top film for 1940, grossing $1,710,000 domestically and $675,000 foreign, and earning a profit of $869,00

Good points, NJason!

Since no one has mentioned it, to my knowledge, Ginger was also good in I'll Be Seeing You, with Joseph Cotten and Shirley Temple, where she plays a convict paroled at Christmastime to go to her relatives, while Cotten plays a shell-shocked veteran, and they fall in love. It plays better than it sounds.

Metro's remake of Grand Hotel was Americanize and sanitized into the super glossy and soapy Weekend at the Waldorf. This and the Barkleys of Broadway were really Ginger's last hits as a leading lady. After starting the '40s with an Oscar win. Which is kind of telling, that it was unwarranted...

It's odd. Ginger wore her hair much longer later in life than she ever did when she was a movie star.

Yes, and Ginger's hair as a senior reminded me of Mae West's bleached blonde cotton candy do's!

She suffered from excessive peach fuzz on her face. Her photos had to be heavily retouched. She was quite sensitive about it.

"Lady in the Dark" was Ginger's SECOND psychoanalysis musical about a woman that can't make up her mind about marriage. Her FIRST psychoanalysis musical about a woman that can't make up her mind about marriage was "Carefree" from 1938. "Carefree" was much more of a screwball comedy than any of the other Fred and Ginger films, and the hypnotized and homicidal Amanda (see below) was far more entertaining than the humorless and angsty Liza from "Lady".

Twice, that's funny, as Christian Scientist Ginger didn't believe in psychoanalysis...

Peach fuzz face is easily taken care of. I don't know why she would need to be self conscious about it.

She was. Several other actresses had the same issue. Publicity stills were airbrushed within an inch of their lives.

Ever heard of a razor? Problem solved.

Ginger had amazing blue eyes, but being photographed in profile wasn't her strong suit--bumpy nose and weak chin.

Her features were rather coarse, not unlike Jean Harlow’s. But Jean was more photogenic than Ginger.

If anyone would care to find and post it, there's a marvelous clip out there of London stage star Maria Friedman in a 1990s West End revival of LADY IN THE DARK's "The Saga of Jenny" that gives you a great sense of the potential of the number when done right. Brit TV star LINE OF DUTY's Adrian Dunbar is one of her accompanying chorus boys.

Sorry, I never have been able to post stuff.

Ginger's film career began in 1933 and lasted at the top for 20 more years; that was no small feat in the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Ginger Rogers status as a top leading lady faded immediately after WWII. But she kept working steadily, with diminishing returns, for another decade. Then it was TV and theater and concerts. Nothing to sneeze at, with the Fred/Ginger nostalgia being a big selling point.

It's interesting that aside from RKO, she never signed long term contracts with any studio, freelancing both before and after. She turned down Jack Warners offer while making GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 and her big solo number ("I've Got Two Sing a Torch Song") was cut in retaliation.

"To" , not "Two!"

Jeez Louise!

Vincent Youman's wonderful Music Makes Me from flying down to Rio is on YouTube. Ginger is half nude in a vertical slinky form-fitting dress. Even though I'm gay I love looking at her body in this scene. An absolutely sensational knockout. This movie was the first or one of the first films to receive a C as in condemned rating from the Catholic Church as in unsuitable for everyone. That's how offensive the Catholic clergy found it. It was also the first Christmas movie at Radio City Music Hall to play along with The Nativity on stage. It was a huge hit there. I wonder how many parents knew they were bringing their children to see a dirty movie.

I agree with the comments about Michael Leisen. He was a terrific director. Midnight is a very wonderful film and if you've never seen it you need to stream it immediately.

He also designed that amazing mink dress that Ginger wears during the Jenny sequence in Lady and the Dark. I believe Ginger hated it because it was so heavy. And of course Edith Head took credit for it. Like Edith stole Givenchy's Oscar for Sabrina. Considering how much Edith stole you begin to wonder what dresses she actually did design.