THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 30, 1995 TAG: 9504280073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
IN NEW YORK on Sunday afternoon, the pianist at the Regency Bar at 61st and Park Avenue was noodling away at Andrew Lloyd Webber tunes from ``Cats'' and ``Phantom of the Opera.'' Everyone ignored him.
Suddenly, he broke into an extended medley of lilting rhythms. There was ``Let's Face the Music and Dance'' followed by ``Isn't it a Lovely Day . . . to be Caught in the Rain.'' People stopped talking.
``Fred and Ginger!'' a listener said, swaying slightly to the tunes. ``Ginger and Fred!'' someone else murmured at almost the same moment on the other side of the room. The tunes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and the Gershwins poured gently from the piano. The well-dressed swells quietly, almost shyly, mouthed the words about ``dancing cheek to cheek.'' By the time ``The Carioca'' upped the tempo, feet were shuffling under the tables.
A day later, Ginger Rogers was dead.
The Sunday outing was a reminder, to me at least, how much Ginger Rogers remains a part of our national psyche. The Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers dance partnership is so much a part of our consciousness that it transcends age and taste boundaries.
The image of his spiffy tuxedo and her flowing gowns reinforces our fantasy that there once was a time when people cared enough to don gorgeous clothes and continental manners.
I only met Ginger Rogers once, and it wasn't for an interview. Through most of her years of stardom, if you wanted an interview with Ginger, you had to go through her mother, Lela Emogene McMath, the stage mother supreme. I, among many, was not successful in getting through her. It was her mother who guided Ginger's career and made most of the decisions - at least the decisions in the heyday of her career. McMath led Ginger more than Astaire ever did.
Long after the heyday, Rogers was seated at a dinner table in the lobby of the Kennedy Center in Washington. Hours earlier, she had been given the coveted Kennedy Center Honor, coupled with a visit to the White House. People gathered around to congratulate her.
It was a little sad. She was quite hefty and had been transported into the room in a wheelchair, although she did sometimes stand with the help of a cane. Her long blond hair remained, although it didn't quite match her sadly matured face. The thought passed through my mind: Isn't it unfair that the rest of us can age and think nothing of it, but we expect our screen images to stay the same?
Even at this time, around age 80, Ginger Rogers was very much the sassy, brash and wisecracking chorus girl we remember from her early films. Since we had a mutual friend (columnist Shirley Eder of Detroit) at the table, and since I wanted to talk about her early career, she made her pronouncement. ``Stick around,'' she said, motioning to a chair. It was as though the Queen of the Chorus Girls issued a seductive OK.
Trying to get her to talk about the oft-rumored feud with Astaire, she said, lifting long, manicured nails, ``I always adored Fred - always.''
Published reports belie that memory. In her autobiography, ``Ginger, My Story,'' she wrote that they were civil, but not close. He was reportedly a perfectionist while she was a ``let's get on with it'' girl. There were stories of how her feet bled within those high heels as he insisted upon hours of additional rehearsals. There was the story that he insisted she change a costume because she had designed jewelry on flowing sleeves - the better to hit him in the head when she turned. The rumors were reinforced when she failed to appear at his American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award presentation. Her curt telegram of congratulation was mildly booed when it was read to the audience.
``Oh, all that!'' She dismissed it. ``Everyone wanted us to be in love. They wanted to accept nothing less than that. The man had a very jealous wife.''
Actually, she was a bigger star than Astaire when they first danced, in 1933's ``Flying Down to Rio.'' He was new to movies and she was a second-lead, the sassy blonde. When they separated, after nine hit dance flicks, it was she who initially fared better, winning the Oscar in 1940 for repressing her personality and playing a working girl in ``Kitty Foyle.''
A devout Christian Scientist, she neither smoked nor drank and didn't tolerate booze around her.
Her friends called her Virginia. (The story is that an infant cousin gave her the nickname, Ginger, because she couldn't pronounce Virginia.)
As people visited her table and told her the Kennedy Center Honor was long overdue, she fully agreed. ``It wouldn't have been embarrassing if I'd won this thing years ago,'' she said.
Ginger was an appropriate name for her. She was brassy and spicy and she did face the music and dance. Meeting her in those last years, I realized that an era of grace and social elegance was gone.
I said goodbye to Ginger Rogers that night at the Kennedy Center, but a new goodbye seems necessary. The Astaire-Rogers dance goes on - preserved on screen and in the recesses of our fantasies, dreams of a simpler time, a more romantic time. A time when people did dance cheek to cheek. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Ginger in her heyday, a time of gorgeous clothes and continental
manners.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES DANCE by CNB