Two Hollywood greats were born on this day in history -- Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck. Ginger secured her place in the A-List of Hollywood history when she danced with Fred Astaire in a series of 1930s RKO musicals, some with original songs written for them by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin and Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. An actress of depth and great clarity, she won a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for the 1940 feminist drama, KITTY FOYLE. In films such as that, films that did not co-star Astaire, she proved to be a significant talent in such dramas and comedies as STAGE DOOR (1937), PRIMROSE PATH (1940), ROXIE HART (1942), Billy Wilder's THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942) and I'LL BE SEEING YOU (1944).
When Ginger danced with Fred in those celebrated original RKO musicals, she didn't just dance. She acted. She reacted. She danced in character, in the moment, and keeping the emotions of the scene fluid.
With Irving Berlin's TOP HAT (1935), Astaire & Rogers became a truly iconic movie musical team. They followed that with another classic, an original movie musical with a score by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. Fred plays a professional dancers who sees, chats with and instantly falls in love with Ginger. She plays a non-nonsense dance teacher in Manhattan. Fred goes into the studio and pretends to need classes in order to talk to her again, However, his innocent ruse gets her fired and he immediately works to fix his mistake. Here's the "Pick Yourself Up" number from SWING TIME (1936).
Later in the movie, Dixie Daisy and two fellow company members have to ad lib a dance routine when one of the tootsies has a loud meltdown backstage.
Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck -- two extraordinary talents.
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