The Global Film Village

ICT salutes Ginger Rogers with “Backwards in High Heels” at Long Beach Performing Arts Center

// February 27th, 2010 // Stage Play

by Marla Lewin

“My mother told me I was dancing before I was born. She could feel my toes tapping wildly inside her for months.” – Ginger Rogers

The Los Angeles premiere of The Ginger Rogers Musical kicks off Long Beach’s International City Theatre‘s 25th Season.

If you are a fan of Turner Classic Movies then you are familiar with the magnificent dancing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. What you don’t probably know is that Rogers walked away from her partnership with Astaire in 1939 at the peak of its success after 9 films. She had tired of doing musicals and Astaire was committed to doing two a year. It being the studio era when actor’s had contracts with individual studios which determined which roles they could perform, Ginger was afraid of being typecast as just a dancer. She walked away from her deal when it expired. She than was free to choose her own roles and became an acclaimed actress winning the Academy Award for the film Kitty Foyle for Best Actress in 1940. She and Astaire later reunited for one more movie, The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).  Backwards in High Heels follows Rogers from the time she arrived in Hollywood at age 14 through winning the Academy Award at age 37.

The title of the play comes from the famous quote: “Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but don’t forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards… and in high heels!”  by Faith Whittlesey , former US ambassador to Switzerland.

Backwards in High Heels combines original songs by Christopher McGovern with vintage movie musical numbers like “Fascinatin’ Rhythm,” “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” “Embraceable You,” and “A Fine Romance” to tell the story of a small town Texas girl who became a movie star in the 1930s. Her divorced mother had left her in the care of relatives to work writing for Hollywood only to return to Texas and have her daughter enter a dance contest that would propel her to stardom. According to Lynnette Barkley co-creator of Backwards in High Heels, “It turns out there were two constants in Ginger’s life: dance and her mom, Show business was Lela’s life, and she ended up doing it until she was in her eighties.” The play shows the highs and the lows of Ginger’s life during the high point of her career. The audience gets to see how this mother and daughter worked together during the Great Depression to carve out a niche for themselves. Lela’s greatest triumph was the success her daughter achieved and her greatest disappointment was that Ginger like her never found a partner she could share it with.

I met Ginger Rogers because of my association with Dorothy Hart, the sister-in-law and Executor of the Lorenz Hart estate when we all lived in Palm Springs. Ginger Rogers was born on July 16, 1911 as Virginia Katherine McMath. Ginger lived much of her life with her mother, Lela Owens McMath Rogers (1891-1977), a Christian Scientist who was a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer.  Ginger Rogers was married and divorced five times. Rogers was ahead of her time as one of the industry’s first women to demand equal pay. By 1945 she was the highest-paid performer in Hollywood. She continued in occasional films until the mid-1960s but then found a new audience when she took over the lead in such musicals as Hello, Dolly! and Mame. The Kennedy Center honored Ginger Rogers in December 1992. Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire: she presented him with a special Academy Award in 1950 and appeared with him on the 1969 Oscar telecast. Unfortunately the Fred Astaire estate requested that CBS remove all clips of Astaire dancing with Rogers from the broadcast. It was also a term of his will that no film representations of him were to ever be made thus making a biography movie of Ginger’s life impossible.

Their relationship is best summed up in her own words. Responding to reports that she and Fred were “unfriendly” towards each other: “That’s pure bunk. I adored Fred. We were good friends. Our only problem is that we never aspired to be any kind of a team. We didn’t want to be Abbott and Costello. We thought of ourselves as individuals. We didn’t intend to be another Frick and Frack.” Then she said after a pause and with a smile. “But it happened anyway, didn’t it? And I’ll be forever grateful it did”. (Ginger Rogers, quoted in “Leading Couples”, by TCM’s Robert Osborne, p. 11.)

Ginger lived the last years of her life between Medford Oregon and the desert of Palm Springs. She would spend winters at her home in Rancho Mirage and summers in Medford.

Ginger Rogers died in Rancho Mirage on April 25, 1995 of congestive heart failure at the age of 83. Dorothy and I were in Manhattan at the time and she was devastated. We were there working on the Rogers and Hart Centennial celebration and it was very upsetting. Dorothy’s other close friend was Ruby Keeler who had died two years earlier. The last time I saw Ginger was backstage at the Annenberg Theatre after a Michael Finestein Concert.

Starring in the title role is Anna Aimee White.  Heather Lee portrays her mother, Lela Rogers, a driving force in Ginger’s life and career with whom the actress was deeply bonded in a complex, perhaps symbiotic, relationship.  Playing a variety of roles are Matt Bauer as Fred Astaire and Ginger’s third husband, Jack Briggs; Christopher Carothers as Ginger’s father and second husband Lew Ayres; Jeff Payton as Hermes Pan, Jimmy Stewart, and first husband Jack Culpepper; and Robin De Lano as Ethel Merman, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn and Marlene Deitrich.

International City Theatre is the Resident Professional Theater at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, and the recipient of the Margaret Harford Award from the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle for “Sustained Excellence in Theater.”

Backwards in High Heels: The Ginger Musical

Conceived and Developed by Lynnette Barkley and Christopher McGovern

Book and Original Songs and Arrangements by Christopher McGovern

Directed by caryn desai [sic]

Musical Direction by Darryl Archibald

Choreography by Melissa Giattino

Starring Matt Bauer, Christopher Carothers, Heather Lee, Robin De Lano, Jeff Payton, Anna Aimee White

Produced by Shashin Desai

The set was designed by Stephen Gifford; lighting design by Jared A. Sayeg; costume design by Kim DeShazo; sound design by Paul Fabre; hair and wig design by Tony Gagliardi; property design by Patty and Gordon Briles; casting by Michael Donovan Casting.

Performances: February 26 through March 21

Thursdays at 8 pm: February 25; March 4, 11, 18

Fridays at 8 pm: February 26 (Opening Night); March 5, 12, 19

Saturdays at 8 pm: February 27; March 6, 13, 20

Sundays at 2 pm: February 25; March, 7, 14, 21

INTERNATIONAL CITY THEATRE

Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 East Ocean Blvd.  Long Beach CA 90802

(562) 436-4610 or www.InternationalCityTheatre.org