25 February 2023
Newsdesk
The BFI today announces the complete programme for All That Sass, a new season celebrating the career of Ginger Rogers with screenings and special events taking place from 27 March – 30 April. Highlights will include the BFI Distribution re-release of TOP HAT (Mark Sandrich, 1935), along with screenings of other classic musicals including THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (Charles Walters, 1949) and GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933). The season will also shine a light on Rogers’ plethora of comedic roles such as MONKEY BUSINESS (Howard Hawks, 1952), ROXIE HART (William A. Wellman, 1942) and Billy Wilder’s debut picture THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (Billy Wilder, 1942), as well as her dramatic turns which include STORM WARNING (Stuart Heisler, 1951), BLACK WIDOW (Nunnally Johnson, 1954) and her Academy-Award winning role in KITTY FOYLE: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A WOMAN (Sam Wood, 1940).
The season will include a number of special events and talks to introduce audiences to Rogers’ long and storied career. On 30 March a season introduction, Backwards and in High Heels, will explore the widely ranging roles that Ginger Rogers played with speakers Lucy Bolton, Pamela Hutchinson and David Benedict, covering comedies, musicals and dramas while delving into her legacy and unique star persona. On 8 April we celebrate Fred & Ginger Day, with an illustrated talk on the magic of Fred and Ginger by Miles Eady, film writer and curator, alongside screenings of SHALL WE DANCE (Mark Sandrich, 1937), TOP HAT (Mark Sandrich, 1935) and THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (Charles Walters, 1949) – a joint ticket for all three films will be available. Writer and film critic Pamela Hutchinson will present a free Introduction to Ginger Rogers for members of our 25 & Under scheme on 12 April, examining the star’s impact beyond her success, and City Lit at the BFI: Ginger Rogers and All That Sass, a four-week course accompanying the season, will also explore the life and films of this great actor – who sometimes played a great dancer.
Although she became a star through her celebrated dance partnership with Fred Astaire, no other woman in Hollywood moved between musical, comedic and dramatic roles with so much ease, or while playing each so convincingly. Learning her craft in a string of early shorts and B-movies, Rogers wasn’t afraid of hard work and excelled in portraying strong, unbreakable women. These were characteristics ingrained within herself and most certainly inherited from her fiercely independent mother – a significant presence in her career. Programmed by the BFI’s Heather Osborn, Ginger Rogers: All That Sass aims to celebrate Rogers’ stage presence, sass, and the mischievous, deft comic-timing which was present in every one of her movies.
FILMS SCREENING IN THE SEASON
Discovered on Broadway by George Gershwin, Ginger Rogers became an overnight star at 19 but 1933 was the year her life and career changed forever. The critically acclaimed GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933), a Depression-era tale of four enterprising showgirls, brims with sparkling droll humour and pre-Code titillation. Busby Berkeley surpasses himself with surreal, elaborately staged musical numbers, and Rogers opens the movie singing We’re in the Money.
A BFI re-release, TOP HAT (Mark Sandrich, 1935) will play at BFI Southbank in April, as well as screening at selected cinemas UK-wide. This fun mistaken-identity tale is enhanced by lavish Art Deco sets, a wonderfully eccentric supporting cast and a score written especially for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers by Irving Berlin. Their dancing is sheer perfection and numbers include Top Hat, White Tie and Tails and the sublime Cheek to Cheek – arguably the most romantic dance sequence ever filmed. Two other Fred and Ginger classics are also included in the season. In SHALL WE DANCE (Mark Sandrich, 1937), Astaire plays a phoney Russian ballet dancer who falls for Rogers’ flashy revue entertainer. This joyful film is brimming with new songs from George and Ira Gershwin, all of which went on to become Great American Songbook standards. Astaire and Rogers were reunited at MGM some ten years after their run at RKO with THE BARKLEYS OF BROADWAY (Charles Walters, 1949), and their chemistry is as magical as ever. Rogers plays an entertainer yearning to become a dramatic actress, giving the star a perfect platform to send herself up – aided by a sizzling script from another exemplary Hollywood duo, Comden and Green. On 8 April we celebrate Fred & Ginger Day, with an illustrated talk on the magic of Fred and Ginger by Miles Eady, film writer and curator, alongside screenings of all three films – with a joint ticket available.
While best remembered as a dancer, Ginger Rogers only made a handful of musicals compared to the dozens of comedies and dramas in which she starred. STAGE DOOR (Gregory La Cava, 1936) is a classic, female-led tragicomedy, chock full of sizzling wise cracks and zippy dialogue. Katharine Hepburn instantly revived her flagging career playing a rich girl in love with the theatre opposite a pseudo-tough Rogers. In the delicious romantic comedy VIVACIOUS LADY (George Stevens, 1938), James Stewart plays a winsome professor who impulsively marries Rogers’ nightclub singer, but chaos ensues when he takes her home to his parents – leading to a hilarious no-holds-barred brawl between Rogers and Frances Mercer. Once again proving herself one of the screen’s most knowing comediennes, in BACHELOR MOTHER (Garson Kanin, 1939) Rogers plays a seasonal department store worker who is presumed to be the mother of an abandoned baby that she finds. Store owner David Niven falls for her, much to the delight of his father who has always wanted a grandchild.
Based on Maurine Dallas Watkins’ 1926 play Chicago, ROXIE HART (William A. Wellman, 1942) is the tale of a show girl who confesses to murder purely for the publicity. Later a smash-hit Kander and Ebb musical, this staccato-paced comedy version stars a streetwise Rogers, who even throws in a couple of dance routines from behind bars. Billy Wilder’s exuberant directorial debut THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (Billy Wilder, 1942) was one of Rogers’ favourites, and features a lovely cameo from her real mother, Lela. Rogers masquerades as a child to ride the train home half-fare and a kindly Major, who is more than a little slow on the uptake, takes her under his wing. In MONKEY BUSINESS (Howard Hawks, 1952), Cary Grant and Rogers play a chemist and wife who accidentally drink a youth elixir concocted by the laboratory chimpanzee. What initially appears to be a mid-life crisis vehicle for Grant soon transforms into a riotous slapstick, skilfully played out by the two leads, and a breathy Marilyn Monroe, which demands to be seen with an audience.
Censored in some US states when it was released, PRIMROSE PATH (Gregory La Cava, 1940) was Rogers’ first serious role. She plays Ellie, a sweet-natured woman so deeply ashamed of her sex worker mother and alcoholic father that she keeps them from her boyfriend, with disastrous consequences. Rogers triumphantly proved her acting chops with slow-burn feminist drama KITTY FOYLE: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF A WOMAN (Sam Wood, 1940), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress, beating Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and Joan Fontaine with her flawless performance as an office worker who for falls for a high society man. LADY IN THE DARK (Mitchell Leisen, 1944) is an enjoyable drama, based on the Moss Hart play, which stars Rogers in her first Technicolor production as a troubled magazine editor on the edge of a breakdown – one of Hollywood’s few early attempts at giving credibility to psychoanalysis.
One of Rogers’ strongest roles is in STORM WARNING (Stuart Heisler, 1951), a frighteningly tense and atmospheric anti-Klan thriller made on the cusp of an increasing conservatism in 1950s America. Starring opposite Doris Day, this powerful drama strongly emphasises their terrifying grip on small-town communities. Melodramatic film noir BLACK WIDOW (Nunnally Johnson, 1954), shot with impressive early CinemaScope photography, stars Van Heflin as a theatrical producer and Rogers as a flamboyant Broadway star who both become murder suspects following the death of a young writer. Rogers could always express so much with the raise of an eyebrow or two, and those eyebrows work overtime in this classy murder mystery.
