Picturegoer (Jul-Dec 1937)

bed (which irked Jimmy no end, because he'd been looking forward to playing all day long with his lady-love !). At present the Radio studio is looking for a top-rank leading man to cast in Jimmy's place. Anyway, after Vivacious Lady, Ginger gees into Stage Door, wherein she shares headline honours with Katharine Hepburn. Above: The star with her mother, to whom she owes much. It was due to her keenness that Ginger Rogers got her start. Left: A new portrait of Hollywood's " smartest girl." These two films will definitely divorce Ginger from the hey-hey-andhoofing stuff for the time. And then — but not until then — does she team with Astaire again, for a story based on the life of Vernon and Irene Castle. In short, Ginger is going to show Radio and the whole world that she can do anything and everything else on the screen besides being just the echo of Astaire's pedal rat-a-tat-tat. And then, when either Astaire quits screening or the dance-and-song-nlm vogue passes (as it always has and will). Ginger will still be tops as a straight dramatic or comedy actress. She's straightforward about it. There are no illusions in her mind that she's another Bernhardt. It's just plain business sense. One of the times that Ginger got worked up (she's got the kind of disposition that you can hardly ever ruffle!) was when a gushy interviewer asked her : "Do you want to play drahmah-tic roles, Miss Rah-gers . . . ?" "Get me right," snapped Ginger. "I don't want to do high tragedy. I'm no clown-wantsto-be-Hamlet picture. I don't care whether I do drama or comedy, tragedy or slapstick, modern or costume, drawing-room or down-to-earth — I don't care what it is, so long as it does not depend merely on my ability to dance !" Get it? All right; what else? We've seen her heart-insurance plot; her career-insurance plan. Now look at her own life. Her finances, of course, are insured. There isn't a top star in Hollywood to-day who hasn't that much sense. Ginger, like the others, is putting her earnings safely and smartly away. We know that, so let's go into deeper things. Her own happiness ; her brain. Now understand this, first — Ginger has had very little "formal" education. She left school at 13, went to work. Always, Ginger has felt PICJUREGOER Weekly that. Well, many another actress has had the same sort of background. I've seen many of them — too many ! — overlook it, and just go wild on Hollywood, live the gay life, forget the other life. Noi Ginger. Ginger goes gay with the gayest of them. BiU Ginger also remembers she has a brain, and she knows that some day, when she's ceased being that red-haired-and-grecn-eyed honey you know on the screen, she's going to have an awful lot of time and an awful lot of existence left over, to do something with. So Ginger is preparing. Now of many stars it's said they study. Of many stars, that's just so much press-agent hooey. But of Ginger Rogers, it's true. The girl spends unbelievable hours, reading heavy things. Ginger likes them ; wants them ; it's no affectation. She sometimes annoys people that way. A certain girl confided to me about how Ginger made her feel foolish one day. The girl was talking to Ginger about books; Ginger mentioned that she'd just read a certain 1,000-page tome that wasn't at all popular, but was brainy reading. In a peevish mood, and suspecting that movie-star Ginger was trying to put on a front, the girl (who chanced to have just finished reading that very book) decided to trip Ginger up. So she began to ask Ginger about certain very abstruse passages in it. "And darned if Ginger hadn't actually read the book ! " the girl snorted to me later. " She made me feel like a fool . . . ! " When Ginger grows out of stardom, she'll have things to live with — things that nothing but death can ever take from her, because they'll be part of her, part of her mind, of her soul. That's pretty good self-insurance, isn't it? Too, her hobbies. That's an old story, but behind it is the untold story of Ginger's realisation that in hobbies and in learning what they teach, she is adding self-insurance, too. Right now, she is very keen on sketching. Late at night, you'll see her dressing-room lights burning. You burst in on her, and there she is at her drawing-board, sketching away. And not badly — in fact so well that a big national magazine has asked permission to reproduce Ginger's portrait of her mother as a work of art, not just as a Hollywood curiosity ! So far, Ginger hasn't agreed. "It's not good enough," she says of her work. "Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, I'll be better." Materially, as well as mentally. Ginger is insuring her future happiness. There's that home she's finishing, now. It's going to be Iter home — not a Hollywood architect's and Hollywood interior-decorator's idea of what a movie-star's home should be ! It's on a mountain top, between Hollywood and the great San Fernando Valley. Ginger, from its windows, can look on the magic town that gave her fame and fortune; she can look to the rich valley on the other side; she can look far off to the sea and its mystery — and then, without the distractions and dimmings of sun-arcs and neon signs and marquee-lights, she can look up — "all the way to God," she once told an intimate friend. Reverently, honestly, without a Hollywood smirk. . . . Anyway, that's going to be Ginger's home. It's part of her All-For-Ginger Self-Insurance Plan. No matter what happens to her as movie-star Rogers, she can always go there as just plain Virginia Rogers, and live a full life —and never once go near a movie studio again if need be. Let accident, catastrophe of any kind, come. Ginger will have her future — enough money to live on, her own home, her mind, her heart (unless, by then, she shall have given it into the keeping of some man who, by the very safeguards she has thrown around it, will be the man to guard richly that heart). Then, if and when the time comes. Ginger Rogers' All-For-Ginger Hundred Per-Cent. Self-Insurance Policy will be paying out, in full ! Didn't I tell you she's the smartest girl in Hollywood ? 13