Monthly Muse - Jean Harlow

The start of a new year means a new monthly muse and this month it is the original platinum blonde Jean Harlow. Jean Harlow was born Harlean Harlow Carpenter on 3rd March 1911 in Kansas City, Missouri. Her father was a dentist from a working-class background and her mother was the daughter of a wealthy real estate broker.

Mother Jean moved with Harlean to Hollywood in 1923 with hopes of becoming an actress, but was too old at 34 to begin a film career.  When, finances dwindled her mother and she moved back to Kansas City after Skip Harlow issued an ultimatum that he would disinherit his daughter if she did not return. Several weeks later, Skip sent "Baby" to a summer camp called Camp Cha-Ton-Ka in Michigamme, Michigan, where Harlean became ill with scarlet fever. Mother Jean traveled to Michigan to care for her but was told that she could not see her daughter.

Harlow next attended the Ferry Hall School (now Lake Forest Academy) in Lake Forest, Illinois. Each freshman was paired with a "big sister" from the senior class, and Harlean's big sister introduced her to 19-year-old Charles "Chuck" McGrew, heir to a large fortune, in the fall of 1926. Soon the two began to date, and then married. On January 18, 1927.

Shortly after the wedding, the couple left Chicago and moved to Beverly Hills. McGrew turned 21 two months after the marriage and received part of his large inheritance. The couple moved to Los Angeles in 1928, settling into a home in Beverly Hills, where Harlean thrived as a wealthy socialite. McGrew hoped to distance Harlean from her mother with the move. Neither McGrew nor Harlean worked, and both, especially McGrew, were thought to drink heavily. The couple divorced in 1929.

In Los Angeles, Harlean befriended Rosalie Roy, a young aspiring actress. Lacking a car, Roy asked Harlean to drive her to Fox Studios for an appointment. Reputedly, Harlean was noticed and approached by Fox executives while waiting for her friend, but stated that she was not interested. Nevertheless, she was given dictated letters of introduction to Central Casting. A few days later, Rosalie Roy bet Harlean that she did not have the nerve to go and audition. Unwilling to lose a wager and pressed by her enthusiastic mother, Harlean drove to Central Casting and signed in under her mother's maiden name, Jean Harlow.

After several calls from Central Casting and a number of rejected job offers, Harlean was pressed into accepting work by her mother, now back in Los Angeles. She appeared in her first film, Honor Bound, as an unbilled extra for $7 a day. This led to small parts in feature films such as Moran of the Marines (1928), This Thing Called Love (1929), Close Harmony (1929), and The Love Parade (1929), among others. In December 1928, she signed a five-year contract with Hal Roach Studios for $100 per week.[17] She had a co-starring role in Laurel and Hardy's short Double Whoopee in 1929, and went on to appear in two more of their films: Liberty and Bacon Grabbers (both 1929).

In March 1929, however, she parted with Roach, who tore up her contract after Harlow told him, "It's breaking up my marriage, what can I do?" In June 1929, Harlow separated from her husband and moved in with her mother. After her separation from McGrew, Harlow worked as an extra in several movies. She landed her first speaking role in 1929's The Saturday Night Kid, starring Clara Bow.

In late 1929, she was spotted by James Hall, an actor filming Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels. Hughes, reshooting most of the originally silent film with sound, needed an actress to replace Greta Nissen, who had a Norwegian accent that was considered to be undesirable for her character. Harlow made a test and got the part.

Hughes signed Harlow to a five-year, $100-per-week contract on October 24, 1929. Hell's Angels premiered in Hollywood on May 27, 1930, at Grauman's Chinese Theater, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1930 . The movie made Harlow an international star.

With no projects planned for Harlow, Hughes sent her to New York, Seattle, and Kansas City for Hell's Angels premieres. In 1931, loaned out by Hughes' Caddo Company to other studios, she gained more attention when she appeared in The Secret Six, with Wallace Beery and Clark Gable; Iron Man, with Lew Ayres and Robert Armstrong; and The Public Enemy, with James Cagney. Though the successes of the films ranged from moderate to hit, Harlow's acting was mocked by critics. Concerned, Hughes sent her on a brief publicity tour which was not a success, as Harlow dreaded such personal appearances.

Harlow was next cast in Platinum Blonde (1931) with Loretta Young. The film, originally titled Gallagher, was renamed by Hughes to promote Harlow, capitalizing on her hair color, called "platinum" by Hughes' publicists. Though Harlow denied her hair was dyed, the platinum blonde color was reportedly achieved by bleaching with a weekly application of ammonia, Clorox bleach, and Lux soap flakes. This process weakened and damaged Harlow's naturally ash-blonde hair. Many female fans began dyeing their hair to match hers. Howard Hughes' team organized a series of "Platinum Blonde" clubs across the nation, with a prize of $10,000 to any beautician who could match Harlow's shade.

Harlow next filmed Three Wise Girls (1932) with Mae Clark and Walter Byron. Paul Bern then arranged to borrow her for The Beast of the City (1932), co-starring Walter Huston. After filming, Bern booked a 10-week personal-appearance tour on the East Coast. To the surprise of many, especially Harlow herself, she packed every theater in which she appeared, often appearing in a single venue for several nights. Despite critical disparagement and poor roles, Harlow's popularity and following was large and growing and, in February 1932, the tour was extended by six weeks.

According to Fay Wray, who played Ann Darrow in King Kong (1933), Harlow was the original choice to play the screaming blonde heroine. Because MGM put Harlow under exclusive contract during the preproduction phase of the film, she became unavailable for Kong, and the part went to the brunette Wray, wearing a blonde wig.

When Luciano crime family mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel went to Hollywood to expand casino operations, Harlow became the godmother of Siegel's eldest daughter Millicent.

Paul Bern, by now romantically involved with Harlow, spoke to Louis B. Mayer about buying out her contract with Hughes and signing her to MGM, but Mayer declined. MGM's leading ladies were presented as elegant, while Harlow's "floozy" screen persona was abhorrent to Mayer. Bern then began urging close friend Irving Thalberg, production head of MGM, to sign Harlow, noting her popularity and established image. After initial reluctance, Thalberg agreed and, on March 3, 1932, Harlow's 21st birthday, Bern called her with the news that MGM had purchased her contract from Hughes for $30,000. Harlow officially joined the studio on April 20, 1932.

At MGM, Harlow was given superior movie roles to show off her looks and nascent comedic talent. Though Harlow's screen persona changed dramatically during her career, one constant was her apparent sense of humor. In 1932, she starred in the comedy Red-Headed Woman, for which she received $1,250 a week. The film is often noted as being one of the few films in which Harlow did not appear with platinum blonde hair; she wore a red wig for the role. She next starred in Red Dust, her second film with Clark Gable. Harlow and Gable worked well together and co-starred in a total of six films. She was also paired multiple times with Spencer Tracy and William Powell. She was later paired with up-and-coming male co-stars such as Robert Taylor and Franchot Tone in an effort to boost their careers.

At this point, MGM began trying to distinguish Harlow's public persona from that of her screen characters, changing her childhood surname from common "Carpenter" to chic "Carpentier", claiming that writer Edgar Allan Poe was one of her ancestors and publishing photographs of Harlow doing charity work to change her image from that of a tramp to an all-American girl. This transformation proved difficult; once, Harlow was heard muttering, "My God, must I always wear a low-cut dress to be important?"

During the making of Red Dust, Bern, her husband of two months, was found shot dead at their home, creating a lasting scandal. Initially, Harlow was speculated to have killed Bern, but Bern's death was officially ruled a suicide. Louis B. Mayer feared negative publicity from the incident and intended to replace Harlow in the film, offering the role to Tallulah Bankhead. 

After Bern's death, Harlow began an indiscreet affair with boxer Max Baer who, though separated from his wife Dorothy Dunbar, was threatened with divorce proceedings naming Harlow as a co-respondent for "alienation of affection", a legal term for adultery. After Bern's mysterious death, the studio did not want another scandal and defused the situation by arranging a marriage between Harlow and cinematographer Harold Rosson. Rosson and Harlow were friends and Rosson went along with the plan. They quietly divorced eight months later.

By 1933, MGM realized the value of the Harlow-Gable team and paired them again in Hold Your Man (1933), which was also a box-office success. The same year, she played the adulterous wife of Wallace Beery in the all-star comedy-drama Dinner at Eight, and played a pressured Hollywood film star in the screwball comedy Bombshell with Lee Tracy. The film has often been cited as being based on Harlow's own life or that of 1920s "It girl", Clara Bow.

The following year, she was teamed with Lionel Barrymore and Franchot Tone in The Girl from Missouri (1934). The film was the studio's attempt at softening Harlow's image, but suffered with censorship problems, so much so that its original title, Born to Be Kissed, had to be changed. Due to the financial success of Red Dust and Hold Your Man, MGM cast Harlow with Clark Gable in two more successful films: China Seas (1935), with Wallace Beery and Rosalind Russell, and Wife vs. Secretary (1936), with Myrna Loy and James Stewart.

From 1933 onward, Harlow was consistently voted one of the strongest box office draws in the United States, often outranking her fellow female colleagues at MGM in audience popularity polls. Reckless (1935) was her first movie musical. It co-starred her then-boyfriend William Powell and Franchot Tone. Although her character sings in the movie, Harlow's voice for the performance was dubbed by skilled vocalist Virginia Verrill. The film offered yet another incident of "arts meets life" for Harlow, as her character in the movie suffers the horrors of her husband's suicide.

By the mid-1930s, Harlow was one of the biggest stars in the United States, and it was hoped, MGM's next Greta Garbo. Still young, her star continued to rise while the popularity of other female stars at MGM, such as Garbo, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Luise Rainer, waned. Harlow's movies continued to make huge profits at the box office even during the middle of the Depression. Some credit them with keeping MGM profitable at a time when other studios were falling into bankruptcy. After her third marriage ended in 1934, Harlow met William Powell, another MGM star, and quickly fell in love. The couple was reportedly engaged for two years, but differences kept them from formalizing their relationship (she wanted children, he did not). Harlow also said that Louis B. Mayer would never allow them to marry.

Suzy (1936), in which she played the title role, gave her top billing over Franchot Tone and Cary Grant. While critics noted that Harlow dominated the film, they added that her performance was imperfect, and the film was a reasonable box-office success. She then starred in Riffraff (1936) with Spencer Tracy and Una Merkel, a financial disappointment, and the worldwide hit Libeled Lady (1936), in which she was top billed over Powell, Myrna Loy, and Tracy. She then filmed W.S. Van Dyke's comedy Personal Property (1937), co-starring Robert Taylor. It was Harlow's final fully completed motion picture appearance.

Jean suffered from scarlet fever at the age 15 in 1926. This may have contributed to her untimely death from kidney disease on June 7, 1937, at the age of 26.

In January 1937, Harlow and Robert Taylor traveled to Washington, DC, to take part in fundraising activities associated with President Franklin D. Roosevelt's birthday. The trip was physically taxing for Harlow and she contracted influenza. She recovered in time to attend the Academy Awards ceremony with Powell.

Production for Harlow's final film Saratoga, co-starring Clark Gable, was scheduled to begin filming in March 1937. However, production was delayed when she developed septicemia after a wisdom tooth extraction and had to be hospitalized. After she recovered, shooting began on April 22. On May 20, 1937, while shooting Saratoga, Harlow began to complain of illness. Her symptoms—fatigue, nausea, water weight and abdominal pain—did not seem very serious to her doctor, who believed she was suffering from cholecystitis and influenza. However, he was apparently unaware that Harlow had been ill during the previous year with a severe sunburn and influenza.  Her friend and co-star Myrna Loy noticed Harlow’s grey complexion, fatigue, and weight gain. On May 29, Harlow was shooting a scene in which the character she was playing had a fever. Harlow was clearly sicker than her character, and when she leaned against co-star Gable between scenes, said, "I feel terrible. Get me back to my dressing room." Harlow requested that the assistant director telephone William Powell, who left his own set to escort Harlow back home.

On May 30, Powell checked on Harlow, and when he found her condition unimproved, recalled her mother from a holiday trip and summoned her doctor. Harlow's illnesses had delayed three previous films (Wife vs. Secretary, Suzy, and Libeled Lady), so there was no great concern initially. On June 2, it was announced that Harlow was suffering from influenza. Dr. Ernest Fishbaugh, who had been called to Harlow's home to treat her, diagnosed her with an inflamed gallbladder. Harlow felt better on June 3 and co-workers expected her back on the set by Monday, June 7. Press reports were contradictory, with headlines like "Jean Harlow seriously ill" and "Harlow past illness crisis."Clark Gable, who visited her during these days, later said that she was severely bloated and that he smelled urine on her breath when he kissed her—both signs of kidney failure. 

Dr. Leland Chapman, a colleague of Fishbaugh's called in to give a second opinion, recognized that she was not suffering from an inflamed gallbladder, but was in the end stages of kidney failure. On June 6, Harlow said that she could not see Powell properly and could not tell how many fingers he was holding up. That evening, Harlow was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, where she slipped into a coma. The next day at 11:37 am, Harlow died in the hospital at the age of 26. In the doctor’s press releases, the cause of death was given as cerebral edema, a complication of kidney failure.

For years, rumors circulated about Harlow's death. Some claimed that her mother had refused to call a doctor because she was a Christian Scientist or that Harlow herself had declined hospital treatment or surgery. Also rumors related that Harlow had died because of alcoholism, a botched abortion, over-dieting, sunstroke, poisoning due to platinum hair dye, or various venereal diseases. However, medical bulletins, hospital records, and testimony of her relatives and friends prove it was kidney disease. From the onset of her illness, resting at home, Harlow had been attended by a doctor; two nurses visited her house and various equipment was brought from a nearby hospital. Yet, it seems also true that Harlow’s mother had barred some visitors, such as the MGM doctor, who later stated that she did so because she was a Christian Scientist. It has been suggested that she still wanted to control her daughter, but no evidence supports the allegation that she refused medical care for Harlow

Harlow was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale in the Great Mausoleum in a private room of multicolored marble which William Powell bought for $25,000. She was buried in the gown she wore in Libeled Lady, and in her hands, she held a white gardenia and a note that Powell had written: "Goodnight, my dearest darling." The simple inscription on Harlow's grave is "Our Baby."

MGM planned to replace Harlow in Saratoga with either Jean Arthur or Virginia Bruce, but due to public objections, the film was finished using three doubles (one for close-ups, one for long shots and one for dubbing Harlow's lines) and rewriting some scenes without her. The film was released on July 23, 1937, less than two months after Harlow's death, and was a hit with audiences. It became MGM's second-highest grossing picture of 1937. 

At the time of Harlow's death, MGM was planning for Harlow to star in a series of films as Maisie. She was replaced by Ann Sothern.

Legacy:

Harlow wrote a novel entitled Today is Tonight. In Arthur Landau's introduction to the 1965 paperback edition, Harlow stated her intention to write the book around 1933–34 but it was not published during her lifetime. After her death, Landau writes, her mother sold the film rights to MGM, though no film was made. The publication rights were passed from Harlow's mother to a family friend and the book was finally published in 1965.

In 1965, two films about Jean Harlow were released, both called Harlow. The first film was released by Magna in May 1965 and stars Carol Lynley. The second was released in June 1965 by Paramount Pictures and stars Carroll Baker. Both were poorly received and did not perform well at the box office. In 1978, Lindsay Bloom portrayed her in Hughes and Harlow: Angels in Hell. In 2004, Gwen Stefani briefly appeared as Harlow in Martin Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator.

In August 1993, Sharon Stone hosted a documentary about Harlow entitled Harlow: The Blonde Bombshell, which aired on Turner Classic Movies

Quotes:
♥ No one ever expects a great lay to pay all the bills.
♥ When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
♥ Underwear makes me uncomfortable and besides my parts have to breathe.
♥ Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable.
♥ I'm going to be a lady if it kills me.
♥ I like to wake up each morning feeling a new man.

Monthly Muse - Lupe Velez

The start of a new month means its time for another muse and this month it is mexican screen star Lupe Velez.

Lupe Velez was born María Guadalupe Villalobos Vélez on July 18, 1908 in San Luis Potosí in Mexico. She was the daughter of Jacobo Villalobos Reyes, a colonel in the armed forces of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, and his wife Josefina Vélez, an opera singer according to some sources, or vaudeville singer according to others.

At the age of 13 her parents sent her to study at  Our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio, Texas. It was theree that Lupe learned to speak English and began to dance. She later admitted that she liked dance class, but was otherwise a poor student.After the Mexican Revolution began, Jacobo joined the fight and Vélez was removed from school and returned to Mexico City. To help support the family, she began working in a department store earning just $4 a week.

Lupeélez began her career in Mexican revues in the early 1920s. Her first stage appearance was in a María Conesa revue show where she sang "Oh Charley, My Boy" and danced the shimmy. In 1924, Aurelio Campos, a young pianist and friend of Vélez sisters, recommended Lupe to stage producers Carlos Ortega and Manuel Castro. Ortega and Castro were preparing a season revue at the Regis Theatre and hired Lupe to join the company in March 1925. Later that year, Lupe starred in the revues Mexican Rataplan and ¡No lo tapes!. Her suggestive singing and provocative dancing was a hit with audiences and she soon established herself as one of the main stars of vaudeville in Mexico. After a year and a half, Lupe left the revue after the manager refused to give her a raise. She then joined the Teatro Principal but was fired after three months due to her "feisty attitude". Lupe was quickly hired by the Teatro Lirico where her salary rose to 100 pesos a day.

Lupe, whose volatile and spirited personality and feuds with other performers were often covered by the Mexican press, also established her ability for garnering publicity. In October 1925, the Mexican newspaper La Prensa reported that she attempted suicide after placing second to her vaudeville rival Celia Padilla in a talent contest. The reports were likely exaggerated but the media continued to report on the matter and the feud with Padilla for several months.

In 1926, Frank Woodward, an American man whom had seen Lupe perform, recommended her to stage director Richard Bennett. Bennett was looking for an actress to portray the role of a Mexican cantina singer in his upcoming play The Dove. He sent Lupe a telegram inviting her to Los Angeles to appear in the play. Lupe had been planning to go to Cuba to perform but quickly changed her plans and traveled to Los Angeles.

While in Los Angeles, she met the comedian Fanny Brice. Brice was taken with Lupe and later said she had never met a more fascinating personality. She promoted Lupe's career as a dancer and who recommended her to Florence Ziegfeld who hired her to perform in New York City. While Lupe was preparing to leave Los Angeles, she received a call from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Harry Rapf who offered her a screen test. Producer and director Hal Roach saw Lupe screen test and hired her for a small role in the comedy short Sailors, Beware!, starring Laurel and Hardy.

After her debut in the short film Sailors, Beware!, Lupe appeared in another short film for Hal Roach, What Women Did for Me, in 1927. Later that year, she did a screen test for the upcoming Douglas Fairbanks film The Gaucho. Fairbanks was reportedly impressed by Lupe and quickly signed her to a contract and hired her to appear in the film with him. Upon its release in 1927, The Gaucho was a hit and critics were duly impressed with Lupe's ability to hold her own alongside Fairbanks, who was well known for his spirited acting and impressive stunts.

Lupe made her second major film, Stand and Deliver (1928). That same year, she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars. In 1929, Lupe appeared in Lady of the Pavements and Where East Is East, playing a young Chinese woman. As she was regularly cast in as the "exotic" or "ethnic" women that were volatile and hot tempered (and often considered "fallen women" or simply prostitutes),  gossip columnists took to referring to Lupe as "Mexican Hurricane", "The Mexican Wildcat", "The Mexican Madcap", "Whoopee Lupe" and "The Hot Tamale".

By 1929, the film industry was transitioning from silents to sound films. Several stars of the era saw their careers abruptly end due their heavily accented English or voices that recorded poorly due to primitive recording technology. Studio executives predicted that Lupe's accent would likely hamper her ability to make the transition. That idea was dispelled after she appeared in her first all-talking picture in 1929, Tiger Rose, with Rin Tin Tin. The film was a hit, in large part due to Rin Tin Tin's popularity, and Lupe's sound career was established.

Lupe appeared in a series of Pre-Code film like Hell Harbor, The Storm and the crime drama East Is West.  In 1931, she appeared in Squaw Man. In 1932, Lupe filmed The Cuban Love Song. That same year, she had a supporting role in Kongo.She also starred in Spanish-language versions of some of her movies produced by the Universal Studios. Lupe soon found her niche in comedy, playing beautiful but volatile characters.

In February 1932, Lupe took a break from her film career and traveled to New York City where she was signed by Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. to take over the role of "Conchita" in the musical revue Hot-Cha! The show was fraught with problems from the beginning. By 1932, Ziegfeld had lost most of his fortune due to the Great Depression and dwindling audience attendance to pricey Broadway shows. In order to finance the show, Ziegfeld was forced to accept money from Eddie Cantor and two known mobsters: Dutch Schultz and Waxey Gordon who insisted that the racy show be subtitled Laid In Mexico. Upon its March 8 premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre, the show was largely overshadowed by the Lindbergh kidnapping. It was generally panned by critics who found the script weak and the risque elements to be "crass". Hot-Cha! ran for 119 performances, closing on July 18, 1932.

In 1933, she appeared in The Half-Naked Truth. Later that year, she returned to Broadway where she starred opposite Jimmy Durante in the musical revue Strike Me Pink. In 1934, she filmed Palooka and Strictly Dynamite. That same year, Lupe was cast as "Slim Girl" in Laughing Boy with Ramón Novarro. The film faced opposition from film censor Joseph Breen who called it "a sordid, vile and dirty story that is definitely not suited for screen entertainment" due its references to prostitution and supposed portrayals of "illicit" sexual activities. M-G-M changed the material that Breen deemed offensive, but poor writing coupled with Novarro's waning popularity sank the film. Laughing Boy was quietly released and largely ignored. The few reviews it received panned the film but praised Lupe's performance.

Although Lupe was a popular actress, RKO Pictures did not renew her contract in 1934. Over the next few years, Lupe worked for various studio as a freelance actress; she also spent two years in England where she filmed The Morals of Marcus and Gypsy Melody . She returned to Los Angeles the following year where she appeared in the final part of the Wheeler & Woolsey comedy High Flyers (1937). In a routine she had been performing since her vaudeville days, Lupe impersonates popular actresses of the era Simone Simon, her longtime rival Dolores del Rio and Shirley Temple.

Lupe made her final appearance on Broadway in the 1938 musical You Never Know, by Cole Porter. The show received poor reviews from critics but received a large amount of publicity due to the feud between Lupe and fellow cast member Libby Holman. The two instantly disliked each other which was furthered when Holman took offense that Porter had written songs specifically for Lupe. Holman was also irritated by the attention Lupe garnered from the show with her impersonations of several actresses including Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn and Shirley Temple. In turn, Lupe reportedly urinated outside of Holman's dressing room door. The feud came to a head during a performance in New Haven, Connecticut after Lupe punched Holman in between curtain calls and gave her a black eye. The feud effectively ended the show.

Upon her return to Mexico City in 1938 to star in her first Mexican film, Lupe was greeted by ten thousand fans. The film La Zandunga, was directed by Fernando de Fuentes and co-starred Mexican actor Arturo de Córdova. It was a critical and financial success and Lupe was slated to appear in four more Mexican films. She instead returned to Los Angeles and went back to work for RKO Pictures.

In 1939, Lupe was cast opposite Leon Errol and Donald Woods in a B-comedy The Girl from Mexico. Despite being a B film, it was a hit with audiences and RKO re-teamed her with Errol and Wood for a sequel, Mexican Spitfire. That film was also success and lead to a series of Spitfire films (eight in all). In the series, Lupe portrays "Carmelita Lindsey", a temperamental yet friendly Mexican singer married to Dennis "Denny" Lindsay (Wood), an elegant American gentleman.  The Spitfire films rejuvenated Lupe's career and she was cast in a series of musical and comedy features for RKO, Universal Pictures, and Columbia Pictures Some of these films were Six Lessons from Madame La Zonga (1941), Playmates (1941) opposite John Barrymore and Redhead from Manhattan (1943). In 1943, the final film in the Spitfire series, Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event was released. By that time, the novelty of the series has begun to wane.

In 1944, Lupe returned to Mexico to star in an adaptation of Émile Zola's novel Nana, which was well received. It would be her final film. After filming wrapped, Lupe returned to Los Angeles and began preparing for another stage role in New York.

Lupe's career was often overshadowed by her personal life as she was involved in several highly publicized and often stormy relationships over the course of her career. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, she was linked to actors Tom Mix, Charlie Chaplin and Clark Gable Her first long-term, high profile relationship was with actor Gary Cooper. The pair met while filming The Wolf Song in 1929 and began a two-year affair. The relationship with Cooper was passionate but often stormy. When angered, Lupe reportedly physically assaulted Cooper. Cooper eventually ended the relationship in mid-1931. By that time, the rocky relationship had taken its toll on Cooper who had lost 45 pounds and was suffering from nervous exhaustion. Paramount Pictures ordered him to take a vacation to recuperate. While he was boarding the train, Lupe showed up at the train station and fired a pistol at him.

After her breakup with Cooper, Lupe began a short lived relationship with actor John Gilbert. They began dating in late 1931 while Gilbert was separated from his third wife Ina Claire. They were reportedly engaged but Gilbert ended the relationship in early 1932 and attempted to reconcile with Claire.

Shortly thereafter, Lupe met actor Johnny Weissmuller while the two were in New York. After they both returned to Los Angeles, they dated off and on while Lupe also dated actor Errol Flynn. On October 8, 1933, Lupe and Weissmuller were married in Las Vegas. This relationship was also stormy with reports of domestic violence and public fights. In July 1934, after ten months of marriage, Lupe filed for divorce citing cruelty. She withdrew the petition a week later after reconciling with Weissmuller. On January 3, 1935, she filed for divorce a second time and was granted a interlocutory decree. That decree was dismissed when the couple reconciled a month later. In August 1938, Lupe filed for divorce for a third time again charging Weissmuller with cruelty. Their divorce was finalized in August 1939.

Lupe began dating actor Guinn "Big Boy" Williams in late 1940. They were reportedly engaged but never married. In late 1941, she became involved with author Erich Maria Remarque. Actress Luise Rainer later recalled that Remarque told her "with the greatest of glee" that he found Lupe's volatility wonderful. He recounted to Rainier an occasion when Lupe became so angry with him that she took her shoe off and hit him with it. After dating Remarque, Vélez was linked to boxers Jack Johnson and Jack Dempsey.

In 1943, Lupe began an affair with her La Zandunga co-star Arturo de Córdova. De Córdova had recently moved to Hollywood after signing with Paramount Pictures. Despite the fact that de Córdova was married to Mexican actress Enna Arana with whom he had four children, Lupe granted an interview to gossip columnist Louella Parsons in September 1943 and announced that the two were engaged. Lupe vended the engagement in early 1944, reportedly after de Córdova's wife refused to give him a divorce.

Lupe then met and began dating a struggling young Austrian actor named Harald Maresch. In September 1944, she discovered she was pregnant with his child. She announced their engagement in late November 1944. On December 11, five days before her death, Lupe announced she had ended the engagement and kicked him out of her home.

On the evening of December 13, 1944, Lupe dined with her two friends, Estelle Taylor and Benita Oakie. In the early morning hours of December 14, Lupe retired to her bedroom where she consumed 75 Seconal pills and a glass of brandy. Her secretary, Beulah Kinder, found the actress' body on her bed later that morning. A suicide note addressed to Harald Ramond was found nearby. It read:

"To Harald, May God forgive you and forgive me too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him. - Lupe."

On the back of the note, Vélez wrote:

"How could you, Harald, fake such a great love for me and our baby when all the time you didn't want us? I see no other way out for me so goodbye and good luck to you, Love Lupe."

The day after Lupe's death, Harald Ramond told the press that he was "so confused" by her suicide and claimed that even though the two had broken up, he had agreed to marry Lupe anyway. He admitted that he once asked Lupe to sign an agreement stating that he was only marrying her to "give the baby a name", but claimed he only did so because he and Lupe had had a fight and he was in a "terrible temper".

Actress Estelle Taylor, who was with Lupe from 9pm the previous night until 3:30 am the morning she died, told the press that Lupe had told her of her pregnancy but said she would rather kill herself than have an abortion. Beulah Kinder, Lupe's secretary, later told investigators that after Lupe broke off the relationship with Ramond, she planned to go to Mexico to have her baby. Kinder said Lupe soon changed her mind after concluding that Ramond "faked" the relationship and considered having an abortion.

The day after Lupes's death, the Los Angeles County coroner requested that an inquest be opened to investigate the circumstances surrounding her death. On December 16, the coroner dropped the request after determining that Lupe had written the notes and that she had intended to kill herself.

On December 22, a funeral for Lupe was held at the mortuary at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Among the pallbearers were her ex-husband Johnny Weismuller and actor Gilbert Roland.After the service, her body was sent by train to Mexico City where a second service was held on December 27. Her body was then interred at Panteón Civil de Dolores Cemetery.

Despite the coroner's ruling that Lupe committed suicide to avoid the shame of bearing an illegitimate child, some authors have theorized that the official account was not entirely true.

In the book From Bananas to Buttocks: The Latina Body in Popular Film and Culture, Rosa-Linda Fregoso writes that Lupe was known for her defiance of contemporary moral convention and that it seems unlikely that she could not have reconciled having a child out of wedlock. Fregoso believes that, in the final year of her life, Lupe had exhibited signs of extreme mania and depression. Fregoso goes on to speculate that Lupe's death may have been the result of an untreated mental illness such as bipolar disorder.

Journalist Robert Slatzer claimed that a few weeks before Lupe's death, he interviewed her at her home and she confided in him that she was pregnant with Gary Cooper's child. According to Slatzer, Lupe said that Cooper refused to acknowledge the child believing that Harald Ramond was the father. After Lupe died, Slatzer said he asked Cooper about the situation and Cooper confirmed that it was possible he might have been the father. Slatzer further claimed that he also interviewed Clara Bow who revealed that shortly before Lupe's death, Cooper called her and screamed that he was going to kill Harald Ramond for impregnating her. Slazter claimed that Bow told him that she never believed Lupe's baby was fathered by Ramond, and that she was convinced that she had attempted to get Ramond to marry her to protect Cooper's reputation.

Biographer Michelle Vogel speculated that if Cooper was the father, his rejection of Lupe and their child coupled with the idea of having to raise a child alone may have sent her "over the edge".

Lupe death was recounted in the 1959 book Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger. In Anger's retelling, Lupe planned to stage a beautiful suicide scene atop her satin bed, but the Seconal she took did not mix well with the "Mexi-Spice Last Supper" that she had eaten earlier that evening. As a result, Anger said she became violently ill. Instead of dying on her bed as planned, Anger claimed that a dazed she stumbled to the bathroom to vomit, slipped on the bathroom floor tile and fell head first into the toilet where she subsequently drowned. Anger claimed that Lupe's "chambermaid" Juanita found her mistress the next morning. Despite the fact that Anger's version of events contradict published reports and the official ruling, his story became something of an urban legend and is often repeated as fact. Lupes biographer Michelle Vogel points out that it would have been "virtually impossible" for her to have "stumbled to the bathroom" or even get off her bed after having consumed such a large amount of Seconal. Seconal is noted for being fast acting even in small doses and Lupe's death was likely instantaneous. Her death certificate lists "Seconal poisoning" due to "ingestion of Seconal" as the cause of death, not drowning. Further, there was also no evidence to suggest Lupe had vomited.

Lupe's Legacy:
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lupe Vélez has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6927 Hollywood Boulevard.

Lupe was a gifted actress whose talent stood out despite her tumultuous private life that was often made public and the fact that she was often cast in stereotypical roles. She successfully made the transition from silent movies to 'talkies' and even in her roles in movies that were panned her talent was still noted.

Quotes:
♥ The first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the check. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It's the same with men.

♥ In a church, I am a saint. In a public place, I am a lady. In my own home, I am a devil....My house is where I can do as I please, scream and yell and dance and fall on the floor if I like. I am myself when I am in my home.

Monthly Muse - Gina Lollobrigida

This months muse is Italian actress and at one point the world's most beautiful woman Gina Lollobrigida.

Gina Lollobrigida was born Luigina Lollobrigida in Subiaco, Italy, on 4th July 1927. She was one of four daughters of a furniture manufacturer and his wife. She grew up in a picturesque mountain village. In her youth, Gina did some modelling, and from that, she participated successfully in several beauty contests. At around this time, she began appearing in Italian films in minor roles.

In 1945, at age 18, she played a part in the comedy Santarellina by Eduardo Scarpetta at the Teatro della Concordia of Monte Castello di Vibio, the smallest theatre all'italiana in the world.

In 1947, Lollobrigida entered the Miss Italia pageant and came in third place. It gave her national exposure.

In 1950, Howard Hughes invited Gina to work in Hollywood, but she refused, preferring to remain in Europe; this decision prevented her from working in American movies filmed in the USA until 1959, though not from working in American productions shot in Europe. Her performance in Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane, amore e fantasia, 1953) led to her receiving a BAFTA nomination and won a Nastro d'Argento award. Gina also appeared in The Wayward Wife (1953) and in Woman of Rome (1954). These were three of her most renowned Italian films, but she worked also in the French industry on such films as Fearless Little Soldier (Fanfan la Tulipe, 1952), Beauties of the Night (Les Belles de nuit, also 1952) and Le Grand Jeu (1954).

Her first widely seen English language film was Beat the Devil (1953), a film which was shot in Italy. In this film, directed by John Huston, she played the wife of Humphrey Bogart, with Jennifer Jones as her rival. She then took part in the Italian-American production Crossed Swords (1954), co-starring with Errol Flynn. Her appearance in The World's Most Beautiful Woman (also known as Beautiful But Dangerous, 1955) led to her receiving the first David di Donatello for Best Actress award; in this film she interpreted the Italian soprano Lina Cavalieri, singing some arias from Tosca with her own voice. She had the principal female lead in the circus drama Trapeze (1956) directed by Carol Reed co-starring with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis and in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956), appeared as Esmeralda with Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo. The film was directed by Jean Delannoy.

In 1959, she appeared in the French movie The Law, alongside Yves Montand and Marcello Mastroianni; then, she co-starred with Frank Sinatra in Never So Few (1959) and with Yul Brynner in Solomon and Sheba (also 1959). The latter was the last film directed by King Vidor, and features an almost unique orgy scene in Hollywood motion pictures of that era; furthermore, Brynner was chosen to substitute Tyrone Power, who died before the shots were completed.

In the romantic comedy Come September (1961), Gina had a leading role along with Rock Hudson, Sandra Dee and Bobby Darin. It was a film for which she won a Golden Globe Award. She appeared, also in 1961, with Ernest Borgnine and Anthony Franciosa in the drama Go Naked in the World.

Jean Delannoy then directed her again, this time in Venere Imperiale (1962). She co-starred with Stephen Boyd and she received Nastro d'Argento and David di Donatello awards. She co-starred with Sean Connery in the thriller Woman of Straw (1964), with Rock Hudson again in Strange Bedfellows (1965) and appeared with Alec Guinness in Hotel Paradiso (1966).

She starred in Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell (1968) with Shelley Winters, Phil Silvers and Telly Savalas. For this role, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and won a third David di Donatello award. Gina co-starred with Bob Hope in the comedy The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell and also accompanied Hope on his visits to military troops overseas.
By the 1970s, her film career had slowed down. She appeared in King, Queen, Knave, co-starring with David Niven, and in a few other poorly received productions in the early part of the decade. In 1973, she was a member of the jury at the 8th Moscow International Film Festival.

In the mid-1980s, she starred in the television series Falcon Crest as Francesca Gioberti, a role originally written for Sophia Loren, who had turned it down. For that role she received a third Golden Globe nomination. She also had a supporting role in the 1985 television miniseries Deceptions, co-starring with Stefanie Powers. The following year, she appeared as guest star in the TV series The Love Boat.

In 1986, she was invited to head the jury at the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, which awarded the Golden Bear to Reinhard Hauff's film Stammheim. She said the decision was made for political reasons.

In the 1990s, she made a few minor French film appearances and continued to participate and attend international film festivals.

By the end of the 1970s, Lollobrigida had embarked on what she developed as a successful second career as a photographic journalist. She photographed, among others, Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, David Cassidy, Audrey Hepburn, Ella Fitzgerald and the German national football team. She scooped the world's press by obtaining an exclusive interview with Fidel Castro, leader of Communist Cuba. In 1973, a collection of her work was published under the title Italia Mia.

She has focused on other interests such as sculpting. She has shown her sculptures in Italy, France, Spain, Russia, the United States, Qatar, and China.

Lollobrigida became a corporate executive for fashion and cosmetics companies.

In 1999, she ran unsuccessfully for one of Italy's 87 seats in the elections for European Parliament with the center-left party The Democrats.

Quotes:
♥A woman at 20 is like ice, at 30 she is warm and at 40 she is hot.
♥I do what I like now. I just don't have time for it all.
♥I've had many lovers and still have romances. I am very spoiled. All my life, I've had too many admirers.
♥There is only one trouble with having played the most famous courtesan of all times and that is, after Sheba, all other roles will certainly seem tame and anticlimactic.
♥Popularity has a bright side, it unlocks many doors. But the truth is that I don't like it very much because it changes the private life into a very small thing.
♥My cinema -- the '50s, '60s -- is different from the cinema today so I thought that it would not be bad to show that kind of cinema where we could dream.
♥We are all born to die—the difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.
♥Glamour is when a man knows a woman is a woman.
♥Happiness is a journey that depends solely on ourselves. We should be grateful to life because so much that it has in store for us will be marvelous and we have the good fortune to live it. 

Monthly Muse - Dovima

Last month I completely forgot to write a muse post (apologies for that!) so this month I thought I better make it a good one so without further ado this months muse is 1950's model Dovima!

Dovima was born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba on 11th December 1927 in Jackson Heights, Queens, . Dorothy Juba first devised the name Dovima constructed the name by which she was known from the initials of her given names. It was the name of an imaginary companion she invented as a child when she was bedridden with rheumatic fever.

''I never thought of myself as a beautiful woman,'' she told an interviewer four years ago. ''As a child, I was a gangly, skinny thing and I had this ugly front tooth that I broke when I was playing dress-up in my mother's clothes.''

She was walking out of an Automat in 1949 with her first husband, Jack Golden, when a woman asked her if she had ever been a fashion model. The woman said she worked for Vogue magazine and invited her to have some test photographs made. The next day she was photographed by Irving Penn. She kept her mouth closed because of her bad tooth and the photo had a mysterious look that reminded those who saw it of the Mona Lisa. Within a year she was one of the most popular models at the Ford Model Agency, where she made $30 an hour when the other leading models made $25.

 She worked closely with Richard Avedon, whose photograph of her in a floor-length black evening gown with circus elephants—"Dovima with the Elephants"—taken at the Cirque d'hiver, Paris, in August 1955, has become an icon. The gown was the first evening dress designed for Christian Dior by his new assistant, Yves Saint-Laurent.

A supermodel before the term was invented, Dovima was reputed to be the highest-paid Manhattan high-fashion model of her time ($75 an hour) in the 1950s. Dovima worked closely with photographer Richard Avedon in the 1950s. When the musical Funny Face (1957) was produced based on Avedon's career, Dovima was given a role in the film.She had a role as an aristocratic-looking, but empty-headed, fashion model with a Jackson Heights whine: Marion. She left modeling in 1962, at the age of 35, saying, ''I didn't want to wait until the camera turned cruel.'' She had several small roles in television plays - appeared in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and My Favorite Martian (1963) before retiring in 1975.

Dovima was married to Casper West Hollingsworth, Alan Murray and Jack Golden. Dovima gave birth to a daughter named Allison on July 14, 1958, in Manhattan. Allison's father is Dovima's second husband, Allan Murray.

She died of liver cancer on May 3, 1990 at the age of 62 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA.

Quotes:
♥ “I would just never appear in public without looking like Dovima, who was to me an image of myself.”

Monthly Muse - Gypsy Rose Lee

The beginning of the month means time for another muse and this month it is Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy Rose Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick on 19th January 1911 in Seatle, Washington. Louise's sister, actress June Havoc, born Ellen Evangeline, was born in 1912.


After their parents divorced, the girls supported the family by appearing in vaudeville where June's talent shone while Louise remained in the background. Much to her mother's displeasure, June eloped with Bobby Reed, a dancer in their act, in December 1928 (at the age of 15), and went on to pursue a brief career in marathon dancing, a more profitable vocation than tap dancing.

Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually, it became apparent that Louise could make money in burlesque, which earned her legendary status as a classy and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience's response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance.

Her innovations were an almost casual strip style compared to the herky-jerky styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease"), and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her strip style, and – changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee – she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky's Burlesque, where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brothers' shows. During the Great Depression, Lee spoke at various union meetings in support of New York laborers. According to activist Harry Fisher, her talks were among the most well attended

In 1937 and 1938, billed as Louise Hovick, she made five films in Hollywood. But her acting was generally panned, so she returned to New York City where she had an affair with film producer Michael Todd and co-produced and appeared in his 1942 musical revue "Star and Garter".

Lee viewed herself as a "high-class" stripper, and she approved of H. L. Mencken's term "ecdysiast", which he coined as a more "dignified" way of referring to the profession. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" from Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey, a play in which her sister June appeared. Gypsy can be seen performing an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen. Her routine starts at about 1 hour 29 minutes into the film and lasts for about six minutes.

In 1941, Lee authored a mystery thriller called The G-String Murders, which was made into the sanitized 1943 film, Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck. While some assert this was in fact ghost-written by Craig Rice, there are those who claim that there is more than sufficient written evidence in the form of manuscripts and Lee's own correspondence to prove that she wrote a large part of the novel herself under the guidance of Rice and others, including her editor George Davis, a friend and mentor.Lee's second murder mystery, Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942.

While she worked at Minsky's, Gypsy Rose Lee had relationships with an assortment of characters, from comedian Rags Ragland to Eddy Bruns. In Hollywood, she married Arnold "Bob" Mizzy on August 25, 1937, at the insistence of the film studio. Gypsy was at one time in love with Michael Todd and in 1942, in an attempt to make him jealous, she married William Alexander Kirkland; they divorced in 1944. While married to Kirkland, she gave birth on December 11, 1944, to a son fathered by Otto Preminger; he was named Erik Lee and has been known successively as Erik Kirkland, Erik de Diego, and Erik Preminger. Gypsy Lee was married for a third time in 1948, to Julio de Diego, but they also eventually divorced.

Gypsy seemed to hang onto her money. In 1940 she purchased a townhome on East 63rd St in Manhattan.... there was a private courtyard, 26 bedrooms and seven baths. Gypsy Rose Lee and her sister June Havoc continued to get demands for money from their mother Rose, who had opened a boarding house for women in a 10-room apartment on West End Avenue in Manhattan (the property rented for her by Gypsy) as well as a farm in Highland Mills, New York. Rose shot and killed one of her guests (Rose's female lover, who had made a pass at Gypsy according to an account provided by Gypsy's son, Erik Lee Preminger). The incident was explained away as a suicide and Rose was not prosecuted. Mother Rose died in 1954 of colon cancer.

After the death of their mother, the sisters now felt free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Gypsy's memoirs, titled Gypsy, were published in 1957 and were taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. June Havoc did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, but she was eventually persuaded (and paid) not to oppose it for her sister's sake. The play and the subsequent movie deal assured Gypsy a steady income. The sisters became estranged. June, in turn, wrote Early Havoc and More Havoc, relating her version of the story.

Gypsy Rose Lee went on to host a morning San Francisco KGO-TV television talk show, Gypsy. She was diagnosed in 1969 with metastatic lung cancer, which prompted her to reconcile with June before her death. "This is my present, you know," she reportedly told June, "my present from Mother."


Gypsy's Legacy:
The walls of her Los Angeles home were adorned with pictures by Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning, all of which were reportedly gifts to her by the artists themselves. Like Picasso, she was a supporter of the Popular Front movement in the Spanish Civil War and raised money for charity to alleviate the suffering of Spanish children during the conflict.] "She became politically active, and supported Spanish Loyalists during Spain's Civil War. She also became a fixture at Communist United Front meetings, and was investigated by the House Committee on un-American activities."

She also founded one of the first kennels dedicated to breeding Chinese Crested dogs in the U.S.; her dog "Lee" was sold after her death to Mrs. Ida Garrett and Debora Wood. Lee died of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 1970. She is buried in Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.

Punk band The Distillers wrote a song entitled "Gypsy Rose Lee" for their debut album in 2000.

In 1973, Tony Orlando and Dawn recorded (Say Has Anybody Seen My) Sweet Gypsy Rose? by W.M. Irwin Levine & L. Russell Brown. (The song uses her name and profession, but relies on a fictitious prior life.)

In January 2012, Seattle Theater Writers (a group of arts critics for various publications) awarded the first annual Gypsy Rose Lee Awards, honoring her Seattle roots and celebrating excellence in local theatre.

Quotes:
♥ If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly . . .very slowly
♥ I have everything I had twenty years ago, only it's all a little lower
♥ Praying is like a rocking chair - it'll give you something to do, but it won't get you anywhere

And finally I could not finish this post without including this great clip of Gypsy's act taken from the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen:

Monthly Muse - May Wirth

This month's muse is someone a little different. Inspired by our trip to the Australian Outback Legends, I decided to find out a little more about one of the legends we heard about May Wirth.

May Emmeline Wirth (1894-1978), circus rider, was born on 6 June 1894 at Bundaberg, Queensland, daughter of John Edward Zinga, a circus artist from Mauritius whose real name was Despoges, and his native-born second wife Dezeppo Marie, née Beaumont. After her parents separated, May was adopted in 1901 by Mary Elizabeth Victoria ('Marizles') Wirth (1868-1948), equestrienne and sister of Philip and George Wirth. Born on 7 December 1868 at Dalby, Queensland, Marizles had married John Augustin Martin (d.1907), circus musician, on 9 February 1891 at St Andrew's Anglican Cathedral, Sydney. With their only daughter Stella (b.1892), they toured overseas with Wirth Brothers' Circus in 1893-1900.

Having been taught by her father to do the 'flip-flap', May soon featured in balancing and tumbling acts, and as a tightwire performer and contortionist. From Philip and Marizles she learned equestrian skills and from ringmaster John Cooke the feet-to-feet forward somersault on a bareback horse. At the age of 10 she was a 'real trick rider' and began appearing in acts with Stella and Marizles. In Melbourne in 1906 she was billed as 'May Ringling', the 'American fearless hurricane hurdle rider'. A 'remarkably pretty girl', she grew to only 4 ft 11 ins (150 cm) tall.

After starring in Sydney in April 1911, when she 'rode and drove eight ponies, and turned somersaults on a cantering grey', May visited the United States of America with her mother and sister. Engaged by John Ringling for two seasons to tour with his Barnum & Bailey circus, she was billed as 'the world's greatest bareback rider' and given a conspicuous place on the programme at their opening show in New York on 21 March 1912. The elegantly gowned Marizles was ringmistress and Stella also performed. An immediate success, May developed her act by somersaulting backwards through rings and by leaping from the ground to the back of her galloping horse with her feet encased in baskets. Although seriously injured in a fall during a performance in April 1913, she appeared with Carl Hagenbeck's Wonder Zoo and Circus at London's Olympia next December. In 1914 Marizles, May and Stella appeared with two male riders in vaudeville in England and France.

As the 'Royal Wirth Family', the troupe toured Australasia with Wirth Bros Ltd Circus in 1915-16, performing vaudeville, burlesque and equestrian items. May was dainty, 'like a butterfly in flight … alive, alert' and delighted Sydney audiences. In 1917 the troupe toured North America with Ringling Brothers. As the 'May Wirth Troupe', they were joined by Philip Vincent Jones, known as St Leon, who later married Stella. May remained the star equestrienne when the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circuses amalgamated in 1919. At the Church of the Transfiguration ('The Little Church around the Corner'), New York, on 27 November that year, she married her manager Frank White who also adopted the professional name of Wirth; they were to remain childless.

May and her troupe toured with the Walter L. Main circus in the 1921 and 1923 seasons, performing in 1922 at the Coliseum, London; in the winter months they played in vaudeville in Europe. She again starred in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey combined shows in 1924, but left in 1927 to tour country fairs and indoor circuses. In the winter of 1931 her troupe was featured as the St Leon Indoor Circus and in March next year she performed the live circus scenes in the operetta, The Blue Mask, at Chicago.

Retiring at the peak of her career in 1937, May Wirth settled in New York; Marizles died there on 30 March 1948. May moved to Sarasota, Florida, where her name was added to the Circus Hall of Fame in 1964. A gracious, gentle woman, with 'merry brown eyes', she remained 'sprightly' and enjoyed sharing her circus memories. Predeceased by her husband, she died on 18 October 1978 at Sarasota and was cremated.

Monthly Muse - Lucille Ball

The beginning of February means it is time for a new muse and this month it is Lucille Ball!

Lucille Desiree Ball was born on 6th August 1911 in Celoron, near Jamestown, New York, in the far western part of the state. She later sometimes claimed she had been born in Butte, Montana.

Her father, a telephone lineman for Bell Telephone Company, was frequently transferred because of his occupation. Within three years of her birth, Lucille had moved with her parents from Jamestown to Anaconda, and then to Trenton.While DeDe Ball was pregnant with her second child, Frederick, Henry Ball contracted typhoid fever and died in February 1915. After her father died, her mother returned to New York and her parents. Ball and her brother, Fred Henry Ball (July 17, 1915 – February 5, 2007), were raised by their mother and maternal grandparents in Celoron, New York.

Lucy loved Celoron Park, one of the best amusement areas in the United States at that time. Her grandfather, Fred Hunt, was an eccentric who also enjoyed the theater. He frequently took the family to vaudeville shows and encouraged young Lucy to take part in both her own and school plays.

Four years after the death of her father, Ball’s mother DeDe remarried, to Edward Peterson. While her mother and stepfather looked for work in another city, Ball and her brother were cared for by her stepfather’s parents. Ball’s new guardians were a puritanical Swedish couple who banished all mirrors from the house except for one over the bathroom sink. When the young Ball was caught admiring herself in it, she was severely chastised for being vain. This period of time affected Ball so deeply that in later life she claimed that it lasted seven or eight years.

Peterson was a Shriner. When his organization needed female entertainers for the chorus line of their next show, he encouraged his twelve-year-old stepdaughter to audition. While Ball was onstage, she realized performing was a great way to gain praise and recognition. Her appetite for recognition had thus been awakened at an early age.

In 1927 her family suffered misfortune. Their house and furnishings were lost to settle a financial legal judgment, after a neighborhood boy was accidentally shot and paralyzed by someone target shooting in their yard under Ball's grandfather's supervision. The family moved into a small apartment in Jamestown

In 1925 Ball, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a 23-year-old local hood. DeDe was unhappy with the relationship, but was unable to influence her daughter to end it. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks, but that did not happen. After about a year, DeDe tried to separate them by using Lucille's desire to be in show business. Despite the family's meager finances, she arranged for Lucille to go to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City, where Bette Davis was a fellow student. Ball later said about that time in her life, "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened."

Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong and returned to New York City in 1928. Among her other jobs, she landed work as a fashion model for Hattie Carnegie. Her career was thriving when she became ill, either with rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, or some other unknown illness, and was unable to work for two years. She moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress and supported herself by again working for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. Using the name Diane (sometimes spelled Dianne) Belmont, she started getting some chorus work on Broadway but the work was not lasting. Ball was hired – but then quickly fired – by theatre impresario Earl Carroll, from his Vanities, and by Florenz Ziegfeld, from a touring company of Rio Rita. She was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones.

After an uncredited stint as a Goldwyn Girl in Roman Scandals (1933), starring Eddie Cantor and Gloria Stuart, Ball moved permanently to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935), briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat (1935), as well as in a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936), another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the film Stage Door (1937), co-starring Katharine Hepburn.

In 1936 she also landed the role she hoped would lead her to Broadway, in the Bartlett Cormack play Hey Diddle Diddle, a comedy set in a duplex apartment in Hollywood. The play premiered in Princeton, New Jersey, on January 21, 1937 with Ball playing the part of Julie Tucker, "one of three roommates coping with neurotic directors, confused executives, and grasping stars who interfere with the girls' ability to get ahead." The play received good reviews, but there were problems, chiefly with its star, Conway Tearle, who was in poor health. Cormack wanted to replace him, but the producer, Anne Nichols, said the fault lay with the character and insisted that the part needed to be reshaped and rewritten. The two were unable to agree on a solution. The play was scheduled to open on Broadway at the Vanderbilt Theatre, but closed after one week in Washington, D.C. when Tearle suddenly became gravely ill.

Ball was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940s, but she never achieved major stardom from her appearance in the studio's films. She was known in many Hollywood circles as "Queen of the B's" – a title previously held by Fay Wray – starring in a number of B-movies, such as Five Came Back (1939). Like many budding actresses Ball picked up radio work to earn side income as well as gain exposure. In 1937 she appeared regularly on The Phil Baker Show.

When that completed its run in 1938, Ball joined the cast of The Wonder Show starring Jack Haley (best remembered as the Tin man in The Wizard of Oz, 1939). It was here that she began her fifty-year professional relationship with Gale Gordon, who served as show announcer. The Wonder Show lasted one season, with the final episode airing on April 7, 1939.[39] MGM producer Arthur Freed purchased the Broadway hit musical play DuBarry Was a Lady (1943) especially for Ann Sothern, but when Sothern turned down the part the choice role was awarded to Ball, who in real life was Sothern's best friend. In 1946 Ball starred in Lover Come Back and, in 1948, made an uncredited appearance as Sally Elliot in The Fuller Brush Man.

In 1948, Ball was cast as Liz Cugat (later "Cooper"), a wacky wife, in My Favorite Husband, a radio program for CBS Radio. The program was successful, and CBS asked her to develop it for television. She agreed, but insisted on working with her real-life husband, Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz. CBS executives were reluctant, thinking the public would not accept an All-American redhead and a Cuban as a couple. CBS was initially not impressed with the pilot episode produced by the couple's Desilu Productions company, so the couple toured the road in a vaudeville act with Lucy as the zany housewife wanting to get in Arnaz's show. The tour was a great success, and CBS put I Love Lucy into their lineup. The I Love Lucy show was not only a star vehicle for Lucille Ball, but a way for her to try to salvage her marriage to Desi Arnaz, which had become badly strained, in part by both having hectic performing schedules which often kept them apart.

Along the way, she created a television dynasty and reached several "firsts." Ball was the first woman in television to be head of a production company: Desilu, the company that she and Arnaz formed. After their divorce, Ball bought out Arnaz's share of the studio, and she proceeded to function as a very active studio head. Desilu and I Love Lucy pioneered a number of methods still in use in television production today such as filming before a live studio audience with a number of cameras, and distinct sets adjacent to each other. During this time Ball taught a thirty-two week comedy workshop at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Ball was quoted as saying, "You cannot teach someone comedy; either they have it or they don't."

Ball and Arnaz wanted to remain in their Los Angeles home, but the time zone logistics made that broadcast norm impossible. Prime time in L.A. was too late at night on the East Coast to air a major network series, meaning the majority of the TV audience would be seeing not only the inferior picture of kinescopes but seeing them at least a day later.

Sponsor Philip Morris did not want to show day-old kinescopes to the major markets on the East Coast, yet neither did they want to pay for the extra cost that filming, processing, and editing would require, pressuring Ball and Arnaz to relocate to New York City. Ball and Arnaz offered to take a pay cut to finance filming, on the condition that their company, Desilu, would retain the rights to that film once it was aired. CBS relinquished the show rights back to Desilu after initial broadcast, not realizing they were giving away a valuable and durable asset.

I Love Lucy dominated the weekly TV ratings in the United States for most of its run. (There was an attempt to adapt the show for radio; the cast and writers adapted the memorable "Breaking the Lease" episode — in which the Ricardos and Mertzes fall out over an argument, the Ricardos threaten to move, but they're stuck in a firm lease — for a radio audition disc that never aired but has survived.) A scene in which Lucy and Ricky are practicing the tango, in the episode "Lucy Does The Tango", evoked the longest recorded studio audience laugh in the history of the show; so long that the sound editor had to cut that particular part of the soundtrack in half. During the show's production breaks they starred together in two feature films: The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and Forever, Darling (1956). Desilu produced several other popular shows, such as The Untouchables, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible. Desilu was eventually sold and merged into Paramount Pictures in 1967.

The 1960 Broadway musical Wildcat ended its run early when Ball became too ill to continue in the show. The show was the source of the song she made famous, "Hey, Look Me Over," which she performed with Paula Stewart on The Ed Sullivan Show. She made a few more movies including Yours, Mine, and Ours (1968), and the musical Mame (1974), and two more successful long-running sitcoms for CBS: The Lucy Show (1962–68), which costarred Vivian Vance and Gale Gordon, and Here's Lucy (1968–74), which also featured Gordon, as well as Lucy's real life children, Lucie Arnaz and Desi Arnaz, Jr. She appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1974 and spoke of her history and life with Arnaz. She revealed how she felt about other actors and actresses as well as her love for Arnaz. Ball revealed in this interview that the strangest thing to ever happen to her was after she had some dental work completed and having lead fillings put in her teeth, she started hearing radio stations in her head. She explained that going home one night from the studio, as she passed one area, she heard what she thought was morse code or a "tapping". She stated that "as I backed up it got stronger. The next morning, I reported it to the authorities and upon investigation, they found a Japanese radio transmitter that had been buried and was actively transmitting codes back to the Japanese."[48][49]

Ball was originally considered by Frank Sinatra for the role of Mrs. Iselin in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate. Director/producer John Frankenheimer, however, had worked with Angela Lansbury in a mother role in All Fall Down and insisted on having her for the part.

During the mid-1980s, Ball attempted to resurrect her television career. In 1982 she hosted a two-part Three's Company retrospective, showing clips from the show's first five seasons, summarizing memorable plotlines, and commenting on her love of the show. A 1985 dramatic made-for-TV film about an elderly homeless woman, Stone Pillow, received mixed reviews. Her 1986 sitcom comeback Life With Lucy, costarring her longtime foil Gale Gordon and co-produced by Ball, Gary Morton, and prolific producer/former actor Aaron Spelling was canceled less than two months into its run by ABC. In February 1988, Ball was named the Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year.

In May 1988 Ball was hospitalized after suffering a mild heart attack. Her last public appearance, just one month before her death, was at the 1989 Academy Awards telecast in which she and fellow presenter, Bob Hope, were given a standing ovation.

On April 18, 1989, Ball was at her home in Beverly Hills when she complained of chest pains. An ambulance was called and she was rushed to the emergency room of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She was diagnosed with dissecting aortic aneurysm and underwent heart surgery for nearly eight hours, receiving an aorta from a 27-year-old man who had died in a motorcycle accident. The surgery appeared to have been successful, and Ball began recovering very quickly, even walking around her room with little assistance. She received a flurry of get-well wishes from Hollywood, and across the street from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Hard Rock Café erected a sign reading "Hard Rock Loves Lucy". However, shortly after dawn on April 26, Ball awoke with severe back pains and soon lost consciousness. All attempts to revive her proved unsuccessful, and she died at approximately 05:47 PDT. Doctors determined that the 77-year-old comedian had succumbed to a second aortic rupture, this time in the abdominal area, and that it was unrelated to her surgery the previous week.

Her body was cremated and the ashes were initially interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. However, in 2002, her children moved her remains to the family plot at Lake View Cemetery in Jamestown, New York, where Ball's parents, brother, and grandparents are interred.

Lucille's Legacy:
On February 8, 1960, Ball was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6436 Hollywood Boulevard for contributions to motion pictures, and one at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard for television.

Ball received many prestigious awards throughout her career including some posthumously such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George H. W. Bush on July 6, 1989, and The Women's International Center's 'Living Legacy Award'.

There is a Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center museum in Lucy's hometown of Jamestown, New York. The Little Theatre was renamed the Lucille Ball Little Theatre in her honor. Ball was among Time magazine's "100 Most Important People of the Century."

On August 6, 2001, which would have been her 90th birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp as part of its Legends of Hollywood series.

Ball appeared on the cover of TV Guide more than any other person; she appeared on thirty-nine covers, including the very first cover in 1953 with her baby son, Desi Arnaz, Jr. TV Guide voted Lucille Ball as the 'Greatest TV Star of All Time' and it later commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of I Love Lucy with eight collector covers celebrating memorable scenes from the show. In another instance it named I Love Lucy the second-best television program in American history, after Seinfeld.

Because of her liberated mindset and approval of the Women's Movement, Ball was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2001.

The Friars Club named a room in its New York clubhouse for Lucille Ball.

 She was awarded the 'Legacy of Laughter' award at the fifth Annual TV Land Awards in 2007.

 I Love Lucy was named the 'Greatest TV Series' by Hall of Fame Magazine.

In November 2007, Lucille Ball was chosen as the second out of the '50 Greatest TV Icons', after Johnny Carson. In a poll done by the public, however, they chose her as the greatest icon.

On August 6, 2011, which would have been her 100th birthday, Google honored Ball with an interactive doodle on their homepage. This doodle displayed six classic moments from I Love Lucy. On the same day a total of 915 Ball look-alikes converged on Jamestown, New York to celebrate the birthday and set a new world record for such a gathering.

Quotes:
• I'm not funny. What I am is brave.

• Ability is of little account without opportunity.

• The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

• If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

• Luck? I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: Hard work -- and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

• One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn't pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself.

• I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can do. In fact, that's good taste.

• I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.

• In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by.

• I have an everyday religion that works for me. Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.

• It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.

• Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

• Heaven, no. I was shy for several years in my early days in Hollywood until I figured out that no one really gave a damn if I was shy or not, and I got over my shyness.

• A man who correctly guesses a woman's age may be smart, but he's not very bright.

Monthly Muse - Ginger Rogers

The first muse of 2015 is Ginger Rogers. Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath on 16th July 1911 in Independence, Missouri, the only child of William Eddins McMath, an electrical engineer, and his wife, Lela Emogene. Her parents separated as soon as she was born and she and her mother went to live with her grandparents. Gingers mother refused her father visitation but he reportedly absconded with her twice.

One of Rogers' young cousins, Helen, had a hard time pronouncing "Virginia", shortening it to "Ginga"; the nickname stuck.

When Ginger was was nine years old, her mother remarried, to John Logan Rogers. Ginger took the surname Rogers, although she was never legally adopted. They lived in Fort Worth, Texas. Ginger attended high school but did not graduate.

As a teenager, Ginger thought of becoming a school teacher, but with her mother's interest in Hollywood and the theater, her early exposure to the theater increased. Waiting for her mother in the wings of the Majestic Theatre, she began to sing and dance along with the performers on stage

Ginger's entertainment career was born one night when the traveling vaudeville act of Eddie Foy came to Fort Worth and needed a quick stand-in. She then entered and won a Charleston dance contest which allowed her to tour for six months, at one point in 1926 performing at an 18-month-old theater called The Craterian in Medford, Oregon. This theater honored her many years later by changing its name to the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.

At 17, Ginger married Jack Culpepper, a singer/dancer/comedian/recording artist of the day who worked under the name Jack Pepper (according to Ginger's autobiography, she knew Culpepper when she was a child, as her cousin's boyfriend). They formed a short-lived vaudeville double act known as "Ginger and Pepper". The marriage was over within months, and she went back to touring with her mother. When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs and then her Broadway theater debut in a musical called Top Speed, which opened on Christmas Day, 1929.

Within two weeks of opening in Top Speed, Ginger was chosen to star on Broadway in Girl Crazy by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, the musical play widely considered to have made stars of both her and Ethel Merman. Fred Astaire was hired to help the dancers with their choreography. Her appearance in Girl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19.

Ginger's first movie roles were in a trio of short films made in 1929—Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1930, she was signed by Paramount Pictures to a seven-year contract.

Ginger soon got herself out of the Paramount contract—under which she had made five feature films at Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens—and moved with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé Exchange. She made feature films for Warner Bros., Monogram, and Fox in 1932 and was named one of fifteen "WAMPAS Baby Stars". She then made a significant breakthrough as "Anytime Annie" in the Warner Brothers film 42nd Street (1933). She went on to make a series of films with Fox, Warner Bros. (Gold Diggers of 1933), Universal, Paramount, and RKO Radio Pictures.

Ginger Rogers was most famous for her partnership with Fred Astaire. Together, from 1933 to 1939, they made nine musical films at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939) (The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) was produced later at MGM). They revolutionized the Hollywood musical, introducing dance routines of unprecedented elegance and virtuosity, set to songs specially composed for them by the greatest popular song composers of the day.

Arlene Croce, Hannah Hyam and John Mueller all consider Ginger to have been Astaire's finest dance partner, principally because of her ability to combine dancing skills, natural beauty, and exceptional abilities as a dramatic actress and comedienne, thus truly complementing Astaire, a peerless dancer who sometimes struggled as an actor and was not considered classically handsome. The resulting song and dance partnership enjoyed a unique credibility in the eyes of audiences.

Of the 33 partnered dances Rogers performed with Astaire, Croce and Mueller have highlighted the infectious spontaneity of her performances in the comic numbers "I'll Be Hard to Handle" from Roberta (1935), "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet (1936) and "Pick Yourself Up" from Swing Time (1936). They also point to the use Astaire made of her remarkably flexible back in classic romantic dances such as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" from Roberta (1935), "Cheek to Cheek" from Top Hat (1935) and "Let's Face the Music and Dance" from Follow the Fleet (1936).

For special praise, they have singled out Rogers' performance in "Waltz in Swing Time" from Swing Time (1936), which is generally considered to be the most virtuosic partnered routine ever committed to film by Astaire. She normally had no solo dance routines at RKO (apart from the "I've Got a New Lease on Life" and "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" numbers from "In Person" (1935)). Astaire always included at least one virtuoso solo routine in each film, while Rogers performed the solo tap dance "Let Yourself Go" in the Astaire and Rogers musical Follow the Fleet (1936).

Although the dance routines were choreographed by Astaire and his collaborator Hermes Pan, both have acknowledged Rogers's input and have also testified to her consummate professionalism, even during periods of intense strain, as she tried to juggle her many other contractual film commitments with the punishing rehearsal schedules of Astaire, who made at most two films in any one year. In 1986, shortly before his death, Astaire remarked, "All the girls I ever danced with thought they couldn't do it, but of course they could. So they always cried. All except Ginger. No no, Ginger never cried".

John Mueller summed up Rogers's abilities as follows: "Rogers was outstanding among Astaire's partners, not because she was superior to others as a dancer, but, because, as a skilled, intuitive actress, she was cagey enough to realize that acting did not stop when dancing began ... the reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable".

According to Astaire, when they were first teamed together in Flying Down to Rio, "Ginger had never danced with a partner before. She faked it an awful lot. She couldn't tap and she couldn't do this and that ... but Ginger had style and talent and improved as she went along. She got so that after a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong." Author Dick Richards, in his book "Ginger: Salute to a Star", quoted Astaire saying to Raymond Rohauer, curator at the New York Gallery of Modern Art "Ginger was brilliantly effective. She made everything work for her. Actually she made things very fine for both of us and she deserves most of the credit for our success."

Rogers also introduced some celebrated numbers from the Great American Songbook, songs such as Harry Warren and Al Dubin's "The Gold Diggers' Song (We're in the Money)" from Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), "Music Makes Me" from Flying Down to Rio (1933), "The Continental" from The Gay Divorcee (1934), Irving Berlin's "Let Yourself Go" from Follow the Fleet (1936), the Gershwins' "Embraceable You" from Girl Crazy and "They All Laughed (at Christopher Columbus)" from Shall We Dance (1937). Furthermore, in song duets with Astaire, she co-introduced Berlin's "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket" from Follow the Fleet (1936), Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields's "Pick Yourself Up" and "A Fine Romance" from Swing Time (1936) and the Gershwins' "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" from Shall We Dance (1937).

After 15 months apart and with RKO facing bankruptcy, the studio hired Fred and Ginger for another movie called Carefree, but it lost money. Next came The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, but the serious plot and tragic ending resulted in the worst box office receipts of any of their films. This was driven not by diminished popularity, but by the hard 1930s economic reality. The production costs of musicals, always significantly more costly than regular features, continued to increase at a much faster rate than admissions.

Both before and immediately after her dancing and acting partnership with Fred Astaire ended, Rogers starred in a number of successful dramas and comedies. Stage Door (1937) demonstrated her dramatic capacity, as the loquacious yet vulnerable girl next door, a tough minded, theatrical hopeful, opposite Katharine Hepburn. Successful comedies included Vivacious Lady (1938) with James Stewart, Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), where she played an out-of-work girl sucked into the lives of a wealthy family, and Bachelor Mother (1939), with David Niven, in which she played a shop girl who is falsely thought to have abandoned her baby.

In 1934, Rogers sued Sylvia of Hollywood for $100K for defamation. Sylvia, Hollywood's fitness guru and radio personality, had claimed that Rogers was on Sylvia's radio show when, in fact, she was not.

In 1941, Rogers won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in 1940's Kitty Foyle. She enjoyed considerable success during the early 1940s, and was RKO's hottest property during this period. In Roxie Hart (1942), based on the same play which served as the template for the later musical Chicago, Rogers played a wisecracking wife on trial for a murder her husband committed.

In the neo-realist Primrose Path (1940), directed by Gregory La Cava, she played a prostitute's daughter trying to avoid the fate of her mother. Further highlights of this period included Tom, Dick, and Harry, a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men; I'll Be Seeing You (1944), with Joseph Cotten; and Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature film: The Major and the Minor (1942), in which she played a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse for an extended period. This film featured a performance by Rogers's own real mother, Lela, playing her film mother.

Becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, including Tender Comrade (1943), Lady in the Dark (1944), and Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), and became the highest-paid performer in Hollywood. However, by the end of the decade, her film career had peaked. Arthur Freed reunited her with Fred Astaire in The Barkleys of Broadway in 1949, when Judy Garland was unable to appear in the role that was to have reunited her with her Easter Parade co-star.

Rogers's film career entered a period of gradual decline in the 1950s, as parts for older actresses became more difficult to obtain, but she still scored with some solid movies. She starred in Storm Warning (1950) with Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, the noir, anti Ku Klux Klan film by Warner Brothers, and in Monkey Business (1952) with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe, directed by Howard Hawks. In the same year, she also starred in We're Not Married!, also featuring Marilyn Monroe, and in Dreamboat. She played the female lead in Tight Spot (1955), a mystery thriller, with Edward G. Robinson. After a series of unremarkable films she scored a great popular success on Broadway in 1965, playing Dolly Levi in the long-running Hello, Dolly!.[5]

In later life, Rogers remained on good terms with Astaire: she presented him with a special Academy Award in 1950, and they were co-presenters of individual Academy Awards in 1967, during which they elicited a standing ovation when they came on stage in an impromptu dance. In 1969, she had the lead role in another long-running popular production, Mame, from the book by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in the West End of London, arriving for the role on the liner Queen Elizabeth 2 from New York. Her docking there occasioned the maximum of pomp and ceremony at Southampton. She became the highest paid performer in the history of the West End up to that time. The production ran for 14 months and featured a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II.

From the 1950s onwards, Rogers made occasional appearances on television, even substituting for a vacationing Hal March on The $64,000 Question. In the later years of her career, she made guest appearances in three different series by Aaron Spelling: The Love Boat (1979), Glitter (1984), and Hotel (1987), which was her final screen appearance as an actress. In 1985, Rogers fulfilled a long-standing wish to direct when she directed the musical Babes in Arms off-Broadway in Tarrytown, New York, at 74 years old. That production starred Broadway talents Randy Skinner and Karen Ziemba.

The Kennedy Center honored Ginger Rogers in December 1992. This event, which was shown on television, was somewhat marred when Astaire's widow, Robyn Smith, who permitted clips of Astaire dancing with Rogers to be shown for free at the function itself, was unable to come to terms with CBS Television for broadcast rights to the clips (all previous rights holders having donated broadcast rights gratis).

Rogers was an only child, and she maintained a close relationship with her mother throughout her life. Lela Rogers (1891–1977) was a newspaper reporter, scriptwriter, and movie producer. She was also one of the first women to enlist in the Marine Corps, was a founder of the successful "Hollywood Playhouse" for aspiring actors and actresses on the RKO set, and a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

Mother and daughter had an extremely close professional relationship, as well. Lela Rogers was credited with many pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York and in Hollywood and gave her much assistance in contract negotiations with RKO.

In her classic 1930s musicals with Astaire, Ginger Rogers, co-billed with him, was paid less than Fred, the creative force behind the dances, who also received 10% of the profits. But she was also paid less than many of the supporting "farceurs" billed beneath her, in spite of her much more central role in the films' great financial success. This was personally grating to her and had effects upon her relationships at RKO, especially with director Mark Sandrich, whose purported disrespect of Rogers prompted a sharp letter of reprimand from producer Pandro Berman, which she deemed important enough to publish in her autobiography. Rogers fought hard for her contract and salary rights and for better films and scripts.

Rogers' first marriage was at age 17 to her dancing partner Jack Pepper (real name Edward Jackson Culpepper) on March 29, 1929. They divorced in 1931, having separated soon after the wedding. Ginger dated Mervyn LeRoy in 1932, but they ended the relationship and remained friends until his death in 1986. In 1934, she married actor Lew Ayres (1908–96). They divorced seven years later.

In 1943, Rogers married her third husband, Jack Briggs, a U.S. Marine. Upon his return from World War II, Briggs showed no interest in continuing his incipient Hollywood career. They divorced in 1949. In 1953, she married Jacques Bergerac, a French actor 16 years her junior, whom she met on a trip to Paris. A lawyer in France, he came to Hollywood with her and became an actor. They divorced in 1957. Her fifth and final husband was director and producer William Marshall. They married in 1961 and divorced in 1971, after his bouts with alcohol and the financial collapse of their joint film production company in Jamaica.

Rogers was lifelong friends with actresses Lucille Ball and Bette Davis. She appeared with Ball in an episode of Here's Lucy on November 22, 1971, in which Rogers danced the Charleston for the first time in many years. Rogers starred in one of the earliest films co-directed and co-scripted by a woman, Wanda Tuchock's Finishing School (1934). Rogers maintained a close friendship with her cousin, writer/socialite Phyllis Fraser, but was not Rita Hayworth's natural cousin, as has been reported. Hayworth's maternal uncle, Vinton Hayworth, was married to Rogers's maternal aunt, Jean Owens.

She was raised a Christian Scientist and remained a lifelong adherent.[8] She devoted a great deal of time in her autobiography to the importance of her faith throughout her career. Rogers was a lifelong member of the Republican Party.

In 1977, Rogers's mother died. Rogers remained at the 4-Rs (Rogers's Rogue River Ranch) until 1990, when she sold the property and moved to nearby Medford, Oregon. Her last public appearance was on March 18, 1995, when she received the Women's International Center (WIC) Living Legacy Award. For many years, Rogers regularly supported, and held in-person presentations, at the Craterian Theater, in Medford, where she had performed in 1926 as a vaudevillian. The theater was comprehensively restored in 1997 and posthumously renamed in her honor as the Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater.

Rogers spent winters in Rancho Mirage and summers in Medford, Oregon. She continued making public appearances (chiefly at award shows) until suffering a stroke that left her partially paralyzed and dependent on a wheelchair. Despite her stroke, Rogers never saw a doctor or went to a hospital. Rogers died at her Rancho Mirage home on April 25, 1995, at the age of 83. An autopsy concluded that the cause of death was a heart attack. She was cremated and her ashes interred in the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California, with her mother's remains.

Gingers Legacy: 
Likenesses of Astaire and Rogers, apparently painted over from the Cheek to Cheek dance in Top Hat, are in the "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" section of The Beatles film Yellow Submarine (1968).
Rogers's image is one of many famous women's images of the 1930s and 40s featured on the bedroom wall in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, a gallery of magazine cuttings pasted on the wall created by Anne and her sister Margot while hiding from the Nazis. When the house became a museum, the gallery the Frank sisters created was preserved under glass.
A musical about the life of Rogers, entitled Backwards in High Heels, premiered in Florida in early 2007.
Rogers was the heroine of a novel, Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak (1942, by Lela E. Rogers), in which "the heroine has the same name and appearance as the famous actress but has no connection ... it is as though the famous actress has stepped into an alternate reality in which she is an ordinary person." It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941–1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.
The Dancing House in Prague (Czech: Tancici dum), sometimes known as Ginger and Fred, was designed by American architect Frank Gehry and inspired by the dancing of Astaire and Rogers.
In the 1981 film Pennies From Heaven, Bernadette Peters dances with Steve Martin in a scene which uses Fred and Ginger's "Let's Face the Music and Dance" sequence (from 1936's Follow the Fleet) as its inspiration.
Federico Fellini's film Ginger and Fred is centered around two aging Italian impersonators of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Rogers sued the production and the distributor when the film was released in the U.S. for misappropriation and infringement of her public personality. Her claims were dismissed, as, according to the judgement, the film only obliquely related to Astaire and her.

Quotes:
♥ You know, there's nothing damnable about being a strong woman. The world needs strong women. There are a lot of strong women you do not see who are guiding, helping, mothering strong men. They want to remain unseen. It's kind of nice to be able to play a strong woman who is seen.

♥ The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first.

♥ Looking back at my life's voyage, I can only say that it has been a golden trip.

♥ When two people love each other, they don't look at each other, they look in the same direction.