Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987) and Ginger Rogers (July 16, 1911 – April 25, 1995) were iconic dance partners who made motion pictures together from 1933 to 1949. They made a total of 10 films, nine of them with RKO Radio Pictures from 1933 to 1939, and one, "The Barkleys of Broadway", with M-G-M in 1949, their only color (Technicolor) film. Many years later, they became known by the portmanteau nickname of "Fringer", popularised by Australian entertainer Dave Gorr. Astaire started dancing in the early 1900s as a child on stage
Ginger Rogers 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. On March 5, 1939, Rogers starred in "Single Party Going East", an episode of "Silver Theater" on