Sam White (film producer) Sam White (film producer) Sam White was an American film producer, film director and actor. White was born in Los Angeles on to parents who had immigrated from Austria and Hungary. In 1937, he married Claretta Ellis, a studio contract dancer. They were married for 65 years until her death in 2002. For much of the 1930s, Sam White directed numerous musical sequences in films such as "Roberta" with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Irene Dunne; "Old Man Rhythm" with Betty Grable and Buddy Rogers; "Top of the Town" with George Murphy; and "Hooray for Love", with Ann Sothern. During
Ginger Rogers got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé Exchange. Two of her pictures at Pathé were "Suicide Fleet" (1931) and "Carnival Boat" (1932) in which she played opposite future Hopalong Cassidy star, William Boyd. Rogers also made feature films for Warner Bros., Monogram, and Fox in 1932, and was named one of 15 WAMPAS Baby Stars. She then made a significant breakthrough as Anytime Annie in the Warner Bros. 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. Her solo