Ginger Rogers Convention. A Republican and a devout Christian Scientist, Rogers was married five times, with all of her marriages ending in divorce; she had no children. During her long career, Rogers made 73 films, and her musical films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre. Rogers was a major movie star during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is often considered an American icon. She ranks number 14 on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars list of female stars of classic American cinema. Virginia Katherine McMath was born on July 16, 1911, in Independence, Missouri, the only child of Lela
Ginger Rogers 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. 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, she was a practitioner of Christian Science and never saw a doctor or went to a hospital. Her last husband, William Marshall, would trick Rogers to take insulin since she