Ginger Rogers filmography with RKO Radio Pictures, where she was paired with dancer Fred Astaire in commercially successful "Flying Down to Rio" (1933). The pair achieved greater success in subsequent musicals "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), "Top Hat" (1935), "Swing Time" (1936), and "Shall We Dance" (1937), totaling 8 films made between 1933 and 1939. Without Astaire, Rogers starred in critically and commercially successful non-musicals throughout the remainder of the 1930s such as "Stage Door" (1937) with Katharine Hepburn, "Vivacious Lady" (1938) with James Stewart, and "Bachelor Mother" (1939) with David Niven, culminating with an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in
Ginger Rogers nickname soon became "Ginga". When Rogers 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. Her mother became a theater critic for a local newspaper, the "Fort Worth Record". She attended, but did not graduate from, Fort Worth's Central High School (later renamed R.L. Paschal High School). As a teenager, Rogers 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