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
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for Astaire and Rogers, "Shall We Dance", which co-starred Edward Everett Horton. Although the film was RKO's biggest film of the year with worldwide rentals of $2.2 million, it did not perform as well as expected by the studio. "Shall We Dance" had the first Hollywood score by the brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and included the song "They Can't Take That Away from Me". Although Astaire and Rogers would go on to make two more films together for RKO, the film's comparative disappointment in the box office was the beginning of the end for their partnership. After an unusually