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
Charley Foy stage through the 1920s, eventually disbanding when Eddie Foy Jr. went out on his own as a single act in 1929. Foy, along with three of his younger siblings, Madeline, Mary, and Irving, continued to perform as an act in Vaudeville through the mid-1930s, billed as "The Foy Family: Real Chips Off the Old Block", in which Charley Foy was given top billing. At one point in the mid-1920s, Foy attempted to give Ginger Rogers, then an unknown dancer by the name of Ginger McMath, an opportunity on stage during a performance in Fort Worth, Texas. However the venue manager