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 a founder of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. Rogers was a lifelong member of the Republican Party, who campaigned for Thomas Dewey in the 1944 presidential election and was a strong opponent of Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking out against both him and his New Deal proposals. She was also a member of The Daughters of the American Revolution. Rogers and her mother also had an extremely close professional relationship. Lela Rogers was credited with many pivotal contributions to her daughter's early successes in New York and in Hollywood, and gave her much assistance in contract