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 1915, Rogers moved in with her grandparents while her mother made a trip to Hollywood in an effort to get an essay she had written made into a film. Lela succeeded and continued to write scripts for Fox Studios. Rogers was to remain close to her grandfather (much later, when she was a star in 1939, she bought him a home at 5115 Greenbush Avenue in Sherman Oaks, California, so he could be close to her while she was filming at the studios). One of Rogers' young cousins, Helen, had a hard time pronouncing "Virginia", shortening it to "Badinda"; the