Ginger Rogers the reason so many women have fantasized about dancing with Fred Astaire is that Ginger Rogers conveyed the impression that dancing with him is the most thrilling experience imaginable". According to Astaire, when they were first teamed together in "Flying Down to Rio", "Ginger had never danced with a partner before. She faked it an awful lot. She couldn't tap and she couldn't do this and that ... but Ginger had style and talent and improved as she went along. She got so that after a while everyone else who danced with me looked wrong." Author Dick Richards, in his
Ginger Rogers Harry", a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men; "I'll Be Seeing You" (1944), with Joseph Cotten; and Billy Wilder's first Hollywood feature film: "The Major and the Minor" (1942), in which she played a woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse for an extended period. This film featured a performance by Rogers' own real mother, Lela, playing her film mother. After becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, including "Tender Comrade" (1943), "Lady in