Ginger and Fred Ginger and Fred Ginger and Fred () is a 1986 comedy/drama film directed by Federico Fellini and starring Marcello Mastroianni and Giulietta Masina. The title is a reference to the American dancing couple Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The two leads portray Italian impersonators of Astaire and Rogers who reunite after thirty years of retirement for a vulgar and bizarre television extravaganza. The film was the subject of a trademark claim in the United States by Ginger Rogers, who claimed in "Rogers v. Grimaldi" that the film violated her Lanham Act trademark rights, right of publicity, and was a "false
Ginger Rogers nickname soon became "Ginga". When Rogers was nine years old, her mother remarried, to John Logan Rogers. Ginger took the surname Rogers, although she was never legally adopted. They lived in Fort Worth. Her mother became a theater critic for a local newspaper, the "Fort Worth Record". She attended, but did not graduate from, Fort Worth's Central High School (later renamed R.L. Paschal High School). As a teenager, Rogers thought of becoming a school teacher, but with her mother's interest in Hollywood and the theater, her early exposure to the theater increased. Waiting for her mother in the wings of