SUZIEKEW

Ginger Rogers was a FUCKING BADASS. Ignore for a sec the rampant sexism in Hollywood (they once bleached  her hair blonde in wardrobe without telling her beforehand), the fact that she fought her whole career against typecasting and stereotyping from fellow actors (Katharine Hepburn famously said of the Astaire/Rogers partnership “she gave him sex. He gave her class” ) for starting out in musicals, and went on to have a career lasting over fifty years, winning a Best Actress Oscar (Kitty Foyle, 1940). But… JUST focusing on the Astaire movies…

Not only did she dance “backwards” in high heels, the dances were a task in themselves. Astaire was an absolute perfectionist and choreographed for himself, so as a younger, less experienced dancer Rogers came in at a disadvantage and worked her ass off to match him. 

Then there’s the filming complications… these numbers were filmed in ONE TAKE. So one thing goes wrong and you have to start over. Maybe you make a mistake or maybe your dress flies up because…

Ginger had to contend with her wardrobe. Dancing in heels is the norm at this time, but dancing in a dress designed for cinema cameras… not so much. They were heavy, embellished, uncomfortable, restrictive and cumbersome and essentially a third member of the dance, strapped to the body of one partner.Not only did she have to dance and look good, she had to control the dress too!

Take this routine from Swing Time… (it gets going proper at 1:30ish)

This dress has weights, YES WEIGHTS, sewn in to the hem to make it fly out and create a visual effect. So it’s heavy, it hurts if it hits you, and your partner gets mad if it hits him. So you gotta control it. 

Well it turns out all these factors on this set, this particular day aren’t going so well. So you’re doing take after take, here’s no labour laws, so at 4am after 18 hours you’re still going, even though part of the routine requires you to spin up those curved stairs with no rail at high speed….

Okay so now back to those high heels. In Ginger’s autobiography she vividly remembers this night as the night she bled though her shoes. They did so many takes, her feet blistered, bled, and the white satin high heels she was wearing finished he night pink because they were literally full of blood. And still they keep shooting. She keeps dancing.

The take they use in the film is the last. Early hours. Bloody feet. And she spins, acts and bosses out until that last second. Because she was that professional, talented and bloody minded. This is the last set of spins… 

So I say once again. Ginger Rogers was a badass.

“Get lost copper !”

The show we deserve !

*BONUS*

Somedays all you need to feel better about the crap hell that is your life is to see a smile. An honest to god genuine smile.

!!!IMPORTANT FOR BLACK US VOTERS!!!

I saw this on Facebook and went to check my registration status, sure it was fine because I voted recently, but I put in the info and it said I’m not registered

“…and I handed [Roddenberry] my resignation that I’d written out. And he took it, and he just, and I finally laid it on the desk and he looked at it and he said ‘Take the weekend, Nichelle’, ‘cause that’s how I know it was either Thursday or Friday, and he says ‘and think about it. And if you feel the same way the beginning of next week, if you still feel that way, think about this. It’s more than you think it is. Just think about it, and if you still want to go on by Monday morning, then… go with my blessings.’ And he took the resignation, and he stuck it in his desk drawer. And I said ‘Thanks Gene.’ and I skipped out of there, that went better than I thought. And as fate would have it, I’ve always used this word because I believe in fate, I believe it was fated, I was to be a celebrity guest at some fundraising thing in Beverly Hills…And so I went to do this on that Saturday night, and I had just been taken to the deus and been sat down when the organizer came over and said, ‘Miss Nichols, …listen, there’s someone here who said he is your biggest fan, …and he’s desperate to meet you… really want’s to meet you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, thank you’… And I stand up and I turn and I’m thinking, ‘It’s a Star Trek fan. He said a Star Trek fan. I’m looking for a young man who’s a Star Trek fan.’ I turn, and instead of a fan, there’s this face the world knows with this beautiful smile on it. And I remember thinking, ‘Whoever that fan is, is gonna have to wait because Dr. King, Dr. Martin Luther King, my leader, is walking toward me, at not ten feet away, with a beautiful smile on his face.’ And then, this man says, ‘Yes, Miss Nichols, I am that fan, I am your best fan, your greatest fan. And my family are your greatest fans. As a matter of fact, this is the only show on television that my wife Coretta and I will allow our little children to watch, to stay up and watch because it’s on past their bedtime.’ And I said, {mouths words}, and that was all I was able to say, my mouth just opened and closed. He said, ‘We admire you greatly, you know.’ And he said some more things and ‘the manner in which you’ve created this role has dignity’ and so forth… I said, ‘Dr. King, thank you so much.’ And then I got the courage to say, ‘and I really am going to miss my co-stars.’ And he said, ‘What do you mean?’ Dead serious. 'What are you talking about?’ I said, 'Well, I’ve had an off-’ …going to say 'have an offer to star in’. I never got that far… He said, 'You cannot. You cannot.’ And I felt like that little boy Willis, 'Whatcha talkin’ 'bout, Willis?’, but you know I didn’t say that, but I was taken aback. And I didn’t say anything, I just looked at him. He said, 'Don’t you understand what this man has achieved?’ …and I thought deja vu all over again. I just looked at him. He said, 'For the first time on television we will be seen as we should be seen, every day. As intelligent, quality, beautiful, people who can sing, dance, …but who can go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be prof- who are in this day, and yet you don’t see it on television? Until now.’ And he went on, so many of the things, perhaps some of the things he said, but I could say nothing, I just stood there, realizing every word that he was saying was the truth. And he said, 'If you leave, Nichelle, Gene Roddenberry has opened a door for the world to see us, if you leave, that door can be closed because you see, your role is not a black role, and it’s not a female role. He can fill it with anything including an alien.’ And at that moment, the world tilted for me, and I knew then I didn’t want to know it, 'cause I was going to go through some more turmoil for the rest of the week, but I knew that I was something else, that the world was not the same. And that’s all I could think of as Dr. King, everything that he had said, 'the world sees us for the first time as we should be seen.’ And I remember being angry come Sunday or whatever, 'Why me? Why should I have to-?’ Whatever happened, Monday morning I went to Gene, and I’m not sure to this day if I knew what I was going to say. He’s sitting behind that same danged desk, and he had whoever he was talking to had to leave 'cause I wasn’t there first, and I said, 'Gene, …if you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.’ And he opened his drawer, and he looked up at me and said, 'God bless Dr. Martin Luther King, somebody knows where I’m coming from.’ And he took out my resignation, which was torn into a hundred pieces, and handed me the pile, and we just stood there looking at each other, and I finally said, 'Thank you, Gene.’ And he said, 'Thank you, Nichelle.’ and my life’s never been the same since, and I’ve never looked back, I’ve never regretted it because I understood the universe had somehow, that universal mind had somehow put me there. And we have choices, are we going to walk down this road, or are we going to walk down the other? And it was the right road for me.”