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[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 71 (Tuesday, May 2, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S5996]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

                       REMEMBERING GINGER ROGERS

  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, the Op-Ed page of Friday's Washington 
Post featured an irresistible account by Philip Geyelin, ``When I 
Danced With Ginger Rogers.'' The occasion was the Gridiron Club dinner 
of March 28, 1981. With the advent of Ronald Reagan's presidency 
``Hooray for Hollywood'' was the evening's theme, and Miss Rogers its 
most illustrious guest. It happens I was the Democratic speaker that 
evening, and I had the inexpressible joy of sitting next to Miss Rogers 
at the head table in my white tie and tails. I took the liberty of 
expounding, as best I was able, Professor Joseph Reed's theory of the 
dramatic import of Miss Rogers' abrupt decision to dance with Astaire 
on that lovely day they were caught in the raid in Regents Park. She 
confided to me that she had to slip off to dance, that night, with 
Geyelin. She returned to pronounce him divine!
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the above 
cited article be reprinted in the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Apr. 28, 1995]

                    When I Danced With Ginger Rogers

                          (By Philip Geyelin)

       That was a nice piece Tom Shales wrote about Ginger Rogers 
     [Style, April 26]. He had it just right, except maybe the 
     part about how she made it look effortless but ``not for a 
     minute did it look easy.'' I would have put it the other way 
     around: It wasn't exactly effortless for me when I danced 
     with Ginger Rogers, but she certainly made it look easy.
       You heard me: When I danced with Ginger Rogers. I am not 
     dreaming this up. Rather, I'm setting out to describe the 
     realization of a dream of, oh, let's say close to a half-
     century. From the first time I saw a Fred Astaire-Ginger 
     Rogers movie, I had nurtured the fantasy. And then, 
     unbelievably, there I was 14 years ago standing on stage with 
     Ginger, before an audience of more than 600 swells, waiting 
     for the beat that would send us gliding off to the music of 
     ``Isn't This a Lovely Day.''
       It was March 28, 1981, at the spring dinner of what The 
     Post's Style section describes with relentless redundancy as 
     the ``exclusive Gridiron Club.'' By ``swells'' I mean that 
     when you peer across the footlights on these occasions, you 
     dimly see a head table that starts with the president and the 
     vice president and their wives, most of the Cabinet, maybe 
     three justices of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs and a 
     gaggle of ambassadors. The ballroom is wall-to-wall 
     governors, members of Congress, CEOs, TV talking heads, other 
     assorted celebrities and the publishers and editors of the 
     newspapers whose Washington correspondent make up the 
     Gridiron Club's membership.
       So much for the setting. A dance story should be taken step 
     by step. It was the first year of Ronald Reagan's presidency. 
     A Hollywood touch was in order. An invitation was extended to 
     Ms. Rogers through the good offices of Godfrey ``Budge'' 
     Sperling Jr. of the Christian Science Monitor. She not only 
     accepted but agreed in principle, to a surprise appearance on 
     stage. In my capacity that year as music chairman (producer), 
     I was in a position to claim the right to be Ms. Roger's 
     partner if there was to be any dancing. I did so at the cost 
     of what may be the earliest onset of stage fright ever 
     experienced by anybody.
       The plot was that Ms. Rogers, who was seated at the head 
     table, would actually proceed directly backstage and appear 
     in the opening number of the show, which, in another bow to 
     the Gipper, was to the tune of ``Hooray for Hollywood.'' The 
     cue for her to step from the wings would be the line: 
     ``Hooray for Fred Astaire--Miss Ginger Rogers made him walk 
     on air''--whereupon there she would be, the real thing, at 
     the microphone, singing a satiric put-down of the Gridirons: 
     ``Isn't this a lovely way, to be meeting the press ...?''
       Not bad, showbizwise, wouldn't you say--for amateurs? With 
     only mild trepidation, I called Ms. Rogers. I told her my 
     name was of French origin. She said her favorite husband was 
     French. It was going well. Then I got to the part of the 
     briefing that had to do with ``Hooray for Fred Astaire,'' and 
     the stories that she didn't much like running as an entry 
     turned out to have some truth to them. ``Let's stop right 
     there,'' she said. While I was mumbling my confusion she cut 
     in to make her meaning clear. ``If you were Abbott,'' she 
     asked, ``would you want people to be always asking. `How's 
     Costello'''? The mention of Astaire, I said quickly, will be 
     excised.
       She arrived in Washington the Friday night before the 
     dinner, and on Saturday I sent flowers to her room, thinking 
     that to be the Hollywood way, with the lyric tucked in among 
     them. At an appointed hour we met, and she handed me the 
     lyric with some pencil editing. Recklessly, I questioned 
     whether her changes would scan, noting modestly that, while I 
     was tone deaf and usually urged when singing as a member of 
     the chorus not to get too close to the microphone, I did have 
     some experience as a lyric writer.
       ``Honey,'' Ms. Rogers replied gently, with no hint of any 
     awareness of what that salutation meant to me, ``I've been 
     singing that song longer than you've been writing lyrics for 
     the Gridiron Club.''
       With only three hours to go before curtain, we repaired to 
     the empty ballroom, where a piano player and the club's dance 
     director put us briefly through what were, mercifully, pretty 
     elementary paces. We parted to change for dinner, she to a 
     ball gown, me to--you guessed it--white tie and tails.
       We met again backstage and warmed up with a few practice 
     twirls. Her introduction went precisely as planned; the song 
     was a smash. We were perfectly poised to begin the dance, but 
     somehow, with a full orchestra, the bar of music that was our 
     cue didn't come through. I froze. Now, I'm not saying Ms. 
     Rogers also missed it. But she knew what to do. Stepping to 
     the mike, she said: ``Let's try that again--We only had 20 
     minutes to rehearse.''
       The second effort was--how shall I put it?--pretty close to 
     perfection, or at least relatively close. Things are relative 
     when you have been contemplating the real possibility of 
     stumbling off stage into the orchestra pit and taking Ginger 
     Rogers with you.
       My sigh of relief, however, was cut short. Ms. Rogers, was 
     back at the microphone. ``Let's see,'' she was saying, ``if 
     this guy can do it one more time.'' I did, or I should say 
     that we did. She was then 69, but to dance with she was going 
     on twenty-something, and she made it easy--so much so that 
     when she graciously consented to stay over for the usual 
     Sunday afternoon reprise of the Saturday night show, it was 
     becoming very nearly effortless.
       A few years later, she sent a message saying she was 
     writing her memoirs and would appreciate a memorandum on some 
     of the details of that night at the Gridiron. Ignoring my 
     effusions on what the evening had meant to me, she wrote in 
     her book that the dance ``had brought the house down but not 
     because of me; the audience couldn't get over Mr. Geyelin's 
     dancing.''
       A classy dividend, I thought, from a classy lady who made 
     the lifelong dream of an ink-stained wretch come true.
     

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