page_title: Ginger Rogers
section_title: 1929–1933: Early film roles
hierarchical_section_title: Ginger Rogers / Career / 1929–1933: Early film roles
caption_attribution_description: English: Promotional photograph for the film 42nd Street starring Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler and Ginger Rogers
context_page_description: Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood and is often considered an American icon. She won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Kitty Foyle, but is best remembered for performing during the 1930s in RKO's musical films with Fred Astaire. Her career continued on stage, radio and television throughout much of the 20th century.
  Born in Independence, Missouri and raised in Kansas City, Rogers and her family moved to Fort Worth, Texas when she was nine years old. After winning a 1925 Charleston dance contest that launched a successful vaudeville career, she gained recognition as a Broadway actress for her stage debut in Girl Crazy. This led to a contract with Paramount Pictures, which ended after five films. Rogers had her first successful film role as a supporting actress in 42nd Street.
  In the 1930s, Rogers' nine films with Fred Astaire are credited with revolutionizing the genre and gave RKO Pictures some of its biggest successes, most notably Top Hat and Swing Time. But after two commercial failures with Astaire, she branched out into dramatic and comedy films.
context_section_description: Rogers' first movie roles were in a trio of short films made in 1929—Night in the Dormitory, A Day of a Man of Affairs, and Campus Sweethearts. In 1930, Paramount Pictures signed her to a seven-year contract.
  Rogers soon got herself out of the Paramount contract—under which she had made five feature films at Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens—and moved with her mother to Hollywood. When she got to California, she signed a three-picture deal with Pathé Exchange. Two of her pictures at Pathé were Suicide Fleet (1931) and Carnival Boat (1932) in which she played opposite future Hopalong Cassidy star, William Boyd. Rogers also made feature films for Warner Bros., Monogram, and Fox in 1932, and was named one of 15 WAMPAS Baby Stars. She then made a significant breakthrough as Anytime Annie in the Warner Bros. film 42nd Street (1933). She went on to make a series of films at Warner Bros. most notably in Gold Diggers of 1933   where her solo, "We're In The Money", included a verse in Pig Latin. She then moved to RKO Studios, was put under contract and started work on "Flying Down To Rio", a picture starring Dolores Del Rio and Gene Raymond but it was soon stolen by Rogers and Broadway star Fred Astaire.
caption: Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, and Ginger Rogers in 42nd Street (1933)
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