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Tarfumes.com - Ginger: My Story
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.92
Your Save: $ 4.03 ( 27% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780061564703
ISBN: 0061564702
Label: Harper Paperbacks
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: 2008-08-01
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Release Date: 2008-08-05
Studio: Harper Paperbacks
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Editorial Reviews:
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She was born Virginia Katherine McMath, but the world would come to know her—and love her—as Ginger Rogers: Broadway star, Academy Award-winning actress, and the ultimate on-screen dancing partner of the inimitable Fred Astaire. In Ginger: My Story, the legendary entertainer shares the triumphs of a remarkable career that began when she won a Texas dancing contest at age fourteen; the joys and heartbreaks of her five marriages; her relationships with some of Hollywood's major leading men, including Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, and damaged daredevil billionaire Howard Hughes; and the strength of her religious convictions that got her through thick and thin. Lavishly illustrated with rare photographs from the author's personal collection, Ginger is an enthralling, behind-the-scenes tour of Hollywood life during the Golden Age of movies by one of its most enduring stars.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: not as snappy as we'd like
Comment: when this book was released in hardback, ginger rogers went on a book signing tour. she stopped in chicago and the press was there to record the event. i was there and she signed my copy. she said to me, with a bit of bemused surprise, 'bless you heart'. i, goon that i can be, just smiled and stared at this icon of film and dance. i didn't care that arthritis had robbed her of her dancing prowess and the meds had blown her up. the winsome half smile was in place and the eyes were still an amazing green.
so, i niftied my way back to my apartment and started to read. it was a little bit of a comedown.
i did some research on film musicals for a paper i hope to publish this year and re-read. i was left a little numb and cold. i realize that a woman like rogers came from a different place and time. and being a staunch midwesterner that she was there was no way she was going to write about her life with the candor of say, rue mcclanahan or shelley winters(they're both midwesterners--i'm about to lose my point!). but besides claiming credit for the beautiful gown of blue feathers and satin she wore in 'top hat', there was little enlightenment about her life or career. the stories just had the same bemused, slightly dazed quality she had when i met her and touched her hand that day.
but i touched ginger rogers' hand! in our minds, that moment counted for something.
now, if i didn't own this book, would i buy it? no. i would get it from the library and read it. and i would hope for the biography that will elucidate this woman who is a lot more complex than she let on. an only child with a domineering mother and an electra complex--hey, this is the stuff that minieries are made of!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fluff and 'nonsense'
Comment: Ginger Rogers wasn't much for self-reflection, and that's very evident in the recounting of her life. For instance, you never know precisely why all her marriages failed. There weren't any transitions from being head-over-the-heels-in love with her husbands to getting a divorce. And it's probably because the marriages failed that quickly. She was a romantic and when the romance faded, so did the marriage. After the fifth marriage, I think she finally realized she enjoyed being single and dating, more than she enjoyed being married.
Pretty much that's about as deep as she gets about herself. Mostly it reads like a travel guide of all her movie-making. There are some amusing anecdotes which will give the reader a sense of the real Ginger Rogers. And there's also a lot of mention about her religious beliefs. These beliefs probably helped to curb any self-reflective moments she might've had, because she allowed her faith in God to guide her through the really tough times.
There is one movie of hers, that, now that I've read the book, gives me a better understanding of her overall personality. 'Monkey Business' with Cary Grant. The part where she regressed to childhood was perfectly played, and I could see this as a side to Ginger Rogers that could've annoyed a lot more serious-minded people. Maybe even her husbands. But, if that's her worse sin, she did good.
Fluff, but if you enjoyed Ginger Rogers as the hard-working actress she truly was, this book won't disappoint.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Oh So Tedious!
Comment: I was a huge fan of Ginger Rogers until I read this book--oy vey, what a moaner! She comes across as thoroughly tedious and completely self-involved. I can fully understand exactly why she had so many husbands. I truly sympathized with one of the later husbands who had to resort to hiding booze up in the loft of their house--anything to numb the pain, I suspect!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A book I'll always remember
Comment: Not being an avid "autobiography" reader, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I can honestly say that even if you aren't a reader you will like this book. It has surprises out of nowhere & it's enjoyable.
I'd recommend this book to anyone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "God Bless Mommy, and Granddaddy, and Mary Baker Eddy ..."
Comment: What do you get when you cross Ginger Rogers with Tammy Faye Bakker? You get, evidently, Ginger Rogers--or at least what remained of Ginger in her not-so-sprightly seventies. Though much has been said and written about the cruelty of time, the gentle reader must nonetheless brace herself for a shock upon cracking Ginger's memoirs to the pages of recent photographs. There is nothing left of the buff, scrub-faced girl that graced the cover of Life Magazine in 1942 sporting boots, coveralls, and a fishing rod. Alas, Ginger in her dotage was an overweight, diabetes-ravaged, pancake makeup-smeared parody of her former self, more frightening and less recognizable than any male drag artist's impersonation could ever have been.
But what, you may well ask, is the relevance of these observations? None in particular, unless you speculate that the medical treatment Ginger shunned throughout her life might have boosted her long-term physical and mental health, leading to a more lucid, balanced, and enjoyable memoir. But such was not to be. Nay, Ginger--devout Christian Scientist that she was--relied exclusively on prayer, and credited it with curing everything from an ailing starlet's acute appendicitis to the boils on her fourth husband's derriere. Where most Hollywood memoirs are chock full of juicy gossip and innuendo, Ginger's runneth over with religious testimonials. It seems that in childhood, little Ginger, stricken with warts, first employed the bury-the-potato method to no avail. Shamefaced at her lapse in faith, Ginger then tried prayer, which--lo and behold(!)--vanquished the warts, leading to a lifetime of unwavering, prayerful devotion. So says Ginger in three scores of hindsight, at any rate.
These sorts of rose-colored recollections might justifiably strain the credulity of even similarly devout readers, and will certainly alienate young film buffs, who tend to lean toward the cynical and metrosexual. This is too bad, because La Ginger was indisputably one of the great geniuses of the Golden Era--one who could not only dance like the wind and sing tolerably but act, both dramatically and comically. She was a quadruple threat, as evidenced by her Oscar turn in *Kitty Foyle* and her uproarious comic rhythm in classics like *Swing Time*, *Stage Door*, *Tom, Dick, and Harry*, and *Monkey Business*.
On the bright sider, evidence of Ginger's cross-medium artistic ability is plentiful in *Ginger, My Story*. While her memoir doesn't come close to matching the literariness or wit of say, Tallulah Bankhead's, it conveys a sense of physical place and culture with an effectiveness unparalleled by other Hollywood bios. Whether Ginger is squatting in the dirt at her childhood home in Independence Missouri, sashaying around Astaire, or cringing at a bull fight in Rio, the reader can see, feel, and smell things as they were. This delightful sense of immersion makes *Ginger, My Story* a more than worthwhile read, despite what I would call the book's principal flaw: the author's tendency to depict the otherworld of human relationships in black-and-white, two-dimensional terms.
Four stars.
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