Ginger Rogers to be Celebrated at Tsai Performance Center, 10/24

Ginger Rogers, the Academy Award winning screen legend from the films 42nd Street, Top Hat, The Gay Divorcee and dozens more, would have been 100 this year. She will be celebrated with a live performance and an exhibition of her archive and memorabilia created in celebration of her life and career as one of America's most luminescent and talented motion picture actresses. The special exhibition opens at Boston's Mugar Library Building on Monday, October 24. Hosted by Nick Clooney, the event will feature an appearance by special guest Angela Lansbury. The live performances will debut at the Tsai Performance Center (October 24) in Boston and the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline (October 25).

Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé and a myriad of others, all owe a great deal to a movie star, dancer, entertainer, and American woman named Ginger Rogers. Almost every girl of a certain age pretended to be Ginger Rogers. The Ginger that they wanted to be, was the character that was developed over the course of 73 feature films. But the Ginger that they didn't always see - was a real and daring woman, who, in her bountiful lifetime accomplished so much for herself and for millions of women that followed in her path.

The items shown in the exhibition are exclusive, and the show is being written especially for the event - containing stories and music about and by Ginger. It paints a portrait of this incredible Oscar winning actress, dancer, comedienne, artist, and singer who was a cosmopolitan woman, leading the way in a career in motion pictures, as well as in her personal life.

Ginger was an innovator and a "dame" in every sense of the word; a trailblazer in the world of entertainment, achieving equality and respect in what was clearly a male dominated environment (in the 1940's she was the highest paid actor or actress in Hollywood.)

This exclusive engagement (in Boston in October, and NYC in early 2012) will include not only the songs written especially for her by Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, and many more - but it will tell stories from her life that have never been heard, contain songs that she wrote, and share moments kept in diaries by her very creative writer/mother Lela. Some of the film clips will include her fantastic dancing, her Oscar winning performance in Kitty Foyle, her creation of the character Roxie Hart (that was to become the basis for the musical Chicago) and her comic turns with Cary Grant.

Hosted by famed film historian Nick Clooney and starring the wonderful singer and actress Karen Oberlin backed by a fine quartet of musicians - this show will be a first for the nation in 2011. Also at each performance, a special invited guest star will appear to reminisce about Ginger's importance to American film, and to American society.

The Ginger Rogers CENTURY Exhibition is curated by Vita Paladino, Director of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, and archivist J.C Johnson. The exhibition will open on Monday, October 24 at 5:30 PM at the Richards-Frost Exhibition Room of the Mugar Library Building, First Floor (771 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215). There will be an adjacent reception at the Howard Gotlieb Memorial Gallery, beginning at 5:30 PM.

The special live performance will be on Monday October 24 at 8:00 PM at Tsai Performance Center (685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215). Please call the box office at (617) 353-8725 for tickets. Tickets can be purchased in person at the Tsai box office. Tickets are $20.00. There will be a second performance on Tuesday, October 25 at 7:30 PM at the Coolidge Corner Theatre (290 Harvard Street, Brookline, MA 02446). Please visit www.coolidge.org or the box office for more information. Tickets are $20.00 ($17.00 for Coolidge Corner Theatre Members)

"Sure Fred Astaire was great. But don't forget Ginger Rogers did everything he did backwards.....and in high heels!" - Bob Thaves

"In her life, as in her films, Rogers was a distinctly independent woman. She was so modern in her directness, her self-possession, her firm command of her expressive powers - let alone her career. "Rogers' name is forever linked with Astaire's, but she is hardly a second banana. Matching her warmth and steeliness to his nervous perfectionism, she elevated the greatest dancer of the day. She had hotshot composers - Gershwin, Kern, Berlin - writing for her films, much as Tchaikovsky wrote for the Russian ballet. She ran with intellectuals, entrepreneurs and celebrities alike; among her many wooers were New Yorker founder Harold Ross, aviation magnate Howard Hughes and actor Cary Grant. She had five husbands and no children, and when she wasn't in front of a camera, she was probably on the tennis courts, or at her Oregon ranch. Considered a natural athlete, she was said to have near-professional skill."

 

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