Ginger Rogers & Barbara Stanwyck Dance Break

 Two Hollywood greats were born on this day in history -- Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck. Ginger secured her place in the A-List of Hollywood history when she danced with Fred Astaire in a series of 1930s RKO musicals, some with original songs written for them by Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin and Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. An actress of depth and great clarity, she won a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for the 1940 feminist drama, KITTY FOYLE. In films such as that, films that did not co-star Astaire, she proved to be a significant talent in such dramas and comedies as STAGE DOOR (1937), PRIMROSE PATH (1940), ROXIE HART (1942), Billy Wilder's THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942) and I'LL BE SEEING YOU (1944).

 When Ginger danced with Fred in those celebrated original RKO musicals, she didn't just dance. She acted. She reacted. She danced in character, in the moment, and keeping the emotions of the scene fluid.

With Irving Berlin's TOP HAT (1935), Astaire & Rogers became a truly iconic movie musical team. They followed that with another classic, an original movie musical with a score by Dorothy Fields and Jerome Kern. Fred plays a professional dancers who sees, chats with and instantly falls in love with Ginger. She plays a non-nonsense dance teacher in Manhattan. Fred goes into the studio and pretends to need classes in order to talk to her again, However, his innocent ruse gets her fired and he immediately works to fix his mistake. Here's the "Pick Yourself Up" number from SWING TIME (1936).

The amazing Barbara Stanwyck didn't star in a series of star-making musicals like Ginger did, but, Lord! What a career! Stanwyck could break your heart as the ultimate self-sacrificing mother from the wrong side of the tracks in STELLA DALLAS (1937), break you up laughing as the lovable lady card shark in the Preston Sturges screwball comedy classic, THE LADY EVE (1941) and be the ultimate cold-blooded femme fatale killer in Billy Wilder's film noir classic, DOUBLE INDEMNIT (1944). In between, she'd get a song 'n' dance opportunity as Dixie Daisy in LADY OF BURLESQUE, a comedy murder mystery based on a novel written by famed stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. Here's Stanwyck singing the "Take It Off the E-String, Play It On the G-String" number from LADY OF BURLESQUE (1943).

Later in the movie, Dixie Daisy and two fellow company members have to ad lib a dance routine when one of the tootsies has a loud meltdown backstage.

Ginger Rogers and Barbara Stanwyck -- two extraordinary talents.