Ginger Rogers Movies

The AFI listed Ginger Rogers as the 14th Greatest Screen Legend Actress
The AFI listed Ginger Rogers as the 14th Greatest Screen Legend Actress

Want to know the best Ginger Rogers movies?  How about the worst Ginger Rogers movies?  Curious about Ginger Rogers’s box office grosses or which Ginger Rogers movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Ginger Rogers movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences and which ones got the worst reviews? Well you have come to the right place…. because we have all of that information and much more.

Ginger Rogers (1911-1995) was an Oscar® winning American actress, singer and dancer.  On American Film Institute’s Top 50 Screen Legends list, Rogers was ranked as the 14th best actress.  Right behind #13 Grace Kelly and right before #15 Mae West.  She appeared in movies from 1929 to 1965.   Rogers appeared opposite Fred Astaire in 10 movies.  Those movies revolutionized the musical genre. She also achieved great success on her own in a variety of film roles and won a Best Actress Oscar® for 1940’s Kitty Foyle.

Her IMDb page shows 92 acting credits from 1929-1987. This page will rank Ginger Rogers movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information.  Television appearances, shorts, documentaries and many of her B movies from 1929-1933 were not included in the rankings.

It is hard not to think of Fred Astaire when you hear the name Ginger Rogers. They made 10 movies together.
It is hard not to think of Fred Astaire when you hear the name Ginger Rogers. They made 10 movies together.

Ginger Rogers Movies Ranked In Chronological Order With Ultimate Movie Rankings Score (1 to 5 UMR Tickets) *Best combo of box office, reviews and awards.

Ginger Rogers Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table

The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.

  • Sort Ginger Rogers movies by co-stars of her movies
  • Sort Ginger Rogers movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
  • Sort Ginger Rogers movies by yearly domestic box office rank
  • Sort Ginger Rogers movies by how they were received by critics and audiences.  60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
  • Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Ginger Rogers movie received.
  • Sort Ginger Rogers movies by Ultimate Movie Ranking (UMR) Score.  UMR puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
  • Use the sort and search buttons to make this table very interactive.  For example…if you type in “Fred Astaire” in the search box….the 10 Rogers/Astaire movies will pop right up.
  • * Sadly Worldwide box office is not available for all of the Ginger Rogers’ movies ranked but we have added the ones we do have at the bottom of the page
Ginger Rogers in 1940's Kitty Foyle.
Ginger Rogers in 1940’s Kitty Foyle.

Possibly Interesting Facts About Ginger Rogers

1. Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri.  She became “Ginger” when a relative had a hard time saying Virginia.  She became “Rogers” when her mother remarried and became a Rogers.

2. Ginger Rogers’ road to stardom Cliff Notes style….She entered and won a Charleston dance contest which allowed her to tour and dance for six months.  When the tour got to New York City, she stayed, getting radio singing jobs and then her Broadway theater debut in a musical called 1929’s Top Speed.  Rogers was then chosen to star George and Ira Gershwin’s Girl Crazy. Her appearance in Girl Crazy made her an overnight star at the age of 19.  This lead to a 7 year movie contract with Paramount.   She appeared with Fred Astaire in supporting roles in 1933’s Flying Down To Rio.  Their dance scenes were the highlight of the movie…and was beginning of one of the greatest screen teams in the history of movies.

3.  Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire starred in 10 movies together.  During those 10 movies they had 33 partnered dance sequences.  Some of their more famous dance sequences would be “I’ll Be Hard to Handle” from 1935’s Roberta, “I’m Putting All My Eggs in One Basket” from 1936’s Follow The Fleet,   and “Pick Yourself Up” from 1936’s Swing Time and “Cheek to Cheek” from Top Hat.

4. Ginger Rogers was nominated for one Oscar® (Kitty Foyle) and one Golden Globe® (Monkey Business).  She won the Best Actress Oscar® for Kitty Foyle.

5. According to the American Film Institute, Ginger Rogers is the 14th greatest female star of all-time.

6. Ginger Rogers was married five times in her life.  Sadly all five of her marriages ended in divorce.  She did not have any children.

7. Roles Ginger Rogers turned down or was seriously considered for:  It’s A Wonderful Life (Donna Reed role), His Girl Friday (Rosalind Russell role), Now, Voyager (Bette Davis role), and The Heiress and To Each His Own (Olivia de Havilland Oscar® winning roles) and Ball of Fire (Barbara Stanwyck role).

8. On our Most 100 Million Dollar Movies of All-Time page…Ginger Rogers’ 15 adjusted $100 million movies is tied in 4th place for most of all actresses that have a UMR page.

9.  Ginger Rogers did many paintings, sculptures and sketches in her free time but could never bring herself to sell any of them.  She was a near-champion tennis player, a topline shot and loved going fishing.

10.  Ginger Rogers was one of the celebrities whose picture Anne Frank placed on the wall of her bedroom in the “Secret Annex” while in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam, Holland.

Ginger Rogers Adjusted Worldwide Box Office Grosses

America Film Institutes’ Top 25 Screen Legend Actress and UMR’s Links That Rank All Of Their Movies.

1.  Katharine Hepburn  43 Movies Ranked..On Golden Pond (1981) to Grace Quigley (1985)
2.  Bette Davis 79 Movies Ranked…from All About Eve (1950) to Wicked Stepmother (1989)
3.  Audrey Hepburn 24 Movies Ranked…from My Fair Lady (1964) to The All Laughed (1981)
4.  Ingrid Bergman  32 Movies Ranked..Gaslight(1944) to Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweiler(1973)
5.  Greta Garbo 24 Movies Ranked.. from Ninotchka (1939) to Torrent (1928)
6.  Marilyn Monroe 23 Movies Ranked…from Some Like It Hot (1959) to Ladies of the Chorus (1948)
7.  Elizabeth Taylor 47 Movies Ranked..Who’s Afraid of Va.Woolf?(1966) to A Little Night Music(1977)
8.  Judy Garland 31 Movies Ranked…from A Star Is Born (1954) to I Could Go On Singing (1963)
9.  Marlene Dietrich 30 Movies Ranked…from Shanghai Express (1932) to Just A Gigolo (1978)
10. Joan Crawford 72 Movies Ranked…from Mildred Pierce (1945) to The Law of the Range (1928)
11. Barbara Stanwyck 72 Movies Ranked.. Double Indemnity (1944) to The Bride Walks Out (1936)
12. Claudette Colbert 48 Movies Ranked..It Happened One Night(1934) to Royal Affairs(1954)
13. Grace Kelly 11 Movies Ranked.. from The Country Girl (1954) to Green Fire (1954)
14. Ginger Rogers 54 Movies Ranked.. from Kitty Foyle (1940) to The Groom Wore Spurs (1951)
15. Mae West 12 Movies Ranked.. from She Done Him Wrong (1933) to Sextette (1978)
16. Vivien Leigh 15 Movies Ranked.. from Gone With The Wind (1939) to Dark Journey (1937)
17. Lillian Gish 31 Movies Ranked.. from Intolerance (1916) to Hambone and Hillie (1983)
18. Shirley Temple 37 Movies Ranked.. from Since You Went Away (1944) to Honeymoon (1947)
19. Rita Hayworth 35 Movies Ranked.. from Gilda (1946) to The Naked Zoo (1970)
20. Lauren Bacall 36 Movies Ranked.. from To Have and Have Not (1944) to Diamonds (1999)
21. Sophia Loren 29 Movies Ranked.. from El Cid (1961) to Firepower (1979)
22. Jean Harlow 22 Movies Ranked.. from The Public Enemy (1931) to Riffraff (1936)
23. Carole Lombard 39 Movies Ranked from My Man Godfrey (1936) to It Pays To Advertise(1931)
24. Mary Pickford 31 Movies Ranked.. from The Little Princess (1917) to Rosita (1923)
25. Ava Gardner 40 Movies Ranked.. from The Killers (1946) to City on Fire (1979)
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94 thoughts on “Ginger Rogers Movies

    1. Hey Kevin…..ah..,..you have hit on our biggest problem on this website. Currently the site is not dynamic….which means I have to manually change all the numbers in all the different places they appear. In this case I think I have Monkey Business listed in 5 UMR pages: Ginger Rogers, Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Howard Hawks and 1952.

      All 5 pages should have the same box office number…..but as you pointed out that is not the case. 0ver the last few months we have been updating these pages with a new formula to calculate box office. Monroe and Grant have gotten those updates the rest have not.

      Recently we found a better source for Monkey Business…..we changed it on Grant’s page but not Monroe’s page. So in summary….lol…. the Grant number is right, I will fix the Monroe number and eventually all 5 pages will have the same correct number,

      1. HI BRUCE

        1 I think you said that you have now completed 80% of the updates. I can appreciate how massive a task that was as I have been moving in tandem with you in adjusting my own data base as you release revised figures – and I don’t have the management of an entire site to contend with or new pages to write, different projects to undertake etc. So as we’re always pointing out your occasional mistakes to you perhaps it’s time someone said “Well done,” to the 80% we’ve got so far.

        2 As the saying goes it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and Kevin’s post reminds me that when I wrote about Steve’s Carole Lombard’s video the other week I revisited your page to make the usual comparisons with your rankings and I meant to say to you that you have her co-star links column in blue where appropriate giving the impression that it has been updated whereas you haven’t got around to it yet.

        1. Hey Bob….some of these updates are actually requiring a good bit amount of time. One of the worst decisions I made was when I first decided to add in the Co-Star column….rather than putting the co-star in the database….I decided to just add the Co-Star directly into the table….because…I thought (another mistake) that I would never have to change the data. So when I do updates….the Co-stars disappear…and I have to type them all in again. Which when it is a person like John Wayne or Michael Caine….we are talking about 0ver 90 movies.

          The dream of making this site dynamic seems so far away….but WoC graduates with her William and Mary masters degree next Spring…so hopefully she will be able to squeeze in some time to help get that done….which will greatly reduce this continuity errors…..though it will not fix my huge problem with spilling….lol.

          Hmmmm..I am betting the Lombard page was during the short phase…when I stared to include the link in the column….shortly after that….we switched all the formulas…..so good catch there….that would have confused me….boy that table looks pretty bad….but her update is coming….thanks for the feedback.

  1. Bruce:

    I saw The Tight Spot last night. Classic Robinson crime film. Rogers was a witness he and Brian Keith had to protect before she could testify against Lorne Greene’s deportation case. I could have done with more Robinson screen time, but Keith was the main male character. I enjoyed Rogers much more in this film.

    By the way, as is often the case with Joseph Cotten romance films, TCM didn’t own the rights to air the Shirley Temple/Ginger Rogers/Joseph Cotten film that was scheduled to air last week. So I still have had no access to I’ll Be Seeing You.

    Flora

    1. Thanks for the review on The Tight Spot. The plot sounds like lots of other movies …..but the cast is pretty stellar. I have always liked Brian Keith. He is a very underrated actor. Sorry about I’ll Being Seeing You…..I found a copy of that movie at my local library. Good possibility that Shirley Temple is the next page. Steve has said he will be skipping that page…..so I think you will easily win that tally count.

  2. Still not found time to watch The Tight Spot, but I saw It Had to Be You last night on TCM to add another titles I’ve seen of Ginger Rogers. It is at 27 on your ranking. I found it a bit annoying and dated.

    Cheers,

    Flora Breen Robison

    1. Hey Flora….thanks for the mini review on It Had To Be You. It does not sound like a movie to track down. I think by 1947 her career was on the downside…..let me know what you think of The Tight Spot when you see it.

  3. Hey Søren…working on a current actor now…..but I am thinking as long as I do not run into too many box office roadblocks…Sir Larry will be the next classic page.

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