Ginger Rogers asks---"Did I Get What I Wanted From Life?"
From Modern Screen

"Yes, I get what I want from life," said Miss Virginia Rogers to me, "except---except for one thing---I want to go to college!"

"College?" I echoed stupidly, "you want to go to college?" I had expected anything but that. Some nostalgic reference, however, reticent, to teh recently divided home of young Mr. and Mrs. Lew Ayres. Some faintly spoken regret, perhaps, for teh mortality of young love....

But---Yes," laughed Ginger, laughing at me, not herself, "yes---why not? Lots of professional women do go, you know. Maybe I will, someday. There are so many things I'd like to learn. And would get so much out of college if I syould go now---more than I would have gotten a few years ago. I'd know now what I want to study, what course I want to take. I've learned concentration---dancing teaches you that. I've learned patience, I think. I'd care more about learning than I would have cared a few years ago. I'd be able to choose what I want and to go after it.

"I really think that I only woke up four years ago. Before that I was asleep or numb, or something. Perhaps it's just that I've grown up. My ideas, like my face, are shaping differently, losing baby contours. I seem to see everything in sharper focus. I don't believe that I saw anything at all---not really---four years ago."

I had been watching Ginger and Fred rehearsing. Tirelessly. Almost religiously---over and over again, perfecting perfection. And watching Ginger, in pale yellow overalls, pale green polo shirt, red-gold hair flying...I'd thought: She has everything she or any other girl ever wanted from life. Yes, in spite of what may have grieved her and caused her separation from Lew. For she is young and famous and wounds heal swiftly for the young, and the rainbow is still arched and her dancing feet are only beginning the arc...She has youth and beauty and fame and jewels. She has riches. She has a mother who adores her. She has cars and friends and fine feathers. And she has Fred Astaire for a dancing partner. She is tops at the box office. There is nothing lacking---nothing that can be replaced or achieved. And then we sat down to luncheon in the RKO commissary and Ginger sipped iced tea and nothing else---because she was rehearsing again after luncheon and one can't rehearse on a full tummy. And I told her what I had been thinking, or some of it. I said: "You have got everything you ever wanted from life, haven't you? In spite of---" Ginger vroke in, grinning, "But I never wanted very much. I never thought about it---"

No but---" I said, "all your dreams have come true, haven't they? All young girls of having fame and riches and---and love. And so you must have dreamed. And even if some dreams never stay true, forever, you've had them all, haven't you?"

And Ginger's pale young face, guiltless of any make-up, framed by that tawny silk hair sobered as she said: "Of course, I haven't got everything. No. Wait---I haven't got everything only because there is no such thing. I mean, there is no such thing as having everything. We are all mortal and being mortal means being limited, and so none of us has capacity for everything. No one can have everything. Because for every dream dreamed there arises another dream. For every hope hoped there emerges another hope." And I found myself thinking "And for every love does there arise another love to take the old love's place?" And Ginger replied: "It is an old saying and a true one---that the more we have the mroe we want. It's like eating---the more you eat the more can eat! 'Everything' is limitless, don't you see? There is no end to it."

"NO, NO, for anyone to make the boast that he or she has everything is like going to school and graduating and then saying: 'Well, now, I know all there is to know. I never need to read ontoher book or hear another lecture or study another subject.' So stupid, that attitude. Because the thrill and the glory and the whole come-on of living is just because there are no limits. There is no saturation point. For every goal is, when you have reached it, only a sign-post pointing the way to the next goal. The end is never reached.

"I certainly never dreamed of being an actress, of all things! I never thought about having a lot of money. Mother earned what would be called a sensible amount of money as a newspaper women---enough to make us comfortable. The people I knew then all lived nicely, but modestly. I never thought about movie stars and their fabulous lives at all...but, if I had thought about them, I would have put them in the same fantastic category as Alice In Wonderland or something like that.

"I never thougt about having a lot of money because I really need so little. If I cared about the things that money can buy I wouldn't go about as you see me now, dressed in cotton overalls anda dollar sweat-shirt. Oh, I like to get all tricked out now and then and go out with a crowd and have fun. But I can live without expensive clothes and still be happy. I don't give a darn for jewels. My first ermine coat didn't make a different girl of me.

"When I was a little girl I only had one ambition that I can remember---I wanted to be a school-teacher. I think that was because I adored my English teacher. She lived at home with us for a term or two and I used to think that anyone so pretty and gentle and wise would be the perfect one to copy. I wanted to be just like her.

"NO, honestly, you can't have everything in a world so 'full of a number of things.' I'd like to go to college as I've said. I'd like to try to write. I don't know whether I could write or not, but I'd love to have the time to try. I'd like to compose music, too. I don't say that I could do that, either---though I have written a song or two.---but I would like the time to work at it. I'd like to have the time to be a little bit domestic. I think I really am a housewife at heart. Most girls are, if you strip off the cellophane wrappings of their professional lives, whatever they may be..." (And I found myself wondering whether this may be the Why Of It...whether the little housewife-at-heart who hasn't time to be a housewife might be teh explantion of a little wife who doesn't perhaps, have time to be a wife? For Ginger is, I think, essentially whole-hearted. And where she couldn't give her whole heart and her whole time and her whole devotion she would rather not give at all...)

"You know," Ginger was saying, "I have to live in my own house as I would live in a hotel. I never get the time even to plan a menu. I never have the least idea what I'll have to eat from one meal to the next. I never have the least idea what I'll have to eat from one meal to teh next. I never have time to count the linens, to arrange flowers, to fuss over things---and I'd love to. When the maid tells me that we need three more table-cloths, I phone a shop and tell them to send me three new table-cloths and then I never see them until they are on the table.

"I'd like to be able to go out more---to do silly, on -the-spur-of-the-moment things, like going on picnics and down to Venice to do the chute-the-chutes and things. But I'm usually too tired when I come home from teh studio to do anything except fall into bed and to sleep. When I'm rehearsing I do go out now and then just to keep in step with life. But when we're in production it swallows us whole and we're seen and heard no more---save on the sound stages."

AND how would that go, I thought, with marriage...? Marriage and its multiple demands. The studio and its slavery. Alien bedfellows, I am afraid.

"So you see," said Ginger, "all of the many things I have---this 'everything' you speak of---I can't use. I remind myself of Midas---everything he touched turned to gold but what good did it do him? He couldn't eat gold. He couldn't inhale any fragrance from golden flowers. And when he turned the one object he loved more than anything or any person in the world, his little daughter, he could get no warmth or affection from her---for she, too, had turned to gold!"

(Perhaps, I thought, perhaps Ginger was saying more than she knew, revealing more than she thought...for may it no be that, here in Hollywood under the greedy grasp of the Great God Studio...young, ardent, hopeful marriages, like Midas's daughter, also turn to gold?)

"I have things" said Ginger, "and more than just things, I know. I have clothes, but I have no chance to wear them. I'd like to do some personal shoping now and then. I'd like to window shop and hunt for bargains and try things on, the way girls like to do. I can't. When I need new clothes I phone again. I call a shop and tell them to send me three or four dresses and then I choose the most likely one and I can't wear them because I haven't been able to shop for the right accessories for them...."

Ginger puased for a moment and looked out the window...spread before her Irish blue eyes were the mammoth sound stages, the machine shops, the offices, the gardens, the whole vast body of the study where she reigns supreme---a star...and I wondered what she was thinking, what values she waws weighing in her mind. She didn't say. I knew that she wouldn't say. For if she talked to one she would have to talk of all---and there are some matters even a star cannot be expected to discuss with all.

SHE said finally, "I'd love to have a baby. Of course, I would, naturally. I shall adopt one some day. It seems to me," said Ginger, her bright blue eyes wistful, as if asking a question, "that it is just as fine to adopt a baby as it is to have your own. Don't you think? To choose a baby beacause of all the babies you have see that baby is the one you want most? I sort of agree with Kathleen Norris when she said recently, that the real motherhood is to love every baby born and not only the babies born to you...

"Movie babies certainly cost a lot, too," Ginger laughed, her eyes coming back from Neverland. "I read in a recent articlesomewhere that a certain very big star;'s last baby cost her exactly $150,000---because of her having to be out of production so long. Time is very valuable to a movie star.

"You see, I am amphasizing the fact, now, that there is no such thing as having everything that meets the eye. I know that other girls must wonder wht there is left for me to want. That's what I'm trying to tell them. And I'm not disparaging the things I have. I not making light nor little fun of fame, so-called, of money and success and all that. Not for one minute. I'm happy. I wouldn't cahnge places with little Susie Glutz who works in a an office for anything. Even though Susie is probably just as happy as I and with just as good reasons. Even though Susie is certainly normal and I'm not. Vecause we are not really normal, not when we are 'movie stars.' We can't be. It is very much, I think, like running a temperature all of the time. And, after awhile, we get so keyed up that we couldn't live any other way. We would feel depressed and weak if we didn't at high pressure every instant. I know that I work better, the harder the pressure. It is literally true that the less time I have, the more I can accomplish.

"I ENJOY 'fame.' I really love it. I get a kick out of being recognized and praised and spoiled. There are times when it is tiresome, of course. But there are times when everything is tiresome. There are also times, most times, when it is thrilling and satisfying to find my name in electric lights. I enjoy the fan letters and the compliments and the consideration of being a star. I wouldn't be honest if I didn't admit it.

"But just because I do love it and value it, there is a drawback. I think it must be something like having a very beautiful and successful child for whom you have worked every night and day, whom you have watched grow and for whom you feel a great love, a great pride of possession. And just because you love it so much, that love is hot through with fear. For supposing anything should happen to it? Supposing that you should lose it.

"That's the way I feel about my work. Supposing something should happen---the industry or to my part in it? Of course I'd be hurt. Terribly hurt. I'd hate it. I'd be miserable. So that even when you do have everything, presumably, in the work you are doing, at any rate---even that is marred by the fear of loss, accident, of fate..."

In the doorway the assistant director was beckoning. Ginger waved a hand. "Time to go," se said to me. "I can't be five minutes late. I'm always late for everything, except my work. They've got me trained in the studio. So...I guess we can about sum it up like this: I get everything I want from Life except---TIME. Time to go to college, time to be a housewife, time to shop and play and experiment, time to have a baby, time to be normal..."

Can you read between these lines? I can.