Ginger Rogers GLITTERS! (CMBA Blogathon)

Somehow, Ginger Rogers was right at home in the midst of a dishy nighttime soap from 1984…

gif by me

But before we get started, this post is a part of the Classic Movie Blog Association Spring 2023 Big Stars on the Small Screen Blogathon, which has been running since May 15^th and continues through May 19^th. Make sure you click through to read the other excellent posts!

Glitter was a dishy drama set at an entertainment magazine that only ran for one season in the 1984-85 schedule. It was so poorly received, in fact, that it didn’t even finish out the season. It was dropped from the schedule by Christmas 1984 and the final eight episodes aired sometime in 1985 during late, late night.

Produced by television mogul Aaron Spelling, the show featured famous guest stars each week. Van Johnson appears in the pilot; Helen Hayes, Ruby Keeler and Burgess Meredith in the seventh episode; and Dorothy McGuire in the tenth episode. Something I very much lament with modern television is that there's no 'stable' of Old Hollywood stars poised for guest appearances. 

Ginger Rogers was the big guest star for Glitter’s third episode: “In Tennis, Love Means Nothing” alongside Cyd Charisse as the catty producer who’s trying to kill off Ginger’s soap star. Two Glitter reporters, Jennifer and Peter, are tasked with following Ginger around as her soap celebrates its 35th anniversary.

“Margaret Davis, Queen of the Soaps,” Glitter’s editor says in that week's pitch meeting. She's been the star of Another Day for 35 years and the show is filming live that week. 

“America has grown up watching her,” Jennifer adds. Peter seems less than thrilled to be covering a soap star, but what can you do? 

The first time we meet Ginger, she’s having a fight with the show’s producer, Ethel Woodley, played by fellow dance icon, Cyd Charisse. Ethel is ‘cruel and hateful’, and most definitely resents Margaret Davis.

"You still blaming me for stealing for stealing Arnold from you, my second husband," Margaret says.

“It was Roger, your third, and you didn’t steal him from me, I gave him to you. You deserved each other.”

“So this is the way you finally get your revenge.” 

Jennifer and Peter overhear the whole fight, and when they sit down for their first chat with Margaret, she tells them plainly: "They're trying to kill me!" To which they say, "Have you tried the police?" 

"Why, they do re-writes now?" Margaret quips. She's not being murdered, she tells them. Cornelia Winthrop, her character, is going to be killed off. The network is doing audience research and they've found that young audiences want to see young actors, not Ginger Rogers (perish the thought from this household! If I could go back in time, become a Nielsen family, and make sure all these shows survived, I'd do it.). 

Margaret gives an all-encompassing interview, telling them about her furniture collection and her stardom, and soon, Jennifer and Peter are hooked and want to help her. “I fear Cornelia Winthrop is as good as dead. And nobody in Fair Oaks will mourn her passing," she tells them. 

When they go to speak with Ethel, she's tight-lipped, though. Only she and the writer know what's going to happen on the live show, and mum's the word. They offer her the front cover of Glitter, but Ethel knows they can't promise it. "Even Glitter will have to find out like the rest of the world," she says. 

Then comes the day that Margaret receives her script, and just like she feared: she's being killed off. She rushes to the Glitter office and has a funny exchange with the receptionist while she waits. The young woman tells her that she's been a fan since Cornelia's third coma. “My third coma. Which means you missed the first 25 years," Margaret quips. The receptionist replies, "I'm only 21." 

Cut to Margaret reading the script with Peter and Jennifer. They try to placate her: it does say that Cornelia's breaklines are going to be cut, but it doesn't say that she definitively dies. Jennifer tries to help, calling her a "soap opera dinosaur" when maybe she meant 'dynasty'? 

Classic Ginger delivery though: "However that came out, I’m sure you meant well.” 

Finally, the day comes where they film the live episode of Another Day. The show's villainess, Valerie Beaumont, is bragging about having cut Cornelia's breaklines when there's a knock at the door. It's Margaret!

"Someone has tampered with my brakes, but I managed to steer into a hedge and survived," she tells them. Such a ham! 

Ethel wants to stop it, or cut to commercial, but they can't! It's live! So they get a producer to hand Valerie a prop gun and they cue up a gunshot sound effect, and Valerie takes three shots at Cornelia. Margaret tries to change the direction, avoid falling to the ground, and succumbing to her wounds, but she gamely falls to her death after the third bullet...

...but Peter and Jennifer—who are, for some reason, watching from the booth with Ethel—spot Margaret crawling off stage. 

Then there's another knock at the door!

It's Margaret dressed in her street clothes—you know, fur and hat, as one does—and Valerie exclaims, "Cornelia?!" 

"No, Amelia. Cornelia's sister," she says. 

The show sponsors love the twist and congratulate Ethel on pulling off such a massive move for the soap's anniversary. Peter and Jennifer mock congratulate her, too. She'll be able to keep Margaret Davis after all! 

"Lucky us," Ethel quips.

Side plots—or rather, main plots that I ignored in favourite of Ginger’s plot—involve a tennis star with a secret love child (who turns out to be not his but whom he's grown attached to so he stays involved anyways) and a columnist writing an article about ‘first times’ (I think there's a sub-sub plot where she's not writing about sex but I honestly wasn't paying enough attention to figure out if that's the case). 

If you want to watch the full episode, it and a few others are on YouTube, but if you just want to watch the Ginger parts, you can watch this video:

I'd love to know what Ginger thought of this; alas, it doesn't rate a mention in Ginger: My Story. It's certainly not Emmy-worthy, but if you love Ginger and you know how great she is with camp and comedy, you'll appreciate her appearance here! 

Ginger's film career came to an illustrious end in 1965, but she'd been appearing on television since 1956. Her other television credits include spots on anthology series like The DuPont Show with June Allyson, The Red Skelton Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and classics like Here's Lucy, The Love Boat, Hotel (her last screen appearance), and the iconic Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella from 1965, where she played the Queen to Lesley Ann Warren's Cinderella.