Ginger
Cast & Crew
Lewis Seiler
Jane Withers
O. P. Heggie
Jackie Searl
Katharine Alexander
Walter King
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
After he refuses a job at a casting office as a spear carrier in a motion picture, aging Shakespearian actor Rexford Whittington becomes intoxicated and is led home by a policeman. When Ginger, a precocious, street-wise eight-year-old living in New York's 9th Avenue slum, is told by her friends that her uncle is being arrested, she throws a rock through a window to create a diversion so that Uncle Rex can get away. Later, as they act out a scene from Romeo and Juliet on the roof, Ginger and her uncle are interrupted by a probation officer looking for Janet Tracy, Ginger's real name. The officer warns that Ginger, who has been habitually truant from school, can be taken away from Uncle Rex because of his drinking and lack of means of support. Ginger promises to go to school every day and tells the officer that Uncle Rex has just accepted a job acting in movies. Uncle Rex takes a job hawking in front of a movie theater, but he is arrested after fighting with the theater manager about the proper way to pitch a picture. When he is fined thirty dollars or thirty days, Ginger steals a number of things from local merchants to pay the fine, but she is caught. At Ginger's appearance before a judge, Mrs. Elizabeth Parker, a society matron who is writing a book on children, volunteers to take custody of her. At the Parker estate, Ginger meets Hamilton Parker, an immaculately dressed and properly mannered child with faultless grammar. She calls him "Blubber," while he says that she is infantile. Mrs. Parker's husband Daniel, who is disappointed with the way that Hamilton has turned out, demands that his wife send Ginger back. Ginger mistakes Daniel for a servant, and they become friends before she learns his real identity. When Mrs. Parker tells Ginger that she has learned that Uncle Rex is not her real uncle but a close friend of her parents who reared her after they died, Daniel rebukes his wife and gets Uncle Rex out of jail. However, seeing Ginger's affection for Daniel and realizing that the Parkers could give her things that he never could, Uncle Rex sneaks away. As he walks in a daze in the rain, he is hit by a truck, and he subsequently suffers from aphasia. Four months later, Ginger has acquired some refinement, while Hamilton, who now likes his nickname, has picked up Ginger's slang. On Thanksgiving, Ginger and Hamilton go on an errand with the chauffeur to her old neighborhood. Ginger sees her old friends celebrating the holiday by parading in costumes. When she sees Butch, an older boy whom she reviles, walking her dog, they argue about the dog's rightful owner. To protect her, Hamilton fights Butch and beats him up. Meanwhile, Uncle Rex has returned to his boardinghouse, where he imagines Ginger reciting lines from Romeo and Juliet . Back at the Parker home, Ginger and Hamilton overhear Mrs. Parker read to a gathering of ladies from her manuscript in which she describes Ginger and Uncle Rex in a derogatory manner. Ginger insults Mrs. Parker and leaves. She and Hamilton return to the boardinghouse and find Uncle Rex asleep. After Daniel rebukes his wife, they also come to the boardinghouse. Uncle Rex awakens and embraces Ginger. She apologizes to Mrs. Parker, who tells her that she now realizes that her notions were foolish.
Director
Lewis Seiler
Cast
Jane Withers
O. P. Heggie
Jackie Searl
Katharine Alexander
Walter King
Donald Haines
Charles Lane
Arthur Hoyt
Tommy Bupp
Johnnie Pirrone Jr.
Leonard Carey
Mary Gordon
Nina Campana
Richard Powell
Brenda Fowler
George Humbert
Walter Johnson
Gloria Roy
Geneva Sawyer
Bob Mckenzie
Jack Walters
Mary Foy
Jack Kennedy
Wade Boteler
Jack Curtis
Harry Semels
Jessie Pringle
Fay Holderness
Harry Schultz
Otto Hoffman
Oscar Apfel
Russ Clark
Pat O'malley
Lee Phelps
Howard C. Hickman
Frank G. Fanning
Eddie Buzard
Edward Gargan
Stanley Blystone
Ruth Clifford
Lenita Lane
Bess Flowers
Margaret Brayton
Jane Keckley
Ettore Campana
Larry Fisher
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
The working title of this film was Little Annie Rooney. According to an unidentified news item in the M-G-M story department card files at the AFI Library, Fox bought the rights to the "Little Annie Rooney" comic strip and planned to feature Jane Withers in the title role. This was Withers' first starring role. According to New York Times, she "took the screen world more or less by storm last December when she appeared as the thorn in Shirley Temple's side in Bright Eyes []" and with Ginger she emerged "as a star in her own right." New York Times further speculated that Jane Withers can "match charm for charm and dimple for dimple with the great Mistress Temple." As early as February 1935, Fox announced that Jackie Searl, called by Motion Picture Herald "the screen's prime child heavy," and Withers would be teamed in a film, although the story had not been decided. In the film, Withers does imitations of actresses ZaSu Pitts and Greta Garbo, which, according to information in the Twentieth Century-Fox Records of the Legal Department at the UCLA Theater Arts Library, she copied from a Victor recording entitled "A Hollywood Party," performed by British impersonator Florence Desmond. According to the legal records, Withers did the imitations without the knowledge of the legal deparment, who then obtained a license for use by Desmond, who had appeared in the 1933 Fox production Mr. Skitch. According to a Hollywood Reporter news item, Walter King was going to quit Fox after Ginger to free-lance because of his dissatisfaction with the roles offered by Fox. In the scene in the film in which Ginger returns to her old neighborhood on Thanksgiving, the children from the area parade in costumes asking passersby "Anything for Thanksgiving?" in a similar manner to the way children today on Halloween ask "Trick or Treat" to strangers.
