About VKMfan and Gingerology...

First of all, welcome to GINGEROLOGY - The beautiful science of Miss Ginger Rogers!

I am known by all as VKMfanHuey (the VKM stands for Ginger's 'given' name at birth, Virginia Katherine McMath). My ACTUAL name is Jeff, but that isn't all that 'catchy' in the blogosphere, at least from where I sit - in the warm climes of central Alabama. I am a middle-aged dude, VERY happily married to my long-suffering wife Greta; we have a sweet daughter (Rebekah) and little boy (Reed), and I have a great job in the world of building codes. I graduated from the University of Alabama-Birmingham (but please, just call us UAB...heck, it's a lot easier, anyway!) in Mechanical Engineering; Greta also graduated from UAB, in Nursing...strangely enough, we didn't meet until well after our careers started.
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My 'introduction' into the awesomeness that is Ginger Rogers began sometime in the early 90's, as I was passing through the room where my mom was watching either TCM or AMC (back when AMC was cool...), and the movie "Primrose Path" was on. It was towards the end of the film, when Ginger's character, Ellie May Adams, was fixing to go 'out on the town', unfortunately in the tradition of her mom... of course, I didn't really pick up on any of that in my brief viewing, I just thought she was very cute in the funky little outfit with the beret and mink stole... So, I hung around to the end to see where this pretty lady was going to end up. Well, she flagged down Mr. McCrea, and the credits rolled. I thought, "She seems pretty cool... I wouldn't mind seeing her again!"
Well, as luck would have it, the very next film to be aired was "In Person" - so I hung around and watched the first part of that one...Ma explained about her 'partnership' with Fred Astaire, and how she loved those movies...  I eventually had to 'be somewhere', but saw enough to 'light the Gingery spark', as it were.
A few years passed, and every now and again, when I caught wind that a Ginger movie was airing, I would check it out...honestly can't tell you which ones, but I feel pretty sure I saw "Top Hat" in those days, at least. One summer I went down to the beach with my buds, and we went in one of the 'outlet' centers there...the book 'store' had the Ginger bio available (the silver hardcover with 'GINGER' in hot pink), for 7 bucks or so... I thought Ma would dig it, so I picked one up. Well, she read it (she's a voracious reader, y'all...), and said I should read it...so I did. And honestly, I didn't really remember much about it, other than she seemed to be a pretty nice person, had some quite interesting tales to tell, and knew a LOT of Hollywood folks, among others. 
Well, time marched on, and I got things going with my work life, and met my future wife... and really only thought about Ginger when I was 'passing by' one of her movies... I remember the day Ginger died, I was at my future wife's apartment, and one of us was sick (probably me)...so we didn't go anywhere that night (well, I went home later that night...) and, for some weird reason, we had the evening news on... and about midway through they gave the news that Ginger had died...it struck me as sad, of course, as when anyone dies, but I actually knew a bit about Ginger, so it did stick in my mind a bit more.
Fast forward to late 2008... our seven-year-old daughter had been in dance class for a few years, and was really getting into it. As I was scanning through Amazon trying to find movies or anything else for potential Christmas presents, I somehow ran across the 'Astaire-Rogers Set', which had all ten of their films included. It was a pretty good price, and so, I thought, heck, my daughter would probably like to see the dance routines, and, I wouldn't mind seeing Ginger Rogers, so, why not?  
So, that fateful purchase, and subsequent viewing, led to what we are today! My daughter loved these movies, so much so that she kept taking them over to my Ma's house to watch with her...and my Ma fell in love with them all over again, so another set was purchased just for her use...the best present I've EVER given anyone... on any given day or time, you can walk into her house, and she'll have 'Follow The Fleet" or "Top Hat" or "Gay Divorcee" spinning... 
Well, after the success of the GandF box set, I started reading up on Ginger's bio, and all the OTHER movies she made... and wondered how to get them. Well, there were 8-10 or so you could nab on DVD, such as 'Kitty Foyle", "Roxie Hart", 42nd Street", etc. But, there were a LOT more films that were not 'readily available'...so, I turned to TCM, which showed a fair amount of GingerFilms over that time frame. I accumulated another 15-20 or so that way, via 'taping' (yes, with a VCR!!! Remember those?) and then 'transferring' onto a DVD - I actually took a day off from work when TCM aired seven Ginger movies back-to-back on a weekday (THAT'S when I knew there was no turning back, y'all...) ...but there were several others that were just not there.
So, I started 'googling' Ginger Rogers (somehow that never sounds right...) to see if there were any of the 'hard to find' movies available...and there were...for a price, of course. So, after quite a few forays into eBay, iOffer, and...'other' avenues, I managed to find quite a few more. It was during this time that I ran across the blog, "Finding Ginger", which sounded EXACTLY like what I was trying to accomplish. This great Ginger blog, by the awesome BethRose of England, inspired me to crank up my OWN blog...at first, I just figured I would yak about whatever, like football, music, American Idol (R.I.P.), but soon realized that Ginger really commanded that this blog be EXCLUSIVELY about her... and for the blog's name...it honestly just came out of left field... 'Gingerology' was born.
So, here we are... and the main 'vision' for the blog at this point is to keep the memory and work of Ginger Rogers alive, for future generations to discover and enjoy; if we can pass on just a bit of Gingery goodness to the future, I'll be happy about it.
Thanks to everyone who has supported us these last few years...each of y'all have awesome blogs of various topics, and I feel honored to be counted among the 'Classic Film Blog' community!!!
Here's hoping we have a lot more awesome Gingery stuff to experience together!!! And PLEASE feel free to comment on anything, send stuff for the blog, etc...as that's what makes Gingerology tick!

As we say here...

...Keep It Gingery!!! (KIG)

VKMfanHuey
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