Editing Ginger Rogers (section)

=== 1940–1949: Career peak and reuniting with Astaire ===
[[Image:Kitty foyle - life magazine.jpg|thumbnail|alt=Rogers as her character Kitty Foyle on the cover of ''Life''|A [[trailer (film)|trailer]] for ''[[Kitty Foyle (film)|Kitty Foyle]]'' depicting Rogers' cover appearance on ''Life'' magazine for her Oscar-winning 1940 role]]

In 1941 Rogers won the [[Academy Award for Best Actress]] for her role in 1940's ''[[Kitty Foyle (film)|Kitty Foyle]]''. She enjoyed considerable success during the early 1940s, and was RKO's hottest property during this period. In ''[[Roxie Hart (film)|Roxie Hart]]'' (1942), based on the same play which later served as the template for the musical ''[[Chicago (musical)|Chicago]]'', Rogers played a wisecracking flapper in a love triangle on trial for the murder of her lover; set in the era of prohibition. Most of the film takes place in a women's jail.

In the melodrama ''[[Primrose Path (1940 film)|Primrose Path]]'' (1940), directed by [[Gregory La Cava]], she plays a character attempting to conceal being a prostitute's daughter being pressured into following the fate of her mother and grandmother. Further highlights of this period included ''[[Tom, Dick and Harry (1941 film)|Tom, Dick, and Harry]]'', a 1941 comedy in which she dreams of marrying three different men; ''[[I'll Be Seeing You (1944 film)|I'll Be Seeing You]]'' (1944), with [[Joseph Cotten]]; and [[Billy Wilder]]'s first Hollywood feature film: ''[[The Major and the Minor]]'' (1942), in which she played a down-on-her-luck woman who masquerades as a 12-year-old to get a cheap train ticket home and finds herself obliged to continue the ruse at a military academy. Rogers' mother, Lela, played her mother in the film.

[[File:Ginger Rogers by Virgil Apger, 1949.jpg|left|thumb|Ginger Rogers by Virgil Apger, 1949]]

After becoming a free agent, Rogers made hugely successful films with other studios in the mid-'40s, including ''[[Tender Comrade]]'' (1943), ''[[Lady in the Dark (film)|Lady in the Dark]]'' (1944), and ''[[Week-End at the Waldorf]]'' (1945), and became the highest-paid performer in Hollywood. However, by the end of the decade, her film career had peaked. [[Arthur Freed]] reunited her with Fred Astaire in ''[[The Barkleys of Broadway]]'' in 1949, when Judy Garland was unable to appear in the role that was to have reunited her with her ''[[Easter Parade (film)|Easter Parade]]'' co-star.