I first realized I was a legman at age 14.
The revelation came in the form of a long, sturdy pair I found in the entertainment section of the newspaper. My eyes rose slowly from the high heels that supported them, up past the slit from which they unabashedly announced themselves, and over the muscular thighs from which they started in search of the fresh, beautiful face of the woman who had just made my sexual preferences clear to me.
The woman was 65.
Laugh if you will or call me the victim of a lapsing memory - then be aware that this is no run-of-the-mill senior citizen we're talking about. This woman had earned those legs the hard way, and was keeping them in their pristine condition in the same fashion. Her name was Ginger Rogers.
Ginger, who would have been 95 this month, was playing Ottawa's National Arts Centre, that fateful newspaper article announced, in the Vegas style revue with which she had been touring at the conclusion of her movie career.
The article made mention of another interesting figure: a precocious Ottawa University theatre student whose encyclopedic knowledge of cinema was the only thing, despite the appearance of a number of veteran reporters, that turned Ginger's pre-performance media conference from a one-woman show into a dialogue.
"I got hooked on old movies in Grade Nine," says Neil Kelly, still a movie buff after all these years, "as an escape from math and science homework. I had a particular soft spot for the Fred and Ginger films.
"I had brought along this portrait of her from 1936 film annual an old lady in England sent me. After she signed it, I held her hand, we talked some more, and then reluctantly I said goodbye."
Little did Neil know that this was only half of his movie-lover's adventure.
In the early '80s, while a guest in the villa of a wealthy Roman industrialist, Neil encountered the man responsible for so much of the Fred and Ginger magic: choreographer Hermes Pan.
"Nobody at this William Randolph Hearst-style party knew who he was. I recounted my meeting with Ginger to him, and we talked for hours about old Hollywood."
It was a friendship that continued for years; when Neil returned to Canada, he would occasionally call Pan at his home in Beverly Hills.
"One day, just before hanging up the phone he said, 'Fred's coming over for dinner tonight.' Just like that, as if it could have been any Fred. Then he added, 'Would you like him to send you an autograph?' "
Neil mailed him a large portrait of Astaire from Top Hat It arrived, signed, a short time later.
"Today, those signed portraits of Fred and Ginger are side by side in my bedroom. I consider it my own private Hollywood museum."
Oh - one last question Neil: those legs - were they as good in person as they looked in the paper?
"Dan, I stood two inches away from that woman. She had the legs of a well-built 16 year old."
And had Ginger made it to today, it's safe to say they'd still look good at 95.
