All About Ginger Rogers’s Five Husbands and Why Their Marriages Never Worked Out

Giovana GelhorenSun, October 25, 2026 at 12:30 PM UTC

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Ginger RogersCredit: Getty ImagesTHE GIST -

Actress Ginger Rogers was one of the biggest stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

She was married and divorced five times throughout her life.

Her husbands were Edward Jackson Culpepper, Lew Ayres, Jack Briggs, Jacques Bergerac, and William Marshall.

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, Ginger Rogers was one of the most beloved actresses. Beyond her Oscar-winning performance in Kitty Foyle (1940), she starred in 10 classic films with Hollywood icon Fred Astaire, including Top Hat (1935), Swing Time (1936), and Shall We Dance (1937).

While her onscreen success and magnetism were undeniable, Rogers struggled in her personal life. The actress was married and divorced five times in total; her husbands were Edward Jackson Culpepper, Lew Ayres, Jack Briggs, Jacques Bergerac, and William Marshall.

“Yes, I have had some failed marriages,” she wrote in her biography, Ginger: My Story, which was co-written with Jane Scovell and published in 1991. “I yearned for a long, happy marriage with one person. I always loved being married. Caring, cooking, and being a companion with a husband were as natural to me as breathing. Perhaps, in show business, such a marriage is doubly hard to maintain.”

Rogers’s last marriage, to William “Bill” Marshall, came to an end in 1971. She died on April 25, 1995 at age 83.

Below, learn more about Ginger Rogers’s five marriages, including her first impressions of the men who became her husbands.

Edward Jackson Culpepper

Rogers’s first husband was vaudeville comedian Edward Jackson Culpepper, also known as Jack Pepper. The pair first met when Culpepper was dating Rogers’s aunt, Aunt Jean. “The man I had secretly fallen in love with while watching him smooch with my aunt as they sat on our front porch swing,” she wrote in her biography.

Rogers and Culpepper tied the knot in New Orleans on March 29, 1929. Rogers’s mom, Lela E. Rogers, had disapproved of their union and wasn’t there to celebrate with them. At the time, Rogers was 17 while Culpepper was 26.

“For the next four months, Jack and I lived together on the road and marriage proved not to be what I had expected,” Rogers wrote in her book, speaking of how tedious life had become. “As a dutiful wife, my main task was to see that Jack’s toupee was cleaned after each performance.” The two also had briefly performed together as the double act “Ginger and Pepper.”

“My marriage to Edward Jackson Culpepper was indeed a disaster,” she continued. Soon enough, Rogers called her mom, cried to her about her marriage, and made up her mind about leaving Culpepper and going back to her career. They were officially divorced by 1931.

Lew Ayres

Ginger Rogers and Lew AyresCredit: Pictorial Parade/FPG/Archive Photos/Getty Images

Rogers’s next husband was Lew Ayres, an accomplished Hollywood actor who starred in movies like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and later played the title role in nine Dr. Kildare movies (1938–1942).

Rogers first saw him onscreen while watching him star in All Quiet on the Western Front. “I fell head over heels in love, then and there, with the picture’s leading man, Lew Ayres,” she wrote. “I couldn’t take my eyes off this incredibly handsome and gifted actor.”

Soon enough, Rogers and Ayres connected, and he asked her out on a date. On November 14, 1934, the two tied the knot. They were married for six years before calling it quits in 1940. Per The Washington Post, the former couple struggled to be together given their booming careers.

Looking back, Rogers said her union with Ayres was one of her biggest life regrets. “I do regret that my marriage to Lew Ayres did not work out,” she wrote.

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Jack Briggs

Ginger Rogers and John Calvin BriggsCredit: Getty Images

Rogers’s third husband was another actor, Jack Briggs, who starred in movies like Joan of Paris (1942), Parachute Battalion (1941), and My Forbidden Past (1951). They first met when Briggs, who served as Private First Class in the Marines, was assigned to give Rogers a tour of Camp Elliot in San Diego.

After the tour, Briggs asked her on a date, and soon asked her parents for their blessing for their marriage. “Jack Briggs seemed so right for me,” she wrote. “After my brief teenage marriage to Jack Culpepper and the sad breakup with Lew Ayres, I was ready for a new partner and hopeful it would last.”

The couple made it official on January 16, 1943. During their marriage, however, Briggs’s success as an actor dwindled, and his alcoholism worsened. “We could have worked together very well, and very happily, but the war had changed him, and he was drinking a lot (maybe, a little is a lot for me),” Rogers wrote. “In reality, he was no longer married to me and certainly was not the young man I had met many years before. No matter what I said, no matter how I talked to him about it, it made absolutely no impression on him. He was lost to me.”

Rogers and Briggs got divorced in 1948.

Jacques Bergerac

Ginger Rogers with husband Jacques BergeracCredit: Bishop Marshall/Daily Herald/Mirrorpix via Getty Images

Rogers’s fourth husband was French lawyer Jacques Bergerac. Upon his marriage to Rogers, he started an acting career in Hollywood, starring in movies like Thunder in the Sun (1959), The Hypnotic Eye (1960), and Twist of Fate (1954). He was also considerably younger than Rogers, with an age gap of approximately 15 years.

“He was extraordinarily handsome and totally charming; we flirted throughout the evening,” Rogers said of their first meeting. “Jacques took me to lunch the next day to La Coq Carde, and we spent an animated afternoon filled with laughter, jokes, and the joy of correcting his English. I wouldn’t speak my cracked French to him, for fear he would laugh at me. But then Jacques laughed gleefully at most things.”

They married on February 7, 1953. By mid-1957, however, they divorced because Bergerac had been unfaithful.

“I was deeply hurt when I discovered his unfaithfulness,” she remembered. “However, he was always very friendly and affectionate to me whenever we met in | public after that, which was rarely. The truth is, for a few lovely years, Jacques Bergerac was my knight in shining armor and, bless his heart, that’s the way I’ll always see him.”

William Marshall

William Marshall and Ginger RogersCredit: Getty Images

Rogers’s fifth marriage to William “Bill” Marshall was her longest. He was an actor and director, known for The Phantom Planet (1961), State Fair (1945), and Calendar Girl (1947), and was first described in Rogers’s book as a “good-looking fellow.”

He married Rogers in 1961, but, similar to her previous marriages, drinking became a problem for her spouse. “I’d given up on other men because of alcohol, and I didn’t want to quit again,” Rogers remembered. “I foolishly thought I could make a difference.”

She also admitted to taking jobs and roles she didn’t want because of Marshall. “For one, I played the madame of a high-class brothel in The Confession,” she said. “I never in this world would have agreed to such a thing had the producer not been my husband.”

Per Rogers, Marshall made promises he would change and give up drinking, but he never followed through. “He’d tell me he’d quit drinking, but I would find liquor behind the bookcases, or anywhere he thought I wouldn’t find it,” she said. “He could be so wonderful when he wanted to be, and when the need was there to make an appearance with me at some function or at the theater. But when I came home from the theater, and he had been home alone all evening, he had usually had a few drinks, and this led to some unpleasant scenes.”

They divorced in 1971.

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