It’s a light Today in Ginny with only two birthdays.

Actress Virginia Pine (1912) was born Virginia Peine and easily dropped one letter to get her name. The studios wanted our Virginia to drop all the letters in her last name, but she and mama nixed that. Anyway, this Virginia was a glamour girl in Hollywood and played one in THE WOMEN (1939). Miss Pine was in seven films and only had one extensive role, in HOT OFF THE PRESS with Jack LaRue. She seems to be most famous for being a long term girlfriend of actor George Raft.

We talked about composer Hugh Martin (1914) when we honored his writing partner Ralph Blaine a few weeks ago. Martin comes across as the senior partner of the two. In addition to the scores for BEST FOOT FORWARD (1943) and MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, Martin arranged a lot of music at MGM in the forties, In his autobiography he said he hated working there because of the one-upsmanship. Some people have hinted Ginny may have had similar complaints. Martin was nominated for two Oscars and four Tonys, but never won. As we mentioned when we saluted Blaine, they did win an ASCAP award for the Most Performed Feature Film Standard for Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.