Ginger not Dancing in the Dark

A hoax, but not a particularly harmful one, I guess.

A friend of mine today posted a link on Facebook to a movie on YouTube that purports to show Ginger Rogers at 92 dancing with her great-grandson. That surprised me a little, as I was pretty sure she passed away some time ago. And sure enough, a quick check established that she died in 1995 at the age of 83. Which piqued my interest enough to look for more about the hoax.

As ever, Snopes came through with details of an email used to spread the hoax, plus the real provenance of the video, which actually shows Sarah “Paddy” Jones, at that time (2009) a very spritely 75-year-old Englishwoman living in Spain, dancing with her Spanish dancing instructor. In my view, the real story is pretty interesting in itself, and requires no “enhancement.”

I don’t know if Mrs Jones is still with us, I’m afraid, but it doesn’t sound as if she was in any hurry to hang up her dancing shoes.

Other references:

• http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8213839-sarah-paddy-jones-77yearold-salsa-dancer-who-won-spanish-tv-talent-show-tu-si-que-vales-in-2009
• http://www.hoax-slayer.com/ginger-rogers-92.shtml

David Harley CITP FBCS CISSP
Small Blue-Green World
ESET Senior Research Fellow