Free | 23/6
Posted: 5/30/2012
As I expected when posting a blog on National Tap Dance Day asking for your memories of first seeing tap dance, the majority of responses were those of watching Shirley Temple and Bill Robinson -- hand in hand -- tap dancing up and down a flight of stairs. Fred Astaire dancing solo or cheek-to-cheek with Ginger Rogers in Top Hat was also a great fave, as was the dancing of Sammy Davis Jr., Donald O'Connor, Gene Kelly, Gregory Hines and the great Nicholas Brothers -- but what about the women? I was especially pleased with the shout-out to Arthur Duncan, who kept tap dance alive on television from 1964 to 1975 in some 575 programs on the Lawrence Welk Show.For those who remembered only Shirley Temple, you should know that Bill Robinson-- little Shirley's master teacher and long-time friend who acted and danced with her in The Little Colonel, The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Just Around the Corner, and who choreographed the 1936 Dimples -- is implicit in memory. Despite Robinson's appearances in several black-cast musical films, such as Dixiana (1929), Harlem is Heaven (1932) and King for a Day (1934), he did not blossom as a major film studio commodity until he was teamed with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel (1935). It was the first of a series of Hollywood films that cast Robinson as a loyal, self-effacing 'Uncle Tom' who dutifully served his masters. As Walker the houseboy, he was regularly insulted and berated by Lionel Barrymore, the southern patriarch, and he stoically accepted the abuse. Only once in the movie was the spark of resistance that danced behind Robinson's eyes ever affirmed -- when the patriarch admitted that he was 'an old fool': instead of delivering his stoic 'yessur,' Robinson flashed a broad smile and, walking away, intoned 'Yes . . . sir!' Robinson was chipper and effervescent when he playfully jibed with the house servant played by Hattie McDaniel; he was even