Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (born Luther Robinson; May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949), was an American tap dancer, actor, and singer, the best known and the most highly paid black entertainer in the United States during the first half of the 20th century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. His career began in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway theatre, the recording industry, Hollywood films, radio, and television.

According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it on its toes, dancing upright and swinging," adding a "hitherto-unknown lightness and presence." Additionally, he was an early black headliner in Broadway shows. Robinson was the first black performer to appear in a Hollywood film in an interracial dance team (with Shirley Temple in The Little Colonel, 1935), and the first black performer to headline a mixed-race Broadway production.

Robinson came under heavy criticism for his apparent tacit acceptance of racial stereotypes of the era, with some critics calling him an Uncle Tom. He strongly resented this, and his biographers suggested that critics were underestimating the difficulties faced by black performers engaging with mainstream white culture at the time, and ignoring his many efforts to overcome racial prejudice. In his public life, Robinson led efforts to persuade the Dallas Police Department to hire its first black policeman; lobby President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during World War II for equal treatment of black soldiers; and stage the first integrated public event in Miami, a fundraiser which was attended by both black and white city residents.

Robinson was a popular figure in both black and white entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support that he gave to fellow performers, including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers. Sammy Davis Jr. and Ann Miller credited him as a teacher and mentor, Miller saying that he "changed the course of my life." Gregory Hines produced and starred in a biographical movie about Robinson for which he won the NAACP Best Actor Award.

Despite being the highest-paid black performer of the time, Robinson died penniless in 1949, his funeral paid for by longtime friend Ed Sullivan. In 1989, Congress designated Robinson's birthday of May 25 as National Tap Dance Day.

Early life

Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell, a machinist, and Maria Robinson, a church choir director. He and his younger brother William were raised in Richmond's Jackson Ward neighborhood. His grandmother Bedelia Robinson, formerly enslaved, raised him after both his parents died tragically in 1884: his father from chronic heart disease and his mother from unknown causes.

Details of his early life are known only through legend, much of it perpetuated by Robinson himself. He claimed he was christened Luther, a name he disliked. He suggested to William that they should exchange names, and eventually they did.

William subsequently adopted the name Percy and achieved recognition as a musician under that name.

Career

thumb|upright|Robinson in 1942

Early days

At the age of five, Robinson began appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed pennies. A promoter saw him performing outside the Globe Theater in Richmond and offered him a job as a "pick" in a local minstrel show. At that time, minstrel shows were staged by white performers in blackface. Pickaninnies were cute black children at the edge of the stage singing, dancing, or telling jokes. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly. He later teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers.

In 1898, Robinson returned to Richmond and joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War started. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer (Robinson also sang and performed two-man comedy routines). Vaudeville performer Rae Samuels, who had performed with Robinson, convinced him to meet with her manager (and husband), Marty Forkins. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-coloured rule, which forbade solo Black acts.

Tap dance style

As mentioned, the chapter of Stearns' Bill Robinson: Up on the Toes titled Jazz Dance (1966) describes how Robinson introduced dancing "up on the toes" to tap dance. This was a new addition to King Rastus Brown's popular "flat-footed wizardry."

Robinson performed the stair dance in 1918 at the Palace Theatre in New York. Claims regarding the origin of the stair dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. The show then became a huge success on Broadway, where it ran for over a year to sell-out performances. On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, captivating their audiences. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, that they appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway) before they were teamed up together again by Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) to star in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies," that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States.

In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage in The Hot Mikado, a jazz version of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, with Robinson cast in the role of the Emperor. His rendition of My Object All Sublime stopped the show and produced eight encores. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the great hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair. Robinson played the boat pilot and then Sir Joseph Porter in the play-within-a-play of H.M.S. Pinafore. Critics widely praised Robinson's performance and especially his dancing, with his stair dance cited as a high point of the show.

Film career

After 1932, black stage revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with white audiences for more than a decade in some fourteen motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances.

Early films

Robinson's film debut was in the 1930 musical Dixiana. RKO was formed in part by a merger of the Keith and Orpheum theater circuits, with whom Robinson had performed as a headliner for many years. He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing black performers from their showings of the film. Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which sometimes is cited as the first film with an all-black cast, even though all-black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a white actor with a speaking part, as well as a few white extras. The movie was produced in New York and did not perform well financially, leading Robinson to focus on Hollywood-produced movies after that. They quickly hit it off, as Temple recounted years later:

<blockquote>Robinson walked a step ahead of us, but when he noticed me hurrying to catch up, he shortened his stride to accommodate mine. I kept reaching up for his hand, but he hadn't looked down and seemed unaware. Fannie called his attention to what I was doing, so he stopped short, bent low over me, his eyes wide and rows of brilliant teeth showing in a wide smile. When he took my hand in his, it felt large and cool. For a few moments, we continued walking in silence. "Can I call you Uncle Billy?" I asked. "Why sure you can," he replied..."But then I get to call you darlin.'" It was a deal. From then on, whenever we walked together it was hand in hand, and I was always his "darlin.'" After Robinson was signed by 20th Century Fox, it was decided that he would perform his famous stair dance with Temple. While Robinson liked the idea, he quickly realized that he could not teach his complex stair dance to a seven-year-old in the few days permitted by the shooting schedule. Instead, he taught Temple to kick the riser (face) of each stairstep with her toe. After watching her practice his choreography, Robinson modified his routine to mimic her movements, so that it appeared on film that she was imitating his steps. The sequence was the highlight of the film. Robinson did not appear in Dimples (1936), but received screen credit for choreographing Temple's dance numbers for the film.

Robinson and Temple became close friends as a result of his dance coaching and acting with her. Robinson carried pictures of Temple with him wherever he traveled, and Temple considered him a lifelong friend, saying in an interview "Bill Robinson treated me as an equal, which was very important to me. He didn't talk down to me, like to a little girl. And I liked people like that. And Bill Robinson was the best of all."

Other films

Robinson refused to play stereotypical roles imposed by Hollywood studios. In a small vignette in Hooray for Love (1935), he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in One Mile from Heaven (1937), he played a romantic lead with African-American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Blacks.

Robinson appeared opposite Will Rogers in In Old Kentucky (1935), the last movie Rogers made before his death in an airplane crash. Robinson and Rogers were good friends, and after Rogers' death, Robinson refused to fly, instead travelling by train to Hollywood for his film work.

Stormy Weather

Robinson's final film appearance was a starring role in the 1943 Fox musical Stormy Weather. Lena Horne co-starred as Robinson's love interest, and the movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen."

In 2001, Stormy Weather was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Radio and sound recordings

From 1936 until his death in 1949, Robinson made numerous radio and occasional television appearances. The distinctive sound of Robinson's tap dancing was frequently featured, but Robinson also sang, made sound effects, and told jokes and stories from his vaudeville acts.

Robinson also made several recordings, including one in which he demonstrated each of his tap steps and their corresponding sounds. It was also on the radio and in his recordings that Robinson introduced and popularized a word of his own invention, copasetic, which he had used for years in his vaudeville shows, and which was added to Webster's Dictionary in 1934.

Personal life and death

thumb|Fannie S. Clay in 1929.

Little is known of Robinson's first marriage to Lena Chase in 1907. They separated in 1916, and the divorce was finalized in 1922. His second wife was Fannie S. Clay whom he married shortly after his divorce from Chase. They divorced in 1943. His third marriage was in 1944 to Elaine Plaines in Columbus, Ohio, and they remained together until Robinson's death in 1949. There were no children from any of the marriages.

Political figures and celebrities appointed Robinson an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's associations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants. Robinson reciprocated with open-handed generosity and frequently credited the White dancer James Barton for his contribution to his dancing style.

Despite being the highest-paid black performer of the first half of the 20th century, earning more than US$2&nbsp;million during his lifetime, Robinson died penniless on November 25, 1949, from heart failure. His funeral was arranged and paid for by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan.

Robinson lay in repose at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory in Harlem, where an estimated 32,000 people filed past his open casket to pay their last respects. The schools in Harlem were closed for a half-day so children could attend or listen to the funeral, which was broadcast over the radio. Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. conducted the service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, and New York Mayor William O'Dwyer gave the eulogy. Honorary pallbearers were Duke Ellington, Joe Lewis, Bob Hope, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, and Irving Berlin.

Robinson is buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, Brooklyn, New York.

Legacy

upright|thumb|Jack Witt's statue of Robinson in Richmond, Virginia

Robinson was a popular figure in both black and white entertainment worlds of his era, and is remembered for the support he gave to fellow performers including Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne, Jesse Owens and the Nicholas Brothers.

Robinson was successful despite the obstacle of racism. A favorite Robinson anecdote is that he seated himself in a restaurant and a customer objected to his presence. When the manager suggested that it might be better if Robinson leave, he smiled and asked, "Have you got a ten-dollar bill?" Politely asking to borrow the manager's note for a moment, Robinson added six $10 bills from his own wallet and mixed them up, then extended the seven bills together, adding, "Here, let's see you pick out the colored one". The restaurant manager served Robinson without further delay.

Robinson co-founded the New York Black Yankees baseball team in Harlem in 1936 with financier James "Soldier Boy" Semler. The team was a successful member of the Negro National League until it disbanded in 1948 after Major League Baseball was desegregated.

In 1989, a joint U.S. Senate/House resolution declared National Tap Dance Day to be May 25, the anniversary of Bill Robinson's birth.

Robinson was inducted into the National Museum of Dance's Mr. & Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame in 1987.

There are several commonly cited anecdotes about Robinson that are likely the result of conflicting stories put out by Robinson's second wife Fanny, his manager Marty Forkins, or by various show business associates. There are also numerous documented instances in which Robinson gave conflicting stories to reporters at different times.

According to his biographer, Robinson had previously served in the Spanish–American War, where he sustained an accidental gunshot wound. He was 36 when the U.S entered World War I, and received a letter of commendation from the War Department for his work during the war in boosting morale at training camps in the United States, not overseas. While numerous sources repeat the claim of Bill Robinson's appointment as drum major in the 369th Regiment Band, this is not mentioned in either Mr. Bojangles, the Bill Robinson biography by Jim Haskins and N.R. Mitgang, or A Life in Ragtime, the biography of James Reese Europe, the leader of the 369th regimental band.

Origin of the nickname "Mr. Bojangles"

Tales about the origin of Robinson's nickname varied across the color line, a consequence of differing opinions of him by black and white people. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the Black variety artist Tom Fletcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler." Robinson himself said he got the nickname as a child in Richmond, which is the most commonly accepted version. Haskins' biography of Robinson states "Bill was shelling peas at the Jefferson Market, a New York Daily Mirror reporter asked him how he was, and the reply just popped into his head: 'I'm copasetic. The word was not popularized until Robinson used the term as an opening for his vaudeville and radio performances. The word was used in films Robinson made with Shirley Temple in the 1930s. The record stood until 1977, when Paul Wilson ran the distance in 13.3 seconds. Although Robinson's speed running backwards is undisputed, the circumstances in which this feat was accepted as a world record are unclear, and were likely the result of a staged publicity event rather than a sanctioned athletic contest.

The song "Mr. Bojangles"

Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" has been misinterpreted as a song about Robinson; it indirectly refers to Robinson through the lead character's use of his nickname "Bojangles," a reference to both being adept at tap dance. According to Walker, a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail who called himself Bo Jangles was the subject of the song. In the song, the street performer is a heavy drinker and has a dog that died; Walker also noted that the street performer Bo Jangles was white. By Robinson's own account and those of his friends, he neither smoked nor drank (although he was a frequent and avid gambler), and he never had a dog. However, other critics noted that this failed to account for the genuine affection and chemistry between Robinson and Temple that came through onscreen, and that the role represented a breakthrough for Hollywood stereotypes - it was the first time a black man was made the guardian of a white person's life. Bogle later moderated his criticism by noting that the reliable, articulate Uncle Billy character in The Littlest Rebel was a cut above characters portrayed by Lincoln "Stepin Fetchit" Perry. who secured a series of demonstration races for Owens which were viewed by many as degrading to the dignity of an Olympic athlete, most notably an event in Cuba in which Owens raced against a horse. As a result, Forkins and Robinson were viewed as having taken advantage of Owens. According to Forkins’ son, Robinson had told Owens that he should start running demonstration races that would both earn money for him and keep him in the public eye. Robinson had done many such races (including a race in which he set the world record for running backwards) and did not view them as undignified. Moreover, the events paid Owens well and provided him with a source of funds when no one else was offering him employment or helping him financially.

Café Metropole and Jeni Le Gon

In 1937, Robinson caused a stir in the Harlem community by choosing white dancer Geneva Sawyer as his partner over Jeni Le Gon in the Twentieth Century Fox film Café Metropole (1937). Le Gon had danced with him in Hooray for Love (1935) and had received favorable reviews. Sawyer had been Shirley Temple's dance coach when Temple and Robinson made movies together, and Sawyer had taken tap lessons from Robinson while he was teaching Temple and choreographing her routines. Robinson suggested to the producers that Sawyer could be cast as his partner if she wore blackface.