Sad news about tap legend

[brownie]

The man was an extraordinary dancer. Sad to hear that he is ailing and in bad shape.

From The New York Times today:

NEW FUND IS CREATED FOR AILING TAP LEGEND

By Lola Ogunnaike

Decades ago, the Nicholas Brothers - Fayard and his younger brother, Harold - dazzled fans around the globe with their stellar tap dancing and impeccable showmanship. Today, Fayard Nicholas lies in a hospital bed in California, recuperating from a stroke last month that left the entire left side of his body paralyzed.

News of Mr. Nicholas's poor health saddened the tap community. So did the news that Mr. Nicholas, 91, was too destitute to pay his rent and mounting medical bills. Rusty Frank, a Los Angeles-based dance instructor who is a friend of Mr. Nicholas and his wife, Katherine Hopkins-Nicholas, was so moved that she is spearheading a fund-raising drive to ensure that the veteran hoofer never has to worry about money again.

In less than three weeks, Ms. Frank, who began collecting money just days after Mr. Nicholas suffered his stroke on Nov. 22, has raised more than $14,000. "Everybody has been so appalled that this man could slip through the cracks," she said. Hugh Hefner, the Playboy mogul, donated a large sum, Ms. Frank said, and checks have poured in from around the world. "Germany, Switzerland, Australia - you name it," she said. "The response has been fast and great. It's spread like wildfire."

Naturally, some have wondered how Mr. Nicholas, the father of two, landed in such a precarious position. After he and Harold tapped their way through legendary Harlem hot spots like the Cotton Club, they appeared in dozens of Hollywood features, including "Stormy Weather," "Down Argentine Way" and "Tin Pan Alley," and quickly became household names. They wowed audiences with their gravity-defying performances: splits, back flips, cartwheels and feet that moved faster than a game of three-card monte. Yet, though they were well known, the men could never be considered rich. "Residuals didn't start until 1963," Ms. Frank said, "and they were done with films by then."

Jason Samuels Smith, a co-founder and director of the Los Angeles Tap Festival, said: "Unfortunately, it's not just Fayard who is suffering. A number of these older tap legends are struggling, and we need to help them. We cannot wait till these people are dead before we let them know how much we appreciate them."

Even in their 70's, the Nicholas Brothers continued tapping to pay their bills, appearing at festivals and dance symposiums. Over the course of their career, they received Kennedy Center honors and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and Fayard won a Tony for choreography for "Black and Blue." After Harold's death in 2000, solo opportunities for Fayard became increasingly scarce, and he soon fell on hard times. His wife, in her 50's, is unable to work because she must care for him. He had just finished recovering from colon surgery when he suffered his most recent stroke. (He had another in 1997.)

Today, Mr. Nicholas and his wife live modestly in a one-bedroom apartment. Their bills total $3,300 a month, Ms. Frank said. "Social Security and pension covers about $1,000 of that," she said. Donations may be made through www.rustyfrank.com/fayardnicholas.htm.

Mr. Smith said he was planning a benefit of his own for Mr. Nicholas. "We should be waiting hand and foot on someone like this," he said. "He should be sitting on a throne in a mansion somewhere saying, 'You over there, get me my tap shoes.' "

[medjuck]

I thought he was living at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills. Maybe that was Harold. If it was the latter then I presue that Fayard is also eligible. I'll try to check into it.

[BeBop]

Quite sad. I've long been a fan. I had the pleasure of meeting both brothers at an Illinois Jacquet concert. Saw the NY Times article.

[Dave James]

Phenomenal, incredibly athletic dancers. If you've never seen the 1943 movie "Stormy Weather", check it out.

Up over and out.

[brownie]

Fayard Nicholas passed away...

From AP:

TAP DANCER FAYARD NICHOLAS DIES

BURBANK, Calif. The last surviving member of the Nicholas Brothers tap dancing duo has died.

Fayard Nicholas died at his home in Burbank, California at the age of 91. His biographer Paula Broussard says Nicholas suffered a massive stroke last November.

His brother Harold died in 2000.

Fred Astaire once described the Nicholas brothers' performance in the film "Stormy Weather" as "the greatest dance number ever filmed."

While giving the brothers a Kennedy Center Honor in 1991, Gregory Hines called them the world's first "stunt dancers." Fayard Nicholas told A-P Radio News that night that what he loved most was to "dance and sing and be merry."

[Bright Moments]

RIP

one of the greatest - ever

[BERIGAN]

There are many reasons to own Stormy Weather, Fats Waller, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, "Bojangles" Robinson, but if you have never seen the Nicholas brothers dance, you haven't lived! Stormy Weather just came out on DVD this month....

Rest in peace Fayard Nicholas.

[Randy Twizzle]

Here's the LA Times Obit. They were the greatest.

Fayard Nicholas, the elder half of the show-stopping Nicholas Brothers tap-dancing duo that thrilled audiences during the 1930s and beyond with their elegance and daring athleticism, has died. He was 91.

Nicholas, who had been in failing health since suffering a stroke in November, died of pneumonia Tuesday at his home in Toluca Lake, said Paula Broussard, a friend.

The self-taught Nicholas Brothers — Fayard and Harold — tap-danced their way from vaudeville and Harlem's legendary Cotton Club to Broadway and Hollywood. Known for their airborne splits and acrobatics, the handsome, dapper duo is considered by many to be the greatest dance team ever to work in American movies.

The Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once called them "the most amazing dancers I have ever seen in my life — ever."

When filmgoers saw the Nicholas Brothers' dazzling acrobatic routine in the 1940 movie musical "Down Argentine Way" (starring Don Ameche, Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda), they were known to applaud and stomp their feet until the projectionist rewound the film and played the dance sequence again.

Fred Astaire considered the Nicholas Brothers' "Jumpin' Jive" dance sequence in the 1943, all-black musical "Stormy Weather" the greatest dance number ever filmed.

Miles Kreuger, president of the Los Angeles-based Institute of the American Musical, agrees.

"With its spectacular splits and leaps, their 'Jumpin' Jive' number is easily the most exhilarating dance routine in all of cinema," he said.

The show-stopping performance, set in a large cabaret with the Cab Calloway band playing, has the brothers jumping onto tabletops and leaping off a grand piano onto the dance floor in full splits.

The highlight of their breathtaking, synchronous routine occurs when they leap over each other in splits while descending an oversized staircase.

"That was one take, coming down those stairs … jumping over each other's heads," Nicholas told The Times in 1989.

"It's simply unbelievable," Kreuger said.

Fayard Nicholas was born in Mobile, Ala., in 1914; Harold arrived seven years later. Their musician parents played in vaudeville pit orchestras, and Fayard learned to dance by watching the shows.

"One day at the Standard Theater in Philadelphia," he told Associated Press in 1999, "I looked onstage and I thought, 'They're having fun up there; I'd like to do something like that.' "

So he copied what he saw, taught it to his brother and worked up a vaudeville act called the Nicholas Kids.

"We were tap dancers, but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork," Harold Nicholas said in a 1987 interview.

Fayard, he said in another interview, "was like a poet … talking to you with his hands and feet."

In 1932, the two young performers made their film debuts in a short subject ("Pie, Pie Blackbird" with Eubie Blake) and the same year began singing and dancing at the Cotton Club.

They caught the eye of Hollywood producer Samuel Goldwyn, who hired them for their first major film musical, "Kid Millions" featuring Eddie Cantor (1934). "The Big Broadcast of 1936" followed.

The Nicholas Brothers appeared on Broadway in "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936" and in 1937 they worked with ballet choreographer George Balanchine in the Rodgers and Hart Broadway musical-comedy "Babes in Arms."

In 1938, the Nicholas Brothers used their engagements at the Cotton Club to refine and update their style, and they took that style back to Hollywood in a series of musical films made throughout the 1940s.

Among those films are "Sun Valley Serenade" (1941), in which they memorably performed the number "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" with Dorothy Dandridge, whom Harold later married and divorced; "Orchestra Wives" (1942) and "The Pirate" (1948), which was highlighted by their acrobatic routine with Gene Kelly in the "Be a Clown" number.

"We call our style of dancing classical tap," Nicholas said in a 1991 Washington Post interview. "Some people think we're a flash act. But we're not. At the end of the act, we'd put those splits in, but we'd do them gracefully. You don't just hit, bam and jump up. We tried to make it look easy. It's not easy. But we tried to make it look that way — come up and smile."

After spending a year in the Army stateside during World War II, Fayard re-teamed with Harold. In 1946, Fayard had a featured role in the Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer Broadway musical "St. Louis Woman," in which Harold had the lead. They then embarked on a series of international tours.

In 1948, they gave a royal command performance for the king of England at the London Palladium. Later, they danced for nine U.S. presidents.

Nightclubs, tours and television appearances dominated their performing schedule for the next decade, along with a number of projects away from each other.

With Harold working in Europe and Fayard in the United States, the Nicholas Brothers did not perform as a team for seven years.

The brothers reunited as a duo in 1964 for an appearance on "The Hollywood Palace" TV variety show.

But they lived on opposite coasts after that, Broussard said, and when not performing together they performed separately.

On his own, Fayard Nicholas took on a dramatic role in the 1970 movie "The Liberation of L.B. Jones" and won a Tony for his choreography for the Broadway revue "Black and Blue" (1989), which included a dance on stairs for three child tap dancers, one of whom was a young Savion Glover.

Among a string of awards in their later years, the Nicholas Brothers in 1991 received Kennedy Center Honors and were honored at the Academy Awards.

Broussard, who had been working with Fayard on a biography of the Nicholas Brothers in recent years, said he remained active after his brother's death in 2000, dancing at tap festivals and giving lecture-demonstrations — after having had both hips replaced due to arthritis.

"He was the consummate entertainer and just one of the nicest people I've ever met," Broussard said. "He just always had a big smile on his face."

Fayard Nicholas' dance choreography and the brothers' place in dance history were chronicled in the 2000 book "Brotherhood in Rhythm" by Constance Valis Hill.

The Nicholas Brothers also were the subject of a television documentary, "The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance" (1992).

The late tap dancer Gregory Hines said in the foreword to "Brotherhood in Rhythm" that if Hollywood were to make a movie of the Nicholas Brothers' lives, "the dance numbers would have to be computer-generated."

Nicholas is survived by his third wife, Katherine Hopkins-Nicholas; his sister, Dorothy Nicholas Morrow; his sons, Tony and Paul; four grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

Services are pending.