A few years back, I was teaching the musical comedy when a male student remarked that he did not care for musicals because they were like chick flicks—too focused on romance and too filled with music that was old-fashioned. He did not find the production numbers with Fred Astaire from Top Hat to be particularly impressive; while he recognized that Astaire was good at his craft, anyone can take lessons and learn to dance, or so he claimed. For the next class, I came armed with a clip of the Nicholas Brothers performing their famous staircase dance from Stormy Weather (left). The class was dutifully impressed, and the student who dismissed musicals begrudgingly admitted that he liked the Nicholas Brothers whom he compared to athletes. The incident came to mind because today is Fayard Nicholas’s birthday, and it seemed fitting to acknowledge the talents of the Nicholas Brothers.
ON THE BILL AT THE LEGENDARY COTTON CLUB
Like any number of singers, dancers, comics, and entertainers from the Golden Age, the Brothers began in vaudeville. Actually, it was the family business. Their college-educated parents, Viola and Ulysses, had organized their own band in the late 1910s to play the Standard Theater in Philadelphia, which was part of the black vaudeville circuit. By the time he was three, Fayard had begun to mimic the tap dancers on the bill. In 1924, when Fayard was seven, Harold Lloyd Nicholas was born—obviously a name destined for the movies. As soon as his younger brother could walk, Fayard began teaching him to dance, and the pair devised their unique style of tap that was at once smooth and intricate, ballet-like and acrobatic. Apparently, Fayard was the genius behind their style and steps. Harold once said, “The only influence I ever had was Fayard. Nobody impressed me except him. Not even Bill Robinson.” In an episode of Biography on the Brothers broadcast in the 1990s, Harold called his older brother “a poet” who spoke with his dancing.
WITH NINA MAE McKINNEY IN ‘PIE PIE BLACKBIRD’
Though the pair danced on local radio programs (an odd venue for dance), their first important engagement was at the legendary Cotton Club, a heady environment for 17-year-old Fayard and 11-year-old Harold. The first show began at midnight, and the two rarely made it home before 5:00 or 6:00am. The Brothers were still kids when they danced on the big screen for the first time in 1932 in a musical short called Pie Pie Blackbird, starring ragtime great Eubie Blake and Nina Mae McKinney. Their first feature-film appearance occurred two years later in Eddie Cantor’s Kid Millions. While in Hollywood, the Brothers visited Fred Astaire on the set of Top Hat, where Fayard and Astaire compared steps. Back in New York, they were hired for the 1936 version of Ziegfeld Follies, which was choreographed by George Balanchine. The following year, Balanchine rehired them for the Broadway musical Babes in Arms.
IN COSTUME FOR THE FOLLIES
ON THE BILL AT THE FOLLIES
As adults in the 1940s, the Brothers contributed a production number or two to a variety of musicals—from Sun Valley Serenade, starring Sonja Henie, to The Pirate, starring Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. In the former, the Brothers sang and danced with Dorothy Dandridge to “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” Harold and Dandridge married in 1942, though their union lasted only nine years and was marred by heartache and dysfunction. As with “Jumpin’ Jive” in Stormy Weather, in which the Brothers descend a set of stairs by jumping over each other one step at a time before landing in the splits, their musical numbers still astound and amaze. In Orchestra Wives, Fayard runs up a wall then lands in the splits, while Harold runs up another wall and does a back flip. In a performance with Gene Kelly in The Pirate, the three dance an athletic-based routine with flips, high jumps, and other gymnastics. Concluding a dance or series of moves with the splits had always been one of the Brothers’ signature moves, and it served them well in their choreography for their film performances.
WITH DOROTHY DANDRIDGE IN ‘SUN VALLEY SERENADE.’ HAROLD (left) MARRIED DOROTHY IN 1942.
DANCING WITH GENE KELLY IN ‘THE PIRATE’
But for all their innovative dance numbers, the Brothers rarely spoke a line in their films. The racism of the film industry during the Golden Age, which was systemic, reduced roles for minorities to stereotypes and secondary parts. The appearances of the Nicholas Brothers consisted of a scene or sequence per film; they were not offered parts, only performances. Historians claim that their segregated numbers could easily be cut from the films so they could be released in the South. But, I watched Fayard speak at the Chicago Humanities Festival a few years before he died, and he was surprised to hear this claim when an audience member brought it up in the Q&A. He disputed it, noting that he and his brother often toured the South giving performances, and fans commented regularly to them about their films.
O’CONNOR RUNS UP A WALL IN ‘MAKE ‘EM LAUGH’
Regardless, Hollywood did not bring them the same level of success and respect they had enjoyed onstage. The Brothers could not even eat in the commissary at 20th Century Fox until an angered Darryl F. Zanuck intervened and forced the management to allow them to do so. With their career at a crossroads, the Brothers began touring in Europe during the 1950s, where they were treated with less prejudice and more respect.
IN 1989, FAYARD WON A TONY FOR HIS CHOREOGRAPHY FOR BROADWAY’S ‘BLACK AND BLUE.’
Though thousands of miles away, the Nicholas Brothers’ style of tap did not completely disappear from the big screen. However much I love the amazing “Make ‘em Laugh” number from Singin’ in the Rain in which Donald O’Connor dances a tour de force of comic pratfalls, body spins, and flips, it is perilously close to a Nicholas Brothers routine. The athleticism and gymnastic-like moves are reminiscent of the Nicholas style, but the similarities are readily apparent when O’Connor runs up the side of the walls then backflips onto his feet. That was a signature move for the Brothers, particularly Harold. Also, the song “Make ‘em Laugh” features similar lyrics and the exact melody of the Cole Porter tune “Be a Clown,” which was the number the Nicholas Brothers had performed with Gene Kelly in The Pirate. Whether it was a case of appropriation, hommage, or outright theft, the “Make ‘em Laugh”number in Singin’ in the Rain is a reminder that the contributions of black entertainers to American musical comedy were brushed aside in Hollywood. The American musical emerged from a variety of ethnic and African American influences and contributions. Vaudeville, night clubs, and Broadway had been more inclusive in showcasing ethnic acts and black performers, making those contributions more obvious and apparent, even during segregation. However, the musical genre was “whitewashed” when it finally reached Hollywood.
If Fayard Nicholas was bitter about that, he kept it to himself. When I saw him at the Chicago Humanities Festival, he exuded a warmth, friendliness, and kindness that was infectious. In his nineties, he danced on stage with the grace and fluidity that you would expect if you have seen the Nicholas Brothers in the movies. Harold had died a few years earlier, and you could tell that Fayard missed him, even though he was enjoying the companionship of his third wife, a beautiful blonde dancer half his age. I have to say I envied her.