Harold Nicholas, famous tap dancer, dies

Stylized hoofer performed with brother from vaudeville to the big screen Harold Nicholas, who as the younger half of the legendary tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers inspired generations of hoofers with his grace and spectacular agility, died Monday in New York of heart failure following surgery. He was 79.

Stylized hoofer performed with brother from vaudeville to the big screen

Harold Nicholas, who as the younger half of the legendary tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers inspired generations of hoofers with his grace and spectacular agility, died Monday in New York of heart failure following surgery. He was 79.

Nicholas had been scheduled to attend a tribute to him and his brother, Fayard, this week in Hollywood, but recuperation from a heart operation last week was going more slowly than expected. He returned to New York Hospital on Friday, complaining of poor circulation in his legs and had another operation on Saturday.

The Nicholas Brothers began their careers as children in vaudeville with their musician parents. They went on to stop shows on Broadway, in nightclubs, on television and in movie musicals.

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

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With his brother and later as a solo performer, Harold Nicholas appeared in more than 50 movies, including “The Big Broadcast of 1936” (1935), “Down Argentine Way” (1940), “Tin Pan Alley” (1940) and “Sun Valley Serenade” (1941).

Fred Astaire told the brothers that their dazzling footwork, leaps and splits in the “Jumpin’ Jive” dance in “Stormy Weather” (1943) produced the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. In the number, the brothers dance on drums and leap over orchestra musicians.

Ziegfeld appearance

The brothers also appeared on Broadway in “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936” — a production that also starred Bob Hope and Fanny Brice. George Balanchine put the brothers in “Babes in Arms” the next year.

Fayard, born in 1914, and Harold, born in 1921, got interested in dancing after attending vaudeville shows in which their parents played in the pit orchestra.

They were good enough by 1928 to debut in vaudeville. In 1932, they made their film debut in a short, “Pie Pie Blackbird,” and got a booking at Harlem’s famed Cotton Club. Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn spotted them at the club and cast them in the Eddie Cantor musical “Kid Millions” (1934).

The two became film stars despite racial restrictions that limited them largely to musical sequences that were sometimes cut from versions shown in the South. They finally danced with a white star, Gene Kelly, in their last film together, 1948’s “The Pirate.”

In 1950, Harold Nicholas moved to France, where he had a successful second career in nightclubs and film. He was based in Paris but toured throughout Europe and North Africa.

By the end of the 1960s, the two brothers had stopped performing together.

Fayard Nicholas won a Tony award in 1989 for choreography of “Black and Blue,” and the brothers were given the Kennedy Center Honors in 1991. Other awards followed.

Harold’s first marriage, to actress Dorothy Dandridge, ended in divorce after the two had a mentally disabled daughter. Dandridge was the first black to be nominated for a best-actress Oscar. She died at 42 of a drug overdose.

In addition to his brother, Harold Nicholas is survived by his third wife, Rigmor Newman Nicholas; a sister, Dorothy Morrow; a daughter, Harolyn; and a son, Melih.

— Wire reports

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