Celebrity Deathwatch: Harold Nicholas, Tap Dancer, 79

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

http://www.cnn.com/2000/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/04/nicholas.ap/

Harold Nicholas, half of tap dancing Nicholas Brothers, dead at 79

July 4, 2000
Web posted at: 3:39 p.m. EDT (1939 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Harold Nicholas, who as the younger half of the legendary
black tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers inspired generations of hoofers with his
grace and spectacular agility, has died. He was 79.

Nicholas died Monday of heart failure.

The Nicholas Brothers, Harold and his brother, Fayard, 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.

"We were tap-dancers but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead
of just footwork," Harold Nicholas recalled in a 1987 interview. "I copied
my brother. He was a natural dancer. Graceful. People always asked did we
study ballet. We never did."

Astaire's applause
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.

"In 'Stormy Weather' he had a huge set made of big steps," Nicholas
recalled. "My brother would jump over my head into a split on the step below
me," he said. "I'd do the same thing over his head until we both got down on
the floor."

"The only thing I say is, if they want me to jump down the steps now,
they'll have to pay me a lot of money," he joked in 1987.

Playing hooky
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
from attending vaudeville shows while their parents played in the pit
orchestra.

"Fayard used to play hooky to go see the shows," Harold recalled. "He picked
up the tap-dancing, then he taught me steps, which wasn't an easy job."

The brothers 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."

"If you were black, you experienced (prejudice)," Nicholas said. "It wasn't
a real horrible thing for us; we went through it. We noticed it mostly in
the South and in Las Vegas, where we couldn't stay in the hotels where we
entertained. But that began to change."

Second career
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.
Harold continued solo, appearing in Broadway shows such as "The Tap Dance
Kid" and "Sophisticated Ladies" and acting in occasional movies, including
"Uptown Saturday Night" (1974).

Because they were known as song-and-dance men, the Nicholas Brothers'
contributions were often overlooked. But then Fayard Nicholas won a Tony
award in 1989 for choreography of "Black and Blue," and the brothers were
given 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 actress to be nominated for an Academy Award. She died at 42 of a drug
overdose.

He is survived by his third wife, Rigmor Newman Nicholas, and his brother,
Fayard.

Copyright 2000   The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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