Biography
Robinson first drew breath on 25 May 1878 in Richmond, Virginia, and breathed his last on 25 November 1949. During childhood he spent his days among racing stables while harboring ambitions of becoming a jockey. For amusement and to amuse others he took up dancing, making his initial stage appearance at eight. Three years afterward he concluded that dancing offered greater financial promise than riding horses. His popularity spread across the black vaudeville circuit, and he also performed in white vaudeville houses as a “pick,” a term derived from pickaninny, where his footwork lent an air of distinction to occasionally mediocre white productions. Growing fame brought greater visibility within the entertainment industry. While engaged at New York’s Palace Theatre in 1921 he moved up and down the steps connecting the stage to the orchestra pit, an improvisation that evolved into his celebrated stair dance. Although others had previously performed on staircases, he perfected the sequence until it ranked among the most dazzling displays in vernacular dance. Late in the decade, despite having reached sixty, he enjoyed enormous acclaim in Lew Leslie’s smash production Blackbirds Of 1928. Throughout the mid-thirties he appeared in nightclubs, revues, musical comedies, and additional stage presentations, among them Hot Mikado. His schedule grew so crowded that he occasionally performed in separate shows at different theatres on a single evening. Convinced of his supremacy in his field, he projected a self-assurance some interpreted as arrogance, an attitude intertwined with periods of melancholy over the realization that his race had delayed until his sixties the recognition and wealth routinely granted less gifted white dancers. In practice he proved exceptionally openhanded; despite a punishing workload he never declined to perform at benefits for struggling or infirm colleagues. One estimate placed the total of such appearances at four hundred within a single year. A film appearance in Dixiana occurred in 1930, yet only after he reached Hollywood midway through the decade did he achieve cinematic recognition. He danced through a succession of popular motion pictures, several of them featuring Shirley Temple. By 1937 his film work commanded $6,600 weekly, an unusually large sum for a black performer in Hollywood during that era. His first starring film role arrived in 1943 with the all-black musical Stormy Weather, in which he appeared opposite Lena Horne. Although already in his early seventies he executed the stair dance; even when surpassed by the Nicholas Brothers the performance remained extraordinary. He also sang in a light and engaging style, most memorably cutting “Doin’ The New Low-Down” in 1932 alongside Don Redman And His Orchestra. Despite career earnings estimated above $2 million, his generosity left him penniless at his death in November 1949. Half a million mourners lined the procession route of the man widely and deservedly known as the Mayor of Harlem. In 1993 a musical titled Bojangles, scripted by Douglas Jones with music by Charles Strouse and the late Sammy Cahn, received workshop productions in various regional theatres.