From Mark Ambrose: Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born in 1878 in the Jackson Ward neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia. He was raised by his grandmother after both of his parents died in 1885 of natural causes. His only brother with whom he traded first names (his given name being Luther) went on to succeed as a musician after renaming himself Percy. Bojangles began dancing as a hoofer in beer gardens at the age of five and dropped out of school to join Mayme Remington’s troupe in Washington, D.C. in 1886. In 1891 at 12 years of age he toured with the company “The South Before the War” and teamed up with George Cooper in vaudeville in 1905. Meeting his life-long manager Marty Forkins in Chicago in 1908, Bojangles began to dance in nightclubs earning as much as $3,500 per week. Bojangles served as a rifleman in New York’s 15th Infantry Regiment during World War I which became the 369th Infantry “Harlem Hellfighters”. He performed strictly for black audiences until 1928 when he debuted on Broadway with Adelaide Hall in the smash musical revue, “Blackbirds of 1928”, first performing his famous stair dance which he claimed he developed ascending a staircase to receive an honor from the King of England. From then on, his public image was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world. He became the first black male entertainer to dance with a white girl on film in a series of movies with the young Shirley Temple including “The Little Colonel” and the “Littlest Rebel” in 1935 and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” in 1938. In addition to Broadway, he also appeared in a jazz version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Hot Mikado” at the 1939 World’s Fair and danced down Broadway from Columbus Circle to 44th Street in celebration of his 61st birthday. Unfortunately after earning more than $2 million in his lifetime, Bill Robinson died penniless in 1949 at age 71 of heart failure. In 1973 a statue was erected in his honor at an intersection in Richmond that he donated funding for a traffic light after seeing two children hopelessly trying to retrieve a ball and remembering his life on the streets as a child.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 06:58:04 +0000