Synopsis
Book by HASKINS Jim and NR Mitgang
Présentation de l'éditeur
Over sixty years after his death, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson is still the most famous tap dancer who ever lived, immortalized in the song "Mr. Bojangles," fondly remembered as Shirley Temple's dance partner in three of her films, and the subject of a Fred Astaire dance routine, "Bojangles of Harlem." Robinson was the first black single dancer to star in white vaudeville circuits, for nearly thirty years as a headliner. Not only did he get top billing at the Palace in New York, he also played command performances for kings and presidents. His "stair dance" was so widely copied that he sought, unsuccessfully, to patent it. He appeared on radio and television, and played to packed houses on Broadway. And he was the man who added the word "copasetic" to the dictionary. Yet Bill Robinson the man has remained an enigma until now. This first, full-length biography reveals the charmer, gambler, brawler, athlete, and consummate entertainer behind the crusade for actors' rights, who pushed past the color barrier in the first half of the twentieth century. Haskins and Mitgang, with access to many of the people who knew Bojangles best, and to his scrapbooks and personal papers, have created a vivid portrait of the man behind the myth, from his birth in Richmond, Virginia, to his death and the star-studded funeral where he was eulogized by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and Ed Sullivan.
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