ROBINSON, Bill “Bojangles” (1878 – 1949)
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American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century.
SIG – Vintage signature on a small card accompanied by a vintage 8″x10″ sepia tone formal portrait of the hoofer (circa 1940). Some crackling and toning to the image but, overall, very good.
Robinson’s long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology, starting in the age of minstrel shows, moving to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, Robinson’s contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging, giving tap a …hitherto unknown lightness and presence. His signature routine was the stair dance, in which Robinson would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. Robinson is also credited with having introduced a new word, copacetic, into popular culture, via his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
A popular figure in both the black and white entertainment worlds of his era, Robinson is best known today for his dancing with Shirley Temple in a series of films during the 1930s, and for starring in the musical Stormy Weather (1943), loosely based on Robinson’s own life, and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Robinson used his popularity to challenge and overcome numerous racial barriers.