One of the most famous Black entertainers in the first half of the twentieth century, Bill Robinson was a pioneering vaudeville performer and a star of stage and screen. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia on May 25, 1878. After both of his parents died in 1885, Robinson and his younger brother William was raised by his grandmother, a former slave, after being orphaned as an infant. Robinson claimed he was christened Luther, a name he disliked. He suggested to William to switch names with him, since he did not care for his given name of Luther, and eventually they did. At the age of five, Robinson began dancing for small change, appearing as a "hoofer" or busker in local beer gardens and in front of theaters for tossed nickels and dimes. He left school before age eight and ran away to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a stable boy at a racetrack.
In Washington, D.C., he observed traveling minstrel shows. He copied aspects of their movement, eventually creating a unique dance style characterized by highly rhythmic, syncopated, and complex footwork that appeared effortless, carefree, and buoyant. Robinson claimed that he got his nickname, "Bojangles" for his contentious tendencies. This nickname and its future contradictions would perfectly encapsulate his blockbuster career that has been called both groundbreaking and retrograde, both defiant and subservient. He achieved great success as a nightclub and musical-comedy performer. At this stage of his career, he performed almost exclusively in Black theaters before Black audiences. Bill got his first professional job in 1892 as a member of the pickaninny chorus for Mayme Remington with "The South Before the War", performing again as a pickaninny, despite his age of 14. He travelled with the show for over a year before growing too mature to play the role credibly. He later teamed up with a young Al Jolson, with Jolson singing while Robinson danced for pennies or to sell newspapers.
In 1898, he returned to Richmond where he joined the United States Army as a rifleman when the Spanish–American War started. He received an accidental gunshot wound from a second lieutenant who was cleaning his gun. When Robinson arrived in New York City around 1900, he challenged the tap dancer Harry Swinton, the star dancer in Old Kentucky, to a buck-dancing contest at the Bijou Theatre in Brooklyn, New York, and won. Swinton was considered the best dancer of his day. The resulting publicity helped Robinson to get work in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe, more frequently with a partner, though not always as a dancer. Robinson was a part-time partner in a tap-dancing and comedy duo with George W. Cooper from 1902, booked on both the Keith and Orpheum Circuit. By 1912, Robinson was a full partner. He and Cooper, became primarily a tap-dancing act working in numerous travelling shows, sometimes in a troupe. The team broke up in 1914, and vaudeville performer Rae Samuels introduced him to Marty Forkins who became his lifetime manager.
Robinson was a staunch professional, but he was also a gambler who possessed a quick temper and carried a gold-plated revolver. An assault charge in 1915 split the act. Forkins urged Robinson to develop his solo act in nightclubs. Robinson eventually became one of the first Black performers to headline at New York's prestigious Palace Theatre. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s dance career unfolded at a peculiar time in this nation’s history—the forces of segregation were rising at the same time as the appeal of Black entertainment. Popular, everyday entertainment began to threaten the “color line.” For this, many laws and industry norms dictated what Black performers could do, for whom they could perform, where they could perform and with whom they could perform.
Blackface was still popular and even expected of Black artists. The “two-colored” vaudeville rule prevented Black performers from appearing alone onstage. Because of these restrictions, from 1902 until 1914, Robinson was required to have an onstage partner. Under Forkins' tutelage, Robinson matured and began working as a solo act, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. Forkins accomplished this by inventing an alternate history for Robinson, promoting him as already being a solo act. This technique succeeded, making Robinson one of the first performers to break vaudeville's two-colored rule, which forbade solo Black acts. During this time, Robinson pioneered a new form of tap-dancing. His style was elegant, quick and mesmerizing to behold.
In 1918 he became one of the few Black performers to headline a show at the prestigious Palace Theater, in New York. Robinson performed the stair dance, in which he would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. Claims regarding the origin of the stair dance were highly disputed; however, Robinson was widely credited with the dance because he made it popular. Robinson served as a rifleman in World War I with New York's 15th Infantry Regiment, National Guard. The Regiment was renamed the 369th Infantry while serving under France's Fourth Army and earned the nickname the "Harlem Hellfighters". The Keith Circuit and Orpheum Circuit underwrote vaudeville acts at reduced fees, but Robinson volunteered to perform gratis for thousands of troops, Black and White units of the expeditionary forces, receiving a commendation from the War Department in 1918. Along with fighting in the trenches, Robinson was also a drum major who led the regimental band up 5th Avenue upon the regiment's return from Europe.
Bill’s fame was a crucial factor in the 1920s because of all the racial prejudice going on in the U.S. at the time. He had created a new form of dance, transforming the usual flat-footed "shuffling" style to the art of tap dancing. This changed the way dance was viewed as and was a huge contribution to the dance styles of the modern age. He revolutionized tap dancing by turning the “flat-footed” style into a “on the toes” style, which allowed for more complex moves. He also was the first to be a part of Hollywood, which wasn’t really open to Blacks at this point in time. Onstage, Robinson's open face, flashing eyes, infectious smile, easygoing patter, and air of surprise at what his feet were doing made him irresistible to audiences. His tapping was delicate, articulate, and intelligible. He usually wore a hat cocked to one side, and often exited with his signature step, a kind of syncopated "camel walk". His bow ties of multiple colors, his prodigious charity, his ability to run backward (he set a world’s record of 8.2 seconds for the 75-yard backward dash) added to his cheerful, outgoing public image.
In 1922 Robinson married Fannie Clay, who became his business manager and secretary. They divorced in 1943. After moving to Harlem in 1928, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson became part of the Hoofers’ club in Harlem. The "Hoofers’" club was a club for Black entertainers and dancers, and is forever remembered as a club with some of the best performances in the 1920’s and 1930’s. In 1928 he performed "Blackbirds", which was staged by a White producer for White audiences. It was a musical in which all the stars were Black, starring Adelaide Hall along with Aida Ward, Tim Moore and other Black stars. It was very successful, giving him Broadway acclaim. The entertainers from the Harlem Renaissance, such as Bojangles, were finally able to represent their talent and be awarded for it. The show was a breakthrough for Robinson. Just from this one show, Bill was hailed as one of the greatest dancers by several different newspapers.
On stage, Adelaide Hall and Robinson danced and sang a duet together, captivating their audiences. So successful was Adelaide Hall's collaboration with Bojangles, that they appeared together on stage at the prestigious Palace Theatre (Broadway). Marty Forkins (Robinson's manager) had them starring in another Broadway musical titled, "Brown Buddies," that opened in 1930 at the Liberty Theatre, where it ran for four months before commencing a road tour of the States. Largely in recognition of his Broadway success, Robinson was named an honorary "Mayor of Harlem" by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and mascot of the New York Giants baseball team. Robinson's film debut was in the 1930 musical "Dixiana". He was cast as a specialty performer in a standalone scene. This practice, customary at the time, permitted Southern theaters to remove scenes containing Black performers from their showings of the film.
Dixiana was followed by Robinson's first starring role, in Harlem Is Heaven (1932), which sometimes is cited as the first film with an all-Black cast, even though all-Black silent films preceded it and the cast of Harlem Is Heaven includes a White actor with a speaking part, as well as a few White extras. From this Bill became one of the most prominent figures in the 1930s, having multiple roles in major films such as "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and "The Little Colonel", starring Shirley Temple, whom he modified his "stair dance" for the seven year old. The sequence was the highlight of the film. Robinson and Temple became the first interracial dance partners in Hollywood history. The scene was controversial for its time, and was cut out in the South along with all other scenes showing the two making physical contact. The popularity of the stair dance led Robinson to file for a patent through the U.S. Patent Office in Washington D.C., ultimately to no avail.
At age sixty he was starring simultaneously at Harlem’s Cotton Club in the mid-1930s, headlining with Cab Calloway many times. He was renowned for his precision tap dancing, often showcasing his famous stair dance on the Cotton Club stage. In 1936, he co-founded the New York Black Yankees team, based in Harlem, with financier James Semler. The team was a part of the Negro National League until 1948, when Major League Baseball first integrated racially. After Jesse Owens returned from the 1936 Olympics, Robinson befriended him. Despite his fame from his four Olympic gold medals, and undermining Adolf Hitler's claims of Aryan supremacy, Owens found most of the offers that had been made to employ him had been nothing more than publicity stunts that had no substance. Robinson was the one exception, finding work for Owens within a few months of his return to the U.S.
Rarely did he depart from the stereotype imposed by Hollywood writers. In a small vignette in "Hooray for Love", he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honor; in "One Mile from Heaven", he played a romantic lead opposite African American actress Fredi Washington after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for Blacks. Audiences enjoyed his style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug. By 1937 Robinson was earning $6,600 a week for his films, a strikingly high sum for a Black entertainer in Hollywood at the time. In 1939, Robinson returned to the stage as the Emperor in The Hot Mikado, a dynamic jazz adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Shuttling back and forth between Hot Mikado and Cotton Club rehearsals, he put in a daily sixteen hours, first at the Broadhurst Theatre, on West Forty-fourth Street, and then at the club. After Broadway, the show moved to the 1939 New York World's Fair, and was one of the great hits of the fair. August 25, 1939, was named Bill Robinson Day at the fair. In 1939 he celebrated his sixty-first birthday by tapping down Broadway, one block for each year. His performance began at Columbus Circle and concluded down at 44th Street in the heart of the theater district.
His next performance, in "All in Fun" (1940), with an all-White cast, failed to attract audiences. Thereafter, he confined himself to occasional performances, but he could still dance well in his late sixties, to the continual astonishment of his admirers. Robinson's final film appearance was in 1943, in which he played his first leading role in "Stormy Weather", an all-Black musical in which he starred opposite Lena Horne. The movie also featured Fats Waller in his final movie appearance before his death, playing with Cab Calloway and his orchestra. The Nicholas Brothers are featured in the film's final dance sequence, performing to Calloway's "Jumpin' Jive", in what Fred Astaire called "the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen." Despite being in his early seventies when he made the film he performed his stair dance. Robinson's next foray on Broadway was the musical comedy Memphis Bound, which opened in May 1945.
Robinson's final public appearance in 1949, a few weeks before his death, was as a surprise guest on Ted Mack's The Original Amateur Hour. Robinson inspired many people in the Harlem Renaissance that would become known as one of the best during the time. His actions and rise to fame proved to the world that a Black man could also succeed in 1920s despite all the hate and prejudice against Blacks. Many famous figures during the Harlem Renaissance were later influenced by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. A founding member of the Negro Actors Guild of America, Robinson performed in thousands of benefits over the course of his career, and he made generous contributions to charities and individuals, helping to support Black communities. Robinson's generosity was such that when he died in November 1949 he was broke. Much of his wealth went to charities in Harlem and beyond before his death. About 3,000 were inside the Church for the funeral, with about 10,000 people outside the man who was known with some justification as the Mayor of Harlem. Robinson's funeral, arranged by longtime friend and television host Ed Sullivan, was held at the 369th Infantry Regiment Armory and attended by thousands, including many stars from the entertainment industry. A eulogy by Adam Clayton Powell Sr. (father of Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr.) was broadcast over the radio.