Eyewitness 1940: 'Bojangles' returns to city
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Bill Robinson and Lena Horne in the 1943 movie "Stormy Weather."
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Shirley Temple's favorite dance partner was back in Pittsburgh in March 1940.
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson once again was playing the title role in "The Hot Mikado," a jazz adaptation of the Gilbert and Sullivan light opera about mistaken identity in Japan.
"Basically, nothing has been changed much in 'The Mikado,'" Post-Gazette critic Harold W. Cohen wrote in the newspaper's March 26 edition. "The tempos have merely been modernized, and Mr. Robinson and his merry accomplices complete the general modernization," he wrote. "It's a grand show and a lively one."
Robinson, 62 when he appeared here, had been a performer most of his life. He had a long career in vaudeville, starred on Broadway and toured European capitals before heading to Hollywood.
He had made 14 pictures there since 1930, "several of them with a young lady who recently presented him with a gold watch inscribed 'To Uncle Bill from Shirley,'" an anonymous reporter for The Pittsburgh Press wrote on March 26.
In 1939 Robinson had returned to Broadway for a limited run in "The Hot Mikado." The show moved to Flushing Meadows in Queens, the site of the New York World's Fair, where it ran for the next two seasons. When the fair closed for the winter, the "Mikado" troupe went on tour, visiting Pittsburgh twice.
The PG's Cohen was a big fan of the production and of its star, and he quoted from his own review of the December 1939 production when the show returned the following March.
"There never have been feet like Mr. Robinson's," he wrote. "They speak to you, smile at you, wink at you and cajole you as they beat a magic tattoo against the hardwood that seems to know it is echoing the symphonies of a master. ... If 'The Hot Mikado' had nothing else, Bill Robinson's presence alone would justify its frenzied and frolicsome lese majests."
The last two words are an apparent pun on "lese majeste," law court French referring to an offense against the dignity of the sovereign. Any production of "The Mikado," which pokes fun at bureaucrats, hereditary rulers and royal court protocol, always qualifies as a violator.
Robinson was known for his staircase routine, in which he performed an energetic tap dance up and down a set of steps. He and Shirley Temple did one version of it in "The Little Colonel."
During the run of "The Hot Mikado" Robinson talked about how actor Fred Stone appropriated his routine. Stone began as a circus and vaudeville performer and later appeared on Broadway. He also starred in silent movies.
"Bill likes to talk about it," the reporter from The Pittsburgh Press wrote. "Later Stone sent a check to Bill for $1500, accompanied by a note saying, 'In part payment for the stair dance I stole from you.'"
"There was a time when Bill thought he would try to protect his rights by taking out a patent on his stair dance," the March 26 story said. "This was a new and baffling problem for the Patent Office, but after a long and serious huddle it was decided not to accept his application."
Robinson, by then in his mid-60s, appeared on film in Pittsburgh in 1943 as the lead in "Stormy Weather," playing opposite a very young Lena Horne.
He died in 1949 at age 71.
First Published February 20, 2011 12:00 am
