Harold Nicholas, tap-dancing wizard, dies

NEW YORK - Harold Nicholas, who as the younger half of the legendary black tap-dancing Nicholas Brothers inspired generations of hoofers with his grace and spectacular agility, died Monday of heart failure. He was 79.

Harold and his brother Fayard began their careers as children in vaudeville with their musician parents. They went on to stop shows on Broadway, in nightclubs, on television and in movie musicals.

"We were tap-dancers but we put more style into it, more bodywork, instead of just footwork," Harold Nicholas recalled in a 1987 interview. "I copied my brother. He was a natural dancer, graceful. People always asked did we study ballet. We never did."

With his brother, then as a solo performer, Mr. Nicholas appeared in more than 50 movies, including "The Big Broadcast of 1936" (1935), "Down Argentine Way" (1940), "Tin Pan Alley" (1940) and "Sun Valley Serenade" (1941).

Fred Astaire told the brothers their dazzling footwork, leaps and splits in the "Jumpin' Jive" dance in "Stormy Weather" (1943) was the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. In the number, the brothers dance on drums and leap over orchestra musicians.

"In `Stormy Weather,' we had a huge set made of big steps," Mr. Nicholas recalled. "My brother would jump over my head into a split on the step below me. I'd do the same thing over his head until we both got down on the floor.

"The only thing I say is, if they want me to jump down the steps now, they'll have to pay me a lot of money," he said.

Even in the world of tap-dancing, where stealing someone else's steps is an honorable part of the business, the Nicholas Brothers had no imitators. "If those folks in Hollywood ever do get it in their heads to make the life story of the Nicholas Brothers, the dance numbers would have to be computer-generated," tap-dancer Gregory Hines said in Constance Valis Hill's recent biography of the Nicholases, "Brotherhood in Rhythm."

In the 1992 documentary "The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance," ballet star Mikhail Baryshnikov calls the pair "the most amazing dancers I've ever seen in my life - ever."

The brothers also appeared on Broadway in "The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936," which also starred Bob Hope and Fanny Brice. George Balanchine put the brothers in "Babes in Arms" the next year.

Fayard, born in 1914, and Harold, born in 1921, got interested in dancing from attending vaudeville shows while their parents played in the pit orchestra.

The brothers were good enough by 1928 to debut in vaudeville. In 1932 they made their film debut in a short, "Pie Pie Blackbird," and got a booking at Harlem's famed Cotton Club. Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn spotted them at the club and cast them in the Eddie Cantor musical "Kid Millions" (1934).

The two became film stars despite racial restrictions that limited them largely to musical sequences that sometimes were cut from versions shown in the South. They finally danced with a white star, Gene Kelly, in their last film together, 1948's "The Pirate."

"If you were black, you experienced (prejudice)," Mr. Nicholas said. "It wasn't a real horrible thing for us; we went through it. We noticed it mostly in the South and in Las Vegas, where we couldn't stay in the hotels where we entertained."

By the end of the 1960s, the two brothers had stopped performing together. Mr. Nicholas continued solo, appearing in Broadway shows such as "The Tap Dance Kid" and "Sophisticated Ladies" and acting in occasional movies, including "Uptown Saturday Night" (1974).

Because they were known as song-and-dance men, the Nicholas Brothers' contributions often were overlooked. But then Fayard Nicholas won a Tony award in 1989 for choreography of "Black and Blue," and the brothers were given Kennedy Center Honors in 1991. Other awards followed.

Mr. Nicholas is survived by his third wife, Rigmor Newman Nicholas, and his brother, Fayard.