Noted tap-dancer, actor Gregory Hines dies at 57

Gregory Hines, 57, who won international acclaim as an exuberant and charming tap-dancer, choreographer and actor, died Saturday in Los Angeles. He had cancer.

Mr. Hines, who had performed on stage since childhood, was largely credited with reviving interest in tap dance for a generation weaned on rock 'n' roll. His improvisational footwork dazzled, his smile was boyishly radiant and his stage persona as a sleepy-eyed sharpie added to his comic allure on film, television and Broadway.

"His dancing came from something very real," said Bernadette Peters, who appeared with Mr. Hines as co-hosts of the 2002 Tony Awards show. "It came out of his instincts, his impulses and his amazing creativity. His whole heart and soul went into everything he did."

Mr. Hines came from a family of performers. His paternal grandmother, Ora Hines, was a showgirl at Harlem's Cotton Club. His mother wanted her two sons, Gregory and Maurice, to emulate the success of the young dancing dynamos, the Nicholas Brothers. The Hines brothers performed with their father in a tap-dancing act called "Hines, Hines and Dad."

"I don't remember not dancing," Mr. Hines said in a 2001 interview with The Associated Press. "When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance."

Mr. Hines had a falling-out with his older brother in the late 1960s because the younger was becoming influenced by counterculture and wanted to perform to rock music and write songs. In 1973, the family act disbanded and Mr. Hines moved to Venice Beach.

"I was going through a lot of changes," Mr. Hines told The Washington Post in 1981. "Marriage. We'd just had a child. Divorce. I was finding myself."

After a period away from dancing, Mr. Hines revived his career in the Broadway show "Eubie!" (1978). The show, a celebration of Eubie Blake's popular songbook, brought Mr. Hines his first of five Tony Award nominations. He won the 1992 Tony for best actor as jazz icon "Jelly Roll" Morton in "Jelly's Last Jam."

His starring film roles included a hard-driving dancer in Francis Ford Coppolla's "The Cotton Club" (1984). More typically he was cast in buddy movies, such as "Deal of the Century" (1983) with Chevy Chase, "White Nights" (1985) with Mikhail Baryshnikov and "Running Scared" (1986) with Billy Crystal.

On camera, Mr. Hines sometimes seemed better-suited to smaller character parts, such as the wisecracking Roman slave Josephus in Mel Brooks' "History of the World: Part I" (1981). He also had a memorable cameo in "Waiting to Exhale" (1995), lusting after his curvy neighbor.

He had his own short-lived CBS sitcom, "The Gregory Hines Show" (1997), playing a single father.

Mr. Hines received several Emmy Award nominations, most recently in 2001 for his lead role as tap-dancer Bill Robinson in the miniseries "Bojangles," and won a 1999 Daytime Emmy Award as the voice of "Big Bill" in the Bill Cosby animated TV series "Little Bill."

"I like to think of myself as an artist entertainer," Mr. Hines told The Washington Post. "But deep down inside, I think of myself as a tap-dancer.

His marriages to dance instructor Patricia Panella Hines and theatrical producer Pamela Koslow Hines ended in divorce.

Besides his father and brother, survivors include a daughter, Daria, from the first marriage; a son, Zach, from the second marriage; a grandson and a stepdaughter.

At his death, he was engaged to bodybuilder Negrita Jayde.