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Origin: United States
Genre: Dance
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BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
The Nicholas Brothers were a team of dancing brothers, Fayard (1914–2006) and Harold (1921–2000), who performed a highly acrobatic technique known as “flash dancing”. With a high level of artistry and daring innovations, they were considered by many to be the greatest tap dancers of their day. Their performance in the musical number “Jumpin’ Jive” (with Cab Calloway and his orchestra) featured in the movie Stormy Weather is considered by many to be the most virtuosic dance display of all time.
Growing up surrounded by vaudeville acts as children, they became stars of the jazz circuit during the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance and went on to have successful careers performing on stage, film, and television well into the 1990s.
Fayard Antonio Nicholas was born October 20, 1914, in Mobile, Alabama. Harold Lloyd Nicholas was born March 17, 1921, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of college-educated musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater, their mother at the piano and father on drums. At the age of three, Fayard would always be seated in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had seen most of the great African-American vaudeville acts, particularly the dancers, including such notables of the time as Alice Whitman, Willie Bryant and Bill Robinson. The brothers were fascinated by the combination of tap dancing and acrobatics. Fayard often imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood.
Neither Fayard nor Harold had any formal dance training. Fayard taught himself how to dance, sing, and perform by watching and imitating the professional entertainers on stage. He then taught his younger siblings, first performing with his sister Dorothy as the Nicholas Kids; they were later joined by Harold. Harold idolized his older brother and learned by copying his moves and distinct style. Dorothy later opted out of the act, and the Nicholas Kids became known as the Nicholas Brothers.
As word spread of their talents, the Nicholas Brothers became famous in the city. They were first hired for a radio program, The Horn and Hardart Kiddie Hour, and then by other local theatres such as the Standard and the Pearl. When they were performing at the Pearl, the manager of The Lafayette, a famous New York vaudeville showcase, saw them and immediately wanted them to perform for his theater.
The brothers moved to Philadelphia in 1926 and gave their first performance at the Standard a few years later. In 1932 they became the featured act at Harlem’s Cotton Club, when Harold was 11 and Fayard was 18. They astonished their mainly white audiences dancing to the jazz tempos of “Bugle Call Rag” and they were the only entertainers in the African-American cast allowed to mingle with white patrons. They performed at the Cotton Club for two years, working with the orchestras of Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and Jimmy Lunceford. During this time they filmed their first movie short, Pie Pie Blackbird, in 1932, with Eubie Blake and his orchestra.
In that exhilarating hybrid of tap dance, ballet, and acrobatics, sometimes called acrobatic dancing or “flash dancing,” no individual or group surpassed the effect that the Nicholas Brothers had on audiences and on other dancers. The brothers attribute their enormous success to this unique style of dancing that was greatly in demand during this time.
Producer Samuel Goldwyn saw them at the Cotton Club and, impressed by their entertaining performance, invited them to California to be a part of Kid Millions (1934), which would be their very first role in a Hollywood movie. The brothers made their Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and also appeared in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s musical Babes in Arms in 1937. They made a strong impression on their choreographer, George Balanchine; he was the one who invited them to appear in Babes in Arms. With Balanchine’s training, they learned many new stunts; their talent led many people to assume they were trained ballet dancers.
By 1940, they had moved to Hollywood and for several decades alternated between movies, nightclubs, concerts, Broadway, television, and extensive tours of Latin America, Africa, and Europe.
They toured England with a production of Blackbirds, which gave the Nicholas Brothers an opportunity to see and appreciate several of the great European ballet companies.
Personal lives
Fayard
Fayard married three times:
Geraldine Pate (1942–55);
Barbara January (1967–98) (until her death);
Katherine Hopkins (2000–24 January 2006) (until his death)
Fayard was a member of the Bahá’í Faith since 1967.
Fayard died January 24, 2006, of pneumonia after having a stroke.
Upon his death his memorial service was standing room only. Presided over by Mary Jean Valente of A Ceremony of the Heart, the service was a moving collection of personal tributes, music and dance and as appropriate, one last standing ovation.
Two of Fayard’s granddaughters dance as the “Nicholas Sisters” and have won awards for their performances.
Harold
Harold was married four times. He was first married to singer and actress Dorothy Dandridge from 1942 to 1951. The couple had one child, Harolyn Nicholas, who was born severely mentally handicapped. In Paris, he had a son, Melih Nicholas, by his second wife. Harold lived on New York’s Upper West Side for approximately twenty years (until his death) with his third wife, Swedish-born Rigmor Alfredsson Newman, a producer and former Miss Sweden.
Harold died July 3, 2000, of a heart attack following minor surgery.
Filmography
According to a Los Angeles Times article on the brothers, “Because of racial prejudice, they appeared as guest artists, isolated from the plot, in many of their films.” This was a strategy that allowed their scenes to be easily deleted for screening in the South.”
Pie, Pie Blackbird (1932) (short subject)
The Emperor Jones (1933) (Harold Nicholas)
Syncopancy (1933) (short subject) (Harold Nicholas)
Kid Millions (1934)
An All-Colored Vaudeville Show (1935) (short subject)
Coronado (1935)
The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)
The Black Network (1936) (short subject)
My American Wife (1936)
Babes in Arms (1937)
Calling All Stars (1937)
My Son Is Guilty (1939)
Down Argentine Way (1940)
Tin Pan Alley (1940)
The Great American Broadcast (1941)
Sun Valley Serenade (1941)
Orchestra Wives (1942)
Stormy Weather (1943)
Take It or Leave It (1944)
The Reckless Age (1944) (Harold Nicholas)
Carolina Blues (1944) (Harold Nicholas)
Dixieland Jamboree (1946) (short subject)
The Pirate (1948)
Pathe Newsreel (1948)
Botta e Riposta (1951)
El Misterio del carro express (1953)
El Mensaje de la muerte (1953)
Musik im Blut (1955)
Bonjour Kathrin (1956)
L’Empire de la nuit (1963) (Harold Nicholas)
The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970) (Fayard Nicholas)
Uptown Saturday Night (1974) (Harold Nicholas)
That’s Entertainment! (1974) (archive footage)
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1975) (archive footage)
Disco 9000 (1976) (Harold Nicholas)
That’s Dancing! (1985) (archive footage)
Tap (1989) (Harold Nicholas)
That’s Black Entertainment (1990) (archive footage)
The Five Heartbeats (1990) (Harold Nicholas)
“Alright” (Janet Jackson song) and video (1992)
The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance (1992)
Funny Bones (1995) (Harold Nicholas)
I Used to Be in Pictures (2000)
Night at the Golden Eagle (2002) (Fayard Nicholas)
Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003)
Hard Four (2005)
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