Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas - Bill (Bojangles) Robinson, one of the three most famous dancers of all time, celebrated his 66th birthday in 1944 by tap-dancing two miles through the heart of Hot Springs.
To mark the anniversary of that historic dance and the 128th anniversary of Robinson’s birthday, the Hot Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau will issue on May 25th a postcard showing Robinson dancing past what appears to be the intersection of Central Avenue and Prospect Avenue in the downtown area.
“The Bojangles postcard will continue our practice of developing and issuing cards commemorating great moments in the city’s history,” said Steve Arrison, executive director of the CVB. “The Bojangles postcard will join the Al Capone card we issued earlier this year and cards we produced showing Bill Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Babe Ruth, fishing legend Jerry McKinnis and others in Hot Springs settings.”
“We don’t sell the postcards,” Arrison said, “but we give them as souvenirs to convention delegates who come to Hot Springs to hold their meetings. Our convention sales staff has found that the cards are eagerly sought after by meeting planners as a small bonus for their delegates. They’re a tremendous selling tool.”
The postcard shows a smiling Robinson, cane in one hand, dancing down Central surrounded by a crowd of Hot Springs residents who accompanied him on his historic dance, which began at the Phillips Drive-in Caf© on Upper Park Avenue and concluded at the Pythian Hotel on Malvern Avenue in the heart of the city’s thriving African-American community at that time.
The text on the reverse side says:
“Mister Bojangles
“Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson celebrated his 66th birthday in 1944 by tapdancing almost two miles down Bathhouse Row. You could do the same ,but you'd want to stop at the shops, restaurants, galleries and bathhouses. After that you might like to spin your partner out to Oaklawn Park, Magic Springs and the lakes, then go check out the Convention Center for your next big meeting. You might just have as much fun as Mr. Robinson did.”
Robinson’s dance down Central Avenue was recounted by respected Hot Springs historian Bobbie Jones McLane in a 1996 edition of The Record, the official publication of the Garland County Historical Society, which provides support to the CVB in documenting historical occurrences in the city.
McLane’s article quotes from the 1944 account of Bojangles’ feat by The Sentinel-Record:
“[H]e made good a promise to dance two miles and was the first man in the history of this resort to stage a one-man traffic jam. Over 1,000 persons followed him from the Phillips Drive-in Caf© on Park Avenue down that thoroughfare, down Central to Como square, back to Bridge Street and down Malvern Avenue.
“Robinson stepped the distance, stopping between points to give a special exhibition of his incomparable dancing. The day was hot and Bill was 66, but he had the ‘pep’ of a man of just half that age.”
The paper reported that, “Last night he capped his birthday by staging an all-Negro show before a capacity audience at the Auditorium for the benefit of a Negro fraternal organization whose objective is the reopening of the Woodmen of Union bath house.”
The account says Robinson auctioned for $100 the shoes he wore in the dance through Hot Springs and donated the money to pay for treatment of a paralyzed woman who was in town to take the thermal baths as treatment for her ailment.
Born in Richmond, Va., on May 25, 1878, to Maxwell Robinson, a machine-shop worker , and Maria Robinson, a choir singer, Bill Robinson was brought up by his grandmother after the death of his parents when he was still a baby. He was christened Luther, a name he did not like, so he suggested to his younger brother Bill that they should exchange names. When Bill objected, Luther applied his fists, and the exchange was made! (The new 'Luther' later adopted the name Percy and became a well-known drummer.)
At the age of 6, Bill began dancing for a living, appearing as a "hoofer,"or song-and-dance man, in local beer gardens. Two years later, in Washington, D.C., he toured with Mayme Remington's troupe. In 1891, at the ripe age of 12, he joined a traveling company in "The South Before the War", and in 1905 worked with George Cooper as a vaudeville team. He gained great success as a nightclub and musical comedy performer, and during the next 25 years became one of the toasts of Broadway. Not until he was 50 did he dance for white audiences, having devoted his early career exclusively to appearances on the black theater circuit.
In 1908 in Chicago he met Marty Forkins, who became his lifelong manager.Under Forkins' tutelage Robinson matured and began working as a sol o act in nightclubs, increasing his earnings to an estimated $3,500 per week. The publicity that gradually came to surround him included the creation of his famous "stair dance" (which he claimed to have invented on the spur of the moment when he was receiving some honor -- he could never remember exactly wha t-- from the King of England. The King was standing at the top of a flight of stairs, and Bojangles' feet just danced up to be honored), his successful gambling exploits, his prodigious charity, his bility torun backward (he set a world's record of 8.2 seconds for the 75-yard backward dash!) and to consume ice-cream by the quart, his argot--most notably the neologism "copasetic"--and such stunts as dancing down Broadway in 1939 from Columbus Circle to 44th St. in celebration of his 61st birthday.
Toward the end of the vaudeville era a white impresario, Lew Leslie, produced "Blackbirds of 1928," a black revue for white audiences featuring Robinson and other black stars. From then on his public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a tenuous connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofer's Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. Consequently, blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler." Political figures and celebrities appointed him an honorary mayor of Harlem, a lifetime member of policemen's ssociations and fraternal orders, and a mascot of the New York Giants baseball team. Robinson reciprocated with open handed generosity and frequently credited the white dancer James Barton for his contribution to Robinson's dancing style.
After 1930 black revues waned in popularity, but Robinson remained in vogue with white audiences for more than a decade in some 14 motion pictures produced by such companies as RKO, 20th Century Fox and Paramount. Most of them had musical settings, in which he played old-fashioned roles in nostalgic romances. His most frequent role was that of an antebellum butler opposite Shirley Temple or Will Rogers in such films as "The Littlest Colonel," "The Littlest Rebel" and "In Old Kentucky" (all released in 1935.) Rarely did he depart from the stereotype imposed by Hollywood writers. In a small vignette in"Hooray For Love (1935) he played a mayor of Harlem modeled after his own ceremonial honors; in "One Mile From Heaven" (1937), he played a romantic lead opposite the singer Lena Horne after Hollywood had relaxed its taboo against such roles for blacks. Audiences enjoyed his style, which eschewed the frenetic manner of the jitterbug. In contrast, Robinson always remained cool and reserved, rarely using his upper body and depending on his busy, inventive feet and his expressive face. He appeared in one film for black audiences, “Harlem Is Heaven” (1931), a financial failure that turned him away from independent production.
Robinson died of a chronic heart condition at Columbia Presbyterian Center in New York City in 1949. His body lay in state at an armory in Harlem; schools were closed, thousands lined the streets waiting for a glimpse of his bier, and he was eulogized by oliticians, black and white -- perhaps more lavishly than any other African-American of his time. "To his own people", wrote Marshall and Jean Stearns, "Robinson became a modern John Henry, who instead f driving steel, laid down iron taps." He was buried in the cemetery of the Evergreens in New York City.
