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A Student Paper from Comparative Literature 397B
Alice Gray’s essay, “Robsinson and Glover: Two Different Times for Tap-Dancing in Hollywood Film,” was written in response to an assignment in Comp-Lit 397-B in the Fall 2004. The course was taught by Nikolina Dobreva.
Robinson and Glover:
Two Different Times for Tap-Dancing
in Hollywood Film
by Alice Gray
Abstract: Comparing the tap dancing of tap stars Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson and Savion Glover in the two Hollywood films Stormy Weather (1943) by Andrew Stone and Bamboozled (2000) by Spike Lee, calls for the analysis of each film’s historical context. There are race issues deeply embedded either in the political and social situation at the time the film was made, as is the case with Stormy Weather, or in the narrative of the film, as with Bamboozled. This article pro- poses that the markers for the evolution of tap have been closely aligned with the progress of African Americans in this country.
This paper was nominated for the Michael S. Roif Award in Film Studies.
Keywords: tap dancing, Hollywood film, (self-)representation of African Americans
TAP DANCING, an art grounded in African American culture, has moved from an upbeat style with its collection of steps that characterize the Jazz Age, such as the Charleston and the Stomp Time Step, to a style that better mirrors rap’s explosive rhythms and tendency towards synchronization. Much like African American music, tap- dancing’s evolution has been closely aligned with social progress and the slow breaking-down of stereotypes developed in the minstrel shows of the late 1800’s. The direct effects of racist stereotyping on tap-dancing are best observed in pre- 1960’s Hollywood films because these films reached a wide, mostly white, audience and were financed and directed by Whites. Tap legend, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, the star of Stormy Weather (1943), was forced to funnel his talent through a colander of social prejudices set to White Hollywood’s liking, and these social confines are visible in his dancing in this film. It was not until the 1980’s that modern tap emerged in Hollywood as an energetic battle cry from young African American dancers who demanded respect for their art form by refusing to conform to stereotypes. The film Bamboozled (2000), directed by Spike Lee, contrasts modern-day tap to the old-school style. In it, Savion Glover performs both the funky, urban style in street scenes and the smiley, traditional style in modern-day minstrel shows recreated for the film. In order to demonstrate how early conformity with and later break away from stereotypes have fueled the formation of two different generations of tap dancing, I will discuss historical context, and specifically the influence of minstrel shows on Stormy Weather and the 80’s tap revival on Bamboozled, before isolating and analyzing a scene from each film as representative of the two styles of tap-dancing.
Stormy Weather, by white director Andrew L. Stone, follows the story of Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson’s character (Bill Williamson) as he makes his way to the top in show business. Robinson stars in the film with other performers associated with American jazz culture of the time like Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers. This film not only brings together some of the great jazz artists of the time, it also pushes boundaries by being one of the first all-black Hollywood musicals, and by allowing the depiction of a romantic relationship between the two leading roles (Robinson and Lena Horne). Black entertainment was already a hot commodity, and it made sense to put African American talent on screen, especially when it came to tap- dancing. In a way Whites accredited Blacks as better performers when they eventually allowed them on stage rather than exclusively dressing themselves up in blackface as they had done when minstrel shows began. Fred Astaire himself once called Robinson the greatest tap dancer of all time (Bogle 84). In this ironic world, the minstrel show continued to degrade a race seen as inferior, even as black performers proved their talent as dancers and comedians.
Bamboozled on the other hand, with an African American director (Spike Lee), is the story of a T.V. screenwriter, Pierre Delacroix (Damon Wayans). He is encouraged, in a condescending manner, by his white boss to use his African American background to write material that will boost the station’s ratings. Pierre, offended, decides to present an idea so racist that it will get him fired. However, his suggestion of a new age minstrel show, once aired, starts a nation-wide frenzy to see more. It is easy to recognize the minstrel show scenes, in which Savion Glover’s character blacks out his already black face and performs satirical representations of old-school tap dancers, as motivation for the anger that drives the abrasive style of tap we also see him perform in street scenes. Behind the success of stereotyping in the entertainment industry is the audience, and Hollywood is always aware of its audience.
In the opening scene of Stormy Weather, Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson is tap dancing on a wooden porch out in the country, surrounded by five small black children happily doing Stomp Time Steps with him. Robinson has already been placed in circumstances in which contemporary white audience would have expected to see him. The set for this opening scene is very similar to the set constructed for the “New Millennium Minstrel Show” in Bamboozled with its typically southern plantation setting, wooden porch and vast cotton fields. The adorable children at Robinson’s feet are taken straight from a stereotype initiated by the minstrel shows which often employed cute black children labeled “Pickaninnies” whose main purpose in variety shows was to charm and delight (Bogle 7). While Glover performs a simulation of offensive stereotypes, for Robinson, these confining stereotypes were a reality, considering he himself got his start in show business as a Pickaninny (Haskins 43). Since the very beginning he was forced to conform to Whites’ stereotypes in order to get work, and since the very beginning Stormy Weather employs those stereotypes.
Author Donald Bogle remembers firsthand how clear it was that his race was being falsely portrayed on the silver screen:
When I watched Stormy Weather with an all-black audience that openly mocked the stereotypes on screen... or when I saw The Birth of a Nation with a black audience that openly cheered for the black villains to defeat the white heroes [...] I knew I was seeing reactions far different from those that initially greeted these [...] films and other black movies. (Bogle xi)
In Stormy Weather the characters that were ‘openly mocked’ by black audiences as Bogle mentioned, were drawn directly from minstrel types and it is “The Coon” and the “Uncle Tom” types that are most prominent in the film. “The Coon” served as comedic relief by stressing his own inferiority (Bogle 8). “The Uncle Tom” stereotype was the “Good Negro” in the sense that he was ready to please, loyal to his white master, and satisfied with his place in society (Bogle 5). Together, these two stereotypes made Whites feel good about themselves by providing reassurance that African Americans were happy in their ‘place,’ willing and ready to entertain and too simple to merit more humane treatment. From a modern point of view, it is striking how socially acceptable the use of these stereotypes was in the 1940’s.
Comedian Tommy Davidson who plays a coon in the new-age minstrel show in Bamboozled, expressed awe at the talent of his comedic predecessors even while they mocked their own supposed inferiority: “...these brothers that were behind blackface were talented... comedy skills, dramatic skills, they really gave a show, but the flow of their material was geared towards putting themselves down, putting down who they were, and making whites feel superior (Pollard and Robinson).” African American tap dancers, as part of the variety acts featured in minstrel shows, suffered the same constraints on their art form, and were bound to the expression of a single emotion, happiness, and as long as political freedom for African Americans remained restricted, so did their art forms. Tap dancing suffered a recession in the late 1950’s when hoofers who could no longer make a living by dancing were forced to take jobs such as bell hops and bar tenders, and it eventually became more of an American pastime than an active art form (Hill 252). It was not given the chance to truly thrive again until well after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960’s.
Interest in tap dancing was rekindled in the 1980’s, and it gave rise to new forms of the dance. African American artists were able to take advantage of new political freedom, and to break out of the prison of stereotypes. Along with the emergence of a hip-hop and rap boom, tap dancing changed and adapted to the times. With the success of African American dancers like Alvin Ailey, came a new push by African American tap dancers to be regarded as artists rather than purely as entertainers (Hill 246). Harriet Jackson, a writer for Dance Magazine, described the 1980’s phenomenon as artists “emerging from the minstrel-vaudeville cocoon” giving way to “the Negro dancer and choreographer who no longer feels he must be confined to dancing ‘Negro Roles’ (246).” The movie Tap (1989) starring Gregory Hines put the reality of an evolution of mainstream tap on the big screen.
A young Savion Glover starred in Tap,and today has clearly developed into a modern-day product of the 80’s tap revival. Glover’s style is a grounded one as opposed to Robinson’s uplifted and uplifting dancing. Glover is less animated in the traditional vaudeville sense, and allows his dancing to express more than one emotion. In one particular scene from Bamboozled where his character has been thrown into a back alley for refusing to perform in blackface any longer, he runs at the door and, airborne, kicks it. When he lands he begins to pound furiously and rhythmically at the ground with his precise feet. This scene is a clear example of how tap, when given the freedom, can be used as a dynamic instrument to express emotions. In this case Glover’s character uses his art to express anger, something that would never have been allowed in a pre-Civil- Rights Hollywood film when white audiences did not want to see black entertainers expressing their discontent.
I chose one tap-dancing scene from each film to illustrate old-school and new- school forms in Hollywood. Both scenes involve makeshift stages and unconventional audiences. In the scene from Stormy Weather, Robinson’s character is working on a steamboat, trying to make his way south to Louisiana. He has just lain down for the night and announced that “there ain’t no money in the world can get me on my feet again... unlessin’ this boat sinks” when he hears the sound of a traveling minstrel show practicing on deck. His feet begin to twitch, his eyes grow wide at the sound of the music and he is compelled by some inner force to find them and join them. His character’s audience, therefore, is made up of the members of the traveling minstrel show while Robinson’s audience remains Hollywood’s target audience, white America.
In the scene I selected from Bamboozled, Savion Glover’s character, Man Ray, is performing for change in the courtyard at the Lever Building off Park Avenue. We can see that Man Ray’s audience, the upper-class population working in downtown New York City, crowded around the courtyard, is mostly white. Glover’s audience is not meant to be a single race. By 2000, Bamboozled was Spike Lee’s fifteenth film and the director was already known for making movies, mostly controversial, about the African Americans’ experience in U.S. society (Pollard and Robinson, Pinkett). In other words, many of the people who see this film will do so because they are familiar with Lee’s work. The proportion of African American viewers is likely to be high because of the subject matter, but anyone of any color with either an intellectual interest in race issues or an appetite for Hollywood films is likely to be drawn to this film.
The set and costume for the steamboat scene from Stormy Weather are important for understanding how prevalent and socially acceptable the stereotyping of black people in film was in the 1940’s. All the black actors in this scene have supposedly appropriate occupations. There are the entertainers, dressed up in ill-fitting tuxedos, who dance, tell jokes, play music, and throw their bodies into violent spasms for the amusement of Whites. Then there is Robinson’s character whose job is to clean the boat. He is dressed in dingy clothes and a country hat, his sleeves rolled up. There are men around him sleeping on the hard wood of the decks, and other men passing the time by listening to the minstrel show practice. We understand this setting to be how white people would have imagined ‘a good time’ among black people performing for each other. The scene presents their manner of singing and dancing as hardly veering from their presentations on the traditional stage. This shows how important it was for white audiences to believe that the jolly performances they were used to, accurately reflected the black entertainers’ satisfaction with their status in society.
In Bamboozled, Glover and Womack are also dressed in dingy clothes that suggest poverty. Both men have five-o’clock shadows and wear gloves with the fingertips cut out. The warm yellow hat on Womack’s head and the terracotta color of Man Ray’s pants clash not only with the cold structure of the Lever Building, but also with the black and white suits worn by their audience. This time there is a self-awareness about the film that openly comments on the fact that these two men living on the streets are both black. A major element of this film is its criticism not only of the history of the representation of Blacks in American culture, but also its effects still present today in television, art, sports, music and film. Spike Lee’s film rallies for a more keen awareness of modern-day utilization of the leftovers of racist stereotypes. And in the same way, Glover’s tap dancing breaks through these age-old stereotypes that used to constrain his art form.
When we first see the all-black traveling minstrel boys in the scene from Stormy Weather, they are in the middle of their routine. One young man who shakes his thick lips and be bops at the same time is followed by a second young man who steals center stage and uses his own voice to imitate the sound of a trumpet. Robinson’s character ads the missing tap-dance sequence when he marches in and happily lays sand on the planks beneath him to create a certain sound. The base violin, kazoo, ukulele, guitar, washboard and drum set that make up the band, slow down to meet the tempo Robinson sets with his steps. He begins with two bars of a traditional Buck and Wing step then falls gracefully into a turn, dragging his foot along the planks made grainy by the sand. His feet move fast and he bounces effortlessly with the music, smiling all the while. Robinson’s arms stay at his side and his upper body is smooth as he verbally sets up his next step and then moves into it “here’s one I stayed up all night tryin’ to do. Get this.” The step is a combination of Scrapes, Slides, Taps and Shuffles done within the frame of the familiar Time Step: a two bar pattern repeated three times and followed by a “break” (Gray 111). The next three steps he performs follow the time step form and they are all given a feminine edge reminiscent of the harmless Pickaninny type.
In the first step Robinson places one hand on his hip and turns in circles while executing pivoting Toe-Heels. When he comes full circle his eyes are rolled back and he is still sporting an ear-to-ear smile. The next step, a flapper-like version of the Charleston, brings him forward and backward as he flings his heels out keeping his knees together and his hands on his hips. The last Time Step ends in a finale that involves the entire troupe gleefully jumping up and down to the sound of the kazoo as it grows louder and louder. This scene is magnificent and energetic, its main aim being to leave the viewer with a good feeling.
In the scene from Bamboozled at the Lever Building, Glover’s dance set begins in an almost menacing fashion. Before we even see him, we hear the sound of his steady heels pounding “one, two, a three and four” over and over again with intricate variations building each time on the last beats. When we finally see him, he is surrounded by a small crowd of mostly white business men and women, waiting in suspense for him to truly begin. When he does, it comes in a commotion of complex rhythms, and we hear him clicking his mouth and loudly breathing in rhythm with his feet. Glover hardly looks up and hardly smiles. What follows is not a one-dimensional use of talent for simple entertainment; it is a dynamic expression by Glover of himself and his genius. Throughout the dance sequence he keeps a deep base beat with his heels while he jumps around and makes lighter, more intricate sounds with his toes. His dancing, between spinning and dragging his toes, is a flurry of Cramp Rolls, elaborate Adlibs, multiple variations on Paddle and Rolls, Heel-clicks, Pullbacks, Stomps and Stamps. In the middle, his partner cleverly jumps in and shines his shoe in rhythm, craftily referencing an occupation traditionally held by African Americans, and conjuring up an image of a scene in Stormy Weather. In it, Robinson approaches his shoe-shiner friend and taps in rhythm to his friend’s shining cloth. Glover references the past again by ending with a traditional tap step, “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits.”
Glover pays tribute to tappers who came before him by including this last step whose rhythm mirrors the jingle that give it its name. It still indicates the end to his routine, but it no longer has to come across as a final high note demanding that he freeze with a smile and open arms. Instead it can signal the ending, on a powerful note, of an emotional routine. The “Shave and a Haircut” step is a reminder that not only is Glover the embodiment of modern-day urban tap, he is also the keeper of an old American art form that nearly died out. Glover reveres the hoofers who came before him and acknowledges the African American role in stereotypes as “something that we did. It was us pretending to be someone who was pretending to be us (Pollard and Robinson, Glover).” As we have seen, the evolution of mainstream tap-dancing has been recorded in Stormy Weather and Bamboozled. Robinson’s style, with its femininity, predictable reliance on phrases like the time step, and loyalty to the singular expression of joy, clearly adheres to white Hollywood’s devotion to black stereotyping in the 1940’s. Glover on the other hand, refuses to mold to stereotypes, tapping with his head down rather than making eye-contact, and letting his legs go in all directions rather than keeping them contained and underneath him as Robinson does. Tap dancing was a nearly forgotten art form, but it survived because it evolved. Evolution, however, does not mean a complete break with the original dance and dancers. In order for a historically oppressed society to progress, it must first fully embrace its past. Glover embraces his talent and makes no apologies as he drills out complex rhythms of his own, and jazzes up traditional tap moves originated by hoofers from Robinson’s era.
Filmography
Bamboozled. Dir. Spike Lee. DVD. New Line Home Video, 2001.
Pollard, Sam and Butch Robinson. Documentary: The Making of Bamboozled. Trish Giffori, James Lefkowitz. Two Dollars and a Dream Production. New Line Entertainment, 2001.
Stone, Andrew. Stormy Weather. 1943. VHS. Twentieth Century Fox, 1993.
Works Cited
Bogle, Donald. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. New York: Viking, 1973.
Gray, Acia. The Souls of Your Feet: A Tap Dance Guidebook for Rhythm Explorers. Austin, TX: Grand Weaver, 1998.
Haskins, Jim and N.R. Mitgang. Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson. New York: William Morrow, 1988.
Alice Gray, originally from Austin, Texas, graduated with a Comparative Literature degree from UMass and decided to stay in the area. She works with the children of women with substance abuse problems at the Gracehouse in Northampton though writing is always on her mind.
Updated September 3, 2008
