Fred Astaire: Cinebiografias em breve com Tom Holland e Jamie Bell

De acordo com o site CineBuzz, o diretor de “Paddington”, Paul King, assumiu a direção da cinebiografia de Fred Astaire:

O longa será protagonizado por Tom Holland, o Homem-Aranha da Marvel. As informações são do The Wrap.

Sem título oficial, a produção ainda também não tem previsão de estreia. O roteiro está sendo reescrito por Lee Hall, que assumiu o posto de Noah Pink no projeto. Amy Pascal, Rachael O’Conner, Ben Holden e Josh Hyams serão os produtores.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

Já o Terra afirma que são dois os filmes sobre Astaire, e ambos são estrelados por intérpretes de “Billy Elliott”:

Jamie Bell (“Rocketman”) viveu o dançarino aos 14 anos no cinema, e Tom Holland (o Homem-Aranha) o interpretou nos palcos do West End londrino entre os 12 e 14 anos de idade.

O mais adiantado é “Fred & Ginger”, um filme biográfico sobre a parceria icônica de Fred Astaire e Ginger Rogers, que anunciou o começo de suas negociações internacionais e marcou as filmagens para o final do ano.

“Fred & Ginger” terá direção de Jonathan Entwistle (“The End of the F*cking World”) e pretende revelar detalhes da vida do casal, incluindo a história de amor entre as duas lendas, dentro e fora das telas, enquanto celebra a magia criativa de sua parceria artística.

Os intérpretes já estavam definidos desde dezembro de 2021. Os atores Jamie Bell e Margaret Qualley (“Maid”) vão desempenhar os papéis principais.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

Arthur Duncan (1925-2023)

Arthur Duncan

Sobre o falecimento de Arthur Duncan em 04.01.2023, no site Smithsonian. Ele faleceu aos 97 anos:

In 1954, a spirited tap dancer named Arthur Duncan appeared on several episodes of “The Betty White Show,” a daytime talk series hosted by the future Golden Girl. Duncan’s skilled footwork delighted many viewers, but some were rankled by his inclusion in the show’s cast. Duncan was Black—and at a time when racial segregation was institutionalized in the United States, he shared the stage with white performers.

“[A]ll through the South, there was this whole ruckus,” White recalled in the 2018 documentary Betty White: First Lady of Television. “They were going to take our show off the air if we didn’t get rid of Arthur, because he was Black.”

White, however, was unfazed. “I said, ‘I’m sorry, but, you know, he stays,’” she said. “‘Live with it.’”

In the documentary, Duncan credited White with “really getting [him] started in show business.” He would go on to build a dazzling career that saw him surmount racial barriers in Hollywood and kept him dancing until his death earlier this month at the age of 97, according to Harrison Smith of the Washington Post.

“He was performing until the end,” his wife, Carole Carbone, told the publication.

Born in California in 1925, Duncan first learned to tap dance at the age of 13, when he joined a dance quartet that performed at a junior high school in Pasadena. He was a natural performer—Duncan would sing and dance on street corners while working as a newsboy—but when it came time for him to choose a career, he decided to study to become a pharmacist. He enrolled in Pasadena City College after serving in World War II, but the stage continued to call to him. Duncan decided to take a six-month sabbatical to “see what this show business was all about.” He never returned to school.

Leia o artigo completo clicando aqui.

No The New York Times:
– Arthur Duncan, Barrier-Breaking Tap Dancer, Is Dead at 97

.

The Hollywood Roosevelt: Relembrando Bojangles e Shirley Temple

Matéria do portal Terra (“The Hollywood Roosevelt: 5 curiosidades sobre o hotel que sediou a primeira cerimônia do Oscar e foi lar de Marilyn Monroe”) fala do The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, e relembra em um dos parágrafos a cena de Bojangles e Shirley Temple na escadaria:

Além de hospedar astros do cinema, o The Hollywood Roosevelt também serviu de cenário para diversos filmes, como os longas Prenda-me se For Capaz (2002) e As Panteras Detonando (2003). Ah, e não podemos esquecer da cena memorável do sapateado de Shirley Temple e Bill Bojangles Robinson nas escadarias do hotel, no filme A mascote do regimento (1935).

Leia a matéria completa clicando aqui.

Shirley Temple e Bill Bojangles Robinson

Bojangles: Artigo no site do Globo de Ouro

Bojangles

Em 24 de fevereiro de 2023, o site do Globo de Ouro, um dos principais prêmios do cinema mundial, publicou texto sobre o precursor Bill Bojangles. Um trecho da matéria “Forgotten Hollywood: Bill “Bojangles” Robinson”:

He was a 57-year-old Black man, she was six years old and white. Together, they danced into history as the first interracial tap-dancing couple in 1935’s The Little Colonel. Bill “Bojangles” Robinson called Shirley Temple his “darlin’.” He was “Uncle Billy” to her. They would act and dance in three other films – The Littlest Rebel, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and Just Around the Corner. While Robinson was a star onstage in minstrel shows and vaudeville, he did not become famous as a Hollywood movie star until his collaboration with Temple.

Donald Bogle, in his history of Blacks in American film, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, & Bucks, calls Robinson “the Cool-Eyed Tom” because many of his earlier film roles were confined to subservient Black servants of white masters. Although he became famous at the height of segregation and Jim Crow laws, Robinson made the choice to accept these roles. In so doing, however, he achieved the stature that allowed him to be instrumental in breaking barriers – he refused to wear blackface, and broke the “two-colored” rule which required that Blacks could not perform solo. He became the highest-paid Black performer in the early 20th century, with a career that spanned Broadway, the recording industry, radio and television in addition to his movie career.

He was dubbed “Bojangles” because of his contentious personality – that of a “jangler,” or a person who argues noisily.

Born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, on May 25, 1878, he lost his parents at an early age and was raised by his grandmother, who had been a slave. In Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson, James Haskins talks about the entertainer’s beginnings. At age 5, Robinson was a hoofer in local beer gardens and was discovered by a promoter and offered a “pick” job in a minstrel show – a Black child singing, dancing and telling jokes from the side of the stage. At age 12, he ran away to Washington D.C. and supported himself by briefly working at a racetrack until he teamed up with Al Jolson as a song-and-dance duo. He performed for a year with a traveling troupe in a show, “The South Before the War,” then joined the US army in 1898 as a rifleman in the Spanish-American War.

Leia a matéria completa clicando aqui.

Olivia Newton-John (1948-2022) e Gene Kelly

Mais informações sobre a morte da atriz e cantora britânica em

https://cinemagia.wordpress.com/2022/08/08/olivia-newton-john-1948-2022/

RIP Jane Powell (1929-2021)

Leia mais sobre o falecimento em
https://cinemagia.wordpress.com/2021/09/17/jane-powell-1929-2021/

Melba Huber (1927-2021)

Melba Huber

Melba Huber era considerada “the most published writer of tap in the world”:

For 20 years, she wrote a tap column for two major dance magazines. She served as president of The Texas Association Teachers of Dancing and board member of Dance Masters of America. She introduced the first competitive gymnastics in south Texas.

Obituário do Rio Grande Guardian:

The McAllen community and the American dance world have lost a legend. Melba Stewart Huber, founder and owner of Melba’s Dance School in McAllen, has gone home to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. She passed away in the morning of April 24, 2021 at the age of 93. Starting in 1958, she built the first building in McAllen dedicated to dance and continued to build the largest dance complex in the Valley that houses seven studios and a dance shoppe.

Born near Beaumont, Texas on October 1, 1927, Melba Huber hardly knew life without dance. She started dancing in 1932 at the age of 5. Her mother, Melba Stewart, played piano providing music for her daughter’s ballet and tap classes in exchange for tuition. In those days, even phonographs and vinyl records were not widely available.

During World War II, Huber taught dance to kids whose parents worked in the shipyards in Beaumont. She attended Lamar University and taught dance there as well.

Later, as a student at the University of Texas in Austin, she started UT’s first permanent dance team. In 1947, she was selected as Miss Austin. She taught dance at the historically black Huston-Tillotson University back when segregation was still in place. She opened a dance studio in Austin, but soon found herself moving to Canada where her husband, Bill Kinsolving, was transferred in his job with Sun Pipeline Company. Another job transfer by the pipeline company brought the young couple to McAllen with their two young sons. She never left.

In 1958, Huber opened Melba’s Dance School in McAllen. She built the first building in McAllen dedicated to dance on Sycamore Avenue, but soon outgrew it. She moved to the present location at 2100 N 10th Street and began to acquire properties around the small clothing store she had purchased. She worked tirelessly to keep reworking the space to best serve her students.

Now a world-class dance complex, Melba’s Dance currently houses seven dance studios and a retail dancewear store. The largest studio is as big as the entire stage at the McAllen Performing Arts Center. At least three generations of dancers have called Melba’s Dance their dance home over its 63-year history.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

[Tap Fotos] The Hines Brothers, 1960

Maurice com 16, Gregory com 14.

Gregory Hines: Um selo para a história

The 42nd stamp in the Black Heritage series honors Gregory Hines (1946–2003), whose unique style of tap dancing injected new artistry and excitement into a traditional American form.

A versatile performer who danced, acted and sang on Broadway, on television and in movies, Hines developed the entertainment traditions of tap into an art form for a younger generation and is credited with renewing interest in tap during the 1990s.

Art director Derry Noyes designed the stamp, which features a 1988 photograph by Jack Mitchell.

Fonte: clique aqui.

Outros posts sobre Gregory Hines: clique aqui.

Tap Videos – Rita Hayworth e Fred Astaire, 1941

Tap Videos – Jimmy Slyde e George Benson

Tap Videos – Eleanor Powell em Lady Be Good (1941)

Tap Videos – Jimmy Slyde, Bunny Brigs e Sandman Sims

Tap Videos – Eleanor Powell em Broadway Melody (1936)

Tap Videos – Eleanor Powell em Duchess of Idaho (1950)

Tap Videos – Jimmy Slyde (1959)

Relembrando o grande mestre Gregory Hines

Em 2003, o Divulgando comunicou, com imensa e dolorosa tristeza, o falecimento, aos 57 anos, no dia 09 de agosto de 2003, em sua casa, em Los Angeles, de GREGORY HINES, um dos grandes nomes da Broadway, astro de Hollywood, ator de diversas séries da TV americana e um sapateador excepcional, que tinha lugar cativo nos corações de todos os amantes do sapateado — e sempre terá, para todo o sempre. A causa do falecimento foi câncer. Abaixo, relembramos nossa pequena homenagem a esse grande e inesquecível mestre feita anos atrás e que, ampliada, virou seção do livro da mestra Cíntia Martin em 2010.

GREGORY HINES
(1946-2003)

UMA VIDA EM FUNÇÃO DA DANÇA

Gregory Oliver Hines nasceu em 14 de fevereiro de 1946, na cidade de Nova York. Os primeiros passos na dança foram ensinados pelo irmão, Maurice, quando Gregory ainda era pequeno. Gregory Hines costumava dizer que não se lembrava de como era a vida antes que começasse a dançar. Um dos melhores sapateadores de sua geração, foi o sapateado o caminho que a mãe escolheu para os dois filhos como saída do gueto.

Hines disse certa vez que quando ele ainda estava dando os primeiros passos para andar, seu irmão Maurice já fazia aulas de sapateado, e ao voltar para casa ensinava a ele os passos que aprendia. De fato, Gregory Hines começou a ganhar fama no palco sapateando em dupla com o irmão Maurice: as apresentações em público começaram quando ele tinha apenas 5 anos, quando já eram chamados “The Hines Kids”. Com 6 anos, eles chegaram a realizar perfomances no lendário Apollo Theater, durante 2 semanas. Foi no Apollo Theater que assistiram e se emocionaram com performers como Honi Coles, Sandman Sims e The Nicholas Brothers, entre outros.

Gregory e seu irmão Maurice participaram em mais de 20 eventos, performances e espetáculos no Apollo Theater a partir de 1954, ano em que fizeram sua primeira participação integrando o elenco do musical “The Girl in Pink Tights”, de Sigmund Romberg, estrelado pela bailarina francesa Jeanmaire e coreografado por Agnes de Mille. Gregory e Maurice interpretaram, respectivamente, um engraxate e um entregador de jornais.

Já adolescentes, junto com seu pai, Maurice Sr., foram conhecidos como “Hines, Hines and Dad”, fazendo aparições na TV em programas como “Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters”, em 1969, apresentado por Jimmy Durante, além de diversas participações no “The Tonight Show”.

Com pouco mais de 20 anos, Hines por algum tempo deixou de lado a dança. Sobre isso, certa vez, em 2001, ele declarou:

“There was a time when I didn’t want to dance. I was in his mid-20s, ‘a hippie’ in a brief moment of rebellion, and I felt that I didn’t want to be in show business anymore. I felt that I wanted to be a farmer….”

Foi literalmente trabalhar numa fazenda no interior do estado de Nova York (embora sempre realizando atividades paralelas, entre as quais uma banda de jazz/rock chamada “Severance”), mas não demorou muito para “cair a ficha”:

“I was milking cows and shoveling terrible stuff and working all day. By the end of the day all I wanted was my tap shoes — I thought, ‘What am I doing? I better get back where I belong on the stage where we work at night and can sleep late!'”.

Depois de morar em Venice, na Califórnia, Hines retornou a Nova York in 1978, em parte para ficar perto de sua irmã Daria, que morava com aquela que seria a primeira esposa de Hines, uma “dance therapist” chamada Patricia Panella. Imediatamente conseguiu um papel em “The Last Minstrel Show”, para cuja audição fora avisado por seu irmão Maurice: reza a lenda que eles ficaram durantes longos anos de relações estremecidas, e que 1978 marcaria justamente o reatamento de suas relações com o irmão.

Voltando a trabalhar com Maurice, em 1978 brilharam no musical “Eubie!”, sobre o músico Eubie Blake. Mais tarde, estiveram juntos no cinema, em “The Cotton Club” (1984), e na Broadway, em “Sophisticated Ladies” (1981).

Leria mais no post original do Divulgando, no antigo Geocities, que foi “gravado” pelo Reocities, clicando em

http://reocities.com/divulgando/dv_hines.htm

Robert L. Reed: Falecimento

É com grande pesar que o Divulgando comunica o falecimento do grande sapateador Robert L. Reed, que esteve no Brasil ministrando cursos em Campinas em 2000 e 2001. Mais informações em breve.

Robert L. Reed e Cintia Martin