Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:27:55.490Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Tap and Teeth: Virtuosity and the Smile in the Films of Bill Robinson and Eleanor Powell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2014

Margaret Morrison
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Several films of 1935 catapulted tap dancers Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Eleanor Powell to movie stardom. Robinson's The Littlest Rebel and Powell's Broadway Melody of 1936 utilize a cinematic formula that intercuts the virtuosic footwork of the tap artists with giant close-ups of their toothy grins. The experience for contemporary spectators can be unnerving, as magnified lips, teeth, and eyes dominate the screen and interrupt the pleasure of watching expert tap. While the close-up smile and the choreography of the camera helped the film industry reproduce the excitement of live performance, these dance scenes also mobilize constructions of black masculinity and white femininity, through editing techniques that create multilayered narratives of power, intimacy, and submission. Robinson's close-up can be read as a depiction of racial subservience, as audiences are confronted with the smiling minstrel mask and the perpetuation of the legacy of minstrelsy in Hollywood. Powell's smile in close-up emphasizes her feminine sexual availability and evokes the voyeuristic camera shots of beaming, passive showgirls. The interplay in these two movies between the extremes of the tap dancer's body, the smile and feet, offers an opportunity to examine tap virtuosity within Hollywood's rigid system of racial and gender stereotypes.

Keywords

Bill RobinsonEleanor PowellgenderHollywood musicalsracesexualitytaptap dance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Body Parts: Pelvis, Feet, Face, Hips, Legs, Toes, and Teeth , August 2014 , pp. 21 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

American Film Institute. N.d. “Broadway Melody of 1936.” AFI Catalog of Feature Films. http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/DetailView.aspx?s=&Movie=4246 (accessed February 26, 2014).Google Scholar
Armstrong, Louis. 1999. Louis Armstrong, in His Own Words: Selected Writings. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Berkeley, Busby, dir. 1935. “Lullaby of Broadway.” Golddiggers of 1935. Warner Brothers Pictures. VHS. 1989. Culver City, CA: MGM/UA Home Video.Google Scholar
Bogle, Donald. 1988. Blacks in American Films and Television: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Bogle, Donald.. 2001. Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films. 4th ed.New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1993. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Butler, David, dir. 1935. The Littlest Rebel. Twentieth Century Fox. DVD. 2005. Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1988. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40(4): 519–531.Google Scholar
Cohan, Steven. 2005. Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value and the MGM Musical. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Cohan, Steven.. 2010. “Introduction: How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Film Musical?” In The Sound of Musicals, edited by Cohan, Steven, 1–16. London: British Film Institute.Google Scholar
Del Ruth, Roy, dir. 1935. “Broadway Rhythm.” Broadway Melody of 1936. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. DVD. 2008. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video.Google Scholar
Everett, Anna. 2001. Returning the Gaze: A Genealogy of Black Film Criticism, 1909–1949. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Feuer, Jane. 1993. The Hollywood Musical. 2nd ed.London: MacMillan Press.Google Scholar
Foley, Brenda. 2005. Undressed for Success: Beauty Contestants and Exotic Dancers as Merchants of Morality. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Google Scholar
Griffin, Sean. 2009. Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Gubar, Susan. 2000. Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haskins, Jim. 1988. Mr. Bojangles: The Biography of Bill Robinson. New York: William Morrow.Google Scholar
Hayward, Susan. 2006. Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts. 3rd ed.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hill, Constance Valis. 2000. Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hill, Constance Valis.. 2010. Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 1999. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, edited by Thornham, Sue, 307–20. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Ingram, Germaine, Kodish, Debora G., and Dornfeld, Barry. 2004. Plenty of Good Women Dancers: African American Women Hoofers from Philadelphia. DVD. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Folklore Project.Google Scholar
Internet Movie Database. N.d. “Bill Robinson.” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0732408/?ref_=nv_sr_1#actor (accessed December 16, 2013).Google Scholar
Kilkelly, Ann. 2013. Email message to author. July 22.Google Scholar
Lang, Walter. 1935. “Living in a Great Big Way.” Hooray For Love. RKO Radio Pictures. DVD. 2012. Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video.Google Scholar
Lott, Eric. 1993. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Malone, Jacqui. 1996. Steppin' on the Blues: The Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
McLean, Adrienne. 2009. “Putting ’Em Down Like a Man: Eleanor Powell and the Spectacle of Competence.” In Hetero: Queering Representations of Straightness, edited by Griffin, Sean, 89–110. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Earl. 1937. “Morris Interviews ‘Bojangles’; Learns He Is a Real Race Man.” Pittsburgh Courier (1911–1950). Juli 31. http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/202028485?accountid=10226 (accessed July 8, 2013).Google Scholar
Morrison, Margaret. 2010. “Juanita Pitts: Race, Gender and the Female Hoofer.” Unpublished paper presented at the American Dance Festival. Durham, NC, June 18.Google Scholar
Morrison, Margaret.. 2012. “John W. Bubbles.” Dance Heritage Coalition's Exhibit of America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures. http://www.danceheritage.org/treasures/bubbles_essay_morrison.pdf.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. 1999. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, edited by Thornham, Sue, 58–69. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reid, John Howard. 2006. Success in the Cinema: Money-Making Movies. Morrisville, NC: John Howard Reid.Google Scholar
Riggs, Marlon. 2004. Ethnic Notions. DVD. San Francisco, CA: California Newsreel.Google Scholar
Robbins, Allison. 2013. “Doubled Selves: Eleanor Powell and the MGM Backstage Musical, 1935–37.” Journal of the Society for American Music 7(1): 65–93.Google Scholar
Rogin, Michael. 1996. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sampson, Henry T. 1995. Blacks in Black and White: A Source Book on Black Films. 2nd ed.Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
Schultz, Margie. 1994. Eleanor Powell: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan Wallach. 1988. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Stearns, Marshall, and Stearns, Jean. 1979. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer Books.Google Scholar
Thomas, Dan. 1935. “How Eleanor Tapped to the Top.” Washington Post (1923–1954), Aug 11. http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/150652390?accountid=10226 (accessed December 1, 2013).Google Scholar
Thompson, Robert Farris. 1999. “An Aesthetic of the Cool: West African Dance.” In Signifyin(g), Sanctifyin', & Slam Dunking: A Reader in African American Expressive Culture, edited by Caponi, Gena Dagel, 72–86. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar