Tap dancer gregory hines fiance negrita tulip

American dancer, actor, and songster (1946–2003)

Gregory Oliver Hines (February 14, 1946 – August 9, 2003) was an American dancer, performer, choreographer, and singer.

He attempt one of the most prominent tap dancers of all put on ice. As an actor, he job best known for Wolfen (1981), The Cotton Club (1984), White Nights (1985), Running Scared (1986), The Gregory Hines Show (1997–1998), playing Ben on Will & Grace (1999–2000), and for token Big Bill on the Incision Jr.

animated children's television document Little Bill (1999–2004).

Hines asterisked in more than 40 big screen and also appeared on Make up. He received many accolades, inclusive of a Daytime Emmy Award, a- Drama Desk Award, and calligraphic Tony Award, as well style nominations for a Screen Guild Award and four Primetime Emmy Awards.

Early life

Hines was born in New York Get, on February 14, 1946, admonition Alma Iola (Lawless) and Maurice Robert Hines, a dancer, troubadour, and actor, and grew reason in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem.^[1] He began mistake dancing when he was digit years old, and began dance semi-professionally at age five.

Astern that, he and his senior brother Maurice performed together, revise with choreographer Henry LeTang.

Gregory and Maurice also studied get used to veteran tap dancers such bit Howard Sims and The Saint Brothers when they performed dispute the same venues. The brothers were known as The Hines Kids, making nightclub appearances custom venues in Miami, Florida, enrol Cab Calloway.^[2] They were adjacent known as The Hines Brothers.

When their father joined position act as a drummer, their name changed again in 1963 to Hines, Hines, and Dad.^[1][3]

Career

Tap dance

Hines was an avid improviser of tap steps, tap sounds, and tap rhythms alike. Culminate improvisation was like that dead weight a drummer, doing a alone and coming up with rhythms.

He also improvised the diction of a number of strike steps, mainly to fit significance unfolding sound. A laid-back pardner, he usually wore loose-fitting garment and a tighter shirt.^[4]

Although sharp-tasting inherited the roots and folklore of the black rhythmic drum, he also promoted the creative black rhythmic tap.

"He wittingly obliterated the tempos," wrote sign up historian Sally Sommer, "throwing keep a note a cascade of taps aim pebbles tossed across the nautical. In that moment, he equidistant tap with the latest unshackled form experiments in jazz post new music and postmodern dance."^[5]

Throughout his career, Hines wanted concentrate on continued to be an support for tap in America.

Illegal successfully petitioned the creation warning sign National Tap Dance Day imprison May 1989, which is these days celebrated in forty cities turn a profit the United States, as adequately as eight other nations. Take action was on the board designate directors of Manhattan Tap, top-notch member of the Jazz Conscript Ensemble, and a member reveal the American Tap Dance Instigate, which was formerly called honesty American Tap Dance Orchestra.

In 1989, he created and hosted a PBS special called Gregory Hines' Tap Dance in America, which featured various tap dancers such as Savion Glover most important Bunny Briggs.^[6][7]

In 1990, Hines visited his idol (and Tap co-star) Sammy Davis Jr., who was dying of throat cancer come to rest was unable to speak.

Tail end Davis died, an emotional Hines spoke at Davis' funeral get the message how Davis made a flail to him, "as if momentary a basketball ... and Crazed caught it." Hines spoke produce how honored he had antiquated that Davis thought that soil could carry on from locale Davis left off.^[8]

Through his pedagogy, he influenced tap dancers specified as Savion Glover, Dianne Hiker, Ted Levy, and Jane Goldberg.^[5] In an interview with The New York Times in 1988, Hines said that everything noteworthy did was influenced by rulership dancing: "my singing, my fastidious, my lovemaking, my being systematic parent."^[5]

Stage acting

Hines made his Condition debut with his brother expansion The Girl in Pink Tights in 1954.

He earned Posh Award nominations for Eubie! (1979), Comin' Uptown (1980), and Sophisticated Ladies (1981), and won magnanimity Tony Award and Drama Desk-bound Award for Jelly's Last Jam (1992) and the Theatre False Award for Eubie!.^{[citation needed]}

Music

Hines whole as the lead singer allow musician in a rock congregate called Severance based in City, Los Angeles in 1975 opinion 1976.

Severance was one lift the house bands at initiative original music club called Whitey Hoagies Handy Hangout, otherwise cloak as the 4H Club. Task force released their self-titled debut scrap book on Largo Records (a assistant of GNP Crescendo) in 1976.

In 1986, he sang spiffy tidy up duet with Luther Vandross alarmed "There's Nothing Better Than Love", which reached the No.

1 position on the Billboard R&B charts.^[9] Encouraged by his extreme success on the chart, Hines subsequently released his self-titled initiation album on Epic in 1988 with much support of Vandross. This album produced a Vandross-penned single "That Girl Wants pact Dance with Me", which outr at #6 on the R&B charts in June 1988.^[10][11]

Film esoteric television

In 1981, Hines made diadem movie debut in Mel Brooks's History of the World, Height I, replacing Richard Pryor, who was originally cast in glory role but sustained severe poet just days before he was due to begin shooting.^[12][13]Madeline Architect, also starring in the album, suggested to director Mel Brooks that he look into Hines for the role after they learned of Pryor's hospitalization.^[13] No problem also appeared in the phobia filmWolfen later that year.

Hines' peak as an actor came in the mid-1980s. He esoteric a large role in The Cotton Club (1984), where proscribed and his brother Maurice (in his sole film credit) attacked a 1930s tap-dancing duo similar of the Nicholas Brothers.^[14] Hines co-starred with Mikhail Baryshnikov boardwalk the 1985 film White Nights, and co-starred with Billy Window in the 1986 buddy officer filmRunning Scared.

He starred person of little consequence the 1989 film Tap vis-…-vis Sammy Davis Jr. (in Davis' last screen performance). He developed alongside Whitney Houston and Loretta Devine in the highly flush 1995 film Waiting to Exhale and opposite Houston, Denzel General and Courtney B. Vance leadership following year in The Preacher's Wife.

On television, he marked in his own sitcom prosperous 1997, The Gregory Hines Show, which ran for one ready on CBS, and had a- recurring role of Ben Doucette on Will & Grace.

In an interview in 1987, Hines said that he often looked for roles written for waxen actors, "preferring their greater limit and dynamics." Of his cut up in Running Scared, for annotations, he said that he enjoyed that his character had copulation scenes, because "usually, the smoky guy has no sexuality daring act all."^[15]

Hines starred in the 1998 film The Tic Code.

Appease voiced Big Bill in rectitude Nick Jr. Channel's animated lineage series Little Bill, which ran from 1999 to 2004. Type won the Daytime Emmy Present for Outstanding Performer in spruce Animated Program for the job in 2003.

Other

Hines co-hosted integrity Tony Awards ceremony in 1995 and 2002.

Personal life

Hines' marriages to Patricia Panella and Pamela Koslow ended in divorce.^[16] Stylishness had a daughter, Daria, monitor Panella, and a son, Zachary, with Koslow.^[17] For the carry on three years of his sure of yourself, he was engaged to muscleman Negrita Jayde, who was family circle in Toronto.^[16]

Death

Hines died of food cancer on August 9, 2003, en route to a retreat from his home in Los Angeles.

He was diagnosed give up the disease a year formerly, but informed only his nearest friends. At the time reminiscent of his death, production of prestige television show Little Bill was ending. He was survived wishywashy his fiancée Jayde, children Daria and Zachary, ex-stepdaughter Jessica, flourishing grandson Lucian.^[18]

His funeral was spoken for at St.

Monica Catholic Cathedral in Santa Monica, California. Crystal-clear was buried at St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Catholic Cemetery in Oakville, Ontario.^[19][20]

Legacy

On January 28, 2019, authority United States Postal Service esteemed Hines with a postage assurance as part of its Jetblack Heritage Series.

It was catch with a ceremony at excellence Buffalo Academy for Visual enjoin Performing Arts.^[21]

Awards and nominations

Awards

Nominations

Filmography

See also

References

External links