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80s icon: Gregory Hines
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Gregory Hines was the greatest tap-dancer of his generation before he ever became widely known to the public during the 1980s in films. The fact that he did break into movies is to our everlasting benefit, however, because it managed to capture for the record the multifaceted genius of the man. His director in the Broadway smash “Jelly,” George C. Wolfe, said of him that “He was the last of a kind of immaculate performer: a singer, dancer, actor and a personality.” In our age, people become famous for being easy to photograph – or less than that – but Hines had everything.
His first introduction to feature films was in Mel Brooks’ History of the World Part I, when he announced the presence of a “mighty joint.” That cameo led to a series of roles in the 1980s in archetypal buddy pictures – a white guy and his black partner go on a series of adventures. This was the pattern in Wolfen with Albert Finney, Deal of the Century with Chevy Chase, Running Scared with Billy Crystal, and Off Limits with Willem Dafoe. Hines was charming and funny in all those except perhaps the dour Off Limits, which not even he could save. There were three other films during that decade that did not fit this pattern and are the most interesting of his performances.
The first of these was in 1984, in Francis Coppola’s The Cotton Club. A famous mess of a film, it became one of those releases whose backstage gossip overshadows the thing itself, but this is no fault of Hines. Dynamic in the role of Sandman Williams, he carves out a space for himself onscreen and is actually much more interesting than Richard Gere’s story – especially in the dance scene with his brother.
Then, in 1985, he costarred with Mikhail Baryshnikov in White Nights. This might be his most enjoyable film of the decade, with spectacular dance sequences and one of his most interesting dramatic performances. He has long, drunken monologue in which his character explains why he defected from the U.S. that might be his best work as a dramatic actor. (It also addresses a real subject: the perception that the USSR was a land where there was no racism; although the thought seems ridiculous now, it should be remembered that W.E.B. DuBois wrote passages praising Stalin for this very reason.) It also benefits from director Taylor Hackford, not the subtlest of filmmakers, but sensible enough to shoot the dancing wide with a minimum of cuts, unlike more recent films like Chicago.
At the end of the decade in 1989, Gregory Hines starred in Tap, directed by Nick Castle in a very old-fashioned Hollywood manner. While the story is not to be taken seriously, the dancing is fantastic, especially in a dance-off featuring Sammy Davis, Jr., and in a rousing outdoor sequence. It also introduced the brilliant Savion Glover as his young protégé.
Through all these films, which form the bulk of cinematic work, Hines had as much star quality as one could want and the talent to go with it. His chosen profession, tap dancing, was already an antiquated form, and his particular package of skills reminiscent of Old Hollywood, a bygone era. Although he may have to struggle internally with this (as Savion did, going through a crisis for a time in which he rejected audiences), it never came through on the screen. He was, to the end, an entertainer, in the very best sense of that word.
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