Dixie Roberts

Dixie Roberts (April 5, 1919 – April 15, 2010) was a tap and specialty dancer who worked in vaudeville, chorus lines, and musical comedy, appearing on Broadway between 1943 and 1944. Born in Elmhurst, New York, Roberts was frequently billed as the dancer who "taps with a Southern accent," a moniker she attributed to the fact that she was conceived in Atlanta, her mother's hometown. She grew up on Long Island and in upstate New York, where she studied dance and developed a wide range of athletic skills before embarking on a career that took her across the United States.

Roberts began her dance training under Dorothy Fitch in Peekskill, New York, while attending Carmel High School. To help fund her studies, she taught dance after school for twenty-five cents an hour, sometimes walking five miles home after her lessons concluded. By age sixteen she had turned professional, landing her first engagement at the Paramount Theatre in New York in 1935, where she performed with the Tommy Dorsey Band as one of five acts on the bill. At the same venue she and her partner Horace Nichols had previously won the title "King and Queen of Shag." In 1939 she appeared on NBC Television's Showboat and taught and performed on weekends at Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel. That same year she was twenty years old.

Beyond dancing, Roberts distinguished herself as a competitive athlete. She held the title of New York State Cue Champion, was an A.A.U. swimming champion, and was invited to train for the Olympic swim team, an offer her father declined on her behalf. Physical Culture magazine reported in 1943 that as a youngster she had been the top female baseball player in her county and was highly competitive in tennis, basketball, and swimming. The Sunday Mirror noted that she had won eleven sports plaques during her time in show business, with a billiards run of 93 in three-cushion play, a bowling score of 200, and a baseball batting average of .405 in the previous season.

Roberts performed USO tours for the Marines and the Flying Tigers, and during one hospital tour she tap danced alongside Peg Leg Bates, the one-legged tap dancer. She also performed between shows at the Earle Theatre in Philadelphia, where she shot pool with trumpeter Bunny Berigan. Her touring schedule regularly required five or six performances per day, from morning through late evening.

Her Broadway career began with the Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 at the Winter Garden Theater, where she served as a specialist tap dancer. Among her numbers in that production, she partnered with Milton Berle, with whom she also played pool after matinees. Berle later invited her to appear as a guest on his NBC Television show. Columnist Walter Winchell referenced Roberts appreciatively on multiple occasions, once identifying her as "one of the lookers in the Ziegfeld Follies."

In 1944 Roberts appeared in the Broadway musical Dream with Music, where she danced alongside Vera Zorina, the wife of choreographer George Balanchine, who served as the production's ballet choreographer. Henry LeTang, the show's tap choreographer, was also among her collaborators on that production.

Throughout her career Roberts performed at venues including the Copacabana in New York, the Troika in Washington, D.C., the Rainbow Room in New York, the Chez Paree in Chicago, and the Orpheum in San Francisco. She opened shows for performers including Artie Shaw, Jimmy Dorsey, Danny Thomas, Henny Youngman, Ben Blue, Charlie Spivak, Joe E. Lewis, Pearl Bailey, Jimmy Durante, Steve Allen, Woody Herman, and Benny Goodman, frequently making her entrance by sliding onto the stage. After a performance in 1946, Gene Kelly visited her backstage to express his admiration for her dancing, and the two went to Armando's in New York, where he encouraged her to pursue work in Hollywood. Roberts chose to remain on the East Coast.

Following her stage career, Roberts gave dance performances, lessons, and danced with guests at private parties for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Roberts died on April 15, 2010, at the age of ninety-one.