Harold Nicholas

Harold Lloyd Nicholas (March 27, 1921 – July 3, 2000) was an American tap dancer born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to drummer and orchestra leader Ulysses Dominick Nicholas, Jr. and pianist Viola Harden. He was the younger of the two Nicholas Brothers, the celebrated tap-dancing duo he formed with his older brother Fayard. When a second son arrived in the family, seven-year-old Fayard requested that the child be named after his idol, the silent-screen comedian Harold Lloyd. Nicholas made his Broadway debut in 1936 and continued performing on Broadway through 1985, appearing in productions including Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, Babes in Arms, Sammy, and St. Louis Woman.

Nicholas and his brother first appeared at the Cotton Club in New York City when Fayard was sixteen and Harold nine, earning immediate acclaim. Their reputation grew through performances in vaudeville, nightclubs, on Broadway, and in film. Movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn spotted the brothers in a nightclub and cast them in Kid Millions (1934), launching their Hollywood careers. They became established performers at Twentieth Century Fox, appearing together in musical features despite racial restrictions of the era that prohibited speaking parts and scenes with white co-stars. Harold appeared in more than fifty feature films, among them The Big Broadcast (1936), Down Argentine Way (1940), Tin Pan Alley (1940), and Sun Valley Serenade (1941), which featured the brothers alongside Dorothy Dandridge in the "Chattanooga Choo Choo" number. Their 1943 film Stormy Weather contained a dance sequence in which the brothers performed atop a piano and leaped over musicians, a number Fred Astaire described as the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen. The brothers also appeared in musicals with Eubie Blake. Their final film together was The Pirate (1948), in which Gene Kelly danced alongside them.

Following the brothers' Hollywood partnership, Nicholas relocated to France, where he worked as a solo singer and dancer and appeared in the French film L'Empire De La Nuit (1964). He returned to the United States periodically to perform with Fayard and to take on additional film roles, including Uptown Saturday Night (1974), Tap (1989), The Five Heartbeats (1991), and Funny Bones (1995). In 1985–86, Nicholas played the role of Daddy Bates in the national tour of the Broadway musical The Tap Dance Kid. In 1993, he starred in the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre's world premiere of If These Shoes Could Talk, an original tap dance musical by Lee Summers and Kevin Ramsey that also featured Tony nominee Ted Levy. The leading role of Dr. Rhythm, a seasoned hoofer, was written specifically for Nicholas and became his final stage performance in a musical. In 1998, Carnegie Hall sold out for a tribute to Harold and Fayard, with both brothers in attendance.

In his personal life, Nicholas married three times and had two children. His first marriage, on September 6, 1942, was to actress, singer, and dancer Dorothy Dandridge, whom he had met at the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1938. Their daughter, Harolyn Suzanne, was born on September 2, 1943, with severe brain damage, and died in 2003. The marriage ended in 1951. Nicholas had a son, Melih, with his second wife, Elyanne Patronne. At the time of his death he was living on New York's Upper West Side with his third wife, producer Rigmor Alfredsson Newman, with whom he had resided for approximately twenty years. Nicholas died in New York City on July 3, 2000, from heart failure at the age of 79. In 2001, he and Fayard were jointly inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame.