Hermes Pan

Hermes Pan, born Hermes Joseph Panagiotopoulos on December 10, 1909, in Memphis, Tennessee, was an American dancer and choreographer who built one of the most significant careers in twentieth-century film and television dance. He died on September 19, 1990. Pan is principally remembered for his decades-long choreographic partnership with Fred Astaire, a collaboration that encompassed 17 of Astaire's 31 musical films and three of his four television specials. Over the course of his career he choreographed 89 films and won both an Academy Award and an Emmy Award for his dance direction.

Pan's father, Pantelis Panagiotopoulos, was a Greek immigrant from a prominent family in Aigio, Greece, who had been chosen in 1895 to represent Aigio at the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition in Nashville. Intending initially to return to Greece, Pantelis instead remained in Tennessee after meeting Mary Huston of Nashville in 1900; the couple married in 1901. The family settled in Memphis, where Pantelis became president of the Eutrophia Company, which owned the Eutrophia Hotel and Cafe. Hermes was the second son and last child born to the couple, arriving in 1909. Two years later the family relocated to Nashville, where Pantelis opened a restaurant. An African-American nanny known as Aunt Betty Clark introduced the young Hermes to jazz music and tap dance in 1915 by taking him to her neighborhood in Nashville. Aunt Betty's son Sam Clark, who worked for the family and was himself a talented dancer, taught Pan many of the popular dances of the era.

Pantelis died of tuberculosis in San Antonio in 1922. The following year, Pan's mother shortened the family surname to Pan and moved with her children and Sam Clark to New York City, settling initially on the Upper West Side. The family's finances deteriorated significantly after the move. Pan's eldest brother Panos, who had helped support the family, died in 1927. During the 1920s, Pan also made an extended visit to Aigio and Greece to meet his father's relatives. Pan began his professional dance career at age 19, appearing as a chorus boy in the 1928 Marx Brothers Broadway production of Animal Crackers. His Broadway work continued with appearances in the musicals Happy and Top Speed, the latter in 1930, in which he performed as a chorus singer. It was during the run of Top Speed that Pan first met Ginger Rogers. His Broadway career spanned the years 1927 to 1929.

By 1930, Pan and his sister Vasso had both relocated to Los Angeles. Pan met Fred Astaire on the set of Flying Down to Rio in 1933, where Pan was serving as an assistant to dance director Dave Gould. When Astaire was working through steps for the number "The Carioca," Pan demonstrated a brief break he had developed during his New York years, and the two began a professional friendship and collaboration that would last for the remainder of Astaire's performing career. Pan worked on all of the RKO Astaire pictures, and Astaire referred to him as his "idea man." Pan also served as a rehearsal partner for Astaire and took on the task of teaching and rehearsing Ginger Rogers, whose other professional commitments frequently conflicted with Astaire's intensive rehearsal schedule. Beginning with films made after Roberta in 1935, Pan recorded Rogers's taps in post-production on all subsequent Astaire-Rogers pictures.

Pan received Academy Award nominations for the "Top Hat" and "The Piccolino" numbers from Top Hat in 1935 and for the "Bojangles of Harlem" number from Swing Time in 1936. In 1937 he won the Academy Award for Best Dance Direction for A Damsel in Distress, in which Joan Fontaine starred alongside Astaire. The Astaire-Pan collaboration continued through Astaire's final musical film, Finian's Rainbow in 1968, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola ultimately fired Pan during production, and Pan had a small walk-on part in the completed film. Coppola later acknowledged primary responsibility for the film's artistic shortcomings.

Pan made a number of on-screen appearances as a dancer in addition to his choreographic work. His first filmed appearance was as a clarinetist in Second Chorus in 1940. He appeared with Betty Grable in Moon Over Miami in 1941, Footlight Serenade in 1942, and Coney Island in 1943, with his longest filmed dance routine being a tap duet with Grable in Footlight Serenade. He also appeared with Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal in 1942, with Grable again in Pin Up Girl in 1944, and with Lana Turner in a party scene in A Life of Her Own in 1950. He also received a credited appearance in Kiss Me Kate as "Soldier Boy." Pan was a devout Roman Catholic and was known within his professional circles as a homosexual, though he kept his private life largely to himself.