Robert Banas

Robert Joseph Banas (September 22, 1933 – July 29, 2024) was an American dancer, actor, choreographer, and dance coach born in New York, New York. Over the course of his career he worked across Broadway, film, and television, accumulating credits that spanned several decades.

Banas traced his interest in dance to age five, when he found himself unable to sit still upon hearing big bands such as those led by Tommy Dorsey, Ray Anthony, Count Basie, Les Brown, and Stan Kenton. During World War II, his father worked as a military chief inspector for the steel mills in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, while his mother served as a propeller inspector for Curtiss-Wright in Erie. In 1942, his father arranged ballroom dance lessons for Banas and his sister Faith. He subsequently received a scholarship to the Michael Panaieff Children's Ballet Company, where Natalie Wood was his dancing partner and fellow members included Jill St. John and Stefanie Powers. Banas also attended the Hollywood Professional School.

His stage career began when he auditioned for a production of Carousel at the LA Civic Light Opera and was cast as Enoch Snow Jr. He went on to appear in stage productions of Kiss Me Kate, Annie Get Your Gun, Brigadoon, Plain and Fancy, and Peter Pan, the last of which brought him to Broadway in 1954.

Banas accumulated a substantial list of film credits. He appeared in West Side Story (1961), The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Bye Bye Birdie, and Mary Poppins, in which he played a chimney sweep. In the 1960 film Let's Make Love, he was among a group of male dancers kissed by Marilyn Monroe at the conclusion of her performance of "My Heart Belongs to Daddy." Later film appearances included Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) and Always (1989). He also made numerous television appearances, among them an episode of Get Smart.

In 1963, Banas choreographed and performed a dance to Shirley Ellis's "The Nitty Gritty" alongside five other dancers on The Judy Garland Show. Copies of the performance circulated on YouTube and had been viewed more than 19 million times by November 2024, bringing Banas renewed public attention in the 2010s. Later in his career he worked as a choreographer and dance teacher in the Los Angeles area.

Banas died of pneumonia at an assisted living facility in Encino, California, at the age of 90.