On this day in 1957 — after a show at the Pan Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles — local police told Elvis Presley that he was not allowed to wiggle his hips onstage.
The local press ran headlines saying Elvis would have to clean up his act.
The next night, the Los Angeles Vice Squad filmed Elvis entire concert to study his performance.
Here, Elvis performs live on the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show at a CBS studio in New York a year earlier.
Love of dance and the welcome atmosphere at Charlie’s Place, the black night club in 1950’s Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, attracted not only men but top white female dancers like Clarice Reavis.
Reavis — later to become a much celebrated female show dancer often called the “Queen of Shag” — minced no words in telling me what drew her to black music.
“I like the nigger blues, honey. They are so slinky, low down.”
Then, concerned that I had interpreted her description of the music as racist, she grabbed my arm and whispered, “You can call it ‘black music’ if you want in your book — if it will make people feel better. When I called it ‘nigger’ music, they called it ‘nigger’ music. There’s more feeling in there.”
Lining the walls of Fat Harold’s Beach Club in North Myrtle Beach are letters and mementos of the pioneers of the Shag. Among them is an iconic image of the era —a seductive pose by Reavis, among the first inductees into the Shaggers Hall of Fame.
Reavis, naked and partially covered only by a small mink stole, is seated on a towel. It was a simple photograph, taken on a whim, but it became a powerful pin-up coveted by American soldiers at the end of World War II.
“She was voluptuous and beautiful and completely alluring, and a bunch of 17 and 18-year-olds fell in love with her,” writer Bo Bryan said of Reavis’s allure. “She was strong as train smoke. You take a deep breath, she’d knock you out.”
The photo was made one night in 1945 when Reavis and a female friend were clowning at her home.
While in the bathroom, Reavis said she grabbed the small mink “and just draped it around me…not even fixing it…but it just happened to cover everything. My friend backed out of the bathroom with the camera just so she could get all of me in the picture.”
In the area surrounding Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Reavis said she gave away thousands of the photos to soldiers who had seen it at various USOs and wanted one for themselves.
“Those were just young boys,” she said. “I was going to send one to my husband, but then the thing (the war) ended in 1945 and I didn’t get around to sending it.”
Clarice Reavis is featured in “Charlie’s Place,” on the Ku Klux Klan’s attack on black music after World War II.
Charlie’s Place is featured in my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem and Murder.
Jerome Robbins works with Mikhail Baryshnikov at the New York City Ballet
Photo by Martha Swope
Jerome Robbins was born 102 years ago today.
Robbins was a theater producer, director and choreographer known primarily for Broadway theater and dance, but who also occasionally directed films and produced for television. His work ranged from classical ballet to contemporary musical theater.
Among the numerous stage productions he worked on were On the Town, Peter Pan, High Button Shoes, The King And I, The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, West Side Story, Gypsy: A Musical Fable and Fiddler on the Roof.
Robbins was a five time Tony Award winner and a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors. He received two Academy Awards, including the 1961 Academy Award for Best Director with Robert Wise for West Side Story.
A documentary about his life and work — Something to Dance About — featuring excerpts from his journals, archival performance and rehearsal footage, and interviews with Robbins and his colleagues, premiered on PBS in 2009.
Following a bicycle accident in 1990 and heart-valve surgery in 1994, Robbins began showing signs of a form of Parkinson's disease in 1996. His hearing was also quickly deteriorated. He nevertheless staged Les Noces for City Ballet in 1998, his last project.
Robbins suffered a stroke two months later, and died at his home in New York City on July 29, 1998. On the evening of his death, the lights of Broadway were dimmed for a moment in tribute. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered into the Atlantic Ocean.
Jerome Robbins “flies” with Mary Martin in a rehearsal for the live broadcast of Peter Pan on NBC, 1955
