Frank Beacham's Journal

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

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 the fourth edition of my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

Jerome Robbins was born 103 years ago today

Jerome Robbins “flies” with Mary Martin in a rehearsal for the live broadcast of Peter Pan on NBC, 1955

Jerome Robbins was born 103 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 was born 103 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.

Chubby Checker is 80 years old today

Chubby Checker is 80 years old today.

Born Ernest Evans, Checker is a singer-songwriter known for popularizing the Twist dance style with his 1960 hit cover of Hank Ballard's R&B hit, "The Twist.”

In September, 2008, "The Twist" topped Billboard's list of the most popular singles to have appeared in the Hot 100 since its debut in 1958.

Ernest Evans was born in Spring Gulley, South Carolina. He was raised in the projects of South Philadelphia, where he lived with his parents and two brothers. By eight, Evans formed a street-corner harmony group, and by the time he entered high school, learned to play the piano.

He would entertain his classmates by performing vocal impressions of popular entertainers of the day, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Fats Domino. One of his classmates and friends at South Philadelphia High School was Fabiano Forte, who would become a popular performer of the late 1950s and early 1960s as Fabian.

After school Evans would entertain customers at his various jobs, including Fresh Farm Poultry on Ninth Street and at the Produce Market with songs and jokes. It was his boss at the Produce Market, Tony A., who gave Evans the nickname, "Chubby.”

The store owner of Fresh Farm Poultry, Henry Colt, was so impressed by Ernest's performances for the customers that he, along with his colleague and friend, Karl Mann, who worked as a songwriter for Cameo-Parkway Records, arranged for young Chubby to do a private recording for American Bandstand host, Dick Clark.

It was at this recording session that Evans got his stage name from Clark's wife, who asked Evans what his name was. "Well," he replied, "my friends call me 'Chubby’.” As he had just completed a Fats Domino impression, she smiled and said, "As in Checker?" That little play on words ('chubby' meaning 'fat', and 'checkers,' like 'dominoes,' being a game) got an instant laugh and stuck, and from then on, Evans would use the name, "Chubby Checker.”

Checker privately recorded a novelty single for Clark in which the singer portrayed a school teacher with an unruly classroom of musical performers. The premise allowed Checker to imitate such acts as Fats Domino, The Coasters, Elvis Presley, Cozy Cole, Ricky Nelson, Frankie Avalon and Fabian as The Chipmunks, each singing, "Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Clark sent the song out as his Christmas greeting, and it received such good response that Cameo-Parkway signed Checker to a recording contract. Titled "The Class,” the single became Checker's first release, charting at #38 in the spring of 1959.

Checker introduced his version of "The Twist" at the age of 18 in July, 1960 in Wildwood, New Jersey at the Rainbow Club. "The Twist" went on to become the only single to top the Billboard Hot 100 twice, in two separate chart runs. (Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" had done so on Billboard's earlier chart.)

"The Twist" had previously peaked at #16 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart, in the 1959 version recorded by its author, Hank Ballard, whose band The Midnighters first performed the dance on stage.

Checker's "Twist," however, was a nationwide smash, aided by his many appearances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand, the Top 10 American Bandstand ranking of the song, and the teenagers on the show who enjoyed dancing the Twist.

In 2008, Chubby Checker's "The Twist" was named the biggest chart hit of all time by Billboard magazine.

Here, Checker talks about the twist

Chubby Checker's version of "The Twist" hit #1 on the record charts this week in 1960

In 1960 — 61 years ago — Hank Ballard and The Midnighters were the first group to have three songs in the U.S. Top 100 at the same time.

“Finger Poppin’ Time,” “Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go” and “The Twist” all made the Top 30.

Ballard refused to perform, “The Twist,” on a highly-rated U.S. TV show, so Chubby Checker picked it up at the insistence of Dick Clark.

Checker’s version of the song hit #1 this week in 1960.

On September 14, 1927 — 94 years ago today — dancer Isadora Duncan was strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf she was wearing got tangled in the rear hubcaps of her open car

On September 14, 1927 — 94 years ago today — dancer Isadora Duncan was strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf she was wearing got tangled in the rear hubcaps of her open car.

"Affectations," said Gertrude Stein when she heard the news of Duncan's death, "can be dangerous."

Duncan was born in 1877 in San Francisco and moved to Europe to become a dancer when she was in her early 20s. She had always loved to dance — in her teens, she worked as a dance teacher at her mother's music school.

However, Duncan was not a classically trained ballerina. On the contrary, she was a free-spirited bohemian whose dances were improvisational and emotional. They were choreographed, she said, "to rediscover the beautiful, rhythmical motions of the human body."

In contrast to the short tutus and stiff shoes that ballet dancers wore, Duncan typically danced barefoot, wrapped in flowing togas and scarves. Female audiences, in particular, adored her: In an era when classical ballet was falling out of favor with many sophisticated people (and when the scantily-clad dancers themselves were, more often than not, "sponsored" by wealthy male patrons), Duncan's performances celebrated independence and self-expression.

Duncan lived a self-consciously bohemian, eccentric life offstage as well. She was a feminist and a Darwinist, an advocate of free love and a Communist. For this, her American citizenship was revoked in the early 1920s.

Meanwhile, her life was a tragic one, especially when it came to automobiles. In 1913, her two small children drowned when the car they were riding in plunged over a bridge and into the Seine in Paris, and Duncan herself was seriously injured in car accidents in 1913 and 1924.

On the day she died at age 50, Duncan was a passenger in a brand-new convertible sports car that she was learning to drive.

As she leaned back in her seat to enjoy the sea breeze, her enormous red scarf "which she had worn since she took up communism," one newspaper reported. blew into the well of the rear wheel on the passenger side.

It wound around the axle, tightening around Duncan's neck and dragging her from the car and onto the cobblestone street. She died instantly.

Thanks History.com

Above photo by Barbara Morgan

“If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.”

— Isadora Duncan

Photo by Barbara Morgan

Barbara Bain, the sultry Cinnamon Carter on Mission: Impossible in the 1960s, is 90 years old today

Barbara Bain, the sultry Cinnamon Carter on Mission: Impossible in the 1960s, is 90 years old today.

Bain was born Millicent Fogel in Chicago, the daughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants. She graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in sociology.

Developing an interest in dance, she moved to New York City, where she studied alongside Martha Graham. Dissatisfied with her career as a dancer, she went into modeling. Jobs with Vogue, Harper's and other publications followed.

Still uninspired, however, Bain entered the Theater Studio to study acting — first under Curt Conway and then Lonny Chapman. Progressing to the Actors Studio, she was instructed by Lee Strasberg. Bain's first acting role was in Paddy Chayevsky's play, Middle of the Night, which embarked on a national tour in October, 1957.

Accompanying Bain was fellow actor and newly-acquired husband, Martin Landau. The final leg of the tour brought the couple to Los Angeles, where they settled permanently. After relocating, Bain established herself at the Actors Studio West, where she continues to teach classes and perform scene work.

Bain's earliest television appearances included CBS's Tightrope, with Mike Connors, and three ABC series: The Law and Mr. Jones with James Whitmore, Adventures in Paradise with Gardner McKay and Straightaway with Brian Kelly and John Ashley.

She guest-starred as Madelyn Terry in a 1960 episode of Perry Mason, "The Case of the Wary Wildcatter," and in 1964 played the role of Elayna Scott in "The Case of the Nautical Knot".

Between 1966 and 1969, Bain appeared — alongside her then husband, Martin Landau — in the major role of Cinnamon Carter in Mission: Impossible. She won three consecutive Emmy Awards for Best Dramatic Actress for her performance in 1967, 1968 and 1969, in addition to a Golden Globe Award nomination in 1968.

Bain married Landau in 1957 and they divorced in 1993. The couple had two daughters, actress, Juliet Landau, and film producer, Susan Bain Landau Finch (born Susan Meredith Landau).

Bain is of the Jewish faith. She has contributed to many charitable causes, including literacy.

On April 28, 2016, Bain was honored with the 2,579th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6767 Hollywood Blvd. Lifelong friends Edward Asner and Dick Van Dyke were on hand to speak and assist in the unveiling of the star.

Marge Champion, dancer, choreographer and actress, was born 102 years ago today

Marge Champion dances in the 1952 film, Everything I Have Is Yours

Marge Champion, dancer, choreographer and actress, was born 102 years ago today.

At a young age, she was hired as a dance model for Walt Disney Studios animated films. Later she performed as an actress and dancer in film musicals, and in 1957 had a TV show based on song and dance. She has also done creative choreography for liturgy, and served as a dialog and movement coach for the 1978 TV miniseries, The Awakening Land, set in the late 18th century in the Ohio Valley.

Champion was born Marjorie Celeste Belcher in 1919 in Los Angeles to Hollywood dance director, Ernest Belcher, and his wife, Gladys Lee Baskette. She had an older half sister, Lina Basquette, who was already acting in silent films at the age of twelve. She was the daughter of her mother's first husband, Frank Baskette, who committed suicide.

Marjorie began dancing at an early age as her sister had done. By the age of twelve, she became a ballet instructor at her father's studio. She was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a dance model for their animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Her movements were copied to enhance the realism of the animated Snow White figure.

Belcher later modeled for characters in other animated films, including the Blue Fairy in Pinocchio (1940), Maid Marion in Robin Hood and the Dancing Hippo in Fantasia.

In 1947, she married another dancer, Gower Champion (1919–1980). They had two sons, Blake and actor, Gregg Champion. They divorced in 1973.

She married director Boris Sagal on January 1, 1977. He was killed on May 22, 1981, in an accident during the production of the miniseries, World War III. He was the father of actress Katey Sagal.

Together as a dance team, the Champions performed in MGM musicals of the 1940s and 50s, including Show Boat (1951) and Everything I Have Is Yours (1952). MGM wanted the couple to remake Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films, but only one, Lovely to Look At (1952), a remake of Roberta (1935), was completed. The couple refused to remake any of the others, the rights to which were still owned by RKO.

During the summer of 1957, the Champions had their own TV series, The Marge and Gower Champion Show, a situation comedy with song and dance numbers. Marge played a dancer and Gower a choreographer. Real-life drummer Buddy Rich was featured as a fictional drummer named Cozy.

Champion has also worked as a dance instructor and choreographer in New York City.

In 1982, she made a rare television acting appearance on the dramatic TV series, Fame, playing a ballet teacher with a racial bias against African-American students. In 2001, she appeared as Emily Whitman in a Broadway revival of Follies.

Champion died on October 21, 2020, at her son's home in Los Angeles. She was 101.

Here, Marge and Gower Champion perform “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” from the 1952 film, Lovely to Look At

Michael Jackson was born 63 years ago today

Michael Jackson was born 63 years ago today.

Born in Gary, Indiana, Jackson began performing with his four brothers in the pop group the Jackson 5 when he was a child. The group scored its first #1 single in 1969, with "I Want You Back." By age 11, Jackson was appearing on TV, and, by age 14, he had released his first solo album.

A Jackson 5 TV cartoon series appeared in the early '70s, and in 1976 the Jackson family, including sister, Janet Jackson, launched a TV variety show called The Jacksons that ran for one season. Throughout the 70s, media attention focused on Michael, who piped vocals in his high voice for "ABC," "I'll Be There" and many other Top 20 hits. Jackson released several solo albums in the '70s, but his great breakthrough came in 1979 with Off the Wall.

He became the first solo artist to score four Top 10 hits from one album, including "She's Out of My Life" and "Rock with You." His next album, Thriller (1983), became the biggest selling album up to that time, selling some 45 million copies around the world.

Although his next album, Bad (1987), sold only about half as many copies as Thriller, it was still a tremendous best-seller. In 1991, Jackson signed an unprecedented $65 million record deal with Sony. That year, he released Dangerous. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Jackson developed a reputation as an eccentric recluse.

He moved to a 2,700-acre ranch called Neverland, which he outfitted with wild animals and a Ferris wheel. He underwent a facelift and nose job and was rumored to have lightened his skin through chemical treatment, though he claimed his increasing pallor was due to a skin disease.

In 1993, scandal broke when Jackson was publicly accused of child molestation. The case settled out of court.

In 1994, Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley. The couple later divorced. Jackson married Deborah Rowe in 1996, and the couple had two children, Prince and Paris, before divorcing in 1999.

On June 13, 2005, Jackson was acquitted of sexual molestation of a young boy, Gavin Arvizo, in criminal court.

Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, in Los Angeles, just weeks before a planned concert tour billed as his "comeback." The cause of death was acute propofol and benzodiazepine intoxication. He was 50 years old.

Thanks History.com

Donald O’Connor was born 96 years ago today

Donald O’Connor was born 96 years ago today.

A dancer, singer and actor, O’Connor played Gene Kelly's friend and colleague, Cosmo Brown, in 1952’s Singin' in the Rain. He was also in a series of movies in which he co-starred alternately with Gloria Jean, Peggy Ryan and Francis the Talking Mule.

Though he considered Danville, Illinois to be his home town, O’Connor was born in St. Elizabeth Hospital in Chicago. His parents, Effie Irene and John Edward "Chuck" O'Connor, were vaudeville entertainers.

O'Connor began performing in movies in 1937. He appeared opposite Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners at age 12. Paramount Pictures used him in both A and B films, including Tom Sawyer, Detective and Beau Geste. In 1940, when he had outgrown child roles, he returned to vaudeville.

In 1941, O’Connor signed with Universal Pictures, where he began by appearing in seven B-picture musicals in a row, starting with What's Cookin'? (1942) and ending with Mister Big (1943). Peggy Ryan and Gloria Jean were in four each. Before Mister Big (1943) was released, O’Connor’s popularity soared.

Universal added $50,000 in musical numbers to Mister Big (1943) and promoted this B movie to an A. His subsequent films were all A’s. In 1949, he played the lead role in Francis, the story of a soldier befriended by a talking mule. The film was a huge success. As a consequence, his musical career was constantly interrupted by production of one Francis film per year until 1955.

It was because of the Francis series that O'Connor missed playing Bing Crosby's partner in White Christmas. O'Connor was unavailable because he contracted an illness transmitted by the mule, and was replaced in the film by Danny Kaye.

O'Connor's role as Cosmo the piano player in Singin' in the Rain earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Comedy or Musical. The film featured his memorable rendition of Make 'Em Laugh. O'Connor said he smoked four packs of cigarettes a day during filming.

A regular host of NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, O’Connor hosted a color television special on NBC in 1957, one of the earliest color programs to be preserved on a color kinescope. An excerpt of the telecast was included in NBC's 50th anniversary special in 1976.

In 1954, he starred in his own television series, The Donald O'Connor Show, on NBC. In 1968, O'Connor hosted a syndicated talk show also called The Donald O'Connor Show.

O'Connor had undergone quadruple heart bypass surgery in 1990, and he nearly died from double pneumonia in January, 1998. He died from complications of heart failure on September 27, 2003 at age 78 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, in Woodland Hills, California.

Here, O’Connor performs with Noreen Cocoran in “I Love Melvin” in 1953

Gene Kelly was born 109 years ago today

Gene Kelly was born 109 years ago today.

A dancer, actor, singer, film director, producer and choreographer, Kelly was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likable characters that he played on screen.

Although he is known today for his performances in Singin' in the Rain and An American in Paris, he was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid-1940s until this art form fell out of fashion in the late 1950s.

His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.

Kelly was the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1952 for his career achievements. He later received lifetime achievement awards in the Kennedy Center Honors and from the Screen Actors Guild and American Film Institute.

He died in 1996 at age 83.

Here, Kelly performs in “Singin’ in the Rain” in 1952