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Hal LeRoy [biography]
Dates: 1913-1985
Birth Date: Dec 10, 1913
Death Date: May 2, 1985
Place of Birth: Cheviot, Ohio
Place of Death: Hackensack, New Jersey
Hal LeRoy, the gangly, eccentric tap dancing star who is credited with creating a style of rhythm tap with Charleston moves known as the Tanglefoot Tap, was born John LeRoy Schotte, of Irish heritage. He began dancing as s child, studying with Ned Wayburn, and making his Broadway debut at the age of sixteen in Ziegfeld Follies of 1931. He was a featured tap dancer on Broadway in The Gang's All Here (1931), Strike Me Pink (‘33), Thumbs Up (1934), Too Many Girls (1939), and Count Me in In (1942). Because of his stage success, he was brought to Hollywood to star as the title character in the Harold Teen film series, and also appeared in such musical films as Wonder Bar (1934), Start Cheering (1938), and the film version of his Broadway success Too Many Girls, (1940), starring Ann Miller; along with several Vitaphone musical shorts. LeRoy's expertise allowed him to be one of the few Caucasian dancers allowed into the legendary Hoofer's Club. He continued to perform in supper clubs, on television, and in summer stock during the perilous 1950s when tap dance went out of favor in the popular entertainment industry. In 1955, LeRoy was featured on the Ed Sullivan Show in a tap-dance challenge with the one-legged monoped tap dancer Peg Leg Bates.
LeRoy also helped historians of tap to pinpoint when "taps" were put on hard-soled tap shoes, when telling tap dancer Danny Daniels that metal taps did not regularly appear on the toes and heels of hard-soled shoes until the early 1930s. When LeRoy performed in his first Ziegfeld Follies in 1932, he wore no metal taps on his shoes; but soon after, he remembered, "Everyone started wearing them."
(Sources: Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Stage Directors: an Illustrated Biographic Encyclopedia, 1893-1995 (1995); Jane Goldberg, "An Interview With Danny Daniels," Foot Prints (Fall, 1984Vol. 1 #2/3)]