Tony Award-winning actor, dancer
vaulted from stage to films, television

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 10 —  Gregory Hines, the greatest tap dancer of his generation who also transcended the stage with successful film and television roles, has died of cancer. Hines died Saturday in Los Angeles, publicist Allen Eichorn said Sunday. Hines, who started on Broadway and moved to films including “White Nights” and “Running Scared,” was 57.

Hines, who won a 1992 Tony for best actor in a musical playing jazz legend “Jelly Roll” Morton in “Jelly’s Last Jam,” had a smooth, solo tap style reminiscent of Fred Astaire. Hines first became internationally known as part of a jazz tap duo with his brother, Maurice. The two danced together in the musical revue “Eubie!” in 1978.  The brothers later performed together in Broadway’s “Sophisticated Ladies” and on film in 1984’s “The Cotton Club.”

In “The Cotton Club,” Hines also had a lead acting role, which led to more work in film. He starred with Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1985’s Cold War-era dancers’ story “White Nights” and with Billy Crystal in 1986’s “Running Scared,” and he appeared with Whitney Houston and Angela Bassett in 1995’s “Waiting to Exhale,” among other movies.

On television, he had his own sitcom in 1997 called “The Gregory Hines Show,” as well as a recurring role on NBC’s “Will and Grace.” Last March, he appeared in the ABC spring television series “Lost at Home.”

“His dancing came from something very real,” said Bernadette Peters, who appeared with Hines as co-hosts of the 2002 Tony Awards show. “It came out of his instincts, his impulses and his amazing creativity. His whole heart and soul went into everything he did.” 

“He was the last of a kind of immaculate performer — a singer, dancer, actor and a personality,” said George C. Wolfe, who directed “Jelly’s Last Jam.” “He knew how to command.”

Gregory Oliver Hines was born on Feb. 14, 1946, in New York City. He has said his mother urged him and his older brother toward tap dancing because she wanted them to have a way out of the ghetto.  When he was a toddler, he said, his brother was already taking tap lessons and would come home and teach him steps. They began performing together when Gregory Hines was 5, and they performed at the Apollo for two weeks when he was 6. In 1954 they were cast in the Broadway musical “The Girl in Pink Tights,” starring French ballerina Jeanmaire.

“I don’t remember not dancing,” Hines said in a 2001 interview with The Associated Press. “When I realized I was alive and these were my parents, and I could walk and talk, I could dance.”  Paired with his brother Maurice, he was a professional child star. In his teens, joined by their father, Maurice Sr., on drums, they were known as Hines, Hines and Dad. Later Gregory Hines earned Tony nominations on Broadway in “Eubie,” “Comin’ Uptown” and “Sophisticated Ladies.”

MOMENT OF REBELLION

There was a time, he said, when he didn’t want to dance. He was in his mid-20s, “a hippie” in a brief moment of rebellion, he said in 2001.  “I felt that I didn’t want to be in show business anymore. I felt that I wanted to be a farmer,” he said with a laugh. Invited to work on a farm in upstate New York, he quickly learned a lesson.

Beginning before dawn, “I was milking cows and shoveling terrible stuff and working all day. By the end of the day all I wanted was my tap shoes — I thought, ‘What am I doing? I better get back where I belong on the stage where we work at night and can sleep late!”  Hines had a falling out with his older brother in the late 1960s because the younger was becoming influenced by counterculture and wanted to perform to rock music and write his songs. In 1973, the family act disbanded and Hines moved to Venice Beach, Calif.

“I was going through a lot of changes,” Hines told The Washington Post in 1981. “Marriage. We’d just had a child. Divorce. I was finding myself.”  He returned to New York in 1978, partly to be near his daughter, Daria, who was living with Hines’ first wife, dance therapist Patricia Panella. His brother, with whom he had reconciled, told him about an audition for the Broadway-bound “The Last Minstrel Show.” He got the part, but the show opened and closed in Philadelphia.

FIRST FILM IN 1981

Hines landed his first film role in the 1981 Mel Brooks comedy “History of the World Part I,” in which he played a Roman slave as a last-minute replacement for Richard Pryor.  He starred in “Tap,” a 1989 film that included veteran hoofers Sammy Davis Jr. — one of young Gregory Hines’ inspirations — and Sandman Sims, and then-newcomer Savion Glover in a story that joined Hines’ talents for drama and dancing.   Hines had been nominated for a number of Emmy Awards, most recently in 2001 for his portrayal of the troubled legendary dancer Bill Robinson in the 2001 Showtime film “Bojangles.”

His PBS special “Gregory Hines: Tap Dance in America” was nominated in 1989, and in 1982 he was nominated for his performance in “I Love Liberty,” a variety special saluting America.  He also won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1999 for his work as the voice of “Big Bill” in the Bill Cosby animated TV series “Little Bill” and NAACP Image Awards for “Bojangles” and “Running Scared.”

Hines is survived by his fiancee, Negrita Jayde; his daughter, Daria; his son, Zach; his stepdaughter, Jessica Koslow; and his grandson, Lucian, Eichhorn said. Hines had been married twice.  He is also survived by his brother and father. A private funeral was held in Los Angeles.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.