The Washington Post - USA (2022-06-12)

E4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022

Book World

Yet Bubbles died poor in 1986,

at age 84. Celebrity admirers

chipped in for his funeral, includ-

ing Bob Hope, Liza Minnelli and

Johnny Carson, on whose TV

show Bubbles was a regular,

years earlier. Bubbles had had

moments in vogue as nostalgia

swept through the 1950s and

‘60s. In the ‘80s, rumors sur-

faced, Harker notes, “that the

hottest pop star of the day, Mi-

chael Jackson, had named his pet

chimp after the great dancer.”

Outside tap connoisseurs and

enthusiasts, few know Bubbles’s

name today.

Harker meticulously plots the

points where racial discrimina-

tion limited the showman’s op-

portunities on the vaudeville cir-

cuits and in Hollywood. Still,

Bubbles was helplessly in love

with the theater. Born John Wil-

liam Sublett Jr. in Nashville in

1903, he got his stage name as a

child from a vaudeville manager

captivated by his upbeat nature.

By 14 he’d teamed up with Buck.

“We looked poor,” Bubbles

said, “we talked like we didn’t

know nothing, and we danced

like we didn’t care.”

That relaxed air hid the duo’s

special sauce: absolute mastery.

“In their virtuosity, Buck and

Bubbles heralded a new age of

Black achievement,” Harker

writes. They were the act no one

wanted to follow.

Yet Bubbles’s legacy surely

would be different if he’d had the

film career of, say, Fred Astaire or

Bill Robinson. Harker believes

that racism isn’t the only reason

Bubbles didn’t make it in movies.

Certainly, many vaudevillians

made a successful leap to film —

Astaire, Ginger Rogers, George

Burns, to name a few — and there

were Black artists among them.

Robinson, Stepin Fetchit and Ed-

die Anderson “all succeeded in

Hollywood despite the color of

their skin,” Harker writes.

So why not Bubbles?

BY SARAH L. KAUFMAN

T

here’s a fascinating

scene in the 1943 film

“Cabin in the Sky” that,

however brief, sums up

the virtuosic brilliance of dancer

John W. Bubbles. According to

the penetrating and revelatory

new biography, “Sportin’ Life:

John W. Bubbles, an American

Classic,” it also helps explain

why this tap pioneer is virtually

unknown today.

Wearing a bowler hat and

twirling a cane, Bubbles, in the

role of a rakish murderer named

Domino Johnson, swans into a

cabaret and unleashes a cyclone

of spins, floating slides and crisp,

sudden stops that are at once

familiar and uncanny. The tight

turns, the coin-flip toss of his hat,

the way he freezes his strut with

head bowed, one knee bent: It’s

familiar because you’ve seen the

moves copied by Bob Fosse,

James Brown and Michael Jack-

son.

Uncanny, though, is Bubbles’s

crisp clarity and liquid ease. He’s

in perfect command of his body, a

body that flies in different direc-

tions then snaps together so fast

you might suspect there’s film

trickery at work. He is, by the

way, also singing, cheekily, and

flirting with the ladies at their

tables, teasing them with little

dips of his shoulders. He ema-

nates edgy glamour. The scene

buzzes with electricity and visual

surprise.

“Sportin’ Life,” by Brian Hark-

er, author of books on Louis

Armstrong and jazz, is the first

life history of this dance artist, an

astonishing fact given his one-

time renown. For 36 years, Bub-

bles was part of the song-and-

dance team Buck and Bubbles,

one of the longest-lasting part-

nerships in vaudeville history.

The duo was featured on the

world’s first television broadcast

in 1936. They were chauffeured

around London by the Prince of

Wales himself, pre-abdication, af-

ter a command performance for

Edward and his not-yet-wife Wal-

lis Simpson.

Even with the racial confines

of the day, Bubbles was movie

material: tall, handsome, killer

smile. An extraordinary show-

man. In the very few clips that

exist, he’s a natural. In the 1937

feature film “Varsity Show,” star-

ring Dick Powell and Priscilla

Lane, Bubbles tap dances bril-

liantly (playing a janitor , no less),

accompanied by his pianist part-

ner Buck (né Ford Lee Washing-

ton). That, along with Bubbles’s

brief scene in the all-Black “Cab-

in in the Sky,” was about all

Hollywood wanted from him.

The film industry had a blind

spot (more on that soon), but

George Gershwin didn’t.

Harker, who teaches music

history at Brigham Young Uni-

versity, takes his book’s title from

the role Bubbles created in

Gershwin’s 1935 all-Black opera,

“Porgy and Bess.” Sportin’ Life

was the showstopping villain of

that historic production: a danc-

ing drug peddler who was dan-

gerous and — true to Bubbles’s

nature — irresistible. Gershwin

gave him the part; no audition

necessary. He called him “my

Bubbles.”

Because Bubbles was a self-

taught dancer, didn’t read music

and had no opera experience,

Gershwin tutored his “unconven-

tional protege” himself, playing

piano in his apartment while

Bubbles sat next to him and sang.

It was a life-changing experience.

For the rest of his career, “It Ain’t

Necessarily So” was Bubbles’s un-

official theme song. Gershwin

also prompted Bubbles to use his

famous feet to dance out the

songs note by note.

A lot was riding on those feet.

Before Gershwin came along,

Bubbles had insured his ankles

for $50,000. His influence had

spread throughout the tap world.

Where Bill “Bojangles” Robinson

was revered for his light, crystal-

line patter and perfected pat-

terns, Bubbles had a more power-

ful, dynamic and spontaneous

style. Most tappers at the time

danced on their toes, but Bubbles

brought his heels down, adding

rhythmic complexity and synco-

pation. Followers dubbed him

“the father of rhythm tap.”

Harker makes an interesting

argument for why the dancer

bombed in Hollywood: He was

too sexy. “More than any other

single issue,” Harker asserts,

“filmmakers were almost certain-

ly terrified by Bubbles’s sexual

potency.”

In that “Cabin in the Sky”

scene, there is a masculine heat

radiating through his sinuous

agility.

He was so unlike Robinson,

who, for example, paired up with

a young Shirley Temple in “The

Little Colonel,” in the role of an

avuncular, deferential domestic.

By contrast, Harker notes,

“slinky sexy” is how film critic

Pauline Kael described Bubbles.

Harker writes, “For Clark Ga-

ble, sex appeal was a key to

success; for John Bubbles, it was

fatal.”

It remains stupefying that the

movie industry chose not to capi-

talize on Bubbles’s talent and

magnetism. The ironies and in-

justices are plain. Harker opens

his book with Fred Astaire paying

Bubbles an astronomical $400

for a tap lesson in 1930 — an

extraordinary move.

Harker makes clear that

Astaire himself never disclosed

the lesson. The account comes

from Bubbles, who told the story

in several published interviews.

Harker believes it’s true, but even

if it isn’t, he writes, it makes a

point. “Astaire’s complex step-

ping ... could only take place

within a world informed by Bub-

bles’s innovations. Whether by

studying with the man privately

or observing him from afar, the

result was the same: Astaire bor-

rowed ideas from Bubbles. Every-

one did.”

Influence, though, wasn’t

enough to ensure immortality.

Harker’s book is not only vivid

history but a poignant rumina-

tion on what might have been —

what greater art Bubbles might

have made, if only the world that

applauded him hadn’t also

hemmed him in.

Sarah L. Kaufman is The

Washington Post’s dance critic and

author of “The Art of Grace.”

A hoofer’s hoofer, was Bubbles too sexy for Hollywood?

L. TOM PERRY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY, BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, PROVO, UTAH

Innovative tap dancer

John W. Bubbles plays a

rakish killer named

Domino Johnson in the

movie “Cabin in the

Sky” (1943).

SPORTIN’ LIFE

John W. Bubbles, An

American Classic

By Brian Harker

Oxford. 328 pp. $34.95