This Day in Tap History - Jeni LeGon

Stacie Strong | Aug 15, 2008 | 1

Born on Chicago's south side as "Jennie Ligon" on August 14, 1916, Jeni LeGon went on to break gender and racial barriers as one of the first - and arguably only - African-American woman to rise to international stardom as a soloist during the golden age of tap.  Inducted to the Tap Dance Hall of Fame in 2002 - the same year she was given an honorary doctorate by Oklahoma City University - LeGon has performed with everyone from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson to Snoop Dogg.  Read on to learn more about her extraordinary life.

Here she is performing with Bill Robinson and Fats Waller in her very first film (dancing starts at around the three minute mark, with some nice singing before that).

By all accounts, Jeni LeGon was a dancer who could do it all.  Although she received formal dance training from Mary Bruce's School of Dance, LeGon was a dedicated stealer of steps, often skipping school to go to the movies and pick up new moves from the dancers featured on film.  By the age of thirteen, she was dancing in musical theatre as a soubrette (a type of sassy, flirtatious stock character) in trousers, and by sixteen she was performing as a chorus line dancer with the Count Basie Orchestra.  Soon after, she joined the Whitman Sisters, an all-black, woman-managed company that was the highest paid act on the TOBA circuit (the vaudeville circuit for African Americans during the era of segregation).  Although she got her start in the chorus line, she stood out as a soloist, performing a combination of acrobatics, flash steps and rhythm tap that rivaled the top male dancers of the period.  Doing all these tricky steps and flips in a skirt bordered on the impossible (or at least the indecent), so LeGon started performing in trousers, all the better to do her cutting edge knee drops, flips, slides, mule kicks, flying splits and toe stands.  She also took up dancing in flat tap shoes, paving the way for dancers like Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, Lynn Dally and other women of the tap renaissance who also ditched chorus-girl heels as a means of showing their status as serious rhythm tappers and dancing on an equal playing field with men.

It was while she was performing in Los Angeles with the Whitman Sisters that LeGon got her big break. Her act so impressed audiences and film industry professionals that she won herself a long-term contract with MGM (the first black woman to do so) and was cast in the 1935 musical, "Hooray for Love," as Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's dance partner (the only African American woman to dance with him on screen).  During the filming of that picture, she also met jazz great Fats Waller, with whom she would continue to work for much of her career.  After the film came out, LeGon went to London to perform in C.B. Cochran's "At Home Abroad" and won international fame for her skill as a performer.  When she returned to New York, she was one of the few women ever to be invited into the Hoofers Club.

LeGon went on to perform in twenty-four films, playing leading roles in a number of "black" films (i.e., motion pictures made with all-black casts for all-black audiences in segregated cinemas) as well as parts in mainstream Hollywood films such as "Easter Parade" (with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire), "Birth of the Blues" (with Bing Crosby) and "Broadway Melody of 1936" (with Eleanor Powell).  Her last movie to date was Snoop Dogg's 2001 film, "Bones."  She also toured widely with U.S. Army shows, did club and theatre dates both in the U.S. and abroad, and appeared in television shows such as "Amos and Andy."  However, as outstanding as she was as a performer, she was (and is) equally dedicated to her career as a dance teacher.  She taught throughout her life and became even more focused on her life as a studio owner after she gave up her career on the stage.  
LeGon - who lives in Vancouver, Canada, with her husband, musician Frank Clavin - still makes the occasional public appearance, but can also be seen in a 1999 documentary by Grant Greshuck, called "Living in a Great Big Way" after one of her famous numbers with Bill Robinson.  Narrated by Fayard Nicholas, the film clearly shows LeGon as an outstanding performer and a gifted teacher whose devotion to tap dance still burns brightly.   Despite all that she has accomplished, LeGon is clearly not one to rest on her laurels.  Her favorite quote - "Every day you live and learn" - exemplifies her "can do" spirit and continual devotion to growing as a person and an artist.

Happy birthday, Jeni.

Jeni LeGon teaching the time step at the age of 90.

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