Gregory Hines: Two decades ago, the American dancer and actor Gregory Hines, who has died of cancer aged 57, came to London for the premiere of the Francis Ford Coppola movie The Cotton Club, in which he featured with his brother Maurice.
Afterwards, at the reception at the Café Royal, he spotted the last of the jazz hoofers, Will Gaines, and climbed over the packed tables to shake his hand.
Together with Maurice, Hines had an enormous importance for tap dance. He spanned the gap between the swing era and the new generation, led by Savion Glover, for whom he was a mentor. Nowhere was his role as a bridge more important than in Tap (1989), the film in which he appeared with both Glover and his boyhood idol, Sammy Davis jnr.
Hines would do anything to encourage other dancers; in 1988, he even successfully lobbied for a US national tap dance day. But he was also one of those few American tap dancers to develop a Hollywood career.
He was born in New York, into a background steeped in jazz - he recalled that he could not remember a time when he was not dancing. The family lived on Harlem's West 150th Street. His grandmother, Ora Hines, had danced at the Cotton Club in the 1920s; his father, Maurice snr, was a drummer.
Prompted by his mother, who saw dance as a route to social advancement, Maurice took up tap at the age of four - and Gregory eagerly followed suit. There were soon lessons with the world-renowned tap teacher Henry LeTang. The Hines Kids, as they were known, danced at Harlem's Apollo theatre for two weeks in 1952, when Gregory was six. They returned there many times.
They made their first Broadway appearance in 1954, in the musical The Girl In Pink Tights, which starred the great French dancer Zizi Jeanmaire. As they moved into their teens, they changed their stage name to the Hines Brothers, and, after their father joined them as a drummer in 1963, they were billed as Hines, Hines and Dad.
Thus began a 10-year stint in nightclubs. They also gravitated towards television, appearing on the Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson shows, and performed in Europe, including at the London Palladium. Gregory married the dance therapist Patricia Panella in 1968, and their daughter, Daria, was born in 1970.
A divorce followed and differences with his brother led to the break-up of their act. Rhythm tap, like the whole jazz spectrum, was in trouble. Keen to perform to rock music and write songs, Gregory moved to Venice Beach, California, played in the jazz-rock band Severance, and though he often had little money, he later looked back fondly on those days, when, for the first time, he was really by himself.
It was in Venice that Hines met his second wife, Pamela Koslow.
In the late 1970s, tap made a comeback. Hines returned to New York in 1978, and his brother told him about an audition for The Last Minstrel Show. This closed on Broadway almost as quickly as Hines got his part.
He was nominated for Tony awards for his Broadway performance as Eubie Blake - alongside his brother - in the LeTang-choreographed musical revue Eubie! (1979); for Comin' Uptown (1980), an African-American retelling of A Christmas Carol; and for Sophisticated Ladies (1981), a revue based on Duke Ellington compositions. He finally won the award in 1992 for his portrayal of the jazz composer Jelly Roll Morton, in George C. Wolfe's musical, Jelly's Last Jam.
Hines's career as a movie actor took off in 1981, when he got a break in Mel Brooks's History Of The World Part I, replacing Richard Pryor as a Roman slave. He featured in Wolfen (1981) with Albert Finney, and Deal Of The Century (1983) with Chevy Chase. The Cotton Club (1984) led to more Hollywood work, including co-starring with Mikhail Baryshnikov in White Nights (1985) and with Billy Crystal in Running Scared (1986). He also began directing films, the first of which was Bleeding Hearts (1994).
Hines's 1989 television special, Gregory Hines: Tap Dance In America, was Emmy-nominated, although the Gregory Hines Show (1997), in which he played a single father re-entering the dating scene, flopped. He had a recurring role as a tough boss in the sitcom Will And Grace.
In 1976, he co-wrote the song There's Nothing Better Than Love with Luther Vandross, and released an album in 1987.
Immensely likeable, Hines wore celebrity casually. His marriages ended in divorce. He spent the last five years with his fiancée Negrita Jayde. She survives him, as does his father, brother, daughter, son and stepdaughter.
Gregory Oliver Hines: born February 14th, 1946; died August 9th, 2003.