Harold Nicholas

“My brother and I would just put on a show in the living room. We'd get dressed up. We'd act like we were rich.”

“Fred Astaire told us that the 'Jumpin' Jive' dance number in 'Stormy Weather' was the greatest movie musical number he had ever seen.”

“We developed a type of dancing that we called classical tap. We combined tap, ballet, and acrobatics.”

“We never had a lesson. We just watched the other performers at the Standard Theater in Philadelphia.”

“We had to be better than everyone else to even get a chance. That’s what our mother taught us.”

“Our mother was our manager, our agent, our everything. She was a very smart woman.”

“When we danced on the screen, we were just ourselves. We were having fun.”

“Everywhere we went, we were the first. The first black act at many of the big hotels.”