Maurice Hines Jr., who went from tap-dancing brother act to Broadway trailblazer, dies at 80
The scene from the movie “Cotton Club” was fictional but encapsulated much in the relationship between Maurice and Gregory Hines. In the film, the estranged brothers, once a top-billed dance duo, come face to face in a nightclub, their wounds and vanities visible; then they reunite in a seamless virtuoso dance, followed by an embrace.
Maurice Hines Jr., the older and longer-lived brother of a famous tandem act that evolved to separate solo stardom for each man, died Friday in Englewood, New Jersey, said his cousin Richard Nurse, who maintains the Maurice Hines website.
Hines forged a trailblazing 70-year career creating, choreographing, directing and starring in Broadway shows – and also performing all over the world – all the while overcoming prejudice against Black entertainers in leadership roles, and also prejudice against out gay men and out gay Black men.
Centrally, he could flatout dance, with tap dancing as his trademark form but not his only one.
That movie scene and another from the film exhibit those skills as well as the troubled relationship with brother Gregory Hines, who achieved surpassing fame in Hollywood. Director Francis Ford Coppola allowed the brothers to improvise their filmed interactions.
“Francis picked up on the tension and brought that into the story,” said John Carluccio, who directed and produced the 2019 documentary “Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back.” “They played it very well because clearly that was going on.”
Soon after the film came out, there began a 10-year period where the brothers did not speak. They put aside their differences to be with their dying mother in the latter 1990s. This reconciliation lasted until 2003, when Gregory died of cancer at 57.
Those “Cotton Club” scenes were the last they danced together.
Maurice and Gregory Hines achieved early fame as perhaps the last of the great tap-dancing duos to emerge from the classic age of tap. They dazzled audiences in the early 1950s, first appearing on Broadway when they were 9 and 7 in the 1954 show “The Girl in Pink Tights.” They also sang and, in the early 1960s, joined forces with their father, Maurice Hines Sr., who played drums as part of Hines, Hines and Dad.
Tap had fallen out of vogue, but the brothers worked steadily, appearing more than two dozen times on “The Tonight Show” alone. Gregory, however, tired of being the impish, irresistible younger sibling and decamped alone for Southern California in 1972.
Living on opposite coasts, Maurice was faring better. He was handpicked to star in the Broadway musical revue “Eubie!” and urged producers to give his brother an audition, while also haranguing his brother to get to New York. Gregory did not impress – his failed audition was later captured in spirit by a scene in the 1999 movie “Tap,” which starred Gregory Hines. In real life, Maurice insisted he would bow out of “Eubie!” unless Gregory was given a chance.
The 1979 show was a smash – as was their duet – but critics in particular fell in love with Gregory, and thus was launched his Tony-winning Broadway career.
Maurice would later replace Gregory – at the latter’s recommendation – as the lead in the stage hits “Sophisticated Ladies” and “Jelly’s Last Jam,” each making the role his own.
Gregory returned to Hollywood to pursue a notable film career. Maurice focused almost entirely on live theater.
“They both found their own lane,” documentarian Carluccio said.
Maurice’s energy, creativity, forcefulness and forthrightness helped him break ground creating, directing, choreographing and starring in two Broadway shows: “Uptown … It’s Hot!” in 1986 and “Hot Feet” in 2006. The latter retold Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Red Shoes” through the music of Earth Wind & Fire.
“His choreography was some of the best I’ve ever seen, breathtaking,” said veteran actor-directorproducer Mel Johnson Jr., who worked with Maurice Hines on several shows. “The performers were exhausted but they loved it, because they didn’t get the chance to do that kind of dancing on Broadway.”
Despite appreciation for the dancing, neither show proved a commercial or critical success.