Leonard Harper (producer)

Leonard Harper (April 9, 1899, Birmingham, Alabama – February 4, 1943, Harlem, New York) was a producer, stager, and choreographer in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s.[1][2]

Leonard Harper
Born(1899-04-09)April 9, 1899
DiedFebruary 13, 1943(1943-02-13) (aged 43)
OccupationProducer, stager, and choreographer

Harper's works spanned the worlds of vaudeville, cabaret, burlesque and Broadway musical comedy.[3] As a dancer, choreographer and studio owner, he coached many of the country's leading performers, including Ruby Keeler, Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire, and the Marx Brothers.[4][5][6] He produced floor shows and theatrical revues both uptown in Harlem and downtown on Broadway's Great White Way.[7] He co-directed and staged the ensemble segments of The Exile and the short film Darktown Revue with Oscar Micheaux. Harper staged for Broadway Hot Chocolates at the Hudson Theatre and was the premiere producer who opened up the Cotton Club. He also produced Lindy Hop revues and an act called Harper's Lindy Hoppers at the Savoy Ballroom, as detailed in his biography Rhythm For Sale.[8]

Early life

Harper was born in 1899 in Birmingham, Alabama, to William Harper, a performer, and his wife. Harper started dancing as a child to attract a crowd on a medicine show wagon, traveling with the show throughout the South. In 1915, he first toured in New York City, and quickly moved to Chicago.

There he began choreographing and performing dance acts with Osceola Blanks of the Blanks Sisters, who became the first black act for the Shubert Brothers.[9]

He married Osceola Blanks in 1923.[10][7]

Return to New York

Harper and Osceola Blanks performed in his first big revue, Plantation Days, when it opened at the Lafayette Theatre in Harlem in 1922–23.[11] He began producing floor shows in Harlem and New York thereafter.

From 1923 to 1924, Harper offered the Duke Ellington Orchestra the house band position at the speakeasies, Connie's Inn in Harlem and the Kentucky Club in Times Square. He was producing shows there and the Duke Ellington orchestra played as the house band at the Kentucky Club for the next four years. At the suggestion of drummer Sonny Greer, Duke Ellington and his wife Edna along with their son Mercer Ellington were lived in one of Harper's Harlem apartment bedrooms in the early 1920s.[12]

By 1925, Harper owned a Times Square dance studio where black dancers taught their dances to white performers.[13] As a nightclub and Broadway producer, Harper counted Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Bill Robinson, Harold "Stumpy" Cromer of Stump and Stumpy and Count Basie among his colleagues. He introduced Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway to New York show business, and worked with Mae West, Josephine Baker, Lena Horne, Fats Waller and Eubie Blake.[14][15]

Harper was part of the transition team when the Deluxe Cabaret was turned into the Cotton Club, producing two of its first revues during its opening. His biggest milestone on the Great White Way was his staging of the Broadway hit Hot Chocolates, which established the classic Broadway show tunes "Black and Blue" and "Ain't Misbehavin'". Harper was one of the leading figures who transformed Harlem into a cultural center during the 1920s. His nightclub productions took place at Connie's Inn, the Lafayette Theatre, the new Apollo Theatre, and other theatres in New York.

He had a daughter, Jean Harper, out of wedlock with Fannie Pennington.

Harper died in Harlem, New York, on February 4, 1943, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. conducted his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.[16]

Legacy

A Harlem street was co-named after Harper on October 10, 2015, because of the efforts of his grandson, Grant Harper Reid. "Leonard Harper Way" is located on 7th Avenue (also known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd.) and 132nd Street.[17][18] [19]

Harper was named a 2015 NAACP History Maker.[20]

Leonard Harper's Congressional Record

References
  1. Reid, Grant Harper (2014). Rhythm for Sale.
  2. Williams, Kam (October 29, 2014). "Rhythm for Sale by Dr. Grant Harper Reid". Maryland Daily Examiner.
  3. Beckerman, Jim (February 16, 2014). "Pioneering African American Film Comes Back to Fort Lee Where it All Began". North Jersey. Retrieved February 9, 2015.
  4. Variety, July 2, 1924, Billboard, August 23, 1924.
  5. Lawrence, A. H., Duke Ellington and His World, pp. 34–36.
  6. Taylor, Erica L. (February 14, 2014). "Little Known Black History Facts: Leonard Harper and the Harpettes". Black America Web.
  7. Cullen, Hackman, McNeilly, Frank, Florence, Donald (2007). Vaudeville, old & new: an encyclopedia of variety performers in America. New York: Routledge. pp. 482–483.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. Hinckley, David, "He Lived the Nightlife Entertainer and Impresario Leonard Harper Was a New York Original Whose Story Deserves Telling", New York Daily News, March 19, 1998; Nicholson, Stuart, Ella Fitzgerald: A Biography of the First Lady of Jazz, Updated Edition, Routledge, 2004.
  9. Variety, September 23, 1921.
  10. Chicago Defender, January 1918, July 1, 1922.
  11. New York Amsterdam News.
  12. Tucker, Mark, Ellington: The Early Years, University of Illinois Press, 1995, p. 102.
  13. Billboard Magazine, August 23, 1924.
  14. "Leonard Harper". Streetswing.
  15. Graves, Neil (February 14, 2000). "He 'Roots' out Granddads Past". New York Post.
  16. Hinckley, Dave (March 19, 1998). "He Lived the Nightlife: Entertainer and Impresario Leonard Harper Was a New York Original Whose Story Deserves Telling". New York Daily News.
  17. "Leonard Harper Way Street Co-Naming Resolution" (PDF). New York City Government. Retrieved February 27, 2016.
  18. "Harlem Street Pays Tribute To Influential Producer, Director, Choreographer Leonard Harper". CBS New York. October 10, 2015. Retrieved February 27, 2016.
  19. "Mayor Bill de Blasio Signs Legislation Co-Naming 51 Thoroughfares and Public Spaces", NYC website, August 10, 2015.
  20. "NAACP History Makers (Archived copy)". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 30, 2015.
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