Paul Draper : The Dancer, not the Winemaker

From Wikipedia:

Paul Draper, a nephew of Ruth Draper, was a famous dancer, born in Italy.

Draper taught dancing at an Arthur Murray dance school. In 1930 he took tap dancing lessons at Tommy Nip’s Broadway dance school. After only six lessons, he sailed for London, confident that he would find work as a dancer. He scraped together a living performing flashy routines in Europe and the United States, then enrolled in the School of American Ballet and realized the possibilities of combining tap and classical ballet.

By 1937, he was performing at such venues as the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel and the Rainbow Room. Carnegie Hall followed, then Broadway and a film version of William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life (1948).

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